Weissman to Step Down As Provost, VP; Jacobsen to Serve as Interim

This summer, Ruth Weissman will be stepping down as provost and vice president for academic affairs and returning to her role as the Walter A. Crowell University Professor of the Social Sciences. Joyce Jacobsen, the Andrews Professor of Economics, dean of the Social Sciences and Director of Global Initiatives, has accepted a one-year appointment as interim provost and vice president for academic affairs. "Ruth's efforts over the past two years in support of the faculty, in overseeing the curriculum, and in exercising administrative leadership have been extraordinary," said Wesleyan President Michael Roth in an all-campus e-mail. "Wesleyan has been fortunate…

Associate Professor of History Erik Grimmer-Solem’s research on a celebrated German general, known as an “anti-Nazi,” is continuing to have an impact on the ground in Germany today. Over the past year, Grimmer-Solem’s findings have ignited a public debate in the country over General Hans von Sponeck’s place in history—a debate which has now turned to the matter of a commemorative stone honoring him. Since World War II, von Sponeck had been celebrated in Germany with an Air Force base, city streets and other monuments named after him. All this has changed since Grimmer-Solem’s research shed new light on the…

Christina Othon and Erika Taylor, along with physics graduate student Nimesh Shukla, Lee Chen ’15, Inha Cho ’15 and Erin Cohn ’15, are the co-authors of a paper titled “Sucralose Destabilization of Protein Structure” published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, March 2015. Othon is assistant professor of physics and was PI on the paper. Taylor is assistant professor of chemistry, assistant professor of environmental studies. Sucralose is a commonly employed artificial sweetener that behaves very differently than its natural disaccharide counterpart, sucrose, in terms of its interaction with biomolecules. This research suggests that people may need to think about the impact…

(Story by Lily Baggott '15) Last spring, filmmaker David Fisher presented his film, Six Million and One, at the Wesleyan Israeli Film festival. After viewing Fisher’s film and presentation, Director of the Center for Jewish Studies Dalit Katz subsequently invited the filmmaker to teach a course as a scholar in residence this spring. Currently the Silverberg Scholar in Residence at the Center for Jewish Studies, Fisher teaches When Private Meets Public, a course focusing on Israeli documentaries. “[In this course,] I’m trying to decipher with my students the development and consequently the success of the Israeli documentary films worldwide,” Fisher…

Pianist, composer, educator and author Noah Baerman, visiting instructor in music and jazz ensemble coach, will present the Music Department Colloquium on April 22 as part of the 14th annual Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra Weekend.

Psyche Loui, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, was awarded a grant of $20,000 in March from the GRAMMY Foundation Grant Program to study a musical biofeedback-based intervention for epilepsy. The grant will fund three different studies that combine EEG sonification, translational research and basic neuroscience for this type of intervention. Loui anticipates that the results will apply music technology as a possible solution to a neurological disorder affecting 65 million people worldwide. Loui noted that for the approximately one-third of patients with epilepsy who don’t respond well to seizure medication, (more…)

Pedro Alejandro, associate professor of dance, Brittany Delany ’09 and Sarah Ashkin ’11 are collaborating on a new choreography project in New Mexico. The project titled “Chancy Dancing” will premier at 8 p.m. April 11 at the Railyard Performance Center in Santa Fe. Marcela Oteiza, assistant professor of theater, is developing the visual design of the work. The first half of the performance features Ashkin and other local choreographers’ most recent works spanning a spectrum of modern dance, dance theater and improvisational systems. (more…)

Psyche Loui, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, discussed the phenomenon of tone-deafness on Radio Health Journal. Millions people go through life thinking they're hopelessly tone-deaf when they are not--they can distinguish between correct and incorrect notes, yet they're just unable to sing them properly. Ironically, those who are truly tone-deaf cannot hear such distinctions, and thus may be unaware of their condition. "You'll see some people who don't really know that they're tone-deaf," said Loui. Identifying tone-deafness can be done by having people listen to, rather than sing, music. Many people who are tone-deaf don't enjoy music. "Some people think it all sounds the same,…

Professor of Theater Ron Jenkins wrote in The Jakarta Post about recent performances of Rateb Meuseukat, a form of Acehnese dance from Indonesia, at Wesleyan and a few other New England colleges, which gave American audiences "an eye-opening introduction to an aspect of the Muslim world that is rarely seen in the West." The group "Tari Aceh" performed at Wesleyan's Crowell Concert Hall on Feb. 27. The day after the performance, some audience members returned for a workshop in which they learned how to do the movements they had seen onstage. Jenkins writes: Images of Muslim women in Western media often focus on the restrictive nature of…

Alive: New and Selected Poems, a new volume of poetry by Elizabeth Willis, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing, professor of English, was recently published by New York Review Books. The book contains poems spanning more than 20 years. According to the publisher's website, with these poems, Willis "draws us into intricate patterns of thought and feeling. The intimate and civic address of these poems is laced with subterranean affinities among painters, botanists, politicians, witches and agitators. Coursing through this work is the clarity and resistance of a world that asks the poem to rise to this, to speak its fury." Willis is…

On April 2, Wesleyan will host the 1,443rd meeting of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences (the third oldest learned society in the Unites States, chartered in 1799) on campus. To honor the proud occasion, Joseph Siry, professor of art history, the Kenan Professor of the Humanities will give a public lecture presentation about his research. Siry's talk, titled "Air Conditioning in the United States Capitol: Architecture, Technology and Congressional Life," will take place at 5 p.m. in the Center for the Arts Hall. The U.S. Capitol offers an illuminating case study of how modern architecture developed mechanically before…

On March 12, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) aired an episode of The Nature of Things called "Safe Haven for Chimps" in which host David Suzuki and his crew follow the efforts of the staff at Chimp Haven in Louisiana. The compound is a place where chimps, who have been used in biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), are retired and allowed to live our their lives in a sanctuary. Lori Gruen, chair and professor of philosophy, professor of environmental studies, professor of feminist gender and sexuality studies, first appears about 10 minutes into the episode. She speaks about…

Weissman to Step Down As Provost, VP; Jacobsen to Serve as Interim

Grimmer-Solem’s Research Continues to Have Impact on the Ground in Germany

Othon, Taylor Students Published in Physical Chemistry Letters

Filmmaker Fisher is Silverberg Scholar in Residence at the Center for Jewish Studies

Baerman’s Ensemble Performs The Rock World Premiere During Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra Weekend April 22-25

GRAMMY Foundation Grant Supports Loui’s Research on Epilepsy Intervention

Alejandro, Alumnae Collaborate on Choreography Project

Loui Talks Tone-Deafness on Radio Health Journal

Jenkins Writes About “Eye-Opening” Performance of Indonesian Dancers

New Volume of Elizabeth Willis’ Poetry Published

Siry to Speak at Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences Meeting April 2

Gruen Discusses Chimpanzees Used in Research on Canadian Nature Show