David PesciFebruary 1, 20111min
Wesleyan’s alumni participation in the Wesleyan Fund is on a record pace — 30 percent as of December 31 — thanks to a generous challenge established by Frank Sica ’73, a member of the university’s Board of Trustees. The participation rate is four points ahead of last year at this time. Wesleyan has received more than 6,800 gifts, including 890 from alumni who did not give last year. Fully 5,886 alumni met the challenge criteria of contributing $25 or more by December 31, resulting in an endowment gift of $100 each, or $588,600, from Sica. “Frank’s generosity enabled us to…

David LowJanuary 31, 20113min
Author James Kaplan ’73, the Writing Programs’ 2011 Joan Jakobson Visiting Writer, will speak at 8 p.m. Feb. 9 in the Russell House. Kaplan has been writing about people and ideas in business and popular culture, and also writing fiction, for over three decades. His essays and reviews, as well as more than a hundred major profiles of figures ranging from Madonna to Helen Gurley Brown, Calvin Klein to John Updike, Miles Davis to Meryl Streep, and Arthur Miller to Larry David, have appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair and Esquire.  In November 2010, Kaplan published…

David PesciJanuary 20, 20112min
“Education Reform and Youth Empowerment” was the topic of renowned educator Geoffrey Canada, the featured speaker at this year’s Martin Luther King Celebration on Jan. 21 in Memorial Chapel. Canada, who was featured in the recent documentary Waiting for Superman, has dedicated the past 20 years of his life to helping the most impoverished, at-risk youth beat the odds. His idea of educational change is predicated on a simple yet radical idea: to change the lives of inner city kids we must simultaneously change their schools, their families, and their neighborhoods. Through programs such as the Beacon School, Community Pride Initiative, Harlem…

David PesciJanuary 20, 20112min
The 2010 campaign season was the most negative in recent years, but, current political rhetoric aside, that actually may not be a bad thing. These are among the findings and conclusions from a recent journal article published by Erika Franklin Fowler, assistant professor of government and director of The Wesleyan Media Project, and her co-researchers in The Forum, a Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics. “Advertising Trends in 2010” by Fowler and Travis Ridout, associate professor at Washington State University and co-director of The Wesleyan Media Project, examined the data and trends in television campaign advertising from all Federal and…