Conor Veeneman '09 and Joel LaBella, facilities manager for the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, prepare to take a core sample of Block Island's Great Salt Pond. Sediment samples may reveal that Block Island was not formed by the conjunction of two smaller islands more than 6,000 years ago, which is the current belief. Posted 08/06/08 More than 2,500 years ago, Native Americans settled on an area of land located about 13 miles off the coast of Rhode Island. They named the area “little island” or “little god place.” Much later, in 1614, it was charted by Dutch navigator Adrian…

Posted 08/06/08 Katharina “Kay” Butterfield, wife of Wesleyan's 11th President Victor Butterfield, died July 7 in Maine. She was 101 years old. Victor and Kay Butterfield worked at Wesleyan from 1943 to 1967. Kay’s passing reminds the Wesleyan community of the profound and lasting contributions that her family has made to the university. “I’ve often heard how students and alumni would burst into song when they encountered Mrs. Butterfield, a woman whose devotion to and affection for Wesleyan continues to inspire,” says Wesleyan President Michael Roth. In 1982, Kay received the Baldwin Medal, the highest award of Wesleyan’s Alumni Association.…

Creating educational science projects, such as building a wood windmill (top) and using mirrors to teach math (right) were part of the Summer Energy Education Workshops, sponsored by Wesleyan’s Project to Increase Mastery of Mathematics and Science program. Connecticut teachers learned hands-on activities to use in their own classrooms. Posted 08/06/08 At 8:30 a.m., Rusty Gray wrapped an ice cube in thermal insulated foam, packaging together peanuts, bubble wrap, newspaper and aluminum foil, and placed the ice in a cooler. Six and a half hours later, Gray removed the insulating layers and learned her method was not an adequate way…

Wesleyan’s McNair, Hughes, Mellon Mays and graduate students attended an informational financial management workshop July 22.  Posted 08/06/08 Twenty-two students had the opportunity to learn about the do's and don'ts of personal finance during a financial management workshop July 22. The Financial Management for College and Graduate Students Program, sponsored by Wesleyan's Ronald E. McNair Program, featured guests from the Connecticut-based American Eagle Federal Credit Union. The credit union employees delivered presentations on budgeting, savings, auto financing, credit cards, banking practices and credit history. “The workshop gave students an opportunity to better understand how to mange their personal finances as…

Posted 08/06/08 Every day, Linda Hurteau commutes 100 miles to and from Wesleyan, where she works an assistant in Olin Library. With skyrocketing gas prices and the need for oil changes every five weeks, the Mystic, Conn. resident knew she needed to find a transportation alternative. “With gas costing about $4.30 a gallon, it costs me roughly $260 a month or $3,100 a year to drive to work,” Hurteau says. “$3,100 could get me a week relaxing in the Caribbean each year instead of dodging bad drivers, accidents, and rocks along (Interstate) 95. I’ve already had to replace all four…

Posted 06/25/08 The Wesleyan University Board of Trustees affirmed the promotion with tenure, effective July 1, 2008, of the following members of the faculty:Katja Kolcio, associate professor of dance, was appointed as an assistant professor of dance at Wesleyan in 2001. Prior, she was a visiting assistant professor and interim chair at Antioch College, an adjunct assistant professor at Hunter College and a graduate teaching fellow at Ohio State University. Kolcio was awarded a University Fellowship and was honored for Top Graduate Research in the Fine Arts at Ohio State University and has been the recipient of numerous grants including…

Gim Seng Ng '08 was recently published in two internationally-recognized physics journals. Posted 06/25/08 For his research efforts in mesoscopic physics, Gim Seng Ng '08 was awarded the 2008 Vanderbilt Prize for Undergraduate Research in Physics and Astronomy. Vanderbilt University, located in Nashville, Tenn., offers the annual prize to any undergraduate student in the U.S. doing original research in physics or astronomy. Ng is part of Wesleyan’s Complex Quantum Dynamics and Mesoscopic Phenomena Group, led by Tsampikos Kottos, assistant professor of physics. The group’s objective is to develop models and theories to understand the interplay between quantum mechanics, interactions, and…

Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman star in Notorious. The film will be shown free on July 9 as part of the second annual Wesleyan Summer Film Series. Posted 06/25/08 Ingrid Bergman and four legendary leading men are coming to campus thanks to the Center for Film Studies and the City of Middletown. “Ingrid Bergman and her Hollywood Leading Men” is the title of the second annual Wesleyan Summer Film Series. The free event will be held at Center for Film Studies’ Goldsmith Family Cinema and feature four films starring Bergman that will be screened on successive Wednesday nights in July…

Fred Cohan, professor of biology, searches for microbe samples in Death Valley, Calif. Posted 06/03/08 While exploring Death Valley’s parched landscape, Professor of Biology Fred Cohan collected samples of compacted clay from the dry grounds. He sought a bacterium that is closely related to the microbe Bacillus subtilis, previously isolated from neighboring, gravel-based terrains. B. subtilis has similar genes and DNA as the bacteria Cohan discovered living in the clay soils, but Cohan argues that the clay-thriving microbe represents an ecologically-distinct “ecotype” of bacteria that has adapted to the low-nutrient habitat. “We have identified and confirmed that Bacillus living in…

Posted 06/03/08 A Wesleyan faculty member with Hawaiian ancestry is a founding member of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA).J. Kehaulani Kauanui, associate professor of anthropology, associate professor of American studies, is one of six scholars to co-create the professional organization for faculty and researchers who work in American Indian, Native American, First Nations, and Aboriginal or Indigenous studies. The association was officially launched on April 11. "It is clear that scholars in these linked fields are at critical mass, and that the intellectual work has matured in a way that makes the importance of our multi-faceted epistemological…

At right, Ann Campbell Burke, associate professor of biology, and biology graduate student Frank Tulenko, look over Tulenko's research poster explaining how lamprey embryos develop. Tulenko is continuing this research at the RIKEN Institute in Kobe, Japan this summer. Posted 06/03/08 In the past 350 million years of vertebrate evolution, the musculoskeletal system has morphed significantly across taxonomic groups. The first vertebrates, had no jaws or paired fins, and are represented today by the eel-like aquatic the lamprey that continues to thrive with its archaic cartilage jowls. As a recipient of an East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes for U.S.…