2017 – Page 45

We Together, a short film by Henry Kaplan ’10, has been accepted into the Slamdance Film Festival and will be playing in Park City, Utah, later this month. Slamdance Film Festival runs alongside Sundance Film Festival every year, and is self-described as “a showcase for raw and innovative filmmaking,” with a focus on new and emerging artists, filmmakers, and storytellers. We Together is a seven-minute long story of a zombie who comes to remember the person who he used to be, before he was a zombie. “The film premiered online this fall and garnered a lot of buzz from the online…

Wesleyan's Green Street Teaching and Learning Center is currently accepting applicants for its Discovery AfterSchool Program. Spring semester classes will be held Jan. 30 through May 12. The Discovery AfterSchool Program offers a range of classes in the arts, sciences, and math for children in Grades 1- 5. The program encourages children to be curious and creative while they build self-esteem and problem-solving skills. For middle school students in Grades 6-8, GSTLC offers the Wesleyan Bound college experience class on Friday afternoons. "Classes range from visual arts to dance, even to kung fu this semester," said Sara MacSorley, director of GSTLC.…

Campus acquires picturesque winter beauty with the first significant snowfall of 2017 on Jan. 6. (Photos by Olivia Drake) (more…)

Professor of Economics Richard Grossman tells his students that getting closer to the truth is what economic research is all about. That's why he was so dismayed when "my devotion to, and belief in, the truth was battered by the presidential election," he writes in an op-ed on The Hill. He writes: It turns out that polling data and analysis contained very little truth. The news were no better. The mainstream media got many things wrong. And there was no shortage of fake news. Although peddled as the real thing, it really wasn’t even trying to provide truth, only to shape opinion.…

"Hamilton" writer-composer Lin-Manuel Miranda '02, Hon. '15, bested Beyonce, Adele and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, among others for the title Associated Press Entertainer of the Year for 2016. The award is voted by members of the news cooperative and AP entertainment reporters. In 2016, Miranda also won a Pulitzer Prize, multiple Tony Awards, a Golden Globe nomination, and the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History. He also hosted Saturday Night Live, asked Congress to help dig Puerto Rico out of its debt crisis, performed at a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on Broadway, lobbied to stop gun violence in America and teamed…

Sixty-eight Wesleyan student-athletes were honored for their excellence in the classroom when the New England Small College Athletic Contest (NESCAC) announced its 2016 Fall All-Academic Team. Nine others were named to the All-Sportsmanship Team. To be honored on the All-Academic Team, a student-athlete must have reached sophomore academic standing and be a varsity letter winner with a cumulative grade point average of at least 3.40. A transfer student must have completed one year of study at the institution. The women's soccer team led the way for Wesleyan with 14 selections, followed by men's soccer with 12, golf with nine and football…

Sonia Sultan, professor of biology, professor of environmental studies, was invited to speak at a major meeting of London’s Royal Society in November. The theme of the meeting was “New Trends in Evolutionary Biology.” Sultan was joined by biologists, anthropologists, doctors, computer scientists and other visionaries to discuss the future of evolutionary biology. Sultan discussed her research on the Polygonum plant, known by its common name “smartweed.” Her research shows that if genetically identical smartweed plants are raised under different conditions, the end result is plants that may look like they belong to different species. Sultan is a plant evolutionary…

Last spring, Dan Schwartz ’94 returned from Ecuador where he worked as a physician with Team Rubicon as a part of a rapid-deployment disaster medical assistance team after a 7.8M earthquake hit the area on April 16, 2016. Team Rubicon provided rescue, medical and reconnaissance aid to remote villages that could not be reached by the local government or non-governmental organizations. "One of our mottos is, 'We go where the others can't or won't," Schwartz says. Team Rubicon, a group of military veterans and first responders, was formed in 2010. In its first mission, the team brought lifesaving equipment and supplies to Haiti,…

The National Endowment for the Arts approved more than $30 million in grants as part of the NEA’s first major funding announcement for fiscal year 2017. Included in this announcement are Art Works grants of $30,000 for Wesleyan's Center for the Arts' Breaking Ground Dance Series and $25,000 to support Wesleyan University Press in the publication and promotion of books of poetry. The Art Works category focuses on the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and the strengthening of communities through the arts. The…

Edward Aubry ’89 is the author of a new young adult science fiction book, Prelude to Mayhem, published by Curiosity Quills Press in November 2016. Prelude to Mayhem is the first book out of five in the Mayhem Wave series. The next installment is slated for release in mid-2017, according to Lisa Gus, managing partner at Curiosity Quills Press. In this apocalyptic novel, Harrison Cody’s world is in ruins. He follows a mysterious voice on the radio as he and his pixie sidekick travel on foot across a terrifyingly random landscape. They discover Dorothy O’Neill, who has had to survive…

Bill Herbst, the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy; Martha Gilmore, the George I. Seney Professor of Geology; Wilson Cauley, a post-doctoral fellow; and Nicole Arulanantham MA ’15 are the co-authors of a paper forthcoming in The Astrophysical Journal. The paper is based on Arulanantham's thesis research at Wesleyan. The paper also was featured in the December newsletter of the Gemini Observatory, an international observatory based in Hawaii and Chile. “The subject of the paper, a star known as KH 15D, was recognized as an important and interesting object in the 1990s through observations made on the Wesleyan campus by undergraduate and graduate students,” Herbst explained.…

The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration planning committee invites all members of the Wesleyan community to take part in a MLK Commemoration from 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. Feb. 3 in Memorial Chapel. A reception will follow in Zelnick Pavilion. Theodore Shaw ‘76, Hon. '14 will deliver the keynote address titled "Freedom is a Constant Struggle." Shaw is the Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill. Professor Shaw was the fifth Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund,…

Film By Kaplan ’10 to Premiere at Slamdance Festival

Register Children for Green Street’s AfterSchool Spring Semester Program

Snow Blankets Campus While Students Are Away on Winter Recess

Grossman Argues Truth Was Lost in the Election

Hamilton’s Miranda ’02 Named Associated Press Entertainer of the Year

68 Student-Athletes Named to NESCAC’s Fall All-Academic Team

Sultan Discusses Evolutionary Biology at the Royal Society in London

Schwartz ’94 Provides Medical Assistance in Ecuador with Team Rubicon

NEA Supports Center for the Arts, Wesleyan U. Press

Aubry ’89 Pens Science Fiction Book for Young Adults

Thesis Research by Arulanantham MA ’15 to Appear in Astronomy Journal

Celebrate the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Feb. 3