Olivia DrakeThis month, Wesleyan employees have the opportunity to help their local community by participating in the university's annual Middlesex United Way fundraising campaign. Wesleyan staff and faculty members already received informational packets and department representatives are collecting funds for the organization. "Although all of us have many organizations we support, our gifts to United Way raise Wesleyan’s collective voice in support of programs that help our Middlesex County neighbors in need," said Wesleyan President Michael Roth in an all-campus e-mail. "Wesleyan faculty and staff have long been known as contributors to this community endeavor – a tradition worthy of renewed…
In this issue of The Wesleyan Connection, we speak with Edgar Pliaskis from the Class of 2014. Q: Where are you from and what attracted you to Wesleyan? A: I was born in Vilnius, Lithuania and moved to the U.S. about 10 years ago. For me, Wesleyan was always a small school and away from a big city—a beautiful environment to earn a degree and make lifelong friends. Q: What are you majoring in and why? A: I am double majoring in economics and Italian. I picked Italian because I was always interested in languages—Italian is a very beautiful language…
Rob Rosenthal, the John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology, will serve as Director of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life for a three-year term, beginning July 2014. Rosenthal has a distinguished history of initiating programs to integrate public life into the Wesleyan curriculum: He was the founding director of the Center for Service Learning, founding co-director the Center for Community Partnerships, and as Provost he instituted the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship and developed new programming within the Allbritton Center including the year-long "music in public life" initiative. Rosenthal served as provost from 2010-2013 and oversaw Wesleyan's reaccreditation process. Immediately…
Antonio Farias, currently Chief Diversity Officer at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, will become Wesleyan’s Chief Diversity Officer on Nov. 4. At the Coast Guard Academy since 2005, he chaired the Inclusive Excellence Council and worked with the highest level of leadership in the Coast Guard, developing a metrics-driven inclusion and diversity strategy for the Academy that eventually shaped strategy for the larger 47,000-member organization. He has developed retention programs for students of color, first-generation students, women, LGBT and students of various faith/non-faith backgrounds; implemented pre-orientation programs for first-generation students and students of color; and conducted inclusion and diversity workshops…
Ellen Thomas, research professor of earth and environmental sciences, was named the winner of the 2013 Association for Women Geoscientists Professional Excellence Award in the Academia category. This award recognizes exceptional women who have made distinguished contributions in their professions throughout their careers. "The Award Committee was especially impressed with the breadth and depth of your professional accomplishments, your commitment to mentoring, and the emphasis you have placed on outreach and other service activities during your career," wrote Aimee Scheffer, president of the AWG in Thomas' award letter. "Congratulations and thank you for being a positive role model to current and…
Ethnomusicologist Sumarsam, University Professor of Music, and Andy McGraw Ph.D. '06, now an associate professor at the University of Richmond, have been working with the Indonesian Embassy in Washington, D.C. and the Smithsonian Institution to organize and design a festival and conference on Indonesian performing arts. The festival will be held in the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries of Art, Oct. 31-Nov. 3. The Wesleyan Gamelan Ensemble will participate in the festival and Sumarsam will deliver the keynote address on “Traditional Performing Arts of Indonesia in a Globalizing World" on Nov. 2. Sumarsam will discuss Javanese musical and cultural interactions…
Masami Imai, professor of economics, participated in the first annual Stanford Summer Juku on the Japanese Political Economy. He discussed a paper titled, "Banks restructuring sonata: How capital injection triggered labor force rejuvenation in Japanese banks" by David Vera. Learn more here.
Elise Springer '90, associate professor of philosophy, is the author of the book, Communicating Moral Concern: An Ethics of Critical Responsiveness, published by MIT Press in September 2013. View photos of her recent book signing celebration in this Wesleyan Connection story. Modern moral theories have crystallized around the logic of individual choices, abstracted from social and historical context. Yet most action, including moral theorizing, can equally be understood as a response, conscious or otherwise, to the social world out of which it emerges. In this novel account of moral agency, Springer accords central importance to how we intervene in activity around us. To notice…
Ron Schatz, professor of history, tutor in the College of Social Studies, wrote an article on Middletown that was recently published in Past & Present, a prestigious English historical journal. The article, "The Barons of Middletown and the Decline of the North-Eastern Anglo-Protestant Elite," appeared in the March 2013 issue. Schatz uses the story of the transformation of the leadership of the city since the early 20th century as a microcosm of the United States during the past century. Wesleyan is mentioned several times in the 36-page article, including when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited Middletown in 1936. "Although quite…
Fall is in the air at Wesleyan this October. (more…)
The Center for the Arts presented the 37th annual Navaratri Festival, celebrating the traditional culture of India with performances by some of the country's leading artists on Oct. 10-13. One of India's major festival celebrations, Navaratri is a time to see family and friends, enjoy music and dance, and seek blessings for new endeavors. "For us Indian musicians traveling all over the world and especially in the U.S., this campus has been a place of great respect and wonder because of its ability to sustain this program for over 30 years," said tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, who also performed during…
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