Olivia DrakeMiddlesex United Way awarded Wesleyan's Program for Student College Success with a $5,000 grant. The award will support the program through Aug. 31, 2013. Wesleyan’s Program for College Success is a comprehensive program that supports first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students as they move through high school and into college. The program serves 100 high school students (25 in each class), helping them to make a successful transition to college. Led by a director and operated by college students and recent graduates, the program consists of a four-week summer session and 40 weeks of programming throughout the academic year. Wesleyan students…
Cynthia RockwellBekkie Wright '85 has had an ongoing goal: An under-four-hour marathon in all 50 states. A member of Team Marathon Bar for the past two years, Wright succeeded in her quest on Oct. 24, 2012, in Mason City, Iowa, running the Newman Marathon. "Currently there are less than 30 people who have achieved that mark and I was only the fourth woman to reach that milestone," she notes. A soccer player at Wesleyan, Wright didn’t start her marathon running until 1993. Her first took place on a snowy, 17-degree Chicago day—but she didn’t stop there. Since then, she’s run more…
Lauren RubensteinGovernment's Eisner comments on the success, historically, of presidents who embrace regulation
Government's Logan Dancey writes that McMahon's loss reflects a larger trend of voters toeing the party line
Yohe: The recent storm and other extreme weather events raise important questions about climate change
The Wesleyan Weather Station recorded a strong drop in local air pressure during Hurricane Sandy on Oct. 29. According to the weather report, the local sea-level barometric pressure was a normal 760 mmHg (millimeters of Mercury) on Oct. 28. When Hurricane Sandy passed through Wesleyan's campus on Oct. 29, the pressure dropped to a low of 733 mmHg during the storm's peak. "Low pressure generally indicates stormy conditions whereas high pressure is associated with fair weather," explains Johan "Joop" Varekamp, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science. "We tend to only see the barometer drop this low in the…
The Wesleyan Media Project's new study finds more than 915K presidential ads aired in the general election
Tucker explores how this misleading graphic has stirred controversy over evolution for more than a century
Dupuy cautions that outside investors stand to gain more than Haitians from the $300M project
For Robert Nelson P'16 and Jean Fujisaki P'16, nothing means more to them than time with their son, Ryden '16. During Wesleyan's Homecoming/Family Weekend Oct. 19-21, the parents, who visited from La Jolla, Calif. caught a glimpse of Ryden's new home-away-from-home. During their short visit, Nelson and Fujisaki attended Ryden's Japanese class, a general physics lecture, a comedy show, mingled with his new friends and watched bits of the Homecoming football game Oct. 20. "Family Weekend has given us a better sense of what Wes is about," Nelson said, sitting with his family outside Fayerweather on Saturday morning. "We've enjoyed…
(Story contributed by Jim H. Smith) Senior thesis research conducted last spring by Audrey Haynes '12 at Costa Rica’s National University, under the tutorship of Johan “Joop” Varekamp, has shown that many residents of the Central American nation have levels of mercury in their hair that far exceed those recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Varekamp, whose student made the discovery as part of a broad evaluation of environmental mercury in Costa Rica, says the elevated mercury levels are probably a consequence of over-consumption of large ocean fish, not exposure to mercury in the air emitted by volcanoes, as…
Nadja Aksamija, associate professor of art history, is spending her 2012-13 year abroad in Florence, Italy as a Robert Lehman Fellow at the Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. She is one of 15 scholars to receive the fellowship. I Tatti Fellows are selected by an international and interdisciplinary committee that welcomes applications from Italian Renaissance scholars from all nations. While abroad, Aksamija is researching the Bolognese villa in the age of Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti. "My project investigates the Bolognese villa culture at the end of the 16th century, a period marked by Catholic reform…