Lauren RubensteinAn originalist approach to interpreting the Constitution may not be perfect, but it’s “the only game in town,” was the message from U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia when he delivered the annual Hugo L. Black Lecture on Freedom of Expression at Wesleyan on March 8. “Do you think that judges—that is to say, lawyers—are better at the science of what ought to be than the science of history? I don’t think so,” Scalia told a packed crowd in Memorial Chapel. “The reality is that originalism is the only game in town; the only real verifiable criteria that can…
In this issue of The Wesleyan Connection, we ask 5 Questions of Laura Stark, assistant professor of sociology, assistant professor of science in society, assistant professor of environmental studies. Stark recently published a new book, Behind Closed Doors: IRBs and the Making of Ethical Research. Q: Professor Stark, what inspired you to study institutional review boards (IRBs), which regulate research on human subjects? A: I first became interested in this project in 2002 because of a great coincidence of scholarship. At the time, I was reading historical works that explained why the Nuremberg Code after World War II had so…
Steven Stemler, assistant professor of psychology, is the co-author of a new book, The School Mission Statement: Values, Goals & Identities in American Education," published by Eye on Education in March. Co-authored with Damian J. Bebell of Boston College, the book contains an extensive review of mission statements from a diverse range of schools, including public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, vocational schools, parochial schools and Native American schools. Stemler and Bebell developed a coding rubric to classify the mission statements according to eleven broad themes (eg. Foster cognitive development; foster social development; foster emotional development; integrate into global community).…
Lisa Dierker, chair and professor of psychology, Jennifer Rose, research associate professor of psychology and two postdoctoral fellows, together with researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, are the co-authors of two new papers examining nicotine dependence in teen smokers. “The Natural Course of Nicotine Dependence Symptoms Among Adolescent Smokers,” was published March 15 in the peer-reviewed journal, Nicotine & Tobacco Research. Wesleyan Postdoctoral Fellows Weihai Zhan and Arielle Selya contributed to the paper. The researchers followed novice adolescent smokers, as well as those who had never smoked before, for four years. They found that, before smoking 100 cigarettes, 20 percent reported…
For the roughly one-third of temporal lobe epilepsy patients for whom drugs are not an option, researchers at Wesleyan are paving the way for alternative therapies using stem cells. Faculty members Janice Naegele, Gloster Aaron and Laura Grabel, together with Xu Maisano, Ph.D. ’11, Elizabeth Litvina, B.A. ’10/M.A. ’11, and Stephanie Tagliatela, the lab manager in the Naegele lab, recently published a landmark study in the Journal of Neuroscience on the use of embryonic stem cells to treat temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). The researchers derived neural “parent cells” in culture from mouse embryonic stem cells, and transplanted them into the…
In this issue of The Wesleyan Connection we ask 5 Questions of Daniel Long, assistant professor of sociology. Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy has made education reform a major priority this year. He has proposed a sweeping package of reforms, including overhauling teacher tenure, increasing Education Cost Sharing grants to struggling districts, funding more preschool slots for low-income children, and requiring districts to contribute additional money for students to attend charter schools. Q: Connecticut suffers from the highest black/white and poor/non-poor achievement gap in the country. What can be done to address this? A: In Connecticut—as well as nationwide—longitudinal studies have shown…
Tasmiha Khan '12 will present the poster "Responses to Group Devaluation among American-Muslims" at the 2012 Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention, May 24 - 27 in Chicago, Ill. In this poster, Khan will present results with her ongoing research with Patricia Rodriguez Mosquera, assistant professor of psychology, on how American Muslims feel about negative societal images of their group. Khan has been working in Rodriguez Mosquera's Culture and Emotion Lab since 2009 where she is also involved in another research project on the meaning of honor among South Asian women.
Gloster Aaron, assistant professor of biology and assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, has published a new study in PLoS ONE, an international, peer-reviewed online publication. The study is co-authored by four Wesleyan students: Jeffrey Walker BA '08/ MA '09, Greg Storch BA '10/MA '11, Bonnie Quach-Wong '12 and Julian Sonnenfeld '11. In this study, the researchers were able to produce a cortical slice preparation that allows activity to propagate from neurons in one cortical hemisphere to the other hemisphere through the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is the largest structure that connects the right and left halves of our…
Professor of Art Tula Telfair’s latest exhibition, Out of Sight: Imaginary Landscapes, opened at the Forum Gallery in New York, N.Y. on Jan. 5 to a packed crowd. The 15 large panoptic paintings shown in the exhibition, which ran through Feb. 11, depict majestic mountainous landscapes dominated by dramatic skies that reflect a broad range of locations and weather patterns. As with Telfair’s past work, her landscapes are derived from memory and imagination. Telfair, director of Wesleyan’s Arts Studio Program, finds it fascinating when people tell her they can identify a particular location, since none actually exist. “Since I have…
An article by Steven Stemler, assistant professor of psychology, is published in Vol. 47, Issue 1 of Educational Psychologist. In the article, “What Should University Admissions Tests Predict?" Stemler argues that because colleges and universities emphasize the development of a broad range of capabilities in their students—beyond just mastery of specific academic content—admissions tests should also capture a range of essential student qualities. The article includes a review of these common capabilities, such as cultural competence and ethical reasoning, which colleges and universities purport to seek and develop in their students. It then presents a conceptual model outlining what outcomes admissions tests…
Patricia Rodriguez Mosquera, assistant professor of psychology, is the co-author of "Honor and Emotion," published in the February issue of The Inquisitive Mind: Social Psychology for You (InMind). InMind is a peer-reviewed quarterly publication on social psychology geared toward a lay audience. The article, co-authored with alumnae Martha Liskow ’11 and Katie DiBona ’11, answers the question, “What is honor?” It describes several different types of honor, including morality-based honor, family-based honor, and gender-related honor. The writers then explore the ways in which honor influences emotional experience and expressions. Findings described in the paper come from research into honor and emotion in…
A word of caution to the caterpillar munching on that delicious, nutritious black cherry tree: watch out for hungry birds. Michael Singer, associate professor of biology, is the lead author of a new study published in The American Naturalist on the effect of a caterpillar’s choice of feeding spot on its chances of becoming bird food. The article found that on balance, nutritious trees, like black cherry, can increase by 90 percent a caterpillar’s risk of being taken by foraging birds. According to the article, this effect is seen because the most nutritious tree species harbor the greatest number of…