Laurie KenneyOn Friday, October 21, at 9 p.m., PBS will debut Hamilton's America, a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the smash musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda '02. The documentary is directed by Miranda's Wesleyan roommate, Alex Horwitz '02, and features footage from the Broadway show along with interviews with Miranda, Hamilton director Thomas Kail '99, and an array of others, including President Barack Obama, President George W. Bush, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Questlove, Black Thought, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Sondheim, and more.
Frederic Wills '19Melanie Khamis, assistant professor of economics, assistant professor of Latin American studies, attended the Informality and Development Conference in Honor of Elinor Ostrom held at Indiana University on Oct. 22-23. Khamis, co-authored two papers presented at the conference including “Migration and the Informal Sector,” and “Risk Attitudes, Informal Employment and Wages: Evidence from a Transition Country." The conference was organized by faculty from Cornell University and Indiana University. It centered around the study of informality, the part of an economy that is neither taxed not monitored by any form of government—a subject area where Professor Ostrom, the first and only woman to have won…
Randi Alexandra PlakeHilary Barth, associate professor of psychology, is a co-author of a paper titled, “How feedback improves children’s numerical estimation,” published in the August 2016 issue of the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. Barth’s co-authors are former members of her Cognitive Development Lab, which include Shipra Kanjlia ’11 and Jennifer Garcia ’10, former lab managers Jessica Taggart and Elizabeth Chase, and former postdoctoral fellow Emily Slusser, PhD. The paper explores one theory of children’s cognitive development that there are fundamental developmental changes in the ways children think about numbers. This theory says numbers are arranged on a different mental scale for younger…
Olivia DrakeOn Oct. 14, Wesleyan’s Jewish community constructed a sukkah near the Center for the Arts. The dwelling provides a shelter for students to celebrate the festival of Sukkot. For eight days, students study, socialize, mediate, eat, host events and occasionally sleep in the religious building. (more…)
The Office of Human Resources hosted its annual Employee Service Recognition Luncheon Oct. 18 in Beckham Hall. All employees who are celebrating their 20th, 25th, 30th and 35th year working at Wesleyan were honored at the lunch by President Michael Roth. The event concluded with a celebratory cake-cutting and a Wesleyan and world trivia game. Those recognized included: Catherine Race, Psychology Department, 35 years; Simon Bostick, Public Safety, 35 years; Edward Manter, Physical Plant - Facilities, 35 years; Sandra Frimel, Health Services, 30 years; Chuth Prith, Physical Plant - Facilities, 30 years; Dawn Astin Lowe, University Relations, 30 years; and Paul DiSanto, University Relations, 30 years. Also Meg Zocco, University…
Flying Carpets: New Paintings by David Schorr, a solo exhibition and site-specific installation by Professor of Art and Chair of the Art and Art History Department David Schorr, will be on view in the Main Gallery at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery from Oct. 27 through Dec. 11. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Gallery admission is free. In this latest body of work, Schorr revisits childhood days spent playing on his grandmother’s Persian rugs. Vibrantly colored taxis and race cars drive over paisley designs, while model planes soar midst coffee cans and mailing…
Wesleyan’s Passion Driven Statistics curriculum introduces students to statistics by allowing them to ask and answer statistical questions that they care about. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Passion Driven Statistics model has been successfully implemented through the Applied Data Analysis course at Wesleyan, created by Lisa Dierker, professor of psychology, director of pilot programs for the Center for Pedagogical Innovation. The course is taught by several faculty from Wesleyan's Quantitative Analysis Center. "What I want is for students to do when get out of this course is to encounter data in the world and say, 'I can't wait to do something with it,' and to have…
Cynthia RockwellThe 13th Annual Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns, held Oct. 14-15, offered panels and discussions on "The Role of the University in the Era of Mass Incarceration." Experts and activists from across the country, as well as members of the Wesleyan community, considered practical and philosophical responses to the current situation, placing it in a historical perspective that began with slavery. Additionally, Wesleyan's Center for Prison Education (CPE) program alumni gave individual testimony to the imperative they placed on access to learning within the penal system. Keynote speaker Michael Romano ’94, who teaches at Stanford Law School, is the co-founder and director of the…
The Wesleyan Program House Outhouse hosted its 10th Annual Fall Fest on Oct. 14 to celebrate the season. Outhouse residents provided fall-related foods such as apple crisps, apple cider, pumpkin pie, squash and corn, and activities such as apple bobbing, donuts on string, a homemade ball pit, a pumpkin walk, live music and more. The event was funded by the Office of Student Activities and Leadership Development and the Wesleyan Green Fund. Outhouse serves as a base for the Wesleyan Outing Club. It brings together people who share a strong interest in the outdoors, and allows them to share that enthusiasm…
Bloody handprints smeared the glass doors to Usdan, the clue to Mysterium attendees that they had arrived at the scene of their conference on Oct. 8. Red footprints led them to the sign-in table and the schedule, which boasted a cohort of award-winning mystery writers and those in publishing—including Wesleyan alumni. Hosted by Amy Bloom ’75, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing at Wesleyan, the day-long event opened with a keynote with Laura Lippman—a New York Times bestselling author of detective fiction including the Tess Monaghan series—and brought alumni, parents, as well as mystery writers and readers to campus for panel…
Erika Taylor, associate professor of chemistry, is a co-author of a paper titled, “Methyl transfer by substrate signaling from a knotted protein fold,” published in the August 2016 issue of the Nature Structural & Molecular Biology newsletter. The paper describes the protein TrmD, an enzyme that catalyzes tRNA modification, but unlike most proteins, TrmD has an "interesting knotted configuration, which is not common," Taylor said. The paper demonstrates that even in proteins with knotted configurations, the internal protein movements and dynamics are important for binding, signaling and catalysis. "This is exciting because one might expect knotted proteins to be more static in…