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Olivia DrakeJune 17, 20143min
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…

Bill HolderMay 1, 20143min
The broad contextual education that Wesleyan and peer institutions offer is frequently critiqued, sometimes excoriated, by those who accuse it of not preparing graduates for success in today’s world. But that accusation, says President Michael S. Roth in his sixth and latest book, Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters (Yale University Press, 2014), is as old as liberal education itself – and never less convincing than now. A historian whose previous scholarship has focused on making sense of the past, Roth charts the development of pragmatic liberal education through a succession of important American thinkers. Liberal education has deep…

Olivia DrakeApril 18, 20143min
Four years ago, Jennifer Roach ’14 co-founded Summer of Solutions Hartford, a food justice and youth leadership development program in Connecticut’s capital. Since 2010, Summer of Solutions has grown to seven garden sites across Hartford, continuously working to “increase access to healthy food and community green spaces in Hartford by empowering young people as innovators in the food justice movement and providing them tools and opportunities to create solutions to food inequality in the city." This month, Roach's organization was the recipient of a $10,000 grant from the Kathryn W. Davis Projects for Peace program. The Projects for Peace grant will allow Summer of Solutions to expand its nine-week summer…

Natalie Robichaud ’14April 18, 20145min
Wesleyan’s Center for Community Partnerships celebrated its 10th year anniversary on April 8. The CCP, located inside the Allbritton Center, serves the development of both the individual and the community and is guided by principles of mutual respect and shared responsibility. The different offices that combine to constitute the CCP are the Service-Learning Center, the Office of Community Service and Volunteerism, the Office of Community Relations, the Green Street Arts Center/PIMMS, and the Center for Prison Education. Each office within the CCP connects Wesleyan to surrounding communities. The Service-Learning Center integrates experiences outside the classroom with an academic curriculum taught…

Lauren RubensteinApril 18, 20143min
In this issue of The Wesleyan Connection, we speak with Joaquin Benares ’15, who recently was awarded a Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship Seed Grant for his project, Boundless Updated Knowledge Offline (BUKO). BUKO uses an electronic bookshelf (Raspberry Pi powered server) to bring video lectures, e-textbooks and other educational tools to Philippine public schools to supplement their (sometimes nonexistent) libraries, teaching aids and contact time with teachers. Q: Where did you grow up and how did you end up coming to Wesleyan? A: I was born and raised in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. I attended high school…

Olivia DrakeMarch 14, 20142min
Three student-led social ventures are the winners of the 2014 Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship Seed Grant Competition. Student representatives from each group will each receive $5,000 in unrestricted startup funds as well as trainings, advising, mentoring, incubator workspace, and other resources from the Patricelli Center. Recipients were selected from a strong pool of finalists who submitted written business plans and pitched to a panel of expert judges comprised of alumni, students, faculty, and staff. Applicants were assessed on their project design, leadership qualities and potential for social impact. ”We are thrilled to support the early development of these three breakthrough projects, led…

Olivia DrakeFebruary 12, 20142min
Wesleyan's Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship announced the finalists for its 2014 PCSE Seed Grant Competition. These $5,000 awards are intended to fund the launch or early stage growth of a Wesleyan-connected social enterprise, project, program or venture. Last year’s winners used the seed funding to launch a grant-funded community supported agriculture effort in Middletown, work with incarcerated youth in Chicago, advocate for farmers’ working conditions in Bali, and scale up the MINDS Foundation and Maji Safi Group, two Wesleyan-borne social enterprises. This year’s finalists will pitch their projects at a public event from noon to 1 p.m. Feb. 28…

Cynthia RockwellDecember 6, 20133min
Over a lunch of pizza in Beckham Hall on Dec. 5, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, a serial entrepreneur and author of Without Their Permission, addressed a crowded hall of nearly 200 students. He spoke on the importance of the internet, which allows us to access “an incredible amount of information,” and our ability to make use of it to develop new ideas, through maintaining an entrepreneurial mindset. Asking for a showing of hands of those involved in their own creative endeavors, he invited students to seize all opportunities to tell people about their idea—and to view all failures as the…

Olivia DrakeOctober 23, 20132min
Rob Rosenthal, the John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology, will serve as Director of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life for a three-year term, beginning July 2014. Rosenthal has a distinguished history of initiating programs to integrate public life into the Wesleyan curriculum: He was the founding director of the Center for Service Learning, founding co-director the Center for Community Partnerships, and as Provost he instituted the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship and developed new programming within the Allbritton Center including the year-long "music in public life" initiative. Rosenthal served as provost from 2010-2013 and oversaw Wesleyan's reaccreditation process. Immediately…

Olivia DrakeJuly 1, 20132min
Two years after its founding in May 2011, Wesleyan University’s Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship (PCSE) is becoming a hub of activity by supporting students and alumni interested in creating and sustaining programs, businesses, and organizations that advance the public good. During the 2012-13 academic year, the PCSE offered 36 events featuring 30 alumni and five students, awarded 22 grants to 44 applicants, provided bi-weekly student counseling hours to dozens of  undergraduates, and added more than 30 alumni volunteers to its growing network. 2012/2013 highlights include: Five $5,000 Seed Grants were awarded to individual students or student teams with plans for a new venture or a scaling up of…