Olivia DrakeGina 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…
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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…
Gabe Rosenberg '16A litigation associate at Squire Sanders, Dan Matzkin ’06 beat out several hundred other applicants for a clerkship with Judge Adalberto Jordan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Matzkin also has been blind since birth with a condition called Leber congenital amaurosis. It didn’t hold him back, however, from earning an undergraduate degree with honors, double-majoring in Wesleyan’s College of Letters and Classics or graduating from law school at the University of Michigan. While Jordan had reservations about how someone with such a disability could manage the challenges of legal practice, which include reading hundreds of…
The Cardinals are having an incredible spring season. The baseball team locked up a NESCAC tournament spot with a double-header sweep at Middlebury April 20. At 7-2 in league play (and in the tournament for the first time since 2010), the team has a showdown with 8-1 Amherst this weekend. The winner of that series will be the top seed in the West and host the tournament May 10-12. Softball is on the cusp of clinching a playoff spot for the first time since 2010, when they won the NESCAC title. An 8-7 come-from-behind home victory over Tufts, April 20, clinched a first-round NESCAC tournament home game…
David LowSebastian Junger ’84 has directed a new documentary, Which Way Is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington, which premiered on HBO this month. The film covers Hertherington’s career as a war photographer, from his earliest days covering the civil war in Liberia to his final days in Misrata. He was killed in 2011 at age 40 in the siege of Misrata during Libya's civil war. Junger pays tribute to Hetherington's video and still photography and how he engaged himself on a personal level with his subjects. Junger and Hetherington were co-directors of the acclaimed…
A book written by Assistant Professor of English Lisa Cohen was honored by the Biographers International Organization on April 22. Her book, All We Know: Three Lives (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) was nominated for a 2012 inaugural Plutarch Award for "best biography of the year." Named after the famous Ancient Greek biographer, the prize aims to be the genre’s equivalent of the Oscar, in that the winner will be determined by secret ballot from a list of nominees selected by a committee of distinguished members of the craft. The BIO nominated 10 books for the award. The Plutarch Award will…