Cynthia RockwellApril 6, 20103min
Vibraphonist, composer and Adjunct Associate Professor of Music Jay Hoggard ’76,will perform in the 32nd annual Playboy Jazz Fest, held at the Hollywood Bowl on June 13. Performing as a member of the latest version of emcee Bill Cosby’s “Cos of Good Music” band, Hoggard will be playing with NduguChancellor, Dwayne Bruno, Ingrid Jensen, Mark Gross and D.D. Jackson. The invitation to join the band wasn't really a surprise for Hoggard. He has worked with Cosby before, including on the soundtrack to the Cosby TV show. “When Dr. Cosby calls, I drop everything and I’m there,” says Hoggard. Currently taking…

Cynthia RockwellApril 6, 20103min
Chef and business owner Michael Leviton ’88 of Lumiere Restaurant, in Newton, Mass., was nominated for James Beard Best Chef Northeast, which includes the New England states and New York region. The awards will be presented on May 3, in New York City’s Avery Fisher Hall, with previous award winners Alton Brown, Lidia Bastianich and Wolfgang Puck hosting. Nominations for the Beard awards, considered the Academy Awards of cooking, is open to the public. Culinary professionals and food journalists then use secret ballots to determine the winners. Leviton is not the product of any culinary school. Instead, he has trained…

Cynthia RockwellMarch 3, 20103min
Irvin Richter ’66, chairman and chief executive officer of Hill International (NYSE:HIL), was named to the New Jersey Business Hall of Fame.  He was one of only four laureates this year. This is a lifetime achievement award for individuals who have made a significant contribution to the quality of life and the business climate in New Jersey, and who will also serve as “role models for the next generation of New Jersey's business leaders,” according to Dave Weaving, chair of the induction event, scheduled for April. Richter founded Hill in 1976 and the company is now considered one of the…

Cynthia RockwellMarch 3, 20102min
(By Anne Calder ’11) Allison Heaney ’09 has been awarded a Fellowship at Auschwitz for the study Professional Ethics. A law student at Duke University, she will spend two weeks this summer traveling to New York, Poland and Germany. The Fellowship enables students in law, medical, seminary, journalism and business to address contemporary and future ethical issues by looking to the past. In the context of Nazi Germany and Auschwitz, Heaney will analyze the responsibilities lawyers have to their clients and to society. Heaney was a psychology major at Wesleyan, and is now pursuing a master’s degree in psychology while…

Cynthia RockwellFebruary 8, 20102min
The pilot for Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders, aired nationally on PBS in late January. Described as a magazine show “about the intersection of music with life, politics and culture around the world,” it is a collaboration between two alumni of the class of ’70—executive producer Stephen Talbot and executive producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting David Davis. The first episode includes a vignette on Russian pop: "A Man Like Putin” is a catchy tune that became a generation’s anthem. Another section takes the listener to Africa, where Nigerian music legend Fela Kuti’s youngest son, Seun, has kept his father’s legacy alive…

Cynthia RockwellFebruary 8, 20102min
Something Sweet, Nina Zeitlin’s ’03 family/kids’ album, was named in the Top 10 on NPR’s “2009 Best Music for Kids and Their Families." In a story for WXPN’sKids Corner in Philadelphia, host Kathy O’Connell noted that she’d remember 2009 as “the gold standard in kids’ music,” and included Zeitlin’s musical ensemble, King Pajama, as one of the groups “whose kid-centric themes (love of the library, train rides, ice cream) provide a clue to their intended audience, since the songs themselves work for everyone.” Zeitlin, a sociology major at Wesleyan, sang, recorded and produced the collection, which also won a 2009…

Cynthia RockwellFebruary 8, 20102min
John Ravenal ’81 is now president of his professional organization: the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC). The Sydney and France Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Ravenal has become the fourth president of AAMC since the organization was founded in 2001. Ravenal joined the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in 1998, and his exhibitions have included Vanitas: Meditations on Life and Death in Contemporary Art; Outer & Inner Space, a history of video art; and Artificial Light, displayed at VCUarts Anderson Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary…

Cynthia RockwellJanuary 19, 20102min
Dr. Joseph J. Fins ’82 has been elected president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. His election to this two-year term, which begins in 2011, recognizes his major contributions to bioethics, as well as his broad expertise in the field. Fins is chief of the Division of Medical Ethics and a faculty member at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is also director of medical ethics at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and chairs its ethics committee. "I am honored to have been elected, and I look forward to encouraging the contributions of my esteemed colleagues in bioethics…

Cynthia RockwellJanuary 19, 20101min
Beginning this month, Daniel R. Ballon ’01 will serve as a California legislature advisor,  one of 10 fellows taking part in a first-of-its kind statewide program designed to provide legislators with access to experts in science and technology to help them evaluate the proposals before them. Ballon, a Phi Beta Kappa Wesleyan graduate with a double major in molecular biology and biochemistry and Russian language and literature, earned his Ph.D in molecular and cell biology from the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously a senior policy fellow in technology studies at the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in…

Cynthia RockwellNovember 30, 20093min
Caroline Little ’81, the North American CEO for the U.K.-based Guardian News and Media, was the subject of the most recent, “So What Do You Do” Q-and-A for Mediabistro.com. Previously CEO at The Washington Post.com, where she led the web sites for the Post, as well as for Newsweek, Slate, and The Root, Little had begun her career as a lawyer. She says that she made the jump in 1997 to digital media because, “when something's new, there's a lot of opportunities” and her background had given her an overview of the business. Asked about the Guardian’s goals in the…

Cynthia RockwellNovember 12, 20091min
Daniel Pollitt ’43, University of North Carolina Kenan Professor Emeritus and longtime civil-liberties and civil-rights advocate, was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, one of the state’s highest honors, last summer. Nominated for the award by state Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr., whose father, Floyd McKissick Sr., worked with Pollitt on a number of civil-rights issues, Pollitt was presented with the award by Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, with whom he was wed last April. Bestowed for a lifetime of “integrity, learning and zeal,” the award recognizes his activism and commitment to the causes of social justice. In the 1950s, he…

Cynthia RockwellNovember 12, 20092min
Jerry Melillo ’65, a senior scientist at the U.S. Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., says in a study published in Science that the new generation of biofuels will actually emit more carbon dioxide, averaged over the first three decades of this century, than gasoline—although the fuels were meant to be a low-carbon alternative. A Reuters report on the study noted that governments and private industry are spending billions of dollars on research into making fuels from wood and grass in the hopes of cutting carbon emissions while not competing with food, as corn-based biofuels do. Melillo and his…