Olivia DrakeQ&As with outstanding students are an occasional feature of The Wesleyan Connection. This issue we speak with Evan Okun from the Class of 2013. Q: Evan, you'll be graduating this spring. How would you sum up your Wesleyan experience so far? A: Wesleyan University encourages interdisciplinary inquiry while simultaneously supporting student efforts to put theory into practice. Earlier this semester the Sociology Department (along with other student and administrative groups) sponsored a panel discussion on the education system featuring the brilliant rap duo, Dead Prez. This served as the action component of my Senior Essay, which addressed exclusion in academia and incorporated…
Janice Naegele will become director of the Center for Faculty Career Development on July 1. Naegele, professor of biology, professor of neuroscience and behavior, has served as chair of the Biology Department, and has served on the Educational Policy Committee, Review and Appeals Board, the Graduate Liberal Studies Advisory Committee, the Life Sciences Building Committee, and the Writing Certificate Committee. She has published extensively in the areas of developmental neurobiology, stem cells and translational rodent models of neurological disorders. Her research explores genetic, small molecule, and neural stem cell based treatments for cognitive disabilities and epilepsy. She currently serves on…
J. Kehaulani Kauanui, associate professor of American studies, associate professor of anthropology, was appointed an Organization of American Historians (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer by the OAH Distinguished Lectureship Program. In an e-mail to Kauanui, Alan M. Kraut, president-elect of the OAH wrote, "Since 1981, OAH presidents have appointed their most illustrious and dynamic colleagues to our program, making it one of the longest running and most successful efforts of its kind among scholarly associations. It has proven to be an ideal way to reach a broader audience while raising money for the organization's initiatives on behalf of historians." As part of the…
Diana Windemuth, a graduate student in the Astronomy Department, received Honorable Mention as a Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Award Recipient at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society held Jan. 6-10 in Long Beach, Calif. The award is given to recognize exemplary research by graduate students who present a poster at the meeting. Diana's poster was titled "Dramatic Evolution of the Disk-Shaped Secondary in the Orion Trapezium Star θ1 Ori B1 (BM Ori): MOST Satellite Observations." Windemuth's advisor is William Herbst, the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy. Her work included results from two former Astronomy graduate students,…
Wesleyan’s Green Street Arts Center received a $5,000 grant from the Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts, on Jan. 17. The award will support the center’s Arts and Science After School Program through Dec. 31, 2013. The Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts, also receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
Wesleyan's Center for the Arts received a $42,660 grant from Dance/USA, the national service organization for professional dance. The CFA is one of 20 member organizations across the country awarded funding for "Round Two of Engaging Dance Audiences," the first national funding program for audience engagement practices focused specifically on the art form of dance. The award will support two new CFA programs: the DanceLink Fellowship Program, in which Wesleyan students will intern with three professional dance companies during the summer, and then serve as ambassadors for the companies when they are presented on campus during the 2013–2014 Breaking Ground…
Wesleyan’s Program for Student College Success received a grant of $2,500 from the Community Foundation of Middlesex County on Jan. 7. The funds will support the four-week summer session and 40 weeks of academic-year programming that help first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students successfully transition into college.
Seth Redfield, assistant professor of astronomy, is the co-author of "Probing potassium in the atmosphere of HD 80606b with tunable filter transit spectrophotometry from the Gran Telescopio Canarias," published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 419, pages 2233-50, 2012.
An article by Ethan Kleinberg, director of the Center for the Humanities, professor of history, professor of letters, is featured in the 50th anniversary issue of Perspectives on History, the monthly publication of the American Historical Association. The article, titled "Academic Journals in the Digital Era" is part of a forum on "The Future of the Discipline" edited by Lynn Hunt. View the full list of contributors online.
Peter Gottschalk, professor of religion, is the author of Religion, Science, and Empire Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India, published by Oxford University Press in November 2012. In this 448-page book, Gottschalk offers a compelling study of how, through the British implementation of scientific taxonomy in the subcontinent, Britons and Indians identified an inherent divide between mutually antagonistic religious communities. England's ascent to power coincided with the rise of empirical science as an authoritative way of knowing not only the natural world, but the human one as well. The British scientific passion for classification, combined with the Christian impulse…
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History hosted the National Youth Summit on Abolition on Feb. 11. Lois Brown, the Class of 1958 Distinguished Professor of African American Studies and English, joined a team of experts, scholars and activists in a moderated panel discussion to reflect upon the abolition movement of the 19th century and explore its legacy on modern-day slavery and human trafficking. The event was webcast live to more than 2,000 students and adults from 31 states and to schools in Kenya, Pakistan and the Republic of Suriname in…
For more than a decade Wesleyan has celebrated the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. The celebration has taken various forms including prominent keynote speakers such as Johnetta Cole and Sonia Sanchez to a campus-based program where members of the faculty, staff and students read portions of King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Learn more about Shakti Butler and Wesleyan's annual celebration online here.