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Tom Matlack ’86 P’16 has never felt as in the zone as he did while rowing at Wesleyan. “It's this weird thing where you're with eight other people, and you're trying to move in exact synchronicity,” Matlack explained. “There's a feeling when you're doing that well that the boat actually feels almost like it's floating. And that there's no way to tell who is contributing what to the speed of the boat. So, you have to trust that each of the other people who are rolling with you is working just as hard as you are.” For Matlack and many…

The Wesleyan Board of Trustees voted to increase tuition by 4.7 percent for the upcoming 2023-24 academic year. Tuition will be $66,716. The Residential Comprehensive Fee (RCF) will be $19,034. There will also be a $300 student activities fee, bringing the total cost to $86,050. Wesleyan continues to recognize that any increase in student charges can create financial difficulties for families. The University remains committed to meeting all of a students’ demonstrated financial need. In academic year 2022-23, 39 percent of students received need-based grant awards totaling more than $75 million. “We are mindful of the cost of a Wesleyan education.,” said President Michael…

In a recent article in the journal Regional and Federal Studies James McGuire, Professor of Government, found that Trump's 2020 vote share was a strong and robust predictor of a lower COVID-19 vaccination rate across US states, US counties, and Connecticut towns alike, adjusting for wide range other factors thought to affect the vaccination rate. At each of the three subnational levels, McGuire showed, the Trump 2020 vote share was also correlated more closely than the Trump 2016 vote share or the Romney 2012 vote share with the COVID-19 vaccination rate. McGuire estimated the statistical impact of the Trump 2020…

Community-based, data-driven stories are Koeppel Fellow Jacqueline Rabe Thomas’ bread-and-butter. Instead of walking into a pitch meeting with a defined story arc, as is often required in the modern media landscape, Thomas prefers to come in with a general topic to take to community members and find the story from there. “Community-based reporting is sort of just standing on the sidelines and observing what's happening. Listening to people at community meetings or the park or wherever, staying attuned to the Facebook groups that are the communities in the areas you're serving, and then determining what the story is,” Thomas said.…

The 2022 midterm elections featured a record volume of television advertising, while, in addition, candidates in federal races spent almost $150 million on digital ads, according to a post-mortem analysis from the Wesleyan Media Project. Late February, the Wesleyan Media Project published two reports on television and digital ad spending in The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics. “After all was said and done, and after billions of dollars were spent on political advertising in the 2022 U.S. midterm election campaign, American politics mostly changed on the margins,” according to the Wesleyan Media Project. According to WMP…

Through a series of intimate and informal salons, Wesleyan’s Embodying Antiracism Initiative Fellows shared some of the work they have created this year during the program’s Think Tank. The salons are mini-festivals of arts, ideas, and activation, looking at works-in-progress and building community, said Stephanie McKee-Anderson, Executive Artistic Director of partnering organization Junebug Productions and Special Advisor to Provost Nicole Stanton. A Fellow might have the seed of a creation, so a salon could be a helpful place to dialogue about that idea, while the others might act as thought provocateurs. “What questions make a creator more excited about their…

Director and Producer Stephen Talbot ’70 was an early adopter of the anti-Vietnam War movement. He first began to turn against the war as a member of the mandatory Junior ROTC at Harvard High School, now Harvard-Westlake, in California in the mid-1960s. Talbot and his fellow high school classmates were given required trainings about the war. One of their JROTC instructors was called into active duty overseas in Vietnam and was severely injured. The news shook Talbot and he slowly began to question the war. Now nearly 60 years later, Talbot has produced and directed a documentary on the anti-war…

When Taylor DeLoach ’13 was studying for her Master’s in education she went on a lot of school visits. “Alma felt different when I got there,” she recalls. From the all-staff huddles every morning to the parent focus groups, DeLoach says “there were great interpersonal relational dynamics between people.” You’ll hear the same sentiment from a lot of Alma del Mar’s teachers and staff. Since opening in 2011, Alma has become one of the highest-performing charter public schools in the region. And nearly a decade after her first year of teaching, DeLoach has taken the helm as Alma’s new executive…

Former Miami Herald publisher Alberto Ibarguen ’66, Hon. ’11, P ’97 announced he is stepping down as the president and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation—a philanthropic organization that has invested in media, arts, and culture. President Joseph R. Biden nominated Lt. Gen. Michael Cederholm ’88 to be the new commander of I Marine Expeditionary Force, one of the three main Marine forces, according to Marine Corps Times. An aviator by training, Cederholm has served as deputy commandant for aviation since July 2022, according to his official bio. Neuroscientist Michael Greenberg ’76 was one of three winners of the Lundbeck…

One of Wesleyan’s hallmarks is its ability to foster conversation, difference of opinion and creativity. It’s a place where thinking one way isn’t always the way. The experience of Wesleyan is unique, it’s open and it’s broad. It’s a community, but it’s also individual. Despite its nuances, it shares a few universal fixtures that most other universities have too. It has stately buildings with hallways lined with classrooms, its students can be seen rushing from lectures to library study rooms, and if you listen closely enough you can hear the faint beeping of construction vehicles backing up in the distance.…

One spring day in 2011, 15,000 people gathered in the streets of Tokyo, all of them singing a song that had been released online just three days prior. It was a self-cover of a love song, but re-configured and lyricized to protest the use of nuclear power in Japan following the Fukushima nuclear disaster. A tale of a teenage crush reignited at a high school reunion was turned into accusations of governmental lies about nuclear safety. Flickering love to unwavering anger. A sentiment that carried thousands to the streets. The song “Zutto Suki Datta” (“I Always Loved You”) by Kazuyoshi…

In this continuing series, we review alumni books and offer a selection for those in search of knowledge, insight, and inspiration. The volumes, sent to us by alumni, are forwarded to Olin Library as donations to the University’s collection and made available to the Wesleyan community. In honor of Women’s History Month, this edition of YJHTRT features stories that celebrate the lives and legacies of women in American history. Steve Golin ’60, Women Who Invented the Sixties: Ella Baker, Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, and Betty Friedan (University Press of Mississippi, 2022) While there were many protests in the 1950s—against racial…

Tom Matlack ’86 P’16: On Acorns Becoming Oak Trees and Rowing For Coach Will Scoggins

Tuition to Increase For 2023-24 Academic Year

New Research Shows 2020 Vote for Trump a Strong Predictor of Lower Vaccination Rates

Koeppel Fellow Jacqueline Rabe Thomas on the importance of community-based reporting

Wesleyan Media Project Publishes New Study on 2022 Midterm Advertising

Arts, Ideas, and Activation: Embodying Antiracism Fellows Share Creations

Wesleyan Alumnus to Release PBS Documentary on Anti-War Protests

Wesleyan Alumni Chart Course for Student Success

Wesleyan in the News: March 2023

Public Affairs Center, New Science Building Construction on Schedule

Visiting Professor Talks Protest Music in Japan Following the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster

“You Just Have to Read This…” Books by Wesleyan Authors Golin ’60 and Woodruff ’96