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Olivia DrakeSeptember 24, 20147min
During Family Weekend, held Sept. 26-28, Wesleyan families are invited to attend classes and WESeminars, take in concerts and sporting events, enjoy meals, tour campus and learn about student programs and services. Breaking from tradition, this year Family Weekend is be separate from Homecoming Weekend, because Homecoming occurs during Fall break. Diane LaPointe '79, P'17, celebrated her 35th Wesleyan Reunion in May, and is elated to return to campus four months later to visit with her daughter, Megan Dolan '17. Megan took her mother to a French class and Modern Dance III class, and the two plan on spending time mingling with Megan's…

Olivia DrakeSeptember 24, 20141min
Dana Royer, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences, is the co-author of “Plant Ecological Strategies Shift Across the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary,” published in PLOS Biology on Sept. 15. The study reveals that a meteorite that hit Earth 60 million years ago – and may have led to the mass extinction of the world’s dinosaur population – also led to a shift in the landscape of plants, particularly deciduous plants. Royer and his colleagues showed how they applied bio-mechanical formulas to fossilized leaves of flowering plants dating from the last 1.4 million years of the Cretaceous period and the first 800,000 of the Paleogene. Read more about…

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Olivia DrakeSeptember 23, 20142min
On Sept. 23, Wesleyan celebrated the 15th anniversary of Bon Appétit's Farm to Fork program during the annual Eat Local Challenge. Bon Appétit, Wesleyan's campus dining provider, served a menu with all local ingredients. All food — including produce and meat — came from farms or suppliers within a 150 radius of campus. The menu included New England clam chowder, fried haddock and chips, clam bake, roasted pork, BBQ seitan with rosemary potatoes and mushrooms, wood-fired pizza, steamed potatoes and corn, farmhouse salad and strawberry and blueberry crisp for dessert. Students also voted for their favorite farm. The winner, announced next week, will…

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Olivia DrakeSeptember 23, 20142min
Maho Ishiguro, an ethnomusicology doctoral student, received a Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship to study the female Saman dance in Indonesia. The award came with a $29,508 stipend. Ishiguro's proposed research title is “Saman Dance in Diaspora Presence of Female Saman Dance as Expressions of Piety Cultural Identity and Popular Culture.” Her DDRA project will examine the contemporary life of female Saman dance in Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Banda Aceh. Saman dance, or the dance of a “thousand hands” is typically performed in Gayo Lues, a mountainous region of Aceh, by eight to 20 male performers who kneel in…

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Olivia DrakeSeptember 23, 20143min
Faculty and student researchers from Wesleyan's Cognitive Development Lab recently received a $3,000 stipend from the National Living Laboratory® Initiative, which receives support from the National Science Foundation. The award will support an ongoing collaboration between Wesleyan and the the Connecticut Science Center. Hilary Barth, associate professor of psychology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior, oversees a Living Laboratory® site at the science center's museum. For the past year and a half, Wesleyan researchers have visited the museum on Saturdays to collect data for current studies, talk with children and their families about child developmental research, and guide visitors in hands-on activities that demonstrate important findings in developmental psychology. The…