Allynn Wilkinson, digitization specialist, works on scanning and piecing together a map of Middletown inside the Information Technology Services digitization lab.   Posted 03/15/05 Allynn Wilkinson is leading Wesleyan into a digital world. As Wesleyan’s digitization specialist, Wilkinson support curricular instruction by converting and creating multimedia instructional materials. And campus wide, technology seems to be contagious. “We give faculty members what they need, and that gets other people interested in these types of services,” she says. “It’s just amazing what we can do nowadays with technology.” Wilkinson works in her own digitization lab at Information Technology Services. There, she uses…

  Public Safety Senior Officer William Heckstall has worked for Wesleyan more than 20 years.   Posted 03/15/05 In his distinctive black, gray and red uniform, a shimmering silver badge and a belt equipped with a jingling set of keys and nightstick, Public Safety Senior Officer William Heckstall appears daunting from afar. But once eye-contact is made with this 6-foot-3, broad-shouldered officer, his sweet, signature smile overwhelms his face. “I like to greet everyone with a friendly smile, and let them know I’m a nice guy and can be trusted,” officer “Hex” says, modeling his beaming grin. For 23 years,…

  Biology visiting assistant professor Stanley Lin researches ways to prevent brain cell death in stroke patients.   Posted 03/15/05 Q: Professor Lin, you’re among only a handful of scientists, nationwide, studying excitotoxic cell death. Please explain your research, and what this means for stroke victims. A: After a stroke, millions of brain cells can get over excited and the cells can die. This cell death is an ongoing process. This condition can be prevented if the neurological signaling pathways that that cause cell death are inhibited. If we use proteins that block excitotoxic pathways, we could prevent post-stroke death.…

  Lingzhen Wang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures stands outside Fisk Hall, where she teaches a class on 20th century Chinese literature and film.   Posted 03/15/05 Lingzhen Wang joined the Asian Languages and Literatures Department as an assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures in January 2005. She teaches China Modern: An Introduction to the Literature and Film of Twentieth Century China and Intermediate Chinese at Wesleyan. Wang completed her undergraduate work at Nanjing University and earned her Ph.D at Cornell University. Her master’s thesis is a comparative study of a well-known Chinese writer, Shen Congwen, and…

Laurie Zolty, assistant to the coordinator of University Lectures, poses with lecture advertisements inside the Horgan House.   Posted 03/15/05 Q: When did you join the staff at Wesleyan and why? A: I joined the staff in the fall of 2000 looking for a career change. A very good friend was on staff here and spoke so highly about working at Wesleyan. I was searching for almost a year, looking for a position where each day would be different – working a diverse schedule, meeting new people, taking on new tasks and challenges. This newly created position with University Lectures…

Psychology Professor Karl Scheibe will retire from Wesleyan this spring after a 42-year career here.   Posted 03/15/05 Fresh out of the Ph.D. program at the University of California at Berkeley, 26-year-old Karl Scheibe accepted a faculty position at Wesleyan University. Apparently, he liked his first job. “It sure lasted a while,” says Psychology Professor Scheibe, who has spent the more than four decades since teaching and doing research at Wesleyan. “I’ve considered going to other universities, but never did. And I’ve never regretted staying here.” Scheibe, a social psychologist known for his classes emphasizing relationships between psychology and theater,…

  Mary Alice Haddad, assistant professor of government and East Asian studies, came to Wesleyan in June 2004.   Posted 03/05/05 Mary Alice Haddad joined the faculty in the Government Department and East Asian Studies Program as an assistant professor in June 2004. Haddad, a native of Washington, D.C., completed her undergraduate work at Amherst College and earned a Ph.D at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her dissertation, "Creating Citizens: Volunteers and Civil Society, Japan in Comparative Perspective,” was about civil society in Japan. Her primary area of research is comparative civil society, with a focus on Japan.  “I am especially…