Lauren Rubenstein

Over spring break, University Protestant Chaplain Rev. Tracy Mehr-Muska led an interfaith student service trip to Harrisburg, Pa. Six students, representing Christian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Islamic traditions, as well as intern Jon Heinly from Yale Divinity School, and a service dog participated. The group also included international students from Ireland, Ethiopia and Jamaica. The group stayed at a Mennonite camp and worked on a number of service projects, including volunteering with a class for refugees learning English, sorting donations for refugee resettlement, doing construction on apartments for single mothers and their children, and cleaning campgrounds and facilities at the camp.…

Two faculty members and three students have been awarded grants in the latest call for proposals from NASA's Connecticut Space Grant Consortium. Jim Greenwood, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, and Bill Herbst, the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy, professor of integrative sciences, were awarded $8,000 for a Faculty Collaboration Grant titled “Chondrule Formation Experiments.” This is to run high-temperature experiments on material that makes up meteorites in order to test a hypothesis that they put forward in a recent paper in Icarus this year. Seth Redfield, associate professor of astronomy, associate professor of integrative sciences, was awarded $1,500 for a STEM Education…

Writing in The Washington Post, President Michael S. Roth decries the push for students to turn away from "college as exploration" and toward "college as training." "Everywhere one looks, from government statistics on earnings after graduation to a bevy of rankings that purport to show how to monetize your choice of major, the message to students is to think of their undergraduate years as an economic investment that had better produce a substantial and quick return," he writes. This movement is understandable, given the "scourge of student indebtedness" in our country, yet parents, pundits and politicians are misguided in their insistence that students…

On March 22, President Michael Roth will participate in a discussion at the 92nd Street Y in New York City with Mark Edmundson of the University of Virginia. The discussion, titled, "Unorthodox: On Philosophy," will cover Sigmund Freud's most valuable contributions, why his work matters, why it has faded from view, and whether his thoughts will make a comeback. The talk starts at 7 p.m. The event is part of a series of programs that take place both at the Jewish Museum and at the 92nd Street Y in conjunction with the exhibition Unorthodox. According to the website, "The accompanying public…

On April 8, the Center for the Americas will host the Americas Forum 2016, "A Hemispheric Conversation on Violence and Memory," in the Russell House. The Americas Forum is an annual symposium that brings into dialogue scholars and artists from "north" and "south" around a common theme. This year's forum features three panelists and a performance artist who will engage in a conversation over the roles that colonialism, settler colonialism, and nation-building continue to play within the complex dialectic between memory, the archive (writ broadly), and the State. The panel starts at 2:30 p.m., and the event ends around 6:30 p.m. after…

On March 15, Wesleyan's Posse Veteran Scholars program was spotlighted on PBS Newshour, in an episode featuring interviews with President Michael S. Roth and several students. Wesleyan is first mentioned around 3 minutes with Michael Smith '18 speaking. According to the show, more than 1 million vets are using GI benefits, but most attend public or for-profit schools. The number of veterans attending top-tier colleges "is so small, it's not even known." A few years ago, the Posse Foundation—which has a long history of sending groups, or posses, of talented students "who don't fit the mold" to top colleges—started a program focused on…

Assistant Professor of Psychology Psyche Loui has long been interested in studying the intersection of music and emotions. In her latest study, published March 10 in Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience, she identified specific connections in the brain between the auditory processing regions and regions for social and emotional processing. The article is titled, "Brain connectivity reflects human aesthetic responses to music." Loui, who also is assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, assistant professor of integrative sciences, has previously studied how music can cause chills, or similar strong physiological reactions in people when listening to music. Together with former thesis student…

Three hundred faculty and staff filled Beckham Hall for a feast of food and drink provided by 18 vendors at the fifth annual Taste of Middletown on March 9. Offerings ranged from empanadas, a macaroni and cheese bar, salads, chicken tikka masala and vegan spring rolls to a wide assortment of pastries and desserts and a variety of beverages. Wesleyan welcomed six new vendors to the event this year, including La Piastra, Red Fox, Iguanas Ranas, Taino Smokehouse, Fiore II, Mi Argentina and Mondo. (more…)

The Chronicle of Higher Education has published an excerpt from a new memoir by Christina Crosby, professor of English, professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies. The book, A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain, is due out later this month from NYU Press. Crosby tells the story of how her life changed after a bicycle accident in 2003, just after her 50th birthday, left her paralyzed. According to the publisher, "In A Body, Undone, Crosby puts into words a broken body that seems beyond the reach of language and understanding. She writes about a body shot through with neurological pain,…

Three social ventures started by Wesleyan students were recently awarded $5,000 seed grants in the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship's annual Seed Grant Challenge. They are Kindergarten Kickstart, TRAP House and Walking Elephants Home. The last weekend in February, all six finalists for the seed grants presented pitches for their ventures before the Board of Trustees, Patricelli Center Advisory Board and Seed Grant judges, as well as representatives of CT Innovations and the ‎State of Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, fellow students, and others. The event was also livestreamed. One of the other finalists, <Zim/Code>, chose to withdraw from the…

Are the liberal arts still relevant? President Michael Roth answered this question and more as a guest on "Essential Pittsburgh," a show on Pittsburgh's NPR station. As he argues in his book, Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters, Roth explains, "There's an American tradition of liberal education that goes back as far as the origins of the country and emphasizes the pragmatic dimensions of broad, contextual study. It's not so much that you take Latin and Greek or that you study religion rather than, let's say, biology, it's that whatever you study, you study it in connection to other things, understanding how what you're focused on…

In its recent meeting, the Board of Trustees conferred tenure on eight faculty members, effective July 1, 2015. They are: Associate Professor of Sociology Robyn Autry, Associate Professor of Government Sonali Chakravarti, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Amy MacQueen, Associate Professor of Music Paula Matthusen, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Rich Olson, Associate Professor of Mathematics Christopher Rasmussen, Associate Professor of Economics Damien Sheehan-Connor, and Associate Professor of Classics Eirene Visvardi. Brief descriptions of their research and teaching appear below: Associate Professor Autry is a cultural sociologist with broad interests in collective identity, memory, and visual culture. Her…

Mehr-Muska Leads Interfaith Student Group on Service Trip

Faculty, Students Win Research Support from NASA’s CT Space Grant Consortium

President Roth: Jefferson Would Not Have Liked This College Trend

President Roth to Discuss Freud at 92Y March 22

Americas Forum 2016 to Focus on Violence, Memory

PBS Newshour Features Wesleyan’s Posse Veteran Scholars

Loui Studies How Brain Connectivity Reflects Aesthetic Responses to Music

Faculty, Staff Treated to 5th Annual Taste of Middletown

Chronicle Publishes Excerpt from Crosby’s New Memoir

2016 Patricelli Center Seed Grant Winners Announced

President Roth Discusses Liberal Education on Essential Pittsburgh

8 Faculty Awarded Tenure