Olivia DrakeJoyce Jacobsen, the Andrews Professor of Economics, will become dean of the Division of Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Programs beginning July 1 for three years. Jacobsen brings to this role substantial experience in Wesleyan's faculty governance process, having served as chair of the faculty, chair of the Educational Policy Committee, chair of the Economics Department, co-chair of the College of Social Studies, vice-chair of the Review and Appeals Board, and on the governing board of the Center for the Study of Public Life. A scholar of the economics of gender and employment, she is author, co-author, and editor of three…
Makaela Kingsley will become director of the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Makaela (Steinberg) Kingsley graduated from Wesleyan in 1998 with a degree in neuroscience and behavior. After a brief stint doing public relations for the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, she returned to Wesleyan in 2000 to join the alumni and parent relations team in University Relations. During the past 13 years, she has collaborated with colleagues in U.R. and across campus, as well as students and alumni. For the past two months, she has been serving as interim director of the Patricelli Center. Her short-term goal is to…
Sharon Belden Castonguay will become director of the Wesleyan Career Center in May. An expert in career development and strategic planning, Castonguay comes to Wesleyan from Baruch College where she was director of the Graduate Career Management Center for the Zicklin School of Business. Previously, she was an independent career consultant and worked at Harvard University’s Office of Career Services. At Baruch, Castonguay managed the corporate relations team responsible for employer relationships, marketing and on-campus recruiting. She revitalized Zicklin’s career education programming, served on the admissions committee and collaborated with the advancement office to build corporate relationships. A 1993 graduate of Smith…
Wesleyan's WESlam team placed 13th out of 59 college teams from around the country in the 2013 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational, held April 3-6 at Barnard College in New York City. Five students, Evan Okun '13, Lily Myers '15 , Zachary Goldberg '13, Cherkira Lashely '15 and Markeisha Hill '16 competed on the team and Emily Weitzman '14 coached. Lily Myers won the award for best love poem. "'Most moving' was the response Wesleyan got from community ," Okun said. "We were complemented for our creative manner in which we resisted the typical 'slam-poem-formula' that is often over dramatic and…
Gina Ulysse made a 13-minute presentation during "Untapped," the fourth annual TEDxUofM ideas convention at the University of Michigan on April 5. Ulysse is associate professor of African American studies, associate professor of anthropology and director of the Center for African American Studies. Ulysse, a University of Michigan alumna, was one of 20 speakers at the event. More than 1,300 guests attended. Ulysse focused her talk on untapped creativity and why she is turning to performance work at this stage of her life. "With a broad range of topics ranging from NASA funding, creativity, brain cancer research, philanthropy, a food cart…
Brian KattenThe Wesleyan softball team, led by head coach Jen Lane, captured the 2013 Little Three title after taking two of three games from Amherst over the weekend. Combined with their two wins earlier this year over Williams, the Cardinals went 4-2 for the Little Three crown. Su Pardo '16 picked up both pitching wins vs. Amherst, giving up just six hits and one earned run over 12 innings of work with 13 strikeouts. Jill Gately '15 was tremendous at the plate, going 5-for-9 in the series with two doubles, a home run, five runs scored and six RBI. She broke…
Rosa Hayes '13 presented her paper on yield spread during The Carroll Round, an annual international economics conference at Georgetown University, in April. The Carroll Round provides a unique forum for research and discussion among the world’s top undergraduates. The goal of the Carroll Round is to foster the exchange of ideas among the leading undergraduate international economics and political economy students by encouraging and supporting the pursuit of scholarly innovation in the field. Hayes' advisor is Masami Imai, chair and associate professor of East Asian studies, associate professor of economics and director of the Freeman Center for East Asian…
A Wesleyan team scored 130th out of 402 teams at the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, administered by The Mathematical Association of America. In Dec. 2012, 4,277 students from 578 institutions took the exam. Some students competed in groups of three. Wesleyan's top scorer was Joshua Neitzel '14 with a rank of 239. Sangsan Warakkagun '15 ranked 569, and Eli Halperin '15 and Jeremy Fehr '13 ranked 870.5. The Putnam Exam is given every year on the first Saturday in December. The exam's first problem was: "A1 (2012) Let d1, d2, ..., d12 be real numbers in the open interval…
See the map. (more…)
Professor of Economics Richard Grossman was an invited discussant at a conference on “Understanding the Capital Structures of Non-Financial and Financial Corporations,” sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The conference took place in Cambridge, Mass. on April 5-6. Grossman discussed a paper titled “Short-Term Debt and Financial Crises: What can we Learn from Treasury Supply,” by Arvind Krishnamurthy and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, both of Northwestern University. For more information see the conference's website.
Lauren RubensteinOn April 4, The Hartford Courant published an op-ed by Mariah Schug, visiting assistant professor of psychology, giving a cross-cultural perspective on same-sex marriage. During the Supreme Court's recent hearings on two same-sex marriage cases, some justices expressed concern that because same-sex marriage is so new, we don't yet know its long-term impact on families and society. Schug challenges these assertions, pointing out that the justices failed to look outside the U.S. Citing her own research and that of other academics, Schug points to examples in countries around the world, which demonstrate that gay marriage has not led to a…
Kate Shervais '13 presented her thesis research on "Examining Microroughness Evolution in Natural and Experimental Pseudotachylyte-bearing Fault Surfaces," at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in April. More than 11,000 scientists from 95 countries attended the conference, which was held in Vienna, Austria. Only 28 percent of the participants were students. Shervais completed her study with Phil Resor, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences. Resor, who received a National Science Foundation grant to study earthquakes in an Italian fault zone, also attended the conference. The NSF grant supported their travel to the conference. "I had a wonderful time and…