Olivia DrakeMark Hovey, professor of mathematics and director of graduate studies, will serve as interim associate provost, part-time through May 15, and then full-time through Aug. 31. Hovey will focus on curricular initiatives and budget management. Hovey came to Wesleyan in 1997 after receiving his BS from Ohio State University and his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has taught at Yale, University of New Haven, University of Kentucky and MIT, and has been a regular speaker at international conferences in algebraic topology. Hovey is the author of the book Model Categories and more than 50 scholarly papers. He has served…
Writing at Wesleyan announces the Spring 2015 Russell House Series on Prose and Poetry. Writer/authors in the Spring 2015 series include Ron Padgett on Feb. 25, Millett Fellow Caryl Phillips on March 4, Sadia Shepard on March 25, Rowan Ricardo Phillips on April 1 and Ruth Ozeki on April 8. All events are free and open to the public. For more information on these talks visit the Writing at Wesleyan website. Support for this series is provided by Writing at Wesleyan, the English Department, the Annie Sonnenblick Fund, the Joan Jakobson Fund, the Jacob Julien Fund, the Millett Writing Fellow Fund,…
Professor Peter Rutland is the author of an article titled "Petronation? Oil, gas and national identity in Russia," published in Post-Soviet Affairs, Volume 31, Issue 1, January 2015. Rutland is professor of government, the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor in Global Issues and Democratic Thought, professor of Russian and Eastern European studies and tutor in the College of Social Studies. The article was written as part of the research project “Nation-Building and Nationalism in Today’s Russia (NEORUSS),” financed by the Norwegian Research Council. Based on survey research, elite interviews, and an analysis of media treatment, Rutland's article explores the place of oil and…
A paper co-authored by molecular biology and biochemistry major Holly Everett '15 is published in the December 2014 issue of Nature Communications. The article, titled "High-throughput detection of miRNAs and gene-specific mRNA at the single-cell level by flow cytometry," describes a novel approach to visualizing RNA and protein simultaneously at the single cell level. Everett has been working on the accompanying research at the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. This new technology uses gene-specific probes and a signal amplification system based on a “branched DNA” principle. The authors show that this novel flow-FISH (for “Fluorescent in situ hybridization”) technique is…
An article by Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock received honorable mention for the Distinguished Article Prize from the Association for the Study of Eastern Christian History and Culture. Smolkin-Rothrock is assistant professor of history, assistant professor of Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian studies and tutor in the College of Social Studies. Her article, titled "The Ticket to the Soviet Soul: Science, Religion and the Spiritual Crisis of Late Soviet Atheism," appeared in Volume 73, Issue 2 of The Russian Review and was selected from among 22 entries. The honor comes with a $200 award. Smolkin-Rothrock's article examines the confrontation of Soviet scientific atheism with religion as it played out on the pages and…
A chapter titled "Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)" by Charles Sanislow, associate professor of psychology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior, was published in the Encyclopedia of Clinical Psychology in January. Kevin Quinn of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Isaiah Sypher ’13 co-authored the chapter. Sypher worked in Sanislow’s lab at Wesleyan and then went on to a research position at the NIMH Intramural Program in Affective Neuroscience. He is currently in the process of applying to clinical science programs in psychology. Sanislow and Quinn are both charter members of the NIMH Working Group for the RDoC, a project that is developing…
A book by Marc Eisner, the Henry Merritt Wriston Chair of Public Policy, was selected as a winner of the Outstanding Academic Titles by Choice in 2014. Eisner's book, The American Political Economy was published in 2014. In this innovative text, he portrays the state and the market as inextricably linked, exploring the variety of institutions subsumed by the market and the role that the state plays in creating the institutional foundations of economic activity. Through a historical approach, Eisner situates the study of American political economy within a larger evolutionary-institutional framework that integrates perspectives in American political development and economic sociology. Eisner also is chair…
Martha Gilmore, the George I. Seney Professor of Geology, and her former graduate student Patrick Harner MA ’13 are the co-authors of a paper titled "Visible–near infrared spectra of hydrous carbonates, with implications for the detection of carbonates in hyperspectral data of Mars," published in Icarus, Vol. 250, pages 204-214, April 2015. The paper suggests that hydrous carbonate minerals might be relevant on Mars. "We bought and made these unusual minerals in my lab and then took spectra of them to simulate what Mars orbiters might see. Carbonate minerals form in water on Earth (e.g., limestones), and are predicted for Mars, but…
Erika Taylor, assistant professor of chemistry, assistant professor of environmental studies, is the author of a paper "Exploring Allosteric Activation of LigAB from Sphingobium sp. strain SYK-6 through Kinetics, Mutagenesis and Computational Studies," published in Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Vol, 567, pages 35-45, February 2015. Co-authors include graduate students Kevin Barry and Joy Cote; Erin Cohn '15, Abraham Ngu '13 and former graduate student Jason Gerbino. Development of renewable alternatives for petroleum derived fuels and chemicals is of increasing importance because of limits on the amount of fossil fuels that are available on the planet. In an effort to improve the utilization of…
Wesleyan's Winter Session, held Jan. 9-20, provided students with an opportunity to take a full-semester course in only two weeks. The immersion courses offer full credit and allow students to build a close relationship with faculty and each other. Students completed reading and writing assignments before class started. Pictured below are scenes from Winter Session's ENGL234: Jane Austen and the Romantic Age course (taught by Stephanie Weiner, professor of English) and GOVT311: United States Foreign Policy course (taught by Doug Foyle, associate professor of government, tutor in the College of Social Studies). (Photos by Olivia Drake) (more…)
Wesleyan's MLK commemoration will be held in Memorial Chapel at 3:15 p.m., Jan. 30. This is a ticketed, free event.
Wesleyan has a new look online. On Jan. 14, the Office of University Communications and Information Technology Services' New Media Lab launched a new Wesleyan homepage and associated landing pages. The new design features a photo-rich look with an abundance of newsy campus content up top. As users scroll down, they'll see links to upcoming events, President Roth's blog, an Exploring Wes section catered to prospective students, and several more links connecting users to Wesleyan resources, tools and social media. Content, overseen by University Communications, is updated multiple times a week. “The new page reflects current industry standards in web…