Olivia Drake – Page 17

A new play written by John Long MALS '96 is available for online viewing through the Phoenix Stage Company's YouTube Channel. Titled Learning Experience, the play explores individual experiences of living in quarantine during the pandemic in the first half of 2020. Eight people, ranging in age from 18 to 70s, tell their stories in the form of monologues to be posted online. The stories reveal what their lives were like before the pandemic and how they've changed during isolation. "Some characters work from home, some go into work, some don't work at all, but all are motivated to share…

This winter, the Gordon Career Center is hosting four "fireside chat" style Winter Alumni Career Conversation events between prominent alumni and current students. Guests include Kimberley Martin '03, NFL reporter for ESPN; Jon Turteltaub '85, film/TV director and producer; Jesse Greenspan '06, director of supply chain and logistics, Partners in Health; and Dana Peterson '98, chief economist, The Conference Board. (more…)

Several Wesleyan faculty and alumni have been featured in national media outlets recently. They include: The New York Times—Christina Crosby, 67, Dies; Feminist Scholar Wrote of Becoming Disabled NBC News—Biden Picks Jessica Rosenworcel [’93] as Acting FCC Chief NBC Think—Trump’s ‘1776 Commission’ Tried to Rewrite U.S. History. Biden Had Other Ideas.; by Robyn Autry Inside Higher Ed—Everything Won’t Be Different; by Michael Roth ’78 NPR’s Short Wave—Let’s Go Back to Venus!; features Martha Gilmore MyRecordJournal.com—WRESTLING: Paint It, Black! Wesleyan Coach Drew Black of Cheshire Tabbed for National Hall of Fame The New York Times Magazine—Poem: Variation on a Theme by Elizabeth Bishop; poem by John…

Each year, three faculty members are presented the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching during the Commencement Ceremony. The Binswanger Prize recognizes outstanding faculty members as exemplified by a commitment to the classroom, student accomplishment, intellectual demands placed on students, lucidity, and passion. Juniors, seniors, graduate students, and GOLD alumni (Graduates Of The Last Decade) are eligible to nominate up to three professors who had the most enduring impact on students’ Wesleyan experience. An invitation to nominate will be sent on Jan. 30 by Vanessa Guida ’04, chair of the Binswanger Committee. For questions, contact Gina Driscoll (gdriscoll@wesleyan.edu), associate director,…

A poetry collection authored by John Murillo, assistant professor of English, is longlisted for both the 2021 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection and the Believer Book Awards. Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way Books, 2020) explores the legacy of institutional, accepted violence against Blacks and Latinos and the personal and societal wreckage wrought by long histories of subjugation. The collection includes a sonnet triggered by the shooting deaths of three Brooklyn men that becomes an extended reflection on the history of racial injustice. The PEN/Voelcker Award, which comes with a $5,000 prize, is awarded to a poet whose distinguished collection of…

“What is the good life?” “What should I value?” “What should I believe?" These are the questions that more than 760 alumni, parents, and friends of the University are exploring this winter as part of a three-part mini-course titled Living a Good Life. Taught by Wesleyan Professors Steven Horst, Stephen Angle, and Tushar Irani, the course gives attendees the chance to participate in activities during each one-hour virtual webinar. Attendance is encouraged for all three classes, but not required. The mini-series is based on Wesleyan's Living a Good Life undergraduate course, piloted during the Fall 2020 semester. The course is…

This month, Wesleyan is launching two new MOOCs (massive open online courses) on the Coursera platform. Enrollment for both classes is free of charge. Take Action: From Protest to Policy launches on Jan. 17 and is taught by Mary Alice Haddad, John E. Andrus Professor of Government, and Sarah Ryan, attorney and associate professor of the practice in oral communication. Jeffrey Goetz, associate director, Center for Pedagogical Innovation, also assisted with creating the course. (more…)

Works by three Wesleyan alumni are published in the Winter 2020–21 issue of Ploughshares. Founded in 1971 and published at Emerson College, Ploughshares is an award-winning journal featuring the freshest voices in contemporary American literature. The issue includes: "The Man at the Top of the Stairs, On Rendering the Inner Life" by Steve Almond '88; "Private Practice" by Fay Dillof '87; and "Reading for the Plot" by Christina Pugh '88. Almond, an English major, is also the Kim-Frank Visiting Writer at Wesleyan this spring. He's the author of 11 books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers…

The year 2020 will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the most memorable of the modern era. From the threat and real-life toll of a global pandemic to domestic clashes over social, racial, and political injustice, 2020 was full of challenges—and the Wesleyan community met each one head-on. We banded together to keep our students and staff safe and pushed each other to show our resilience, to step up and speak out, and to use our trademark creativity to adapt and lead the way in addressing our new socially distanced and politically charged reality. In this timeline, we…

Ronald Schatz, professor of history, is the author of The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era, published by the University of Illinois Press on Jan. 11, 2021. According to the publisher: Schatz tells the story of the team of young economists and lawyers recruited to the National War Labor Board to resolve union-management conflicts during the Second World War. The crew (including Clark Kerr, John Dunlop, Jean McKelvey, and Marvin Miller) exerted broad influence on the U.S. economy and society for the next 40 years. They handled thousands of grievances and strikes. They…

When hometown friends Michayla Robertson-Pine and Tessa Levenstein found themselves frustrated with online learning at the college level, they suspected school-aged children were also suffering in the world of online education, and that young people were actively looking for fun creative ways to engage with each other socially. That's when Wesleyan junior Robertson-Pine '22 and Amherst College junior Tessa Levenstein '22 decided to create a remote, project-based, community-oriented program with the intent of spreading joyful learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Named Tin Can Learners, the program aims to take the load off of parents and offer engaging and energizing after-school…

As part of the BIO 173: Global Change and Infectious Disease course, Professor Fred Cohan assigns students to write an essay persuading others to prevent future and mitigate present infectious diseases. If students submit their essay to a news outlet—and it's published—Cohan awards them with extra credit. As a result of this assignment, more than 25 students have had their work published in newspapers across the United States. Many of these essays cite and applaud the University's Keep Wes Safe campaign and its COVID-19 testing protocols. Cohan, professor of biology and Huffington Foundation Professor in the College of the Environment…

Play by Long MALS ’96 Focuses on Coping with the Pandemic

Students Connect with Alumni Leaders through Career Conversation Events

Wesleyan in the News

Nominate Faculty for 2021 Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching

Murillo’s Poetry Longlisted for PEN/Voelcker, Believer Book Awards

Alumni, Parents Explore “Living a Good Life” in Mini-Course

Wesleyan Offers 2 New Coursera Courses Focused on Creating Social Change

3 Alumni Authors Published in Ploughshares

From Global Pandemic to Anti-Racism: Wesleyan’s Year in Review

Schatz Pens New Book on the Influence of the National War Labor Board

Students Launch Fun, Interactive Virtual Program for School-Aged Kids

Students’ Essays on Infectious Disease Prevention, COVID-19 Published Nationwide