Olivia Drake – Page 123

Wesleyan's "Music at the Russell House" series concludes with a free concert by the Connecticut-based jazz quartet Stanley Maxwell at 3 p.m. March 1 in the Russell House. The group plays music that blends tight arrangements with intricate group improvisations. The concert at Wesleyan will feature acoustic arrangements of original tunes from the past decade, including several world premieres. Stanley Maxwell features the CFA's Press and Marketing Director Andy Chatfield on drums, Mark Crino on bass, Eric DellaVecchia on alto saxophone, and Evan Green on piano. The group has built a grassroots name for themselves at colleges and festivals throughout…

Members of the Wesleyan Film Project's Screenwriters Lounge gathered at the Shapiro Creative Writing Center's library Feb. 16 to discuss current projects. The Wesleyan Film Project is a student-run group that formed during the fall semester 2014 and supports filmmaking on campus. During Screenwriter's Lounge sessions the students meet with each other, writers, directors and producers to review student-submitted scripts in order to prepare them for production. For more information on the group, visit the Wesleyan Film Project on Facebook. Photos of the Screenwriters Lounge gathering are below: (Photos by John Van Vlack) (more…)

Novelist Amy Bloom '75, the Distinguished University Writer-in-Residence, director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing, is co-hosting a new weekly podcast titled "Ethicists." The podcast, a re-imagination of the New York Times Magazine’s longtime “The Ethicist” column, features Bloom and two other ethicists answering questions for a half-hour. NYT Magazine Editor-in-Chief and Wesleyan alumnus Jake Silverstein '98 invited Bloom to participate in the show. The other panelists are Politico media columnist Jack Shafer and New York School of Law constitutional law professor Kenji Yoshino. The first episode, titled "Close Quarters: Can I ask my neighbors to quiet their baby?" debuted Feb. 18 and is produced…

In this Q&A we speak with Katie McLaughlin from the Class of 2015. (Story and photos by Hannah Norman '16) Q: Katie, what are you majoring in? A: I'm majoring in French and environmental studies with the certificate in international relations. For my capstone project in the environmental studies major, I am researching the academic justifications of contemplative pedagogy and developing a curriculum which integrates it and movement-based learning into elementary school, high school and adult education. The goals of the curriculum are to explore the environment through physical inquiry and embodiment, reevaluate the ways we perceive ourselves as a part of, or…

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Mike Singer, associate professor of biology, associate professor of environmental studies, is the co-author of several recently-published papers. They include: “Thee struggle for safety: effectiveness of caterpillar defenses against bird predation,” is in press and will appear in the April 2015 issue of Oikos. This article shows how the camouflaged or bold appearance of a caterpillar can protect it from predatory birds in Connecticut forests. Former BA/MA student, Isaac Lichter-Marck '11, '12, is the first author of this article. “Defensive mixology: Combining acquired chemicals toward defense,” is published in Functional Ecology, 2015. This article proposes a conceptual framework to study the use of natural drug cocktails by animals…

Brian Northrop, assistant professor of chemistry, is the co-author of several new papers including: “Preparation and Analysis of Cyclodextrin-Based Metal-Organic Frameworks: Laboratory Experiments Adaptable for High School through Advanced Undergraduate Students,” published in Journal of Chemical Education 92, pages 368-372, 2015. Samantha Angle, a Middletown High School student working in Northrop’s lab, co-authored the paper. (See cover at left.) "Rational Synthesis of Bis(hexyloxy)-Tetra(hydroxy)-Triphenylenes and their Derivatives," published in RSC Advances 4, pages 38,281-392 in 2014; "Vibrational Properties of Boroxine Anhydride and Boronate Ester Materials: Model Systems for the Diagnostic Characterization of Covalent Organic Frameworks,” published in Chemistry of Materials 26, pages 3,781-95 in 2014; And “Allyl-Functionalized Dioxynaphthalene[38]Crown-10 Macrocycles: Synthesis, Self-Assembly,…

The Office of Human Resources announces the following new hires, transitions and departures for January 2015: Newly hired Christopher Chenier was hired as a digital design technician in the Art and Art History Department on Jan. 5. Rebecca Foster was hired as the technical director and production manager of theater/manager of ’92 Theater in the Theater Department on Jan. 5. (more…)

Stewart Novick, chair and professor of chemistry, is the co-author of several papers published in 2014. They include: "The microwave spectra and structure of the argon-cyclopentanone and neon-cyclopentanone van der Waals complexes," published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A 118, pages 856-861; "The shape of trifluoromethoxybenzene," published in the Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy 297, pages 32-34; "Fluorination effects on the shapes of complexes of water with ethers: a rotational study of trifluoroanisole-water," published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry, A 118, pages 1,047-51; "Measurement of the J = 1 - 0 pure rotational transition in excited vibrational states of…

Michael Frisch, research professor of in chemistry, is the co-author of many articles published in 2014. They include: “Analytical harmonic vibrational frequencies for the green fluorescent protein computed with ONIOM: Chromophore mode character and its response to environment," published in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, 10, pages 751-766; “Quantum calculations in solution for large to very large molecules: A new linear scaling QM/continuum approach," published in the Journal of Physical Chemical Letters, 5, pages 953-958; “Density of states guided Møller-Plesset perturbation theory,” published in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, 10, pages 1,910-14; “Practical auxiliary basis implementation…

How do faculty help students, and themselves, thread a path through an ever-growing body of information? What practices can faculty and students find that enable them to bring a clear and sustained focus to their work in the classroom and the laboratory? Through two workshops and discussions, held Feb. 19, participants can consider how one might approach teaching from a contemplative perspective, in both the long and short term. Faculty and students will experiment with the adaptation of several traditional contemplative practices to classroom situations including “stilling” (breath and body awareness), contemplative writing, “beholding,” and explore how these might be instantiated in a classroom, laboratory or personal…

#THISISWHY Research Professor Ellen Thomas grasps a glass-enclosed sample of hundreds of microfossils, each a white fleck of limestone barely visible to the human eye. "The first time students look at these they say, 'they all look the same to me,' but in reality, they are all have very different shapes," Thomas says. "Even under a microscope, it can be difficult for a new eye to see the differences, but each species has its own shape; some have a much more open, light structure because they lived floating in the oceans close to the surface. Others have denser shells and lived on the bottom of the ocean,…

Jazz Quartet Stanley Maxwell to Perform World Premieres March 1 at Russell House

Screenwriters Lounge Supports Student Filmmaking on Campus

Bloom Co-Hosts NYT Magazine‘s “Ethicists” Podcast

McLaughlin ’15 Helps Students Discover Body-Mind Awareness through WesBAM! Classes

Information Technology Services Hosts Information Session

Singer’s Caterpillar Defense Studies Published in Ecology, Entomology Journals

Northrop Co-Authors Paper with Middletown Student

Staff on the Move January 2015

Novick’s Papers Focus on van der Walls Complex, Trifluoroanisole Water

Frisch Published in Multiple Chemistry Journals, Publications

Faculty, Students Invited to Workshops on Contemplative Pedagogy Feb. 19

Thomas Uses CT Scans, Computer-Aided Visualizations to Study and Teach Microfossils