Olivia DrakeJane Alden raises her hands and cues members of her Collegium Musicum performance ensemble to intone the music. The sopranos and basses situated in Memorial Chapel’s choir loft allow their voices to resonate throughout the space. Alden cuts them off at measure 17. "Measure 17 is the apex because the cantus firmus is in the top voice. You need to sound like angels floating on the top with the chant,” Alden says during a Nov. 23 rehersal . “Let’s try this once more." The MUSC438 course, which explores vocal and instrumental repertories of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods of European music history, is taught…
Bill HolderOn Nov. 18, Wesleyan launched Making Excellence Inclusive (MEI), an initiative created to help identify ways to further the university’s institutional diversity and inclusion. MEI <http://www.wesleyan.edu/partnerships/mei/overview.html> draws on the Making Excellence Inclusive project of the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) that re-envisions diversity and inclusion as "a multi-layered process for achieving excellence in learning, research and teaching, student development, institutional functioning, local and global community engagement, workforce development, and more." (more…)
Rob Rosenthal, the John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology, has been appointed provost and vice president for academic affairs. It is a position Rosenthal held on an interim basis since the summer. Rosenthal has responsibility for matters relating to the recruitment and promotion of the faculty, the content of the curriculum, continuing studies, athletics and the library. He also is responsible for meeting budget targets for faculty compensation and for academic departments and programs. In the few months that he has held this position on an interim basis, Rosenthal, says Wesleyan President Michael Roth, "has quickly assumed a leadership role…
The newly-established Wesleyan Green Fund Committee is supporting initiatives that move the university forward in sustainability and environmental stewardship. On Dec. 3, the student-managed committee will finance projects that will decrease the carbon footprint of the university, decrease waste, increase Wesleyan's use of energy from renewable resources, or increase visibility of environmentally responsible practices on campus. The committee will select projects proposed by Wesleyan students, faculty and staff. Through a $15 fee, collected voluntarily from students during the Fall 2010 semester, the committee raised about $40,000. These “green funds” will be applied to several sustainability-focused projects at Wesleyan that otherwise would not…
This issue, we ask “5 Questions” of Bill Trousdale, professor of physics, emeritus. He recently lectured on “Global Warming and Energy Options" and "The Pros and Cons of Nuclear Energy." Q: Professor Trousdale, you researched solid state physics at Wesleyan for 30 years, retiring in 1989. Did you always have a side interest in energy creation, consumption and global warming? A: Yes for almost as long as I can remember, in the early 1950s when I learned about the second law of thermodynamics. I was appalled by burning oil at 2,000 degrees to maintain a house at 72 degrees. That…
Wesleyan's non-commercial college and community radio station, 88.1FM WESU, is holding its sixth annual WESU Holiday Pledge Drive. This year’s drive continues through the end of live programming at 3 a.m. on Sunday Dec. 12. The goal for this year’s two-week drive is to raise $15,000 in listener support to sustain operating expenses throughout the coming year. Meeting this goal will keep WESU on track to raise $30,000 in community support before the end of the fiscal year in July. During its 71st anniversary year, WESU completed the 3-year project of quadrupling its broadcasting power from 1,500 to 6,000 watts (ERP). This upgrade…
Wesleyan’s Safety Committee is looking for volunteers willing to help make campus a safer place to work and learn. In the past few years, the committee has conducted a walk-through of 23 buildings on campus; provided personal protective equipment (safety glasses, gloves, ear protection and other equipment) to Physical Plant –Facilities staff; and helped deliver heavy tools and supplies to sites by installing mechanical lifts. They’ve also discussed ways to prevent accidents involving Wesleyan-owned vehicles and staff. “The committee really does care about safety on campus, and we want to make a difference,” says Safety Committee co-chair Chris Cruz, safety…
Wesleyan, in conjunction with the Price Carbon Campaign, an umbrella organization of climate-policy advocates, is convening a conference to discuss and develop new approaches to pricing carbon emissions that are destabilizing Earth’s climate and driving global warming. “Pricing Carbon: The Wesleyan Conference” will be held Nov. 19-21 at Wesleyan. Headline speakers include climatologist and Columbia University Professor James Hansen, author-activist Bill McKibben, and environmental-justice lawyer and advocate Angela Johnson Meszaros. “Wesleyan University’s College of the Environment was established in 2009 to help students become better stewards of our fragile Earth,” says Barry Chernoff, director of the College of the Environment and professor of biology. “We…
During Homecoming/Family Weekend 2010, more than 2,700 Wesleyan alumni, students, families, faculty and staff had the opportunity to attend WESeminars, root on the Cardinals in several Homecoming sporting events, tour campus and visit with old friends. Pictured are a few highlights of the weekend: (more…)
David PesciSo much has been written about the recession that befell the country in the late summer of 2008. It was "unprecedented;" it "caught experts by surprise;" "virtually no one saw it coming." After all, a recession triggered by a major segment of the economy that was vulnerable to speculation, occurring during a time of high government deficits, cuts in interest rates, and tax reductions combined with dramatic increases in federal spending? When has that happened before? “Dozens of times, if not more, during the last one hundred and fifty years or so,” says Richard Grossman, professor of economics, economic historian…
Mention “records and documents of a large bureaucracy” and images of stacks of dense paperwork, rows of beige filing cabinets, and perhaps even a slight sensation of suffocation comes to mind. But mention the same phrase to Laura Stark and her pulse steps up a beat as she sees something quite different: buried treasure. “I am interested in the power of bureaucracies and the discretion people within them have to interpret rules,” says Stark, assistant professor of science and society, assistant professor of sociology. “How people who work in big organizations, including government agencies, apply general rules to specific cases…
[youtube width="640" height="400"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGlPlEEmZlE[/youtube] This issue, we ask "5 Questions" of Eric Aaron, assistant professor of computer science. His article, "Action Selection and Task Sequence Learning for Hybrid Dynamical Cognitive Agents," was recently published in Robotics and Autonomous Systems. Aaron has a bachelor of arts in math from Princeton University; a master of science and Ph.D in computer science from Cornell University. Q: How did you become interested in computer science, and specifically artificial intelligence? A: I’ve always been interested in logical problem solving and how people think. As an undergraduate, I majored in mathematics and took courses in psychology and philosophy, but each…