Olivia DrakeWant to stay up to date on Wesleyan campus life, events and student and faculty news? The university offers several ways to stay connected to all-things-Wes. The Wesleyan Connection online newsletter, which you're reading right now, is an image-rich news-piece e-mailed to Wesleyan's faculty, staff, students, parents and alumni about twice a month. It highlights faculty and student research, Wesleyan staff members, faculty publications, grants and achievements and recent events. The editors welcome story ideas. The newsletter is online here. The Wesleyan Connection isn't to be confused with Wesconnect the online community for Wesleyan alumni. Wesconnect is the best source of information…
This fall, the Academic (Technology) Roundtable meetings will include talks on new library subject research guides, counseling and psychological services, tools to manage digital workflow, grant writing, course design and more. The weekly A(T)R meetings aim to promote conversation, cooperation, and the sharing of information and resources among Wesleyan’s faculty and staff. The event is sponsored by the Center for Faculty Career Development, and is co-sponsored with Olin Library and Information Technology Services. A(T)Rs are held at noon in the Develin Room of Olin Library, and a buffet lunch will be served. Sean McCann, director of the Center for Faculty Career Development, moderates…
Wesleyan will present two traveling exhibits this fall. The Davison Art Center gallery will host Excavations: The Prints of Julie Mehretu, Sept. 16-Dec. 11. Mehretu is best known for her large-scale paintings and drawings, which layer maps, urban planning grids and architectural renderings with whorls of abstract markings and bright shapes of color. This the first-ever comprehensive exhibition of prints produced by the artist thus far in her career. A gallery talk is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Oct. 5 with Cole Rogers, artistic director and Master Printer at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Rogers will speak on his experience working with…
There's something fishy about one of Connecticut's minnows, and the topic hooked researchers in the Department of Biology. During the last ice age, Connecticut was covered by layers of snow and ice, forcing organisms to seek refuge elsewhere. After the glaciers retreated, recolonization of the fauna and flora resulted in the diversity of native species that inhabit the state today. "But where did they come from? How did they come back to the Northeast to give us all the organisms we see today?" asks biology graduate student Michelle Tipton. "These questions are of particular interest to the ichthyologists at Wesleyan with…
David PesciSix Wesleyan students and one alumna spent part of their summer in Nairobi, Kenya as volunteers in Shining Hope for Communities Summer Institute. The institute brings college undergraduates and recent graduates together with students from the Kibera School for Girls. Institute participants provided tutoring and mentoring during the mornings and helped run a summer camp at the school in the afternoon. The volunteers also worked on other Shining Hope projects, including the Johanna Justin-Jinich Community Clinic, a clean water project, toilet access project, community center, and a garden project.Shining Hope for Communities was founded three years ago by Kennedy Odede ’12…
The Center for the Humanities advisory board awarded eight Wesleyan seniors with a Student Fellowship for 2011-12. These fellows will explore the themes “Fact and Artifact” and “Visceral States: Affect and Civic Life." Four Student Fellowships are awarded by the center’s advisory board each semester. During the fall semester, fellows Conan Cheong, Kevin Donohoe, Bridget Read and Alexandra Wang will will explore the theme "Fact and Artifact." They will examine the career of the modern fact and its uncomfortable companion, the artifact. The fellows will question, "Under what conditions can facts be created?" "How do efforts to pin down empirical…
The Center for African-American Studies (CAAS) is hosting a First Book series during the Fall 2011 semester. The series features trailblazing junior scholar-authors whose projects are and will make significant contributions to the field of African-American Studies. Gina Athena Ulysse, the new director of the Center for African American Studies, associate professor of African American Studies, associate professor of anthropology, created the series as the main initiative of her directorship to coincide with the AFAM junior colloquium that she is teaching. Ulysse's interests and concerns were to economically achieve three goals: 1) give AFAM incoming majors the opportunity to engage directly with scholars who are impacting the…
An article by Katie McConnell '13 and Emma Leonard '13 was featured in a recent Permaculture Institute of the Northeast newsletter. McConnell and Leonard are members of the new student group WILD Wes (Working for Intelligent Landscape Design). They've been vying for permacultural principles to be adopted into the University’s landscaping practices. In the past year, the group hosted its first annual Sustainable Landscaping Design Charrette, where Wesleyan faculty, administrative members, permaculturists, landscaping experts, and students from Wesleyan and nearby Northeastern colleges converged. In the newsletter, McConnell and Leonard explain how at the conference, groups collaborated to develop permacultural and sustainable…
Enrollment for the Wesleyan Institute for Lifelong Learning (WILL) Fall 2011 semester is open. WILL is chartered to provide educational opportunities outside of formal degree-granting programs to members of the broader community. WILL classes are taken for interest, not for credit. Classes are small with an informal atmosphere. Faculty include Wesleyan faculty, emeriti faculty, and similarly qualified members of the community. The courses are short, intellectually-stimulating and lively. The course offerings cover the arts, social sciences, literature, science and mathematics. (more…)
This issue, we ask "5 Questions" of Scott Holmes, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry. He received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his research on epigenetic silencing of gene expression. Gene expression refers to the observable characteristics generated on a molecular level by a particular sequence of DNA or gene; epigenetic controls are essential in maintaining the specific patterns of gene expression that distinguish hundreds of distinct cell types in skin, muscles and other types of tissue. Epigenetic mechanisms also explain how humans can have more than 200 distinct cell types. Q: Professor Holmes,…
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This summer, 26 students representing six colleges and universities in the Northeast participated in the Humanitarian Free and Open-Source Software (HFOSS) Project 2011 Summer Institute, hosted by Wesleyan. Wesleyan is part of a growing community involved in The Humanitarian FOSS Project, dedicated to building and using free and open source software to benefit humanity. Students from Wesleyan, Connecticut College, Trinity, St. John's College, Mt. Holyoke College, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute participated in the summer institute and designed 11 projects for HFOSS. They presented their research July 22 in Woodhead Lounge. Diego Calderon '13, Jeremy Fehr '13 and Trinity student Vlad…