Olivia DrakeShellae Versey, assistant professor of psychology, is the author of an article titled "Managing Work and Family: Do Control Strategies Help?" published in the August 2015 issue of Developmental Psychology. In this study, Versey questioned "How can we effectively manage competing obligations from work and family without becoming overwhelmed?" Versey examined control strategies that may facilitate better work-life balance, with a specific focus on the role of lowered aspirations and positive reappraisals, attitudes that underlie adaptive coping behaviors. Data from the Midlife in the United States Survey (MIDUS II) was used to explore the relationship between negative spillover, control strategies, and…
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On Sept. 30, NASA’s Discovery Program selected five planetary mission investigations for study during the next year as a first step in choosing one or two missions for launch as early as 2020. Wesleyan’s Martha Gilmore is on two of the investigation teams. Gilmore, the George I. Seney Professor of Geology and chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, is an expert on terrestrial planets. She studies the morphology and mineralogy of the surfaces of Venus and Mars using data from orbiting and landed spacecraft. She also is on the Executive Committee of NASA’s Venus Exploration Analysis Group…
On Oct. 5, Phillip Wagoner, professor of art history, professor of archaeology, was named a co-recipient of the American Historical Association's John F. Richards Prize in South Asian History. The John F. Richards Prize recognizes the most distinguished work of scholarship on South Asian history published in English. Eligibility includes books on any period or field of South Asian historical studies and works which integrate South Asian history with broader global issues and movements. Wagoner shares the prize with Richard Eaton of the University of Arizona. Together, they co-authored the book, Power, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300–1600,…
Charles Sanislow, associate professor of psychology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior, published findings from his laboratory titled “Ratings for Emotion Film Clips,” in Behavior Research Methods (Volume 47, Issue 3, pages 773-787) in September 2015. Co-authors included former post doc Crystal Gabert-Quillen (now on the faculty at Middlesex Community College in New Jersey); Ellen Bartolini '11 (currently a graduate student in clinical psychology at Widener University); and Benjamin Abravanel '13 (currently a graduate student in the clinical science program at the University of California—Berkeley). In mood induction studies Sanislow and his students were piloting in the lab, they noticed that film…
Ellen Thomas, the University Professor in the College of Integrative Sciences, research professor of earth and environmental science, is the co-author of two recently published papers. They include: "Microfossil evidence for trophic changes during the Eocene–Oligocene transition in the South Atlantic (ODP Site 1263, Walvis Ridge)," published in Climate of the Past, Volume 11, pages 1249–1270 in September 2015 and "Changes in benthic ecosystems and ocean circulation in the Southeast Atlantic across Eocene Thermal Maximum 2," published in the journal Paleoceanography, Volume 30, pages 1059-1077 in August 2015. "Microfossil evidence" describes changes in organisms living in the oceans during a major change in the…
Writing at Wesleyan presents the Fall 2015 Russell House Series of Prose and Poetry. All events are free and open to the public. M. NourbeSe Philip and Professor of Anthropology Gina Athena Ulysse will speak at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 15 in Memorial Chapel. NourbeSe Philip is a Toronto-based poet, essayist, novelist, and playwright. Her most recent poetry collections are She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks, which has been reissued by Wesleyan University Press, and Zong!, also published by Wesleyan. Her essay collections include A Genealogy of Resistance and Showing Grit. Ulysse has performed her one-woman show "Because When God…
On Sept. 16, students enrolled in the PSYC221 Human Memory course used the Wesleyan University Archaeology and Anthropology Collections for hands-on learning. The class, taught by Erika Fulton, visiting professor of psychology, visited the collections to learn more about memory and the brain. Students compared and contrasted three skulls from disparate time points in human evolution and used their observations to make inferences about how different parts of the brain must have evolved. "They had to think about the relationships among a changing environment, memory demands, and brain lobe development," Fulton said. "I think it was a fun way for them to…
On Sept. 29, Wesleyan hosted the annual Eat Local Challenge. This one-day only event challenged the Bon Appétit Management Company staff to create a midday meal entirely from products and ingredients harvested within a 150-mile radius of the campus. The meal included produce, meat, fish and other ingredients from local farmers, ranchers, food crafters and fishermen. The lunch menu incorporated items such as corn on the cob from Horse Listener’s Orchard in Ashford, Conn. and clams and mussels provided by Ipswich Seafood in Ipswich, Mass. Kenian’s Grist Mill’s fried haddock from Yuscabog, R.I. and Szawlowski Farms’ potatoes from Hartfield, Mass. combined…
Hilary Barth, associate professor of psychology, is the co-author of an article titled "Spatial Estimation: A Non-Bayesian Alternative," published in Developmental Science, Volume 18, pages 853-862, in 2015. The paper is co-authored by Ellen Lesser ’15, as well as former Cognitive Development Labs coordinator Jessica Taggart and former postdoctoral fellow Emily Slusser. A large collection of estimation phenomena (for example, biases arising when adults or children estimate remembered locations of objects in bounded spaces) are commonly explained in terms of complex Bayesian models. Bayesian cognitive models seek to model human mental processes as approximations to ideal statistical inference. In this study, Barth and…
On Sept. 26, Wesleyan welcomed members of the community and Wesleyan faculty, staff, students, alumni and families to Middletown Day—a day of family fun and athletic events on campus. The theme of this year’s event was “Salute to Service, Honoring Our Veterans.”
The fog rolled across campus Sept. 28. (Photos by Olivia Drake) (more…)