Hannah Norman '16February 20, 20132min
Two Wesleyan skiers took podium spots in the McBrine Division League Championships Feb. 16 and 17 at Magic Mountain, Vt. Michael Creager '15 and Chris Delaney '14 came in second and third respectively in the Men's Ski Division. Two snowboarders, Dylan Penn '15 and Atticus Swartwood '14, qualified for nationals. The Wesleyan Ski Team is a student-run club team that competes in both Giant Slalom and Slalom events. The men’s ski team, led by captain Adam Freed ’14, took first place overall in the 2013 season, qualifying for USCSA Eastern Regionals at Sugarloaf on Feb. 23-24. The women’s team, led…

Olivia DrakeFebruary 20, 20135min
Q&As with outstanding students are an occasional feature of The Wesleyan Connection. This issue we speak with Evan Okun from the Class of 2013.  Q: Evan, you'll be graduating this spring. How would you sum up your Wesleyan experience so far? A: Wesleyan University encourages interdisciplinary inquiry while simultaneously supporting student efforts to put theory into practice. Earlier this semester the Sociology Department (along with other student and administrative groups) sponsored a panel discussion on the education system featuring the brilliant rap duo, Dead Prez. This served as the action component of my Senior Essay, which addressed exclusion in academia and incorporated…

Olivia DrakeFebruary 20, 20132min
Janice Naegele will become director of the Center for Faculty Career Development on July 1. Naegele, professor of biology, professor of neuroscience and behavior, has served as chair of the Biology Department, and has served on the Educational Policy Committee, Review and Appeals Board, the Graduate Liberal Studies Advisory Committee, the Life Sciences Building Committee, and the Writing Certificate Committee. She has published extensively in the areas of developmental neurobiology, stem cells and translational rodent models of neurological disorders. Her research explores genetic, small molecule, and neural stem cell based treatments for cognitive disabilities and epilepsy. She currently serves on…

Brian KattenFebruary 20, 20134min
For the first time in men's basketball history at Wesleyan, three members of the same class are 1,000-point scorers. All-time leading scorer Shasha Brown '13 has 1,745 points; Mike Callaghan '13 finished with 1,175 career points to rank sixth; and Derick Beresford '13 ranks 18th with 1,055 points. Brown, who averaged 18 points a game over his career, also will graduate as the Cardinals' all-time leader for assists (393) and free throws made (438). During the New England Division III Women's Indoor Track Championships at Southern Maine, Sierra Livious '14 set a Wesleyan record in the shot put with a…

Olivia DrakeFebruary 20, 20132min
J. Kehaulani Kauanui, associate professor of American studies, associate professor of anthropology, was appointed an Organization of American Historians (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer by the OAH Distinguished Lectureship Program. In an e-mail to Kauanui, Alan M. Kraut, president-elect of the OAH wrote, "Since 1981, OAH presidents have appointed their most illustrious and dynamic colleagues to our program, making it one of the longest running and most successful efforts of its kind among scholarly associations. It has proven to be an ideal way to reach a broader audience while raising money for the organization's initiatives on behalf of historians." As part of the…

Gabe Rosenberg '16February 20, 20131min
Mateusz Burgunder ’15 returned recently from competing in the 2013 Ski Mountaineering World Championships, where the U.S. National Ski Mountaineering Team finished ninth out of 23 competing teams. This year was Burgunder’s third time competing for the U.S., participating in both the sprint race and the men’s individual race. He placed 51st and 65th, respectively. The U.S. won its first medal in the world championships, with Dartmouth College alumna Nina Silitch taking a silver medal in the sprint race. The Ski Mountaineering World Championships, hosted by the International Ski Mountaineering Federation, were held in Pelvoux, France from Feb. 9–16.  

Olivia DrakeFebruary 20, 20131min
Diana Windemuth, a graduate student in the Astronomy Department, received Honorable Mention as a Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Award Recipient at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society held Jan. 6-10 in Long Beach, Calif. The award is given to recognize exemplary research by graduate students who present a poster at the meeting. Diana's poster was titled "Dramatic Evolution of the Disk-Shaped Secondary in the Orion Trapezium Star θ1 Ori B1 (BM Ori): MOST Satellite Observations." Windemuth's advisor is William Herbst, the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy. Her work included results from two former Astronomy graduate students,…

Cynthia RockwellFebruary 20, 20132min
Eyal Bar-David '09, Wesleyan psychology major and New York University research assistant in the department of psychology’s Phelps Lab, co-authored a paper asking whether “racial bias affects the way the brain represents information about social groups,” published in the journal Psychological Science. With co-authors Tobias Brosch from the department of psychology at the University of Geneva and Elizabeth Phelps, director of the Phelps Lab at New York University, Bar-David noted in the abstract that their  "findings suggest that stronger implicit pro-White bias decreases the similarity of neural representations of Black and White faces." The paper headlined the "This Week in Psychological Science" sent…