Olivia DrakeThe Green Street Arts Center is launching the Green Street Community Mural Project, an 18 month-long art program that will culminate in a large public mural, to be installed in the spring of 2009 on the corner of Main and Green Streets in the North End of Middletown. Led by mural artist Marela Zacarias, the project’s participants are a diverse group of Middletown children, their families, professional artists, Wesleyan students, and other community members. A core group of students in Green Street’s Afterschool Program will work with the artists on the project regularly. The primary goal of the Green Street…
The web at Wesleyan is undergoing major design and functionality changes, and the Website Design Team is seeking input from the Wesleyan community. "This team has been charged with preparing a new website design strategy for the university," says Melissa Datre, director of the Information Technology Service's New Media Lab. "Through their request for feedback, peer school interviews, and faculty and student input, they will, over the next several weeks, propose to a new design concept for Wesleyan’s website presence." In early March, the team launched a web redesign blog to give every member of the campus community the opportunity…
Wesleyan sports fans can view play-by-play action of their favorite events through Wesscores, a new service hosted on Twitter. Twitter is a popular social networking and “microblogging” service used to communicate timely information as well as exchange quick, frequent messages with others. The short Twitter messages, referred to as the "tweets," can be viewed on a web browser or cell phone as text messages. The Athletics Department at Wesleyan has created a Twitter account called wescores to send updated sports information and is inviting all the Cardinals fans to follow this account on twitter by visiting the URL http://twitter.com/wescores and…
Four Wesleyan athletes traveled to Philadelphia in early March to spend the first weekend of their spring break speaking to underprivileged girls about the importance of staying in school and pursuing higher education. The event was organized through the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation (ESYHF), a non-profit organization founded by Ed Snider, owner of the Philadelphia Flyers, to use the sport of hockey to educate young people on how to succeed in the game of life. ESYHF provides after-school hockey, life skills, and educational programming at no cost to the most disadvantaged communities in the Greater Philadelphia Region. (more…)
Randall Pinkston '72, P'05, a national correspondent for CBS News in New York City, credits Wesleyan's WESU 88.1 FM radio for launching his life-long career. "When I was a student, I heard about WESU installing a new transmitter and I wondered, how can I be on a radio station," Pinkston says. "I took the training required by the FCC at the time, passed a test, and was given a one-hour show, five days a week. I called it 'Soul Session.'" Pinkston recruited four other students, and replicated shows broadcasted in their hometowns including R&B and jazz. On the 55th minute…
David PesciIn November, 2008, when all the first round early decision applications were in, the Wesleyan admissions’ staff knew the initial numbers were not a fluke. Applications from high school students seeking admission during the first early decision period at Wesleyan were up 34 percent from the previous year, 2007. Still, the admissions staff maintained cautious enthusiasm. “We were elated, but we also remained a bit guarded because, quite frankly, we didn’t know if the early decision increase would be followed by a decrease in overall applications, especially with the economy taking such a dramatic downturn,” says Nancy Hargrave Meislahn, dean…
Sitting in front of the Senate panel, Laura Grabel was ready for the “when” and “why” questions. But she knew one of these questions held a lot more potential danger to her future than the other. Grabel, the Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science and Society, professor of biology, is a renowned stem cell researcher. She is also the co-director of the University of Connecticut Human Embryonic Stem Cell Core Facility, part of a $100 million human stem cell research initiative created by the State of Connecticut in 2006. The stem cell initiative was the state’s response to a veto…
The Wesleyan University Board of Trustees affirmed the promotion with tenure, effective July 1, 2009, of the following members of the faculty. These appointments do not conclude tenure announcements for the 2008-2009 academic year, and more may be forthcoming. Norman Danner, associate professor of computer science, was appointed assistant professor of computer Science in August 2002. Before coming to Wesleyan he was the VIGRE assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) CPATH CB Collaborative Grant, a Mellon Foundation Grant and a Wesleyan University Ethical Reasoning Course Grant. Danner's teaching…
An emerging worldwide energy crisis demands a new approach for a sustainable energy future. "How we adapt will determine our future on this planet," said physicist Fred Schlachter, during the Department of Physics' Colloquium Series Feb. 26 in Exley Science Center. Schlachter, a guest speaker from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Advanced Light Source Division, is the co-author of Energy Future: Think Efficiency, a report that examines how America can look within to achieve energy security and reduce global warming. At Wesleyan, he gave a presentation titled "Over a barrel: A world wide energy crisis." The topic of energy is…
As a former U.S. Army sergeant, Max Krafft ’09 has a lot to say about his two stints serving in Iraq. The English major was deployed in December 2005, and again in January 2007. On both occasions he was touring as the bass player and sound engineer for a rock/pop/country/R&B ensemble affiliated with the 389th Army Band. "We were there to perform for the members of the military and government contractors who were stationed there during the holidays in an attempt to entertain them and boost their morale," Krafft explains, regarding his role overseas. Krafft, who lived and worked within 300…
About 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, the ground around Mount Redoubt has begun to shake and a smell akin to rotten eggs tinges the air. The last time this happened the 10,197-foot volcano erupted for five months, venting hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide gas and spewing ash into the air. Professor Johan Varekamp remembers it well. He was among scientists who analyzed the direct effects of the 1989-1990 eruption. The ash he examined was ejected more than 40,000 feet into the sky; the resulting ashfall covered nearly 8,000 square miles of the surrounding landscape. “As is often quoted in…
Corrina KerrThirty years ago, the United States opened its first embassy in the People’s Republic of China as our nation began reestablishing its relations with the country. Vera Schwarcz, professor of history and East Asian studies and director of the Freeman Center, remembers the events well. After all, she was part of them. Schwarcz, an expert on Chinese culture, politics and literature, was one of only seven official exchange scholars invited to visit China in February 1979 when the embassy opened. Her recollections of this time, and her subsequent 30 years of experiences studying in and about China, served as the…