Olivia DrakeWesleyan's campus is home to dozens of flowering shrubs, trees and blooming flower gardens.
During Reunion & Commencement Weekend, the Wesleyan community celebrated the dedications of three prominent areas of campus with ribbon-cutting ceremonies. They include Boger Hall (formerly 41 Wyllys), the Gordon Career Center (located inside Boger Hall), and The West Wing of Usdan University Center. (more…)
During the 184th Commencement Ceremony, John Lemberg Usdan ’80, P’15, P’18, P’18 was honored with the Raymond E. Baldwin Medal. The award was presented by Joshua Boger ’73, P’06, P’09, chair of the Wesleyan University Board of Trustees. The Baldwin Medal, which pays tribute to the late Judge Raymond E. Baldwin of the class of 1916, is the highest honor of the Alumni Association, recognizing outstanding service to Wesleyan. John Lemberg Usdan is president of Midwood, a New York-based real estate investment and development firm. Usdan also is president of the Lemberg Foundation. Usdan’s remarkable record of service to the…
Wesleyan presented honorary doctorates to Bryan Stevenson, Patti Smith and Kwame Anthony Appiah during the University’s 184th Commencement on May 22. Bryan Stevenson is a human rights lawyer who has dedicated his life to fighting racial injustice and discrimination in the criminal justice system. He is executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), an Alabama-based group that has won numerous legal challenges on behalf of the poor and incarcerated, including a historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling holding that life-without-parole sentences for children aged 17 or younger are unconstitutional. He founded the Equal Justice Initiative in 1989 to help prisoners on death…
Sally Bachner, associate professor of English, Demetrius Eudell, professor of history, and James Lipton, professor of computer science, received Binswanger Prizes for Excellence in Teaching at Commencement on May 22. These prizes, made possible by gifts from the family of the late Frank G. Binswanger Sr., Hon. ’85, underscore Wesleyan’s commitment to its scholar-teachers, who are responsible for the university’s distinctive approach to liberal arts education. Recommendations were solicited from alumni of the last 10 graduating classes, as well as current juniors, seniors, and graduate students. Recipients were chosen by a selection committee of faculty and members of the Alumni Association Executive Committee.…
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Wesleyan recently hired five additional tenure-track faculty who will begin their appointments during the Fall 2016 semester. They join eight other faculty who were hired in February. The new faculty include: Joan Cho, assistant professor of East Asian studies. Cho's BA is from the University of Rochester, and she is completing her dissertation at Harvard, titled “The Dictator’s Modernity Dilemma: Modernization and Generation Turnover under Authoritarianism.” (more…)
On May 7, Master drummer Abraham Adzenyah, adjunct professor of music, emeritus, was honored with a ceremony, farewell concerts, and reunion featuring past and present students (View photo set here). Adzenyah taught West African music, dance and culture at Wesleyan for 46 years and retired in May. During the event, Adzenyah was honored with the naming of the Abraham Adzenyah Rehearsal Hall (formerly the Center for the Arts Rehearsal Hall). This is the first time that a leading U.S. university has named a building after a traditional African musician. In addition, grateful students, alumni and friends have raised more than $225,000 to establish the…
The Office of Student Affairs hosted a Spring 2016 awards banquet for students who received academic prizes, fellowships and awards on May 4 in Daniel Family Commons. Students received awards for demonstrating outstanding character, leadership and intellectual commitment; intercollegiate debating; extracurricular participation; promoting the health, visibility, and participation of the Latino community at Wesleyan; writing the best paper that uses econometric techniques to analyze an economic problem; excellence in environmental stewardship; excellence in modern languages; exhibition in painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, photography, or architecture; and much more. To view the entire list of awards and recipients see Student Affairs Prizes…
Three teams from Wesleyan received honors during the American Statistical Association DataFest, hosted at Wesleyan April 8-10. During DataFest, students are presented with a large, complex, surprise data set and work over the weekend to explore, analyze, and present their findings. Teams of three to five undergraduate students from Wesleyan, Trinity, Connecticut College, Yale, and the University of Connecticut competed against each other. After two days of intense data wrangling, analysis and presentation design, each team was allowed only five minutes and no more than two slides to impress a panel of judges. The event, coordinated by Wesleyan's Quantitative Analysis Center, is…
The Center for the Arts hosted a West African Drumming and Dance performance May 6 in Crowell Concert Hall. The program was coordinated by Iddi Saaka, artist-in-residence and John Wesley Dankwa, a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology. Students in West African Dance I and III performed with help from drumming students. (Photos by Olivia Drake) (more…)
Middlesex United Way held its annual awards program May 5 at the Middletown Elks Lodge, and among the honorees were campaign "Coordinators of the Year:" Associate Professor of Biology Gloster Aaron and Provost Joyce Jacobsen, who served as Wesleyan's campaign co-chairs this year, and Cathy Lechowicz, director of the Jewett Center for Community Partnerships. Middlesex United Way also awarded Rob Rosenthal, director of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life and the John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology, with the Community Leadership Award in January. Bill Holder, director of University Communications, is president of the Middlesex United Way Board. Since 2001, Wesleyan…