Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Gina McCarthy will present “Meeting the Environmental Challenges of the 21st Century" at 8 p.m. April 22 as part of Wesleyan's Earth Day observance. Posted 04/04/08 Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Gina McCarthy will present the 2008 Earth Day Keynote Address at Wesleyan titled “Meeting the Environmental Challenges of the 21st Century.” This free event will be held at 8 p.m., Tuesday, April 22 in the Memorial Chapel. A reception will immediately follow in the Zelnick Pavilion. Appointed by Governor M. Jodi Rell on Dec. 10, 2004, Commissioner McCarthy came to the Connecticut…

Posted 04/04/08 Tough, entrepreneurial, family-oriented and successful. This is how Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Associate Professor of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies Gina Ulysse describes the Jamaican women who work as informal commercial importers (ICIs), who she has spent 15 years studying. Her unique, groundbreaking research has lead her to publish the book Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, A Haitian Anthropologist, and Self-Making in Jamaica, which is the first broad analytic work to examine ICIs.The study was inspired by a talk given by well-known Jamaican businesswoman Mabel Tenn at the University of…

Posted 04/04/08 The Wesleyan University Board of Trustees awarded tenure to five members of the faculty in March. These appointments do not conclude tenure announcements for the 2007-2008 academic year, and more will be forthcoming. The faculty members who were awarded tenure in March by the Board are: Christiaan Hogendorn, associate professor of economics. Hogendorn's scholarship concentrates on applied microeconomic theory in the field of industrial organization. His course offerings include Microeconomics, Introduction to Economic Theory, Economics of Technology, Regulation and Anti-trust and Industrial Technology. Allan Isaac, associate professor of English. Isaac's area of specialization is Asian American literature and…

Professor of Astronomy Bill Herbst observed sand-like grains in space through the reflection of light from stars. These grains are the building blocks of an Earth-like planet. Posted 03/17/08 For the first time, astronomers have observed the initial phase in the formation of an earth-like planet.The discovery, highlighted in the March 13 issue of Nature, was documented by a team of astronomers led by William Herbst, the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy, chair of the Astronomy Department and director of the Van Vleck Observatory (pictured at right) and Catrina Hamilton, Ph.D ’03, assistant professor of physics and astronomy…

Posted 03/17/08 For the second year in a row, Wesleyan is participating in the nation-wide competition, RecycleMania, for college and university recycling programs. The 10-week program provides campus communities with a fun, proactive activity in waste reduction. More than 400 institutions are participating in different contests to see which institution can collect the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita, or have the highest recycling rate. "This is a fun way for the Wesleyan community to get excited about recycling, and possibly end up with national recognition, awards…

Posted 03/17/08 “Food: Power and Identity” is the topic of the Wesleyan’s 2008 Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns. The event will take place April 4-6 on campus. Endowed by James Shasha ’50, the annual Shasha Seminar supports lifelong learning and encourages participants to expand their knowledge and perspectives on significant issues. This year, seminar speakers will discuss how food shapes our identity, public and private discourse, politics and daily lives. “Food: Power and Identity” will tackle issues on food production, such as industrial agriculture, organic agriculture, genetic manipulation, local vs. global, sustainability; food and politics, for example unequal distribution of…

Intisar Abioto ’08, left, and her sisters, Amenta and Kalimah, traveled to Djibouti as part of their "People Could Fly Project." In Djibouti, they met men and camels returning from Lac Assal, the lowest point in Africa, with salt from the lakes shores. Posted 03/17/08 Intisar Abioto ’08 had a recurring daydream where she traveled to all parts of the world, adventure-seeking, meeting new people and hearing their stories – especially people her own age. “Our positive stories aren’t always represented in books or movies or on TV, and what the repercussions of this are, is that young people don’t…

Laurel Appel, visiting associate professor of biology and director of the McNair program, teaches participants how to extract DNA from wheat germ during the Green Street Arts Center's Sunday Salon Series, hosted by David Beveridge, pictured in back. Posted 03/17/08 In the 18th century, educated people in the upper reaches of society would meet at a “salon” to discus their ideas and observations. Today, this tradition continues without the pretentious aristocratic trappings at the Green Street Art Center’s Sunday Salon Series. During the two-hour sessions held on Sundays throughout the academic year, Wesleyan faculty and staff speak to a general…

Posted 02/27/08 Nobel Prize winner and University of Massachusetts Medical School professor Craig C. Mello, Ph.D, pictured at left, will be presenting a lecture as part of Wesleyan’s First Year Matters program. The talk, titled "Return to the RNAi World: Rethinking Gene Expression, Evolution and Medicine," will begin at 5:15 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 28, in Shanklin 107. The event is free and open to the public. Mello and his colleague Andrew Fire, Ph.D, of Stanford University, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2006 for their discoveries related to RNA interference (RNAi). “We are excited and…