Bill HolderProfessor of History and Letters Ethan Kleinberg is the recipient of the Reinhart Koselleck Visiting Professorship at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, a high honor accorded to world-renowned historians whose work is “of outstanding significance” for theoretical reflection and further development. Kleinberg will spend the summer term of 2019 at Bielefeld with the intention of beginning work on a project titled “Temporal Anarchy in History.” Candidates for the professorship do not apply for the honor; the Centre for Theories in Historical Research at Bielefeld selects recipients based on the example set by Reinhart Koselleck, one of the most renowned…
Five Wesleyan students determined to make life better for girls in rural African areas have received a prestigious $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace grant. Their start-up nonprofit, Rural Access, seeks to expand access to health and education in impoverished areas, while also raising awareness of pressing health issues. Among those is the need to address lack of menstrual hygiene products, which frequently keeps girls out of school and leads to high dropout rates, poverty, and other harmful outcomes. This summer, Rural Access will be working in Ethiopia and Guyana to make menstrual hygiene kits and distribute them to girls. The…
Graduation came early this year for men’s lacrosse players for the best possible reason. With the team competing in the NCAA championship game on Commencement Sunday for the first time in the program’s history, graduating students missed the regular ceremony. The graduating seniors, and one student receiving an MA in graduate liberal studies, received their degrees at a special ceremony in the Admission building, attended by President Roth and Provost Joyce Jacobsen, on Wednesday, May 23. Also present were the families of the graduates, as well as Director of Athletics Mike Whalen and Vice President for Student Affairs Michael Whaley.…
The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), which operates the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), and other major astronomical research facilities in the United States, has elected the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium (KNAC)—led by Wesleyan University—as a new member. This historic development represents the first time that liberal arts institutions have been invited to join the association and serves as an important recognition of the value of such programs, not just to education, but also to frontier research in astronomy. “This is a tremendous recognition of the important…
The scent of ancient perfumes evaporated eons ago, but scientists are able to reconstruct their ingredients by analysis of the residues left on their containers. Up until now, however, such studies have largely been isolated in the scientific literature, disconnected from the textual and archaeological data that place these perfumes back into the hands of their ancient users. Kate Birney, assistant professor of classical studies, archaeology, and art history, is hoping to change that as co-architect of the OpenARCHEM project, which seeks to assemble the largest set of organic residue samples ever collected from archaeological artifacts around the Mediterranean. Built…
Barbara-Jan Wilson, vice president for University Relations, recently announced that she will retire in December, ending a Wesleyan career that began in 1982 and included leadership of two major capital campaigns. Wilson assumed her present role in 1999, but she is also well known to generations of alumni through her prior leadership of Admission and before that, Career Resources – the position she took when she was hired by President Emeritus Colin G. Campbell Hon. ’89. Her efforts as Wesleyan’s energetic and highly successful fundraiser spanned two presidents and four Board chairs. She worked with President Emeritus Douglas J. Bennet…
Jessica Chen ’20 is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, which is often spoken in her home city of Shenzhen, China. She started learning English before she entered Kindergarten. She taught herself Korean in high school, speaks a local Chinese dialect common in her mother’s native area and is studying Italian at Wesleyan. She is not yet fluent in the latter, but hopes to be so before she graduates and possibly to pick up some other Romance languages as well. (more…)
At its meeting on March 3, the Board of Trustees voted to increase tuition and residential comprehensive fees by 4.1 percent for the 2018-19 year. Tuition and fees for the 2018–19 year will be $54,614. The residential comprehensive fee for first-year and sophomore students will be $15,060, for juniors and seniors, $17,120. Wesleyan’s percentage increase in student charges aligns with its projected increase in total expenses. Wesleyan meets the full demonstrated financial need of all admitted students and devotes almost $60 million of its operating budget to support of scholarships. In 2017-18, 42 percent of students are receiving need-based scholarship…
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Erika Taylor, associate professor of chemistry, is the recent co-author of three articles. Two publications are related to disrupting the formation of Lipopolysaccharides (LPSs), a cell surface component that is important to Gram-Negative bacteria’s ability to form biofilms and become resistant to hydrophobic antibiotics. These papers describe inhibition of enzymes from E. coli, as well as enzymes from related pathogens including Vibrio cholerae (the bacteria that causes cholera), and Yersinia pestis (the bacteria that causes plague). Understanding how enzymes can be inhibited opens up possible new strategies for fighting diseases. The third paper builds on her prior work investigating the…
Wesleyan will present two honorary doctorates at the University’s 186th Commencement on May 27, 2018. Anita Hill, who for decades has fought against discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace, will present the Commencement address, and Joshua Boger ’73, P’06, ’09 founder of Vertex Pharmaceuticals and chair emeritus of Wesleyan’s board of trustees, will also be honored. Anita Hill Anita Hill is University Professor of Social Policy, Law, and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis. In 1991, her name became indelibly stamped on the…
Care to brush up on your French? Learn Japanese? Or perhaps acquire a language that isn’t commonly taught at colleges, such as Danish? Wesleyan is offering alumni and members of the on-campus community free access to the Mango Languages platform, says Antonio Gonzalez, professor of Spanish and director of the Fries Center for Global Studies. The platform provides high-quality online instruction in 72 languages, with an excellent blend of conversational language and cultural study. Gonzalez says that reception of Mango as a teaching and learning tool "has been very positive on campus" and that it is an attractive means for…