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During her fall semester First-Year Seminars intensive writing course, Gina Savoy '20 investigated the career of artist Vincent van Gogh and penned an essay titled “The Church: A Lifelong Obstacle for Vincent van Gogh." On March 28, Savoy's essay took top prize at the Endeavor Foundation First-Year Seminar Essay Contest. She and four other first-year students received cash awards ranging from $250 to $75 and a book, selected by their course instructor. With support from The Endeavor Foundation of New York, Wesleyan was able to offer the offer inaugural awards ceremony and celebrate the success of 43 FYS in the fall, and 10 this…

Antonio Gonzalez, professor of Spanish and director of the Center for Global Studies, is comfortably seated in front of a semicircle of 11 students. He holds an iPad Pro that controls two large screens on the wall behind him and enables him to move effortlessly, seamlessly from Google Maps, to video clips, to text he can annotate on the iPad. All the while he converses in Spanish with his students about a movie that tells the story of a Moroccan woman repatriating the body of her brother after he died crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in a small boat. In…

Assistant Professor of Psychology Psyche Loui and Rachel Guetta ’17 are the authors of a new paper exploring how people form associations between sound and taste. The article, titled, “When Music is Salty: The Crossmodal Associations Between Sound and Taste,” was published March 29 in the journal PLoS One. Scientists know that music can be evaluated as sweet, sour, salty or bitter, depending on features in its composition such as pitch, articulation, or brightness. For example, higher pitches are often thought of as sweet or sour, and lower pitches associated with bitterness. While previous research has studied this general area,…

Wesleyan has been nominated and named as a finalist for the Technology Excellence Award presented by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Awards are presented to universities and employers for “excellence in the use of technology and/or various social media outlets.” Wesleyan earned this distinction for the Gordon Career Center's premier podcast series, Careers By Design, which highlights the careers of some of Wesleyan’s most successful alumni. Sharon Belden Castonguay, director of the Gordon Career Center and Rachel Munafo, assistant director of the Gordon Career Center, will present on the podcast series and represent Wesleyan at the NACE…

Each year, as part of the series “Grist50,” the acclaimed environmental publication Grist honors 50 of the world’s most impactful innovators who are working to solve humanity’s biggest challenges with fresh, forward-thinking solutions. This year, Wesleyan alumnus Evan Weber ’13, co-founder and executive director of U.S. Climate Plan, has been recognized as an “emerging green leader.” Connecting this year’s 50 green leaders is the theme “The Fixer.” Described by Grist magazine as, “bold problem solvers working toward a planet that doesn’t burn and a future that doesn’t suck,” the list includes entrepreneurs, politicians, scientists and activists. Not only do Weber and his…

A group of Wesleyan faculty, students and alumni attended the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodland, Texas March 20-24. The annual conference unites 2,000 international specialists in petrology, geochemistry, geophysics, geology and astronomy to present their latest research in planetary science over the course of several days. Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the George I. Seney Professor of Geology Martha Gilmore coordinated Wesleyan's group. While at the event, she presented her work on the oldest rocks on Venus and Mars gully analogues on Earth. A number of her current graduate and undergraduate students attended and several…

Hannah O’Halloran '20 and Caroline Murphy '20 of the women’s swimming and diving team competed in the NCAA Division III National Championships, which were held March 15-18 at the Conroe ISD Natatorium in Shenandoah, Texas. "Having two freshman swimmers qualify for the NCAA national championships is an incredible achievement," explained Mike O'Brien, director of athletic communication. "This means that they’re among the top Division III swimmers in the country in their respective events." O’Halloran competed in the 200-yard backstroke event, where she was seeded eighth with a time of 2:01.62. In the preliminaries, she touched the wall in a time of 2:02.06,…

This month, two Wesleyan alumnae writers, Kaitlyn Greenidge ’04 and Simone White '93 received the prestigious Whiting Award. Given annually to only 10 emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, drama and poetry, the award provides recipients with a $50,000 grant and is the largest of its kind. Previous winners have gone on to receive the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships. Some Whiting Award winners include Jeffery Eugenides, Colson Whitehead, Tracy Smith and David Foster Wallace. Greenidge’s 2016 novel We Love You, Charlie Freeman is her most recent work and was published by Algonquin Books. The unconventional story…

Hilary Brumberg ’17, who volunteers at Wesleyan's Long Lane Farm, recently received a Princeton in Latin America Fellowship to develop an environmental education program in Costa Rica. As a Princeton in Latin America Fellow (PiLA), Hilary Brumberg ’17 will spend next year working at Osa Conservation in Costa Rica developing a river conservation and environmental education program. Brumberg is double majoring in earth and environmental sciences (E&ES) and Hispanic literatures and cultures. She's also working on the environmental studies certificate. PiLA matches highly qualified and motivated recent college graduates with partner organizations engaged in socially responsible development projects in Latin America and the…

This semester, students in Antonio Gonzalez’s Spanish 258, “The Intercultural Stage: Migration and the Performing Arts in the Hispanic World” have been experiencing what they study. With the assistance of a videoconferencing system, the Wesleyan students are “joined” in the classroom periodically by a group of students studying at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Charles III University in Madrid, Spain). Gonzalez, professor of Spanish, co-teaches the course with his colleague in Spain, Julio Checa. Checa also works on modern/contemporary Spanish theater and performance, and the two have collaborated on various scholarly projects over the years. They previously ran the trans-Atlantic…

Director and playwright Emily Mann will give a talk at Wesleyan on March 28 as part of the Performing Arts Series of the Center for the Arts. Mann will be in conversation with Wesleyan’s Shapiro Distinguished Professor of Writing and Theater Quiara Alegría Hudes. “Emily Mann is a revered theatrical auteur,” said Hudes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who teaches playwriting to beginning and advanced writers at Wesleyan. “An accomplished playwright, director, and artistic director of a leading regional theater, Mann is known for her probing inquiry into our nation's most urgent issues. Her art has time and again advanced the…

Shantelle Brown ’19 has been awarded a Davis Projects for Peace grant for her summer project, Sisters for Empowerment & Equality (SEE), which aims to address gender inequality in Jamaican culture through an art-based mentorship program for girls age 13 to 16. Brown’s project is one of 120 initiatives selected for a Davis Projects for Peace grant, each receiving $10,000 for implementation during the summer of 2017. In 2007, Projects for Peace was the vision of philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis on the occasion of her 100th birthday to motivate tomorrow's promising leaders by challenging them to find ways to "prepare for…

Frosh Honored for First-Year Seminar Essays

Wesleyan Receives Mellon Grant for Pedagogical Innovation

Loui, Guetta ’17 Author Paper on Brain Connections Between Sound, Taste

Wesleyan Named Finalist In NACE Technology Excellence Award

Weber ’13 Named ‘Emerging Green Leader’ by Grist Magazine

Faculty, Students, Alumni Attend the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference

Frosh Swimmers Compete at NCAA Division III National Championships

White ‘93, Greenidge ‘04 Win Whiting Awards for Writing

Brumberg ’17 Wins Princeton in Latin America Fellowship

Students at Wesleyan, in Madrid Collaborate through Teleconferencing

Playwright Emily Mann in Conversation with Quiara Alegría Hudes

Brown ’19 to Address Gender Inequality as Davis Projects for Peace Grant Recipient