Olivia DrakeEdward Moran, chair and associate professor of astronomy, director of the Van Vleck Observatory, received a grant from the National Science Foundation for his research titled "Black Holes in the Milky Way's Backyard." The grant, worth $275,164, will be applied over three years. The award, presented on Aug. 26, is funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Charles Sanislow, assistant professor of psychology, received a $349,939 grant from the National Institute of Health for his research titled "Cognitive Control in Borderline & Trauma Psychopathology." The grant, awarded Aug. 24, will be applied over two years. It is a continuation of a six-year grant transferred from Yale University.
Wesleyan University received a grant worth $177,918 from the U.S. Department of Education to help establish a Middle Eastern Studies Certificate Program at Wesleyan. The grant will be applied over two years. Bruce Masters, the John E. Andrus Professor of History, says he and other interested faculty will propose to the Educational Policy Committee an interdisciplinary cluster of courses that will allow interested students to graduate with a certificate in Middle Eastern Studies, in addition to their departmental/program major. The grant, along with a commitment from Academic Affairs, is supporting a long-term contract adjunct instructor in Arabic language.
Amy MacQueen, assistant professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, received a $746,997 grant from the national Institute of Health for her research titled "Regulation of Synaptonemal Complex Assembly During Meiosis in S. cerevisiae." The grant, awarded Aug. 21, will be applied over three years.
Robert Lane, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, received a grant from the National Science Foundation/American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for this research titled "Cross-Disciplinary Science & Investigation of Olfactory Receptor Gene Regulation." The award, worth $299,955 will be distributed over two years.
Deb Olin Unferth, assistant professor of English, won the 2009 Cabell First Novelist Award for her book, Vacation, (McSweeney's Press). She recieved $5,000 for being the contest winner. According to an Aug. 15 edition of The Los Angeles Times, about 100 readers from Virginia Commonwealth University and the broader Richmond, Va. Community, participated in the selection process.
Gary Yohe, the Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics, is quoted in an Aug. 21 USA Today article titled "Poor communities hit hardest by global warming." The article focuses on a study produced by the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report about its economic forecasts. Yohe is an author on the IPCC report. "IPCC identified the poor, the elderly, and the very young as the most vulnerable categories of people on the planet ... regardless of location, as Katrina and the European (2003) heat wave taught us," Yohe says in the article. "Nonetheless, the most vulnerable are more likely to…
Four Wesleyan spring athletes were named first-team All-Americans in the July/August edition of the Jewish Sports Review, the pre-eminent national publication honoring Jewish athletes. Among those honored from Wesleyan, softball standout Talia Bernstein ’11 (#9), who earned first-team all-NESCAC as well as regional honors from both the New England Softball Coaches Association and the National Fastpitch Coaches Association after leading the Cardinals to a second-place finish in the NESCAC tournament with her .482 batting average, was a first-team Jewish All-American. Two members of the Wesleyan men's lacrosse team, Jason Ben-Eliyahu ’09 (#27) and Lonny Blumenthal ’10 (#13), found spots on…
Keera Bhandari ’08, MA ’09 and Hilary Barth, assistant professor of psychology, are the authors of a new article on children's social cognition. The article, based on Bhandari's research project for her master's degree in psychology, is titled "Show or tell: Testimony is sufficient to induce the curse of knowledge in three- and four-year-olds." It will appear in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2009.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one out of every three black men between the ages 20 and 29 is in prison, on probation or on parole. Of these men, 94 percent are fathers. English and African American Studies major CaVar Reid '11 is curious to discover how prison affects a man's ability to be a father. "I want to ask them, 'What were your expectations about your relationships with your children when you were incarcerated? How do you think your incarceration has affected your children? How did you stay involved with your children?'" Reid says. As a 2009-11…
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Lesley Xu ’11 was featured in a July 25 issue of The Eagle Tribune of North Andover, Mass. for her efforts helping the climate crisis. Xu and five of her friends from other universities have been biking across Massachusetts for eight weeks handing out literature and hosting symposiums urging people to take action for solving the climate crisis. They knock on doors and ask residents to sign a petition that calls for "100 percent clean electricity" in Massachusetts. "We want to mobilize the population and take action," Xu says in the article. The students said they and other activists want…