Olivia DrakeQ: Frank, you came to Wesleyan in 1996 as a campus center coordinator. What did this position entail? A: Oh my, how time flies when you are working with and being challenged by Wesleyan students! I was hired for one year as the interim coordinator of the former Davenport Campus Center. Then I was appointed full time coordinator the following year. I was a one person office, responsible for the facility and its operations. Basically, I was charged with keeping the building safe, clean, and hopefully attractive as a gathering place for students. For the last five years, I also…
Posted 01/15/08 Q: With your father and uncle both outstanding former Wesleyan wrestlers, was it a foregone conclusion that you'd become a wrestler? A: It's hard to say, I had known growing up that my father and three out of my four uncles had wrestled; however, I never felt at one time that I was being pressured to follow suit. We joke in my family that my father always gets his way without ever saying anything. I vaguely remember him urging me to look into it, but I know the decision to start wrestling was ultimately mine. In terms of…
Lauren Nichols, a BA/MA biology student, demonstrates how the new LICOR Li-6400 measures the rate of carbon fixation via photosynthesis in living plants. Posted 01/15/08 A challenge grant from The Kresge Foundation is supporting much-needed equipment for the sciences at Wesleyan. With a challenge grant from The Kresge Foundation, Wesleyan has already acquired a photosynthesis system, microplate reader, spectrometers and a dye laser. With $500,000 raised from donors, the foundation provided a grant of $250,000 for a total of $750,000 used towards the equipment purchase. And this month, Wesleyan will receive an additional $250,000 from the foundation to support future…
Posted 01/15/08 Lisa Dierker, associate professor of psychology, has received a $1 million National Institutes of Health grant to develop a new statistical method that will move past standard approaches to provide more sensitive ways to evaluate both the etiology and clinical course of mental and physical health outcomes. Numerous statistical methods used in longitudinal health research help make sense of mountains of complex data and aid researchers in uncovering important associations that can inform health care.Dierker, pictured at right, and Runze Li, associate professor of statistics at Pennsylvania State University, are principal investigators on the grant, which is a…
Posted 01/15/08 Parlez-vous français? By attending the Wesleyan Summer Language Institute, students will learn to speak, write and comprehend basic French in only four weeks. The new Summer Language Institute, developed by the Division of Continuing Studies, will offer programs in Arabic, Russian and Spanish as well as French. Participants will be grouped together by language, and will live, study, eat and mingle together constantly in the target language. In four weeks of immersion, students will gain the equivalent of a full year of language study at Wesleyan, says Jennifer Curran, assistant director for admissions and outreach. This is a…
Posted 01/15/08 For the past three years, College of Social Studies and French double major Anand Venkatachalam 08 has studied South Asian culture, history, language and the Hindu religion. What was lacking, however, was the opportunity to practice Hinduism on campus. "I found it very odd that a campus so greatly endowed with an interest in Asian art forms did not have even a student group that provided a community for Hindus on campus," says Venkatachalam, a native of Chennai, India. "College is a time of ethic formation, and questioning norms and values. Hindu students, or students who were raised…
FROZEN IN TIME: A wintry mix created an icy glaze over Wesleyan's campus Dec. 3 following the first winter storm of the season. Freezing rain slowed commuters and resulted in power outages throughout much of Connecticut. A fall-bearing fruit glistens with Hall-Atwater Laboratory in the background. Ice-covered, heavy branches hang low on College Row. Pictured in back is the Center for American Studies. (Photos by Olivia Bartlett)
Dan Lachman '09 hires designers from all over the world to create images for his T-shirt and computer-skin business, Sharp Shirter. He runs the business when he's not busy with classes. Lachman is wearing one of his designs, above, featuring a gorilla riding an ostrich. Posted 12/07/07 For the past year, Dan Lachman 09 has gotten used to wearing his heart on his sleeves. The Wesleyan junior has put all his creative energy into an online-based T-shirt company, and his imaginative designs are selling world-wide. Psychology major Lachman created his business, Sharp Shirter, in September 2006 after turning a daydream…
Posted 12/07/07 Barbara Jones has taken her commitment to intellectual freedom around the world and back again. The Caleb T. Winchester University Librarian has put forth extensive work on behalf of intellectual freedom, both in the United States and abroad. For her efforts, she received the 2007 Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award, given by the faculty of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Dec. 3. Jones's work on behalf of the Committee on Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression has taken her to Costa Rica, Dubai and…
Posted 12/07/07 Singer, composer, historian and honorary degree recipient Bernice Johnson Reagon will be the keynote speaker at an upcoming Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration at Wesleyan. Reagon, who founded the internationally-renowned a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, will participate in a class, facilitate a lunch discussion and speak at the community wide MLK celebration Jan. 29. The MLK discussion will begin at 4:15 p.m. Jan. 29 in Memorial Chapel. Reagon received an honorary degree recipient from Wesleyan University in 2001. Wesleyan annually honors and celebrates the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., who also received a honorary…
Charles Batambuze, executive director of the National Book Trust of Uganda, visits with guests inside Olin Library during the Free Access to Information and Freedom of Expression-International Federation of Library Associations conference Nov. 27. Posted 12/07/07 Alice Miranda stood in awe at the plethora of books available for check-out at Olin Library. Miranda, a professor at the Universidad Nacional Costa Rica, says Wesleyans library has more books than seven countries in Central America combined, including 15 universities. There are 1.5 million books in this library, Miranda says, peering at the wall shelves in Olins Smith Room. In Central America, our…
Michael Singer, assistant professor of biology, is the recipient of a NSF grant which will enable him to hire a postdoc and undergraduate student to collaboratively research behavior of the woolly bear caterpillar. Posted 12/07/07 When a woolly bear caterpillar becomes infected with a parasite, it cant go to a pharmacy for medicine, so it does the next best thing: It eats the leaves of medicinal plants. This behavior and recognition for the need to self-medicate when ill is at the heart of a new grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a proposal by Michael Singer, assistant professor…