Alumni – Page 15

Nataly Kogan '98 will present a WESeminar, “What I Wish I Knew When I Was a Super-Successful Wesleyan Overachiever” in the Ring Family Center at 2:30 p.m. Sept. 28. Kogan, who at 13 emigrated with her family to the U.S. as a refugee from the former Soviet Union, graduated from Wesleyan with High and University Honors as a CSS major. She achieved early success as a consultant with McKinsey & Co, a venture capitalist at the age of 26, and a tech executive with companies like Microsoft. However, this came at a huge personal cost, she says, and it didn’t have…

On Saturday, Sept. 29, during Family Weekend, Elise Bean ’78 is offering a WESeminar titled: “Congress’ Constitutional Duty to Investigate: One Senator Who Got It Right.” The Washington co-director of the Levin Center at Wayne State University Law School, Bean is the author of Financial Exposure: Carl Levin’s Senate Investigations into Finance and Tax Abuse. At a time when congressional investigations have taken on added urgency in American politics, Bean offers an insider’s portrait of how the world of congressional oversight operates. Drawing on more than 30 years on Capitol Hill, the last 15 at the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on…

In this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni. Recent Wesleyan News The Wall Street Journal: 'The Lost Education of Horace Tate' Review: Civil Rights for Schoolchildren President Michael S. Roth reviews Emory Professor Vanessa Siddle Walker's new book on a previously "unseen network of black educators" across the South, who fought heroically "over many decades for equality and justice." 2. Forbes: Top 25 Liberal Arts Colleges 2018 Wesleyan is featured among Forbes' annual list of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. 3. Hartford Courant: Connecticut Had Significant Role in Tumultuous 1968…

Ian Boyden ’95 received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship of $12,500, one of only 25 such grants for 2019, to support the new translation of poetry and prose from 17 countries into English. Boyden’s fellowship will support his work translating from the poetry collection Minority, written in Chinese by Tibetan poet Tsering Woeser, considered one of China’s most respected living Tibetan writers. In 2013, John Kerry of the U.S. State Department honored Woeser with an International Women of Courage Award. In 2010, the International Women's Media Foundation had given her a Courage in Journalism Award. Boyden, an artist, writer, curator, and…

This summer, bad things happen here, a play directed by Lila Rachel Becker ’12, was featured at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. An MFA student at the University of Iowa, Becker has been paired to work with Eric Marlin—whom she calls “an incredible playwright, a brilliant collaborator”—since she began her graduate work in 2017. She is drawn, she says, to “incendiary” plays—and after producing this one in Iowa last November, a few professors encouraged the partnership to take it around to festivals. Noting that the spare design of bad things happen here made it easy to bring across the ocean to…

Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO), a grassroots nonprofit organization directed by Kennedy Odede ’12 and Jessica Posner ’09, has been awarded the 2018 Conrad N. Hilton Foundation's Hilton Humanitarian Prize. Selected by a distinguished panel of independent international jurors, SHOFCO will receive $2 million in unrestricted funding, joining 22 other notable organizations that have received the Hilton Humanitarian Prize over the last two decades. Based in Kibera—one of the largest slums in Africa—SHOFCO was founded by Odede as a teenager in 2004 with 20 cents and a soccer ball. The organization describes its mission as catalyzing large-scale transformation in urban slums…

Sarah Ashkin ’11, Brittany Delany ’09, and Sue Roginski ’87 premiered an evening-length dance work, task, on Aug. 17–18, as part of the summer season at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, Calif., under the umbrella of GROUND SERIES dance collective. Ashkin and Delany, codirectors of GROUND SERIES since 2012, choreographed and performed the piece, with Roginski providing dramaturgical direction. As codirectors, Ashkin and Delany describe their work as "collaborating in using dance performance as a tool of embodied intervention and research." "With our shared background in critical thinking, cultural studies, and artistic risk-taking fostered by the Wesleyan Dance Department, we wanted…

In Knocking on Heaven’s Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death, a New York Times Notable Book of 2013, award-winning journalist Katy Butler ’71 recounted shepherding her parents, Professor Emeritus of History Jeffrey Butler and artist Valerie Butler, through their final illnesses. When Katy’s father suffered a stroke and later was given a pacemaker, the family had no idea that the device would extend his physical life years past his cognitive ability to enjoy it or to function independently. After his death, Katy’s mother declined open heart surgery and chose instead to meet her own death head-on. From…

Wesleyan has announced its 2018 Athletics Hall of Fame class, which will be inducted Friday, Oct. 19, before Homecoming. The ninth class features James Carrier '42, Philip Rockwell '65, Allison Palmer '95, Jed Hoyer '96, Flo Stueck '96, and Herb Kenny. Wesleyan’s Athletics Hall of Fame (HOF), both online and on campus, is filled with entertaining and enlightening accounts of Cardinals past. It features exciting stories of accomplishment, character, perseverance, courage, loyalty, teamwork, and generosity. The HOF was founded in 2006 through the collaborative work of the Athletics Advisory Council, the Athletic Department, and the Office of University Relations and…

(by Christine Foster) James Ricci PhD '14 was awarded a 2018-2019 Congressional Fellowship. The program is administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in conjunction with The American Mathematical Society. During this year-long fellowship, Ricci will be paired with either a member of Congress or a congressional committee. Fellows work as special legislative assistants learning about policy creation and contributing their own technical and academic expertise. “They are looking for people who are able to speak clearly and be advocates for STEM education,” says Ricci, who spoke by phone from a salmon fishing boat in Ketchikan, Alaska, where…

William Tyner ’13 was awarded a Fulbright National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship —one of only five of such grants awarded each year. The fellowship is made possible through a partnership between the U.S. Department of State and the National Geographic Society and is a component of the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. It provides opportunities for U.S. citizens to participate in an academic year of overseas travel and storytelling on a globally significant theme. Tyner, who majored in anthropology at Wesleyan and enjoyed courses in the College of Film and the Moving Image, will be working with Code for Romania. He’ll be creating a…

Artistic creations by four Wesleyan alumni are displayed as part of the National Portrait Gallery’s landmark exhibit, Michael Jackson on the Wall. The contemporary art exhibition, which closes on Oct. 21, explores the influence of pop-music icon Michael Jackson and spans several generations of artists across all media. The exhibition opened to coincide with what would have been Jackson’s 60th birthday, on Aug. 29, 2018. The exhibit occupies 14 rooms and includes the works of Glenn Ligon ’82, Jonathan Horowitz ’87, Michael Gittes '10, and Lyle Ashton Harris ’88. The Wesleyan alumni are among 48 artists who have their work displayed,…

Kogan ’98: “What I Wish I Knew When I Was A Super-Successful Wesleyan Overachiever”

Bean ’78 Offers Insider’s Portrait of Congressional Oversight in Book, WESeminar

Wesleyan in the News

Boyden ’95 Awarded NEA Fellowship for Poetry Translations

Director Becker ’12 Brings bad things happen here to Edinburgh Fringe

SHOFCO Recipient of Hilton Humanitarian Prize

Ashkin ’11, Delany ’09, Roginski ’87 Confront White Supremacy through Dance

Butler ’71: Toward a Gentler Death

5 Alumni, 1 Coach to Be Inducted into the Wesleyan Athletics Hall of Fame

Ricci PhD ’14 Awarded Congressional Fellowship

Tyner ’13 Named Fulbright National Geographic Storytelling Fellow

Art by 4 Alumni Featured in Popular Michael Jackson Exhibit