September 2014

"A World of Dreams—New Landscape Paintings" by Professor of Art Tula Telfair will be on exhibit Sept. 16 through Dec. 7 at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. The exhibit's opening reception will be held 5 to 6:30 p.m. Sept. 16 at the gallery. "A World of Dreams" includes new large-scale paintings in which Telfair presents monumental landscapes and epic-scale vistas that are simultaneously awe-inspiring and intimate. She combines stillness with motion, solitude with universality, and definition with suggestion in her bold and quiet works. This is her second exhibition in the Zilkha Gallery. All paintings are oil on canvas. "The work…

This year, The Wesleyan Connection will feature conversations with students who perform important work all over campus, and out in the Middletown community. In this issue, we speak with Sean Martin, senior associate director in the Financial Aid Office, who oversees student employment. Q: Sean, please tell us about your role as senior associate director in the Financial Aid Office. A: I’ve been working in the Financial Aid Office at Wesleyan for going on 10 years, and my responsibilities there have expanded over time. One aspect of my job is overseeing all facets of student employment. I spend a good…

The summer of 1964 saw thousands of young people — many from colleges and universities in the North - mobilize to register voters, educate citizens, and support other civil rights work in the Jim Crow South. What came to be known as "Freedom Summer" is credited with ending the isolation of states where racial repression and discrimination was largely ignored by news media and politicians, despite the the landmark Civil Rights Act passed that July. Wesleyan students joined the struggle. "Five Wesmen to Fight Voter Discrimination in Mississippi," said a front-page headline in the Argus. That May, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had given…

This semester, the Shapiro Creative Writing Center is hosting three master classes taught by award-winning author and poet C.D. Wright. Master classes are open to all poetry-writing upperclassmen free of charge. Each class will last 2.5 hours and include one dinner. The classes will meet Sept. 23, Oct. 14 and Nov. 11, and the deadline to apply is Sept. 12. Wright is currently the I.J. Kapstein Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University where she teaches advanced poetry. Wright was born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. She has published over a dozen books, including Rising, Falling, Hovering, Like Something Flying Backwards: New and Selected…

Paul Hanakata '14 was named a finalist for the American Physical Society's prestigious Leroy Apker Award, the highest prize offered in the United States for an undergraduate thesis in physics. He will compete to win the award this month. The Apker Award was created to recognize outstanding achievements in physics by undergraduate students, and thereby provide encouragement to young physicists who have demonstrated great potential for future scientific accomplishment. At Wesleyan, Hanakata received high honors for his Wesleyan thesis titled, "Cooperative Dynamics in Supported Polymer Films," under his advisor, Francis Starr, professor of physics and director of the College of Integrative Sciences. In…

Wesleyan nearly doubled its number of Teach for America participants this year over 2013, the national organization said. With 19 participants in the 2014 cohort, Wesleyan is tied for third among "small schools" (those with under 2,999 students) who send graduates into the corps. The Wesleyan alumni join the most diverse corps in Teach for America's 25-year-history, with one third of the members the first in their families to attend college, half identifying as people of color, and nearly half Pell Grant recipients as undergraduates. Teach For America works in partnership with communities to expand educational opportunity for children facing…

A country that wants to maintain the dream of social mobility requires real colleges and universities

The mysterious disappearance of millions of honeybees - known as colony collapse disorder - has frustrated and worried scientists around the world for more than seven years. The visiting scholar at Wesleyan's College of the Environment explores this mystery in a new exhibit at the Green Street Arts Center that opened Sept. 4. Joseph Smolinski, a noted artist who has exhibited in many venues ranging from MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass. to the Cleveland Institute of Art , uses 3-D printing, video and other media to show the scale of the honeybee crisis - and note that environmental stressors (more…)

More than 20 student bands participated in THE MASH on Sept. 5. Inspired by Fete de la Musique, also known as World Music Day, the third-annual event highlighted the student music scene at Wesleyan and kicked off the year-long campus and community-wide Music & Public Life initiative. Bands performed concurrently on stages at Olin Library, the Butterfields, North College and at the base of Foss Hill. Bands and soloists included Jacob & The Masters, Quasimodal, David Stouck, Mixolydians, Andrew Hove, Slavei, all-caps LADD, Materiq, Trillion Dollar Boys Club (Butts Reunion Tour 2k14), jdv plus™, MFDP, Don Froot, Mazel Tones, Sam…

A Wesleyan student is being treated for serious injuries sustained in a fall from a window

Q: Welcome to Wesleyan, Professor Matesan! Can you please tell us a little about your background? A: I’m originally from Romania. I came to the U.S. for undergrad in 1998, and earned a degree in economics and political science from Monmouth College in Illinois. Coming from Romania, I had no sense of differences in states. I got together with a couple friends, and we looked at the admission of international students and amount of aid for them at different colleges, and we applied to the colleges with the most aid per international student. It was very much a cost-benefit analysis.…

Scott Rohde will become Wesleyan's new director of Public Safety on Oct. 1. Since 1998, Rohde has served as director of Police Services at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse where he managed safety and security operations for a campus population of 10,000 students, faculty and staff. Prior to working in higher education, he worked for 10 years in municipal policing in a small town in Wisconsin. Rohde holds an MBA from Cardinal Stritch University, and a BS from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, where he majored in criminal justice and minored in sociology. "After an extensive search, I’m confident…

Telfair’s New Landscape Paintings on Exhibit in Zilkha Gallery

Martin Oversees Student Employment, Counsels Families on Financial Aid Issues

“Freedom Summer” Commemoration to Feature Concert, Speakers

Author, Poet C.D. Wright to Teach 3 Master Classes at Shapiro Center

Hanakata ’14 Finalist for American Physical Society’s Apker Award

Wesleyan Nearly Doubles Its Teach for America Cohort

Why ‘Nano-Degrees’ Can’t Replace Liberal Arts Education

COE Scholar Presents Multi-Media Exhibit on “Colony Collapse”

Student Music Scene Celebrated at THE MASH (with Photo Gallery)

Update on Injured Student

Matesan Studies Contentious Politics, Violence in the Middle East

Rohde Hired as Wesleyan’s New Director of Public Safety