Olivia DrakeOther presenters at the Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns included author Mark Harris; Mark I. Bomback ’93, screenwriter, whose credits include Race to Witch Mountain, Live Free or Die Hard, and Deception; Miguel Arteta, film and television director of Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl, Six Feet Under and Youth in Revolt. Also Liz Garcia ’99, producer, editor and writer of Cold Case; Evan Katz ’83, screenwriter and the executive producer of the television series 24; David Kendall ’79, director of several television series, including Jonas, Hannah Montana and Growing Pains; Dan Shotz ’99, producer, editor and writer, Jericho, and the…
Douglas Foyle, Irina Russu and John Seamon were honored with the 2009 Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching May 24. The Binswanger Prize was inaugurated in 1993 as an institutional recognition of outstanding faculty members. Prize recipients are chosen by a selection committee of emeriti and current faculty members and members of the Alumni Association's Executive Committee. Douglas Foyle, the Douglas J. and Midge Bowen Bennet Associate Professor of Government, joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1998, after serving as a postdoctoral fellow in international relations at the Mershon Center for the Study of International Security at Ohio State University. He…
Peter Staye, associate director of utilities, points to the ceiling of the Bacon Field House. About 140 high-tech light fixtures span the width of the dome-roofed gymnasium. "These are special lights for high ceilings," he says. "There's 24 fewer fixtures here than there used to be, and it's just as bright. If we used florescent fixtures, we'd need 240 of them." The new, 350-watt, high-intensity discharge bulbs have replaced the older, 400-watt bulbs, and use 373,000 fewer kilowatt hours per year. They're also programmed to turn on in zones, and change luminosity throughout the day based on a newly-installed ambient…
By Brian Katten, sports information director Q: We understand that you will be umpiring during the World Cup women's lacrosse championships in Prague, Czech Republic in June. How did this opportunity come about? A: The World Cup is every four years. I have been at the last two World Cups representing the U.S. as an umpire in 2001 and 2005. U.S. umpires must apply and are ranked within our country. The number-one ranked umpire is an automatic umpire for the World Cup. This year, that’s me. Each country submits their candidates. A committee of IFL (International Federation Lacrosse) makes the…
Fox 61 News featured Green Street’s AfterSchool Program within the segment "Fox Focus" with Susan Christensen. The newscast was broadcast May 18. The piece featured the Green Street students' and teaching artists' work. The report is online here.
For 25 years, Diane Kischell has cared for the children of dozens of Wesleyan employees and Middletown community members. This month, Kischell, director and head teacher at the Wesleyan-affiliated Neighborhood Preschool (NPS), is retiring. She started at NPS in 1983. "Diane's teaching, mentorship and commitment have guided the Neighborhood Preschool, fostering a school where children can be themselves and where they develop a firm foundation of self-esteem and communication skills that sustain them as they grow," says Suzanna Tamminen, director of Wesleyan University Press and mother of Hugh Barrett NPS '07, Fiona Barrett NPS '08 and Silas Barrett NPS '12.…
Willard B. Walker, professor of anthropology emeritus, died May 23 in Skowhegan, Maine. He was 82 years old. Walker was one of the mainstays of the Anthropology Department for more than two decades. He came to Wesleyan in 1966 as an assistant professor, where he and Dave McAllester established anthropology as a department. A specialist in Native American languages and cultures, Walker taught courses on the ethnography of the southwest, the southeast, and the northeast and he also single-handedly maintained a curricular focus on linguistic anthropology. His research interests ranged from Zuni phonology and semantics to the cryptographic use of…
Ellen "Puffin" D'Oench, curator emerita of the Davison Art Center, adjunct professor of art history emerita, and former trustee of Wesleyan University died May 22 in Middletown. She was 78 years old and had been ill for some time. D'Oench interrupted her education at Vassar College to marry Russell "Derry" D'Oench and raise their family. She completed her undergraduate education at Wesleyan in 1973, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in the same class as her son Peter. She received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1979. D'Oench was Curator of the Davison Art Center from 1979 until…
Jonathan Cutler, associate professor of sociology, spoke to Bloomberg Law's Lee Pacchia '02 about the United Auto Workers and the union's circumstance relative to the bankruptcy filings of General Motors Corp. Cutler is an expert on labor organizations. The report is online.
Gary Yohe, the Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics, is the co-author of “Risk Aversion, Time Preference, and the Social Cost of Carbon," published in Environmental Research Letters 4: 024002, 2009 and available at IDEAS /RePEc http://ideas.repec.org/p/esr/wpaper/wp252.html as well as http://stacks.iop.org/1748-9326/4/024002. He's also the author of “Discounting for Climate Change," published in an Economics e-Journal special issue on Discounting the Long-Run Future and Sustainable Development, 2009; available at http://www.economics-ejournal.org/special-areas/special-issues.
Christiaan Hogendorn, associate professor of economics, is the co-author of "The Economic of Renewable Resource Credits," published as Chapter 9 in Analytical Methods for Energy Diversity and Security, Elsevier, Morgan Bazilian and Fabien Roques, eds., 2008.