Olivia DrakeBill Herbst, the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy, received a grant for $471,990 from the National Science Foundation. The grant will provide summer research stipends for students and funds for an Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium with the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium (KNAC). KNAC is a group of consisting of Wesleyan and seven other institutions (Colgate, Haverford, Middlebury, Swarthmore, Vassar, Wellesley and Williams) that have worked together to improve research experiences for undergraduate astronomy majors. KNAC was formed 20 years ago with a seed grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation and has been supported in recent years by the…
James Greenwood, research associate professor of earth and environmental sciences, received a grant worth $494,517 from NASA. The grant will support his research titled “Water in Lunar Rocks: Petrologic and Isotopic Analyses of Phosphate Minerals in Apollo’s Samples” through June 30, 2014.
Lisa Dierker, chair and professor of psychology, received a grant worth $590,769 from the National Institutes of Health. The grant will fund her research on “Individual Differences in Smoking and Nicotine Dependence Sensitivity” through Aug. 31, 2012. The award is part of the Recovery and reinvestment Act of 2009. Jennifer Rose, research associate professor of psychology, is the coPI on this grant.
Michael Calter, associate professor of chemistry, received a grant worth $472,490 from the National Institutes of Health General Medical Sciences. The award will support his research on “Asymmetric C-C Bond-Forming Reactions Catalyzed by Cinchona Alkaloid Derivatives” through July 31, 2013.
In July 2010, the board of the New York Academy of Medicine elected Andrew Curran, professor of French, Department of Romance Languages, a Fellow of the Academy in the history of medicine. Curran had previously received the Paul Klemperer fellowship in the history of medicine at the Academy and had given a lecture there on “natural history and slavery.” While at the Academy, Curran finished a book on 18th-century life sciences, The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Era of Enlightenment (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming 2011).
Ákos Östör, professor of anthropology, emeritus, was appointed to "Professor Catedratico" for the fall semester at the Instituto Superior de Ciencias do Trabalho e da Epresa - Lisbon University Institute. This is the highest appointment offered in the Portuguese University system. There, Östör is teaching a course on the "History of Visual in Anthropology" for the new master's program in Visual Anthropology. "Lisbon is a delightful place, deep histories and memories of ages and ethnicities, well reflected in the cuisine (the wine and seafood are superb and affordable in the numerous tascas, neighborhood eateries, throughout the city) definitely a place to visit and…
Steve Roslonek '93—aka "Mr. Steve" from PBS Kids and the SteveSongs band—will perform at 1:30 p.m. Oct. 23 at at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center. He blends participatory songs, clever stories and great melodies for children. Roslonek's band has received several awards from parenting organizations. He formerly worked as a business and technology consultant. Tickets are $25 each, but if you join the “Tribeca PAC 10 Club” you order 10 tickets for $140. To order tickets call 212-220-1460 or go to www.tribecapac.org. To get a special Wesleyan discount mention the special Wesleyan code "WSLSS11".
Anna Shusterman, assistant professor of psychology, is the co-author of the article, "Early acquisition of the word 'two'," published in The Proceedings of the 2009 Boston University Conference on Language Development, by Cascadilla Press, 2010.
Charles Sanislow, assistant professor in psychology, is the co-author of a publication examining psychometric characteristics of antisocial personality traits in the September issue of Psychological Assessment. The work was carried out under the auspices of the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Study, a 10-year prospective study funded by NIMH on which Sanislow has been an investigator since it began in 1996. The article is titled "Psychometric characteristics and clinical correlates of NEO-PI-R fearless dominance and impulsive antisociality in the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study."
Kendall Hobbs, Olin reference librarian, and Diane Klare, head of reference, are the co-authors of an article titled "User Driven Design: Using Ethnographic Techniques to Plan Student Study Space," published in Technical Services Quarterly 27(4), pages 347-363, in 2010. In the article, Hobbs and Klare explain how librarians and information technologists at Wesleyan were provided with an opportunity to design a new study space for students during a library renovation. They teamed up to learn ethnographic techniques and apply them by incorporating student input into the new space, rather than making decisions based on traditional methods. Using this approach produced…
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