Bryan Stascavage '18On July 15, Wesleyan Posse Scholar Royce Ebenal ’18 attended the White House Summit on Wireless Workforce Development, a conference that focused on the urgent need to train workers for careers in the wireless industry to ensure that the U.S. wireless network infrastructure capacity will be sufficient for the future. More than 80 leaders from wireless companies, federal agencies and academic institutions attended the conference. Participants also recognized that this was an opportunity to hire and train underrepresented groups, including veterans, women and minorities, for well-paying technical jobs. Posse scholar Rob Mendez ’18, who is an intern at the National Science Foundation this summer,…
Lauren RubensteinIn this News @ Wesleyan story, we speak with David Schwartz from the Class of 2017. Q: David, where are you from and what is your major? A: I grew up in Amherst, Mass. When I first came to Wesleyan, I walked around wearing my Amherst sweatshirt for awhile before realizing there was a bit of a rivalry. I’m an Economics and Government double major, with a minor in data analysis. I’m particularly interested in applying “big data” techniques to government policymaking. Q: You are founder and president of the Wesleyan Radio Control/ Drone Club. How did your interest in…
From July 14–23, two ethnomusicology PhD candidates — Christine Yong and Ander Terwilliger — along with five alumni —Tan Sooi Beng ’80, Donna Kwon ’95, Jonathan Kramer ’71, Sylvie Bruinders ’99, and Becky Miller ’94 — joined University Professor of Music Sumarsam at the 2015 conference of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) in Astana, Kazakhstan. Tan Sooi Beng was elected to the ICTO executive board. The International Council for Traditional Music is a non-governmental organization in formal consultative relations with UNESCO. It aims to further the study, practice, documentation, preservation and dissemination of traditional music and dance of all countries. At the conference, Sumarsam presented a talk titled "Expressing…
Olivia DrakeEleven Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows delivered brief research proposal presentations July 23 in Fisk Hall. The fellows, six from Wesleyan and five from Queens College, City University of New York, spent the past two months developing their research projects with the assistance of their peers, Wesleyan faculty and Wesleyan librarians.
The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program provides minority students and others with a demonstrated commitment to eradicating racial disparities, with support to pursue graduate degrees in the arts and sciences.
Research topics range from deconstructing African feminism to the role of political theater for a post-combat audience to trauma in Japan caused by the Atomic Bomb.
Writing for Africa is a Country, Professor of Anthropology Gina Athena Ulysse reflects on the story of Sandra Bland, an African-American woman who was arrested by a state trooper during a traffic stop in Waller County, Texas and was later found dead in her jail cell. Video footage from a dashboard camera found the trooper had threatened Bland with a Taser after she refused to put out her cigarette and the encounter escalated. Her death was found to be a suicide, though her family has doubts. Ulysse writes that she identified with Bland, and responded strongly to images and videos of the…
Assistant Professor of Economics Damien Sheehan-Connor is the author of "Environmental Policy and Vehicle Safety: The Impact of Gasoline Taxes," published in the July 2015 issue of Economic Inquiry. In the paper, Sheehan-Connor considers the impact that policies to reduce carbon emissions by vehicles, such as fuel economy standards and gasoline taxes, have on vehicle weight and, consequently, on safety. The paper develops a model that separately identifies the impact of vehicle weight on mortality and selection effects that impact accident propensity. He found that the safety externalities associated with heavy vehicles are greater than the environmental ones; that under fuel economy…
When Psyche Loui first heard Rachmaninov's Piano Concert No. 2 on the radio as a college student, she still remembers the chill that went down her spine, the fluttering in her stomach and the racing heart. Now an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience and behavior at Wesleyan, Loui studies this phenomenon--which she refers to as "frissons" or "skin orgasms"--in her lab. She recently co-authored a paper with Luke Harrison '14 in Frontiers in Psychology reviewing the evidence and theories in this area, and spoke to the BBC about their findings. Loui, also an accomplished pianist and violinist, points out that the sensations…
For her distinguished contributions to the geosciences, Suzanne O’Connell, professor of earth and environmental sciences, recently became a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. Society Fellowship is an honor bestowed on leading professional geoscientists. New fellows are nominated by existing GSA fellows in recognition of their contributions to the geosciences through such avenues as publications, applied research, teaching, administration of geological programs, contributing to the public awareness of geology, leadership of professional organizations, and taking on editorial, bibliographic and library responsibilities. “Suzanne O’Connell is an accomplished geoscientist who highly honors the traditions of research and scholarship in the geosciences,…
On Aug. 3, more than 20 Wesleyan employees helped erect a tent on Andrus Field that could be used as a medical facility in the event of an emergency situation. The inflatable tent, which measures 60 by 30 feet, is 1/5 of the complete Ottilie W. Lundgren Memorial Field Hospital owned by the State of Connecticut. If all sections of the tent were assembled, it would contain a 125-bed unit, an operating room, ambulatory care and triage areas. (more…)
Two Wesleyan massive open online courses (MOOCs) are now available on-demand through Coursera. They are “The Modern and the Postmodern,” taught by President Michael Roth, which was recently broken into Parts 1 and 2, and “The Ancient Greeks,” taught by Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, the Jane A. Seney Professor of Greek, chair and professor of classical studies. A third Wesleyan MOOC, “Property and Liability: An Introduction to Law and Economics,” taught by Richard Adelstein, the Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics, has been on-demand since earlier this year.
On July 1, Associate Professor of Psychology Steven Stemler presented the results of a two-year study measuring creativity and citizenship in Connecticut's Higher Order Thinking (HOT) schools to an audience of faculty, staff and students in Judd Hall. The HOT schools are a collaborative of about 14 public schools in Connecticut that voluntarily commit to a philosophy of education, which emphasizes "teaching and learning in, about, and through the arts in a democratic setting," according to the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development Office of Culture and Tourism's website. About two years ago, the HOTs leadership team approached Wesleyan's Quantitative Analysis Center about conducting a study to assess…