Olivia DrakeWesleyan received a $150,000 grant from the George I. Alden Trust to support a Digital Design Studio currently under construction in the Davison Art Center. The interdisciplinary Digital Design Studio will equip Wesleyan students and faculty to address current and future needs with the tools to imagine and test new frontiers in design. The Digital Design Studio will become a new hub within Wesleyan’s existing facilities in the Center for the Arts. The studio will provide a much-needed space for digital production for students enrolled in numerous studio arts courses and design-related fields. Emblematic of liberal education at Wesleyan, the new digital design studio is…
Lauren RubensteinVisiting Writer Charles Barber, director of The Connection Institute for Innovative Practice, will be the principal investigator, along with David Sells of Yale University, on a study peer mentoring of prisoners, thanks to a $295,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. The study is a two-year randomized trial involving 110 ex-offenders in New Haven, Bridgeport and other Connecticut cities — 55 will receive mentors, and 55 will not. "We will recruit clients from prisons, where mentors— who are former prisoners themselves, with at least five years of stability behind them — will meet with them two to three times, pre-release. Mentors will then…
Maho Ishiguro, an ethnomusicology doctoral student, received a Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship to study the female Saman dance in Indonesia. The award came with a $29,508 stipend. Ishiguro's proposed research title is “Saman Dance in Diaspora Presence of Female Saman Dance as Expressions of Piety Cultural Identity and Popular Culture.” Her DDRA project will examine the contemporary life of female Saman dance in Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Banda Aceh. Saman dance, or the dance of a “thousand hands” is typically performed in Gayo Lues, a mountainous region of Aceh, by eight to 20 male performers who kneel in…
Faculty and student researchers from Wesleyan's Cognitive Development Lab recently received a $3,000 stipend from the National Living Laboratory® Initiative, which receives support from the National Science Foundation. The award will support an ongoing collaboration between Wesleyan and the the Connecticut Science Center. Hilary Barth, associate professor of psychology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior, oversees a Living Laboratory® site at the science center's museum. For the past year and a half, Wesleyan researchers have visited the museum on Saturdays to collect data for current studies, talk with children and their families about child developmental research, and guide visitors in hands-on activities that demonstrate important findings in developmental psychology. The…
Kate CarlisleA significant federal grant will support efforts to make works in Wesleyan's Davison Art Center more accessible to students, faculty and the wider world. The $111,173 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, announced this week, will fund digital photography of some of the DAC's permanent collection, beginning in 2015 with Dutch and German "old master" prints. The funds, awarded in the Museums for America program, will allow the DAC to execute high quality, rapid photography of key parts of its holdings; these images can then be used for collection management or in classes. (more…)
Associate Professor of Psychology Anna Shusterman has received a major grant from the National Science Foundation to study language structure and number word learning in children. The research is a collaboration with David Barner at the University of California-San Diego. The total grant is $1,496,636, of which $724,128 will go to Wesleyan. According to Shusterman, the project explores how the structure of a language affects children's acquisition of word meanings for abstract concepts. Specifically, they will consider how the pace of children's number acquisition is affected by the presence of a "dual marker" — that is, grammatical marking to specify a precise quantity…
The University of Connecticut-Wesleyan University Stem Cell Core was among the recipients of a new batch of state funding granted for stem cell research. Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy on June 24 announced nearly $10 million in new funds to 18 Connecticut-based stem cell researchers. The UConn-Wesleyan Core received $500,000, of which about $25,000 will go to the outreach component of the Core run by Laura Grabel, the Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science and Society, professor of biology. According to Grabel, the funds will support visits by stem cell researchers to Connecticut colleges and universities. Since its founding in 2006, the UConn-Wesleyan…
This month, five Wesleyan students received Summer Experience Grants, supported by the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship. The honor comes with a $4,000 stipend to supplement costs associated with a summer internship experience. The grants are available for Wesleyan sophomores and juniors currently receiving need-based financial aid who plan to do socially innovative or socially responsible work during summer break. The recipients include Theodora Messalas ’15, Dara Mysliwiec ’16, Keren Reichler ’16, Geneva Jonathan ’15 and Jared Geilich ’15. In addition, film major Aaron Kalischer-Coggins ’15 received a Priebatsch Internship Grant. All grantees report on their experiences on the Patricelli Center's ENGAGE blog. Sociology major Theodora Messalas is working with…
Manju Hingorani, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, received a grant worth $324,127 from the State of Connecticut Department of Public Health on May 1
The Wesleyan Media Project has received a grant of $74,800 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to track and analyze campaign ad spending in the 2014 midterm election cycle. The project is directed by Assistant Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler, along with Michael Franz of Bowdoin College and Travis Ridout of Washington State University. A resource for journalists, policymakers, scholars and voters, the project has worked to increase transparency in federal elections since it was established in 2010 with support from Knight Foundation. Read more about the grant and the Wesleyan Media Project’s work here.
Meredith Hughes, assistant professor of astronomy, received a grant from the National Science Foundation to support her research on "Dust and Gas in Debris Disks Reveal the Origins of Planetary Systems." The grant, awarded on April 21, is worth $532,943. Hughes’ research focuses on understanding the formation and evolution of planetary systems. She particularly studies the huge disks of gas and dust surrounding a young star, which can give insight into how and when a star planet might form. The disk is made up of “junk” left over from the star’s formation. The main technique Hughes uses to observe these circumstellar…
Professor Don Oliver received a three-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA) (R15) for his research titled “Mechanism of SecA-dependent protein translocation." The grant, worth $374,148, was awarded on April 15. Oliver is the Daniel Ayres Professor of Biology and professor of molecular biology and biochemistry. Oliver studies how proteins are targeted to and transported across biological membranes utilizing bacteria as a simple model system."The current genetic and biochemical studies are designed to elucidate a molecular motor protein, SecA ATPase, that drives proteins through a universally conserved protein-conducting channel by a largely unknown molecular mechanism,"…