Olivia DrakeEllen Alexander '14, Professor Joop Varekamp and graduate student Lauren Camfield recently returned from Argentina where they studied the eruptive products of the Copahue volcano March 7-March 19. Varekamp, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, professor of environmental studies, has studied the volcano since 1997. It erupted in 2000 and again in December 2012. "Many Wesleyan students have done their senior theses and grad theses on Copahue. It's exciting stuff for us volcanology types," Varekamp said. Camfield sampled the products of the most recent eruption of Copahue, which included ash, pumice and volcanic bombs. She will analyze her samples…
The Wesleyan Board of Trustees reviews tenure cases three times each year during its meetings on campus, scheduled as the cases arise. At the most recent meeting in March, the Board awarded tenure — effective July 1, 2013 — to these faculty members: Elijah Huge, associate professor of art, has taught at Wesleyan since 2006. A licensed architect, his work includes private commissions and award-winning competition entries for the High Line (New York, N.Y.), the Bourne Bridge|Park (Bourne, Mass.), and the Tangshan Earthquake Memorial (Tangshan, China). His writing and design work have been featured in Praxis, Thresholds, Perspecta, Architectural Record, Landscape Architecture, Dwell, Journal of Architectural Education, and Competitions. His current scholarly…
Sumarsam, the University Professor of Music, discussed Indonesian puppetry during the Playwriting, Puppets and Dramaturgy Symposium March 9 at the University of Connecticut Puppet Arts Complex. The symposium brought together playwrights, puppeteers, dramaturgs, students and puppetry enthusiasts to share ideas and experiences about the practice, theory, and history of puppetry’s uses of text in performance. Experts discussed ways the visual dramaturgy of puppetry’s sculpture in motion works in tandem with dramatic and narrative texts. Sumarsam and symposium organizer John Bell, director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut, spoke on “Puppets and Texts: Global…
Matthew Kurtz, associate professor of psychology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior, traveled to Gujarat, India in March to work with The MINDS Foundation. The organization provides mental health services to rural regions of the developing world. While in India, Kurtz joined Lennox Byer ’12, director of programs, to enhance current programming and develop a social/vocational skills rehabilitation program for patients. Kurtz is developing this program using his research experience gained through social skills training programs he has developed for patients with Schizophrenia in Connecticut. Kurtz is a MINDS Foundation board member. The MINDS Foundation was founded in 2010 by…
Seth Redfield, assistant professor of astronomy, spoke on "Properties of the Interstellar Medium Surrounding the Sun and Nearby Stars" during a conference held March 11-15 in the Physikzentrum in Bad Honnef, Germany. The conference, which was 527th in a series, was sponsored by the Wilhelm und Else Heraeus Stiftung, a German foundation that supports scientific research and education. The topic of the conference was "Plasma and Radiation Environment in Astrospheres and Implications for the Habitability of Extrasolar Planets."
David Schorr, professor of art, and director of the Art Studio Program for the Art and Art History Department, will have artwork on exhibition at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Mass. The exhibit, Secrets, Loss, Memory and Courage: Works by Male Gay Artists, will be on display April 27-July 31. The show honors gay rights activist, author and poet Paul Monette (1945-1995), who received an honorary degree from Wesleyan in 1993. Schorr and Monette collaborated on three books.
Q: Rachel, you are the operations and communications coordinator for the Wesleyan Career Center. When did you come to Wesleyan and what attracted you to the position? A: I started at Wesleyan in the Career Center in August 2011. As an undergraduate at St. Lawrence University, I had the opportunity to work as a peer career advisor in the Career Services office. I discovered how rewarding it is to work in higher education, particularly in a capacity serving students as they make the transition from college to career. It is extremely gratifying to share in a student’s journey of self-discovery…
Singer-songwriter Tess Amodeo-Vickery '07 debuts her first music video "When I Think about You" on YouTube. The video was filmed in Rome, Italy with director Federico Iris Osmo Tinelli. [youtube width="640" height="420"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz3RVJ2GnKo&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
Jeanine Basinger, the Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies, is the author of I Do and I Don't: A History of Marriage in the Movies, published by Knopf in January 2013. This extensively researched and illustrated book examines “the marriage movie;” what it is (or isn’t) and what it has to tell us about the movies—and ourselves. As long as there have been feature movies there have been marriage movies, and yet Hollywood has always been cautious about how to label them—perhaps because, unlike any other genre of film, the marriage movie resonates directly with the experience of almost every adult…
A paper co-authored by Rich Olson, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, and Sophia Levan '12 was published in The Journal of Molecular Biology, March 2013. The article is titled, "Vibrio cholerae Cytolysin Recognizes the Heptasaccharide Core of Complex N-Glycans with Nanomolar Affinity." The human intestinal pathogen Vibrio cholerae secretes a pore-forming toxin, V.cholerae cytolysin (VCC), which contains two domains that are structurally similar to known carbohydrate-binding proteins. Olson and Levan used a combination of structural and functional approaches to characterize the carbohydrate-binding activity of the VCC toxin. At Wesleyan, Levan was the recipient of the Butterfield Prize, the Graham Prize…
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