Olivia DrakeThe Newman's Own Foundation awarded Wesleyan's Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship a $30,000 grant on June 17. The award will fund grants for students doing unpaid internships or other extra-curricular experiences in social justice, corporate responsibility, international development, and related fields.
Several Wesleyan alumni, staff and friends participated in the four-mile Hartford Marathon Foundation's Legend Run June 30 on Wesleyan's campus. The Legends Run brought legends Bill Rodgers ’70 and Amby Burfoot ’68 back to campus, along with some running stars of younger generations. (Photo by Steve McLaughlin) View more photos of the event in this Hartford Courant article:
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The New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) awarded Wesleyan's Center for the Arts with a $6,200 grant. The funds will support a performance of "Who's Hungry" in September 2013.
(Story contributed by Jim Smith) When graduate student Amy Steele settled into her seat the first day of an upper-level Radio Astronomy course last January she was anticipating a rigorous four-month exploration of the discipline. The instructor, Meredith Hughes, who had just joined the Astronomy Department as an assistant professor, came with strong credentials in radio astronomy. Steele was excited. After completing her undergraduate work at Williams College, she had taken four years off to work as the astronomy lab supervisor at the University of Texas at Arlington. Last fall she enrolled as a graduate student at Wesleyan. “Radio astronomy…
Three Wesleyan faculty members received endowed professorships for the 2013-14 academic year. Tsampikos Kottos, associate professor of physics, is being honored with the Douglas J. and Midge Bowen Bennet Chair. The Bennet Chair, endowed in 2007, is awarded for a five-year term to "a newly tenured associate professor exhibiting exceptional achievement and evidence of future promise." Ashraf Rushdy, professor of English, professor of African-American studies, is being awarded the Benjamin L. Waite Professorship in English Language, first appointed in 1911. Philip Scowcroft, professor of mathematics, is receiving the Edward Burr Van Vleck Professorship in Mathematics. The Van Vleck chair was…
Anna Swartz '13 delivered the following remarks during the Senior Class Welcome on May 26: Right before I left for Wesleyan for the first time, Ruth, my ninety-year-old neighbor warned me “Make the most of it, college is the best time of your life.” I took her advice to heart, it seemed smart to trust a woman who had done so much living, and I arrived at Wesleyan filled with the loftiest dreams, the highest expectations, ready for my life to be changed. What I didn’t realize at the time is that college isn’t just about what Wesleyan could give…
(Contributed by Jim Smith) Meredith Hughes was one of those kids drawn to science and nature. But growing up in small-town Rhode Island, she didn’t know any scientists. “The people I knew who liked science were teachers and doctors,” recalled Hughes, a new assistant professor of astronomy at Wesleyan this year. “So I figured that’s probably what I’d be.” Then, during her junior year of high school, a patient of her mother, a women’s health nurse practitioner, recommended a program for budding scientists called The Summer Science Program (SSP). Hughes applied, and became one of 25 students from around the…
The Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship is pleased to announce its 2013 Seed Grant and Internship Grant recipients. The PCSE Seed Grant program was launched this spring. Individuals and teams of students competed for $5,000 prizes intended to provide capital to help Wesleyan students launch their socially-oriented project or idea and/or build capacity of their existing social enterprise. The winners are: Circles and Ciphers Project Leader: Evan Okun ’13 Description: This grant will fund a project in Chicago with a leadership development organization that fuses restorative justice practices with hip-hop culture to empower and support predominantly African-American and Latino males,…
Christopher Parslow, professor and chair of the Classical Studies Department, professor of archaeology, has been selected as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., for the 2013 fall term. Parslow, a Roman archaeologist specializing in the ancient sites buried by the eruption of Vesuvius, will spend his semester-long residency working on a book on the Praedia (Properties) of Julia Felix in Pompeii. He was chosen on the recommendation of the faculty of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. Each…
Amy Bloom, the Kim-Frank Family University Writer in Residence, will become the director of the Shapiro Creative Writing Center for two years, beginning July 1. She is author of two novels, four collections of short stories, a non-fiction book, and a children's book; winner of the National Magazine Award in fiction; and a past nominee for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her most recent novel, Lucky Us, will be released by Random House in early 2014. She received a bachelor of arts from Wesleyan in 1975 and master of social work from Smith…
Hundreds of alumni returned to campus May 23-26 to reunite with classmates at reunions and other events. View the full Reunion & Commencement photo gallery in this Wesleyan Flickr set. (more…)