Olivia DrakeOn Feb. 7, the nearly-completed Kleen Energy power plant in Middletown exploded during a natural-gas purging procedure. It was a tragedy for the community that shook the earth in Middletown and beyond. The explosion caused the death of six people and injured more than 12 others. Soon after the explosion was felt, Wesleyan’s administration offered to support rescue efforts in any way possible. Middletown officials quickly requested that Wesleyan activate its Campus Community Emergency Response Team (C-CERT) and have them assist at the explosion site. Over the next few hours, C-CERT team members Cliff Ashton, director of Physical Plant; Stacy…
Wesleyan celebrates its 11th annual DanceMasters Weekend March 6-7, an exciting event for choreographers, students, and dance enthusiasts alike. "The mission of DanceMasters is to introduce dance students to contemporary techniques with the hope that they gain an understanding of the breadth and depth of what is out there in the dance world," says Pamela Tatge, director of the Center for the Arts. "We are also providing regional dance teachers an important professional development opportunity through contact with world-class master teachers.” Dancemasters offers a unique combination of outstanding performances and master classes. This year’s showcase performance features the Taylor 2…
Students applying for financial aid for Summer Session courses must have their course registrations and applications in by Friday, March 5. Classes begin June 7 and last five weeks. "With Wesleyan's Summer Session, students can experience the excitement and challenge of intensive, accelerated study, register for popular courses with lower student to faculty ratios, and discover interesting new upper-level courses," says Summer Session coordinator Sheryl Culotta, director of Continuing Studies and the Graduate Liberal Studies Program. "This also allows students to have more options during the school year, and more time to get involved in performances, sports, or other activities."…
Between now and Earth Day in April, Wesleyan employees who seek greener ways to commute to campus will have the opportunity to earn rewards through the Earth Day Commuter Challenge 2010: "Race to the Finish." The event encourages all forms of green commuting including carpooling, vanpooling, telecommuting, biking, walking and taking the bus, and is projected to eliminating more than 140,000 vehicle trips state-wide. This level of participation would result in 5,000,000 fewer miles of driving and the elimination of 2,000 tons of emissions. "Our hope is that the Earth Day Commuter Challenge will encourage employees to get out of…
In the 1970s, veterans, activists and psychiatrists were hard at work getting the disorder that came to be called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) included in the upcoming edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III. During the same period, feminists were building a successful anti-rape movement that crucially insisted that rape is a form of violence. On Feb. 15, Sally Bachner, assistant professor of English, spoke on “Rape Trauma, Combat Trauma, and the Making of PTSD: Feminist Fiction in the 1970s" during the Center for the John E. Sawyer Spring Lecture Series on War. Bachner proposed that…
Janette Boothby, 89, formerly of Middletown, died Feb. 16 at the Seabury Retirement Community in Bloomfield, Conn. where she had been a resident for 17 years. She was employed for more than 30 years by the Art Department and the Davison Art Center at Wesleyan as librarian and registrar of the Davison Art Center Print Collection. She pursued other forms of artistic expression in her life, including drawing, painting, graphic design and calligraphy. She won many prizes for her watercolor paintings and was a member of several area arts organizations. After her retirement from Wesleyan, she volunteered with The Middlesex…
Government, Russian and East European Studies major Elizabeth Trammell ’10 is the author of "Deep Trouble: Baikal, the world’s deepest lake, loses some of its hard-won protection," published in the Feb. 10 edition of Transitions Online and the Feb. 12 edition of Business Week. Trammell is writing an honor's thesis on Russian environmental policy under Peter Rutland, co-chair of the College of Social Studies, the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor in Global Issues and Democratic Thought, professor of government and tutor in the College of Social Studies. She interned last year for Great Baikal Trail, a sister environmental organization to BaikalWave in…
Wesleyan President Michael Roth reviewed the book The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr, by Ken Gormley, for the Feb. 20 edition of The Huffington Post. In the article, Roth writes, "The sordid and the sanctimonious, the crazy and the corrupt, the hypocrisy of those last years of the Clinton administration and, well, especially the hypocrisy were just awful to recall. The weight of the book, too, gave me pause. How was I to get through 800 pages on that nightmare? But although Ken Gormley's book spares none of the gory details, it's a great read that reveals the core dynamics…
Angel Gil-Ordóñez, director of private lessons, chamber music and ensembles, adjunct professor of music, music director of the Wesleyan Orchestra and Wesleyan Concert Choir, received a grant from Spain's Ministry of Culture and that of Foreign Affairs to conduct the orchestra in Falla and Flamenco April 17 in Brooklyn, N.Y. Falla and Flamenco is a program of three works by Manuel de Falla (1876—1946) that imbue 20th-century music with flamenco’s ancient gypsy traditions. Gil-Ordóñez's musicians will premiere "The Three Cornered Hat," in the U.S. for which Picasso created the scenery and costumes for the original. This original version was a ballet/pantomime called "El…
Matthew Kurtz, assistant professor of psychology, was interviewed and quoted in a Feb. 10 issue of Medscape Medical News. The article is titled "Mixed Results for Computer-Assisted Cognitive Remediation in Schizophrenia." Although computer-assisted cognitive remediation can help patients with schizophrenia improve their performance on training tests, these improvements do not generalize to broader neuropsychological or functional outcome measures, according to new research. The remediation program study is published in the February issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. "I thought this was a very well-conducted study with a strong sample size and paradoxical findings," Kurtz says in the article. "It's…
Brenda Hillman's book, Practical Water, published by Wesleyan University Press in 2009, was named a 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in the Poetry category. The 124-page book is part of the Wesleyan University Press's Poetry Series. Publishers Weekly says "Hillman's eighth collection of poems is the third in her series of book-length meditations on the elements. In these aesthetically challenging, yet often surprisingly clear poems, which span the personal, political and environmental, water is simultaneously a transparent vessel, a mirror and an endangered resource. This is one of the most unusual and compelling books so far this year."
David PesciGary Yohe, Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics, and a senior member if the U.N.'s IPCC panel discusses the economic implications of polar ice melt with ABC's Bill Blakemore '65. He estimates the costs of polar ice melting and rising seas at $2.4 trillion over the next few decades.