Posted 11/05/07 Wesleyan University will eliminate loans for its neediest undergraduates and replace these with additional grants, President Michael S. Roth has announced. The policy will be part of a new initiative to reduce overall student indebtedness by 35 percent to make Wesleyan even more accessible to students regardless of their financial capacity. "Access to a Wesleyan education for students from all backgrounds has long been one of the core values of this community," Roth says. "It remains one of our highest priorities. As I begin my presidency, I see this new effort as a down payment on our goal…

Nadeem Modan ‘10 and Adina Teibloom ‘10 attended interactive workshops, panel conversations with leading think tanks and foundations at the Interfaith Youth Conference Oct. 28-30 in Chicago, Ill. They are sharing what they have learned with their Wesleyan peers. Posted 11/05/07 Two Wesleyan sophomores met with renowned religious scholars, interfaith activists and peers from around the world recently to promote peaceful relations between different religious groups. Nadeem Modan ‘10, who is Muslim, and Adina Teibloom ‘10, who is Jewish, attended interactive workshops, panel conversations with leading think tanks and foundations, and an interfaith concert at the Interfaith Youth Conference Oct.…

Skye LoGuidice '09 is on the ballot for three Grammy awards. She write songs on life, tackling love, life and loss. Posted 11/05/07 Skye LoGuidice ’09 is working toward graduating with a degree from the College of Letters, but first she may receive a Grammy Award – or two, or even three. LoGuidice, who musically goes by Skye Claire, is listed on the 50th Annual Grammy Awards official ballot in three categories. The singer-songwriter was chosen among thousands of artists and bands nation-wide. “I haven’t told that many people yet, because I don’t know how to react to this, or…

Posted 10/16/07 In the event of catastrophic weather, accidents that threaten the campus or other life-threatening situations, Wesleyan has furthered its capabilities to inform the campus community quickly and effectively. A recently-implemented Emergency Preparedness Notification System was tested university-wide on Oct. 10. The emergency notification system alerts students, parents, faculty and staff of serious campus-wide emergencies. “If Wesleyan has an extended power outage, an incident requiring mass evacuation, or possibly a hostage situation, we will use this system to quickly notify the Wesleyan community,” says Cliff Ashton, director of Physical Plant and chairperson of Wesleyan’s Business Continuity Committee. Wesleyan has…

Dale Purves, the George Barth Gellor Professor for Research in Neurobiology, and director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University will speak on “Why We See What We Do: Brightness and Color" as part of the upcoming Snowdon Lecture Series. (Photo courtesy of Duke University) Posted 10/16/07 Upcoming lectures funded by the Edward W. Snowdon Fund focus on children’s book writing, the way human beings perceive brightness and color, and cognitive behavior as it relates to stress and health. For several years, the family of Edward W. Snowdon '33 has supported a variety of programs through the Edward…

Posted 10/16/07 Growing up, Karen Collins’s family found themselves in financially-difficult situations. But when times got tough, her community generously helped the family through local programs. In college, she received financial aid, and relied on the support of many alumni of her school to finish her degrees.Nowadays, the chair of the Mathematics and Computer Science Department, professor of mathematics, is giving back to her community by chairing Wesleyan’s Middlesex United Way campaign drive for the 2007-08 term. Wesleyan’s annual campaign kick-off is Oct. 23. “I’m a supporter of United Way because I want to give back to the world some…

The Long Lane Farm Club is spearheading the fourth annual Pumpkin Festival Oct. 20 for the Wesleyan and local community. The event will be held at the student-run Long Lane Farm. Posted 10/16/07 The Wesleyan community and people from the surrounding area can paint and purchase pumpkins during the fourth annual Long Lane Farm Pumpkin Festival Oct. 20. The event offers educational composting and organic gardening workshops, beekeeping, pumpkin face painting, tours of the farm, T-shirt designing, free bike tune-ups, garlic planting, music by student and local bands, games and a farmer's market, selling farm produce and pumpkins. Long Lane…

Wesleyan's Gary Yohe is a member of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel is supported by the United Nations. Posted 10/16/07 Gary Yohe, the Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics, is a senior member and coordinating lead author on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is a co-recipient of the 2007 the Nobel Peace Prize. The other co-recipient was former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. The official press statement from The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited the IPCC and Gore for: "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change,…

Posted 10/02/07 Wesleyan's campus has been captured on camera and bound in a book. Wesleyan University Press has released Welcome to Wesleyan: Campus Buildings in October 2007. The 64-page, full-color book features numerous photographs of Wesleyan's diverse structures captioned with historical notes. Leslie Starr, the assistant director and marketing manager at Wesleyan University Press, is the book's author and editor. Photographs in the book were contributed by a number of university staff members and professional photographers. “We’ve felt that Wesleyan has needed a book like this for a long time – an informative and inexpensive memento of campus,” Starr says.…

Posted 10/02/07 A free flu vaccination is available for Wesleyan faculty, staff and their dependents this month. Influenza is a highly contagious viral illness marked by fevers, muscle aches, cough, headache and fatigue. “Influenza is at best a miserable experience for which we are all at risk every year,” says Dr. Davis Smith, medical director at the Davison Health Center. “An annual flu shot is very likely to confer protection against this year’s strains of influenza and is highly recommended for all members of the Wesleyan community. When flu season comes around, better to know you got the flu shot…

Posted 10/02/07 Wesleyan’s Mathematics and Computer Science Department will host The Wesleyan Dynamical Systems Conference, Oct.13-14 at the Exley Science Center. The conference is being held in honor of Ethan Coven, professor of mathematics, emeritus. Dynamical systems, an extremely broad and central field of mathematics, is, at its core, the quantitative study of systems evolving over time. “Scientists in many disciplines have come to realize and use geometric and quantitative techniques that have been the outgrowth of this field of study,” says Edward Taylor, associate professor and one of the conference organizers. “It cross cuts such major areas of mathematical…