Olivia DrakeKevin Flaherty, a postdoctoral researcher working with Meredith Hughes, assistant professor of astronomy, will speak on "Dusty Debris as a Window into New Planetary Systems" during the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) 2016 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., Feb. 13. Flaherty is one of three symposium speakers who will discuss the theme "Planet Formation Seen with Radio Eyes." Scientists are now probing how, where, and when planets form and are analyzing the links between planetary system architecture and the properties of the parent circumstellar disk. Though the relationship of planetary to stellar masses remains obscure, it is clear that most…
Tom Morgan, the Foss Professor of Physics, recently attended an Atomic Molecular Optical International Workshop held in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Morgan presented two invited talks, one on highly excited unusual electronic configurations of molecular hydrogen produced by laser excitation and another on laser interactions at the interface between water and air. These topics elicit novel dynamics and provide a different perspective on H2 and H2O behavior. He also took the opportunity to reconnect with a Mexican colleague, Professor Carmen Cisneros, Institute of Physics, University of Mexico, organizer of the workshop, with whom Morgan has collaborated in the past.
Lauren Rubenstein"As far as relationships go, parasitism may seem particularly selfish: one partner benefits at the expense of another. Many parasites even alter the behavior of their hosts to get what they need. Parasitoids are similar, but they usually spend a significant portion of their lives living inside or on their hosts' bodies and controlling them from the inside-out, before ultimately killing and often consuming them." So begins an article in Science Daily featuring research by Melissa Bernardo, a PhD student in biology working with Michael Singer, associate professor of biology, associate professor of environmental studies. Bernardo has been studying how parasites and…
Bill HolderA new task force announced by President Michael Roth will explore the establishment of a multicultural/gender/first-generation resource center as part of Wesleyan's broader effort to improve equity and inclusion on campus. The task force will be tri-chaired by Gina Ulysse, professor of anthropology, professor of feminist gender and sexuality studies; Antonio Farias, vice president for equity and inclusion and Title IX officer; and Shardonay Pagett ’18. Their initial recommendations are expected to be published in February with final recommendations by May 1. "It need hardly be said that making our campus more equitable and inclusive is a communal goal and…
Recognize the Wesleyan faculty who had an enduring impact on your academic and personal development by nominating them for the 2016 Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Nominations are now open! The Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching was inaugurated in 1993 as an institutional recognition of outstanding faculty members. One to three Binswanger Prizes are presented each year and are made possible by the generosity of the family of Frank G. Binswanger Sr., Hon. ’85. Recent alumni up to 10 years out, seniors, juniors, and graduate students (including Graduate Liberal Studies) can nominate up to three professors for the award. Current faculty…
Center for the Arts Director Pamela Tatge '84, MALS '10, P '16, will leave the university in April to serve as executive director of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. There, she will set the artistic vision and strategic goals for the organization, including programming one of America’s longest-running international dance festivals, and overseeing education, preservation, and audience engagement programs, as well as marketing and development. For the past 16 years, Tatge has overseen robust programming in music, dance, theater, and visual arts at the CFA. She has supported the realization of faculty and student work in the arts and spearheaded the development of the university’s…
What started out as a class assignment has evolved into a public website. During the fall semester, students enrolled in the Philosophy 268 course, The Ethics of Captivity, explored the various forms and conditions of captivity, including prisons, zoos, laboratories and sanctuaries. As one of the class assignments, Lori Gruen, the William Griffin Professor of Philosophy and chair of the Philosophy Department, asked her students to work in small groups on a blog post, highlighting a variety of ethical and political issues that captivity raises for humans and other animals. (more…)
On the release of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's latest dietary guidelines, The Washington Post looks back at the man responsible for starting it all: William Olin Atwater, Class of 1865 and later a chemistry professor at Wesleyan, who authored the very first dietary guidelines in 1894. According to the Post, at that time, the U.S. government provided basically no funding into nutritional research, and good nutrition meant simply getting enough to eat. But Atwater was a firm believer that nutrition was about more than simply staving off hunger. He framed the effort to figure out what foods are good for you as a moral…
Wesleyan’s Winter Session, held Jan. 6-19, provides students with an opportunity to take a full-semester course in only two weeks. Students completed reading and writing assignments before classes started. Classes meet five hours per day. Indira Karamcheti, associate professor of American studies, is teaching ENGL246: Personalizing History. Students participate in daily memoir reading and writing, and question how they are shaped by their historical times and places. Students construct narratives about our times and selves in a series of writing workshops. They discuss memory itself, childhood, place and displacement, language, loss/trauma/melancholia/nostalgia, self-invention or transformation, family and generational differences. The class engages with…
Jon Barlow, professor of music, emeritus, died Dec. 15 at the age of 73. Barlow arrived at Wesleyan in 1966 after receiving his BA and MA from Cornell University. He arrived as the Music Department began its visionary phase and taught in the department for 34 years. Grounded in “Western” music history, Barlow expanded his horizons geographically and conceptually, constantly creating innovative courses, which attracted serious students. Many of his students went on to become established composers, performers, musicologists and ethnomusicologists. (more…)
Alcohol use, traffic fines and race, and the impact of caffeine on sleep were among the topics presented at a poster session in which students enrolled in a project-based course at the Quantitative Analysis Center demonstrated the power of statistical analysis to illuminate social problems. The QAC Student Research Poster Session, held Dec. 11 in Beckham Hall, served as a final exam for students taking QAC 201: Applied Data Analysis. Several Wesleyan faculty and alumni evaluated the students’ poster presentations. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the QAC 201 class allows students to spend a semester studying a topic they are passionate about. They learn to generate hypotheses…
David LowJeanine Basinger, Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies, was recently featured in a Hollywood Reporter article “The Professor of Hollywood,” by film historian and best-selling author Sam Wasson ’03, who studied with Basinger at Wesleyan. The magazine brought together 33 of her former pupils who work prominently in the film industry for “an A-list class reunion” photo—and several of them talk about how Basinger inspired them, encouraging their self-expression while also sharing with them her love for the medium. In the article, Basinger discusses how and why she came to devote her life to the study of film and how working…