Olivia DrakeThree Wesleyan faculty members received endowed professorships for the 2013-14 academic year. Tsampikos Kottos, associate professor of physics, is being honored with the Douglas J. and Midge Bowen Bennet Chair. The Bennet Chair, endowed in 2007, is awarded for a five-year term to "a newly tenured associate professor exhibiting exceptional achievement and evidence of future promise." Ashraf Rushdy, professor of English, professor of African-American studies, is being awarded the Benjamin L. Waite Professorship in English Language, first appointed in 1911. Philip Scowcroft, professor of mathematics, is receiving the Edward Burr Van Vleck Professorship in Mathematics. The Van Vleck chair was…
Anna Swartz '13 delivered the following remarks during the Senior Class Welcome on May 26: Right before I left for Wesleyan for the first time, Ruth, my ninety-year-old neighbor warned me “Make the most of it, college is the best time of your life.” I took her advice to heart, it seemed smart to trust a woman who had done so much living, and I arrived at Wesleyan filled with the loftiest dreams, the highest expectations, ready for my life to be changed. What I didn’t realize at the time is that college isn’t just about what Wesleyan could give…
Kate CarlisleRecord-busting gifts from the classes of 1973 and 1963 pushed the combined reunion gift total to more than $47 million, as alumni refused to let cold rain and umbrella-threatening winds dampen their generosity. The class of 1973 with more than $15 million and the 50th Reunion class with more than $10 million led the way as gifts and pledges from all increased the total raised in Wesleyan’s campaign to more than $298 million, according to Vice President for University Relations Barbara-Jan Wilson. The campaign has so far raised $107 million in endowment for financial aid, which is the university’s main…
The Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship is pleased to announce its 2013 Seed Grant and Internship Grant recipients. The PCSE Seed Grant program was launched this spring. Individuals and teams of students competed for $5,000 prizes intended to provide capital to help Wesleyan students launch their socially-oriented project or idea and/or build capacity of their existing social enterprise. The winners are: Circles and Ciphers Project Leader: Evan Okun ’13 Description: This grant will fund a project in Chicago with a leadership development organization that fuses restorative justice practices with hip-hop culture to empower and support predominantly African-American and Latino males,…
Lauren RubensteinGlenn Stowell ’13, Isaiah Sypher’13 and Jacob Eichengreen '13 delivered "Senior Voices" speeches on May 25 in Memorial Chapel. Glenn Stowell ’13 The prompt to which I originally responded for the purpose of putting together this reflection asked me to consider what about my experience here at Wesleyan was meaningful. And that left me to do some serious leg lifting prior to answering that question, as I tried to think about how an experience becomes imbued with meaning at all. When we want to make an experience seem meaningful, we often look backward to a moment by which we can illuminate our…
Elvin Lim, associate professor of government, presented the following remarks during the "Senior Voices" baccalaureate address on May 25: As we gather today to commemorate the last four years of our seniors’ career at Wesleyan, perhaps some of you are feeling some trepidation about your futures outside of this ivory tower. So I have decided to direct my remarks today on the subject of contingency, and the human reaction to it, uncertainty, which is the source of all our hopes and fears. Plato had said that in order to understand the nature of justice, we must first observe its incarnations…
David LowIn this issue of the Wesleyan Connection, we speak with Kit Reed, resident writer in the English Department. Reed recently published two new books, Son of Destruction (Severn House), in which a reporter searches for his father and winds up investigating cases of human spontaneous combustion; and The Story Until Now (Wesleyan University Press), a rich collection of 35 stories that displays the range and complexity of her work. In a recent review of Reed’s two books in The New York Times, thriller writer Chelsea Cain wrote: “Reed finds humanity in the most fantastic places. She does it without pretension.…
Christopher Parslow, professor and chair of the Classical Studies Department, professor of archaeology, has been selected as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., for the 2013 fall term. Parslow, a Roman archaeologist specializing in the ancient sites buried by the eruption of Vesuvius, will spend his semester-long residency working on a book on the Praedia (Properties) of Julia Felix in Pompeii. He was chosen on the recommendation of the faculty of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. Each…
Two Wesleyan students have been awarded grants through the Davis Projects for Peace Program to bring their grassroots project proposals to fruition. Class of 2014's Mfundi Makama’s $10,000 grant will support The Buddies Program, which he recently created as a way to empower young women in Swaziland through educational achievement. Greg Shaheen ’13 will use the funds to establish a community-based eco-center focused on environmental education and action for teenagers in Lebanon. The projects will take place this summer. Student applicants at more than 90 Davis United World College Scholar Program partner schools—including Wesleyan—design grassroots projects that promote peace, build…
Bill Holder(Story contributed by Charles Salas, director of strategic initiatives) “A golden example of what exchange should be between academic communities in the United States and China.” That’s how Gao Xiang, vice secretary of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and editor-in-chief of the Social Sciences in China Press, described the Chinese-American Scholarly Exchange Forum that took place May 9-11 at Wesleyan’s Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies. The forum brought 15 distinguished scholars from China to Wesleyan to meet with American counterparts to discuss the topic of “Comparative Enlightenments.” The forum was framed by Wang Weiguang, president of…
Reunite with classmates, attend WESeminars, tour campus, visit with former professors, and congratulate the Class of 2013 during Reunion & Commencement Weekend May 23-26. "Reunion & Commencement is such a fun and celebratory time for the entire Wesleyan community," said Deana Hutson, director of events for University Relations. "There really is something for everyone. We have more than 150 events planned over the course of three days." In addition to another incredible array of WESeminars, Hutson recommends attending the traditional Friday and Saturday night parties, reunion class gatherings, academic department open houses and the Festival on Foss Hill. On Friday…
Anthony Braxton, the John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, has been honored with the 2013 Doris Duke Artist Award, one of the country’s most prestigious awards for individual artists. It comes with a $225,000 honorarium. Braxton is a composer, saxophonist, teacher and philosopher with a career spanning half a century. He is also the founder of The Tri-Centric Foundation, a nonprofit that cultivates and inspires the next generation of creative artists to pursue their own visions with the kind of idealism and integrity Braxton has demonstrated throughout his long and distinguished career. The foundation also documents, archives, preserves and disseminates…