Olivia Drake"Keeping Our Feet to the Fire: Joining Art and Science to Engage Environmental Issues" is the topic of Wesleyan's 2010 Earth Day celebration on April 22. The event will feature a world premier screening of Paul Horton's film Connections within a Fragile World. A panel of environmental experts will discuss the question "are art and science as natural allies in communicating environmental issues to the public?" It will be moderated by Jeremy Isard '11, with panelists: Godfrey Bourne, University Missouri St. Louis; Marda Kirn, EcoArts Connections, Colorado; Cassie Meador, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Washington, D.C.; and Barry Chernoff, the Robert…
David PesciThis year Wesleyan received 10,656 applications to join the university’s class of 2014, an increase of nearly 6 percent from last year. Of those, 2,125 or just under 20 percent, were offered admission, giving Wesleyan its most selective admission cycle on record. “This is a really superb and exciting group of students who are poised to join the Wesleyan community,” says Nancy Hargrave Meislahn, dean of admission and financial aid. “We had another significant increase in the overall number of applications this year and we had to make a lot of difficult decisions. But the students we chose were absolutely…
Corrina KerrHilary Barth, assistant professor of psychology, was recently awarded a five-year, $761,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study “magnitude biases in mathematical cognition, learning, and development.” Barth will be conducting a series of studies with children and adults in the Cognitive Development Laboratory at Wesleyan to investigate abstract and perceptual magnitude biases. The grant, which begins this year, comes from the NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program. The program is only available to non-tenured faculty. Barth’s colleague Anna Shusterman was awarded a CAREER grant in 2009. “The psychology department is thrilled about Professor Barth's accomplishment,” says Lisa…
Bill HolderA generous $2 million gift to Wesleyan will greatly enhance the ability of the Career Resource Center to serve students in a planned new home at the center of campus. The anonymous gift from Wesleyan parents will endow the programs of the center, which will be located in the old Squash Building at the north end of College Row. Part of Wesleyan’s historic brownstone row, this building is scheduled for renovation beginning in the 2010-11 academic year. “The Career Resource Center has an essential role in helping students translate their intellectual interests into productive work and career aspirations,” says Wesleyan…
Richard S. Slotkin, the Olin Professor of English, Emeritus, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Established in 1780 by John Adams and other founders of the nation, the Academy undertakes studies of complex and emerging problems. Its membership of scholars and practitioners from many disciplines and professions gives it a unique capacity to conduct a wide range of interdisciplinary, long-term policy research. Current projects focus on science and technology; global security; social policy and American institutions; the humanities and culture; and education. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60…
In this issue we ask 5 Questions to...Dana Royer, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, who has a new study in the American Journal of Botany that examined flowering plant fossils in hopes of uncovering clues about the growth characteristics of some of these ancient angiosperms. Q. Your study looks at the structure of fossil flowering plants, also known as angiosperms, from more than 100 million years ago. What were you hoping to discover? A. Flowering plants are ubiquitous in most areas on Earth today. Over 90 percent of all plant species today are angiosperms. Given how important these…
One works in translating languages; the other translates words into images. Together they are about to take audiences through a centuries-old world of lechers, louts and libertines, among others. Norman Shapiro, professor of romance languages and literatures, and David Schorr, professor of art, have been collaborating together for more than 20 years to bring ancient French verse and tales to life for an English-reading audience. Their most recent effort is a re-issue, La Fontaine's Bawdy: Of Libertines, Louts, and Lechers (2009 by the Black Widow Press), a book they will be discussing and signing at on May 5 at Broad…
Brian KattenKeisuke Yamashita '10 of Yokahama, Japan; Jory Kahan '10 of Norwich Vt.; Clare Smith '10 of Lexington, Mass.; and Beth Kenworthy '10 from New York, N.Y., were named the recipients of Wesleyan University's Roger Maynard '37 Memorial Award for the 2009-10 academic year. The award is presented annually to the outstanding male and female scholar-athletes in their last year of eligibility. Yamashita, Kahan, Smith and Kenworthy represent the finest combination of athletic accomplishment and academic achievement at Wesleyan. Kahan and Yamashita were starters on the 2009 men's soccer team that posted the first undefeated regular-season since 1940 and set a school…
Amy Bloom ’75, a distinguished writer of novels, short stories, nonfiction, and projects for television, has been named the Kim-Frank Family University Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University. Her appointment takes effect July 1. Bloom will enhance Wesleyan’s curricular offerings in writing by offering two courses per year, and she will serve as a senior thesis advisor. She will have an office in the Shapiro Creative Writing Center. “Amy Bloom is one of the most accomplished writers in the United States today,” says President Michael S. Roth. “Her insight, her creativity, and her deep understanding of the craft of writing…
Albert Fry, the E.B. Nye Professor of Chemistry, is the co-author of “Substituent Effects on the Redox Properties and Structure of Substituted Triphenylamines. An Experimental and Computational Study,” published in Tetrahedron, 65, 2408-2414, 2009.
Brian Northrop, assistant professor of chemistry, is the co-author of several new articles. These include: “Ultrafast Optical Excitations In Supramolecular Metallacycles with Charge Transfer Properties,” published in Journal of the American Chemical Society, 132, 1348-1358 in 2010; “Assembly of Metallacycles on HOPG by Shape-Persistent Macrocycle Templates,” published in Journal of the American Chemical Society, 132, 1328-1333, 2010; “Surface Confined Metallosupramolecular Architectures: Formation and Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Characterization,” published in Accounts of Chemical Research, 42, 249-259, 2009; “Directed Self-Selection in the Coordination-Driven Self-Assembly of Irregular Supramolecular Polygons,” published in Journal of Organic Chemistry, 74, 3554-3557, 2009. Also, “Synthesis of Six-Component Metallodendrimers…
Rex Pratt, the Beach Professor of Chemistry, is the co-author of “Substituted aryl malonamates as new serine b-lactamase substrates: Structure-activity studies,” published in Bioorganic & Mecicinal Chemistry,18, 282 in 2010; “Approaches to the simultaneous inactivation of metallo- and serine- b-lactamases,” published in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters,19, 1618; 2009; “Inhibition of class A and C b-lactamases by diaroyl phosphates,” published in Biochemistry, 48, 8285, 2009; “Intramolecular cooperativity in the reaction of diacyl phosphates with serine b-lactamases,” published in Biochemistry, 48, 8293, 2009; “Structural basis of the inhibition of class A b-lactamases and penicillin-binding proteins by 6-b-iodopenicillanate,” published in the Journal of the…