Olivia DrakeFor efforts with the May 6, 2009 shooting near Wesleyan's campus, the Wesleyan University Public Safety Department was honored with the Northeast Colleges and Universities Security Association President's Award for Outstanding Performance on June 14. C. G. "Neil" McLaughlin Jr., chief of police at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Conn. nominated David Meyer, director of Public Safety at Wesleyan and the Wesleyan officers for this honor. His recommendation read: "On May 6th at 1 p.m. a man in disguise, wig, beard, mustache and glasses entered the campus bookstore about a block and a half from the Public Safety Office…
Dozens of Connecticut teachers went back to school July 7 to gain knowledge, confidence and skills for teaching their students about science, energy and energy conservation. As part of the 2009 Energy Education Workshops series, sponsored by the Project to Increase Mastery of Math and Sciences (PIMMS) and eeSmarts, teachers learned creative exercises to bring back to their classrooms. The annual program is open to all teachers in the state. During a "bottle shake" energy transformation experiment, the teachers were put into groups of four and given two plastic water bottles with a small amount of clear liquid in each…
Next fall, Wesleyan students and faculty will perform research activities on the same state-of-the-art animation computers that produced Ice Age the Meltdown, a $652 million worldwide box office hit. The computer hardware was donated July 2 by Greenwich, Conn.-based Blue Sky Studios, the creator of a number of award-winning digital animation features, including the Ice Age series and Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who, which took in nearly $300 million worldwide. In 2008, Blue Sky Studios refreshed their technology for their latest movie, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and bought racks of new computers. "The old computer racks still…
A former Middletown mayor, Olympic volleyball coach, a three-hour marathon runner, and Baldwin Medal winner are among the newest members of Wesleyan's Athletics Hall of Fame. Wesleyan will formally induct the third class into its Athletics Hall of Fame during a ceremony Nov. 6 as part of Homecoming/ Family Weekend activities. Wesleyan will enshrine four individuals and one team to join the previous two classes of inductees, bringing to total in the Hall of Fame to 20 individuals and three teams. Entering in the fall class of 2009 are Emilio Daddario '39, Winthrop “Wink” Davenport '64, Sally Zimmer Knight '81,…
David PesciWesleyan University has announced the promotion to full professor, effective July 1, 2009, of the following members of the faculty. Stephen Angle, professor of philosophy, came to Wesleyan in 1994. He has served as director of the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, co-directed the NEH summer seminar "Traditions into Dialogue: Confucianism and Contemporary Virtue Ethics" at Wesleyan in 2008, was a Fulbright Research Scholar at Beijing University in 2006-2007, and was awarded Wesleyan's Binswanger prize for excellence in teaching in 2006. His research focuses on neo-Confucian philosophy, and his books include Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy…
It's one mean, green machine and it's saving Wesleyan up to $5,000 a day in energy costs. Wesleyan's new Cogeneration system - or CoGen, - uses natural gas to simultaneously generate electricity, heat and steam for university use. It began operation in February after an 18-month installation process. "Buying electricity from the grid is expensive and non-efficient,” says Peter Staye, associate director of utilities management. “With CoGen, we are generating 81 percent of our own power. It should pay for itself in five years." CoGen operates similar to a vehicle with an extreme super-duty engine. The natural-gas fired, turbo-charged, four-stroke…
The Wesleyan University Board of Trustees affirmed the following appointments to the faculty, effective July 1, 2009: Promotion with tenure: Yuriy Kordonskiy, associate professor of theater, was appointed assistant professor at Wesleyan in 2002. Previously he was visiting assistant professor at George Washington University. He has served as head of directing in the Theatermakers program at the O’Neill Theater Center, and was visiting artist at Columbia University in Spring 2007. He teaches acting and directing, and has performed and directed internationally. His recent directed productions include Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, Galin’s Sorry, and Gogol’s The Marriage. He holds an M.S. from…
Corrina KerrFor the next two years, researcher Silvia Matesanz of Segovia, Spain will be collaborating with Chair and Professor of Biology Sonia Sultan in her plant evolutionary ecology lab at Wesleyan. Matesanz was awarded the prestigious Marie Curie International Post-doctoral Fellowship from the European Commission. Matesanz, Sultan and biology BA/MA student Timothy Horgan-Kobelski ’09 will be studying an introduced annual plant called Polygonum cespitosum that is becoming invasive in North America. The scientists are particularly interested in understanding the evolutionary dynamics of the plant’s spread. Sultan and her research group will provide Matesanz with evolutionary expertise, which will enhance her previous…
Novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anna Quindlen P'07 did not apologize for her generation leaving the Class of 2009 with a failed economy, poor job market and uncertain housing market. Instead she charged the graduates with the opportunity to remold the nation and its spirit. "On behalf of your elders and the entire country, I was expected to say I was sorry," Quindlen said. "I’m not going to do that. I think, perhaps more than any generation in memory, all of you have an unparalleled opportunity to remake this nation so that it is stronger, smarter and makes more sense."…
Douglas Foyle, Irina Russu and John Seamon were honored with the 2009 Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching May 24. The Binswanger Prize was inaugurated in 1993 as an institutional recognition of outstanding faculty members. Prize recipients are chosen by a selection committee of emeriti and current faculty members and members of the Alumni Association's Executive Committee. Douglas Foyle, the Douglas J. and Midge Bowen Bennet Associate Professor of Government, joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1998, after serving as a postdoctoral fellow in international relations at the Mershon Center for the Study of International Security at Ohio State University. He…
Peter Staye, associate director of utilities, points to the ceiling of the Bacon Field House. About 140 high-tech light fixtures span the width of the dome-roofed gymnasium. "These are special lights for high ceilings," he says. "There's 24 fewer fixtures here than there used to be, and it's just as bright. If we used florescent fixtures, we'd need 240 of them." The new, 350-watt, high-intensity discharge bulbs have replaced the older, 400-watt bulbs, and use 373,000 fewer kilowatt hours per year. They're also programmed to turn on in zones, and change luminosity throughout the day based on a newly-installed ambient…
Willard B. Walker, professor of anthropology emeritus, died May 23 in Skowhegan, Maine. He was 82 years old. Walker was one of the mainstays of the Anthropology Department for more than two decades. He came to Wesleyan in 1966 as an assistant professor, where he and Dave McAllester established anthropology as a department. A specialist in Native American languages and cultures, Walker taught courses on the ethnography of the southwest, the southeast, and the northeast and he also single-handedly maintained a curricular focus on linguistic anthropology. His research interests ranged from Zuni phonology and semantics to the cryptographic use of…