Olivia DrakeAn $800,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will support Wesleyan’s College of the Environment (COE) for the next four years. Wesleyan’s faculty and administration approved the COE in 2009 to graduate students who have engaged with critical environmental issues from a variety of disciplinary perspectives; who are sensitive to how those issues are connected to social and political concerns; who can interpret scientific information correctly; and who can communicate conclusions effectively and honestly. The Mellon Foundation grant will support funding for post-doctoral teaching fellows, visiting COE fellows, (more…)
This issue, we ask “5 Questions” to Ron Jenkins, professor of theater. Jenkins is an expert in Balinese theater, international traditions of comic performance, and directing and translating the plays of Italian Nobel Laureate Dario Fo. He was awarded a residency at the Bellagio Center by the Rockefeller Foundation next spring. He is a former Guggenheim fellow whose research in Bali over the past 30 years has been supported by fellowships from the Watson Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Fulbright Fund. Q: Professor Jenkins, you’ve been teaching theater at Wesleyan for 11 years,…
On Sept. 1, Matthew Givner ’10 became one of 19 Princeton-in-Asia fellows from around the world who is teaching English in a Chinese province. Givner moved to Dalain, a city of 6.5 million people located 288 miles east of Beijing. There, he is teaching English, writing, reading and speaking to students at Dalian University of Technology with three other fellows. He teaches 14 class hours per week. Givner learned of the program through a family friend and Wesleyan’s Career Resource Center. He attended two information sessions on the program at the Career Resource Center and decided to apply. (more…)
In 1900, when the student residence at 24 Fountain Avenue was built, heating oil was cheap. Insulation wasn’t a concern. Window sealant didn’t exist. Hot water gushed from the shower heads. “We call homes like this ‘balloon framed,”’ explains Gary Rawlings, lead energy auditor technician for Wesleyan’s contractor Lantern Energy. “Air from the basement flows up through the walls and escapes through the window frames, the area around plumbing pipes, doors, and attic. In this particular house, there’s a big gap around the air duct. That’s never a good sign when you can see down into the basement.” The 24…
David PesciSure, first-year teachers need to be masters of their subject material and their classrooms, but to be truly effective in that first year and beyond teachers also have learn one vital skill: avoiding “bad” decisions. “Novice teachers, in particular, don’t necessarily need to make good decisions right away, but what they must develop is the tacit knowledge to identify what a bad decision or bad response may be. That may sound easy in theory, but when you consider all of the challenges that come from outside the classroom such as administrative duties, dealing with colleagues and dealing with parents, it…
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Wesleyan's Center for the Arts (CFA) $750,000 to support the development of artists’ new work, interdisciplinary collaborations, co-teaching initiatives and arts-based campus-wide projects as well as the planning and partial funding of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP), a new post-graduate professional certificate program for performing arts presenters. "The CFA’s goal is to elevate the place of art, artists and the artistic process at Wesleyan in ways that innovatively strengthen teaching, student learning and art-making," says Pamela Tatge, director of the Center for the Arts. "The Mellon-funded projects will help to…
On July 11, Craig Malamut ’12 photographed a pacific solar eclipse 2,500 miles west of South America. As a Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium Summer Fellow, summer exchange student, Malamut had the opportunity to travel to Easter Island with a group from Williams College. The last time an eclipse occurred over the island was in 591 A.D. The expedition was led by Jay Pasachoff, the Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College and chair of the International Astronomical Union's Working Group on Eclipses. This was Pasachoff's 51st solar eclipse study; it was Malamut’s first. “Before getting this position, I was…
Wesleyan has announced the following promotions of faculty, effective July 1, 2010: Promotion with Tenure During the academic year, the Wesleyan Board of Trustees maintains an ongoing process of tenure case consideration. During its most recent review, the Board awarded tenure to one faculty member effective July 1, 2010. Michael Singer, associate professor of biology, was appointed assistant professor at Wesleyan in 2004. Previously he was postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona’s Center for Insect Science, in Tucson. Singer’s research examines the evolutionary ecology of tri-trophic interactions between plants, herbivores and carnivores. In considering (more…)
Students of all ages can benefit from liberal arts-based educational opportunities outside of a formal degree-granting program through the new Wesleyan Institute for Lifelong Learning (WILL). WILL classes are taken for interest, not for credit. Classes will be small with an informal atmosphere. “Everyone in the room--students and teacher--will be engaged in their subject out of pure curiosity,” says Karl Scheibe, director of the Susan B. and William K. Wasch Center for Retired Faculty. “The learning experience is likely to be more intensive than extensive.” Scheibe, who is overseeing the new institute, says the courses are designed to appeal to…
When Wesleyan student-athlete Adrian “A.J.” Chan ’11 isn’t studying for an economics exam or making a tackle on the football field, he’s busy training Olympic athletes, college and high school students, NFL Superbowl Champions and NBA and NCAA team members. He’s also working with underprivileged youth who use sports as a vehicle for life lessons. Chan, who co-manages the Oakland, Calif.-based gym, Ant’s Mind and Body, prepares athletes by training the body, mind and soul as one. His business, which celebrates its 1-year-anniversary this month, was recently featured in The San Francisco Chronicle. “The training system is a combination of…
Nicaraguan Sign Language, developed only 30 years ago by Deaf children in Nicaragua needing a way to communicate, offers insight to ways an adapted language affects thought processes. In a new study, which was published June 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, co-author Anna Shusterman, assistant professor of psychology explains how human spatial cognition depends on the acquisition of specific aspects of spatial language. The article, titled “Evidence from an emerging sign language reveals that language supports spatial cognition,” is co-authored by Jennie Pyers (Wellesley), Ann Senghas (Barnard College), Elizabeth Spelke (Harvard) and Karen Emmorey (San…
Quality-of-life for patients with Schizophrenia has been recognized as a crucial domain of outcome in schizophrenia treatment, and yet its determinants are not well understood. Arielle Tolman ’10, who studied "Neurocognitive Predictors of Objective and Subjective Quality-of-Life in Individuals with Schizophrenia: A Meta-Analytic Investigation” as her senior honors thesis, will have the opportunity to share her research with other scientists interested in schizophrenia. This month, the editors of Schizophrenia Bulletin accepted Tolman’s paper for publication in an upcoming edition. “This is a real achievement, particularly at the undergraduate level,” says the paper’s co-author and Tolman’s advisor Matthew Kurtz, assistant professor…