Bill FisherMelody Oliphant '13, who double majored in neuroscience and behavior and history at Wes, is now a research associate in a neurogenetics lab at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. “I’m often awestruck at the seemingly limitless answers to the question, ‘What makes Wesleyan special?’ or ‘What excited me about Wesleyan?’ Yet, in some form or fashion, the answer always remains the same: the people, the sense of community. Throughout my Wesleyan experience, I participated in a disparate array of activities and academic pursuits ranging from environmental activism to my double major, from founding a sorority to participating in…
On the eve of the fourth season of HBO’s fantasy hit Game of Thrones, Wesleyan Visiting Writer in English Jim Windolf talks with series creators D.B. Weiss ’93 and David Benioff and novelist George R.R. Martin – on whose works the show is based – in Vanity Fair: “Based on ‘A Song of Ice and Fire,’ the epic series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, the show seemed like an odd fit for HBO. But Benioff and Weiss believed it was in the tradition of The Sopranos,Deadwood, Oz, and other HBO shows in that it would breathe new life into a tired or…
Natalie Robichaud ’14James Lieber ’84, president of the consulting firm, Lieber Strategies, hosted a dinner for Wesleyan students in Paris in March. “I think they were all fed for a week," Lieber said. After graduating from Wesleyan with a BA with honors in art history, Lieber went on to get his master’s degree in public policy from Harvard and a juris doctor degree cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law. In Paris, he founded Lieber Strategies, a strategic consulting firm that specializes in management of cross-border projects for multinational and national corporations, investment funds and private individuals.
David LowNot one but two books about baseball by Wesleyan graduates have just hit the shelves. Daniel Gilbert ’98, assistant professor in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has published Expanding the Strike Zone: Baseball in the Age of Free Agency (University of Massachusetts Press), while Benjamin Baumer ’00 and Andrew Zimbalist P’02 have co-written The Sabermetric Revolution: Assessing the Growth of Analytics in Baseball (University of Pennsylvania Press). Expanding the Strike Zone takes a look at issues of work and territory that have come into play as baseball expanded since the mid-20th…
Roberta Pereira ‘03 is the co-founder and managing editor of Dress Circle Publishing, whose mission is to provide its readers with a peek behind the curtain through theater-themed books. The company publishes fiction and nonfiction, which attracts a varied audience, and especially theater-lovers everywhere. Dress Circle Publishing has just published The Untold Stories of Broadway, Volume 1, by musical theater historian and producer Jennifer Ashley Tepper, which records the stories of eight Broadway theaters and productions that have played there, as told by producers, actors, directors, writers, musicians, and the various other artists and workers involved. Pereira edited the book and…
Kenneth Kimmell ’82 will join the Union of Concerned Scientists as president in May. After graduating with a BA from Wesleyan, Kimmell received his JD from UCLA. His decision to become an environmental attorney was prompted by an experience assisting a United State District Court judge on a case in which the government misused science. He was a director and senior attorney at a law firm in Boston before joining the administration of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. As General Counsel of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Kimmell wrote and helped pass five groundbreaking environmental and energy laws.…
Cynthia RockwellThe Institute on Education Law and Policy (IELP), an interdisciplinary research project at Rutgers University-Newark that director Paul Tractenberg '60 established in 2000, has produced two major reports [see one and two] on school segregation in New Jersey in collaboration with The Civil Rights Project at UCLA. “The findings were sobering, even for a state that has long been home to some of the most segregated schools in the country,” wrote Tractenberg for NJ Spotlight. Tractenberg, who is also the Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor and Alfred C. Clapp Distinguished Public Service Professor of Law at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, recently published Courting Justice:…
Brian KattenWhen Jeff Galloway '67, Amby Burfoot '68 and Bill Rodgers '70 ready for the start of the Harvard Pilgrim Middletown Half Marathon Sunday, April 6 near Main Street, it will be a reunion of titanic proportions. The three haven’t been seen together since running as Cardinals 47 years ago. "This might be the first time the three of us have been together since Wesleyan," Rodgers said. The trio of Galloway, Burfoot and Rodgers has given Wesleyan tremendous presence in the running world. Burfoot, as a Wesleyan senior, became the first collegian in the then 72-year history of the Boston Marathon,…
Mike SembosLaura Fraser '82, who majored in American studies, has cofounded and launched Shebooks, an e-publishing site dedicated to producing short e-books by and for women. The site went live in January, and it features exclusive memoirs, fiction and journalism by established authors like Hope Edelman, Marion Winik, Faith Adiele, Jessica Anya Blau and Suzanne Paola. Some contributing Wesleyan authors include Jennifer Finney Boylan '80, who wrote an original novella for Shebooks and is on its advisory board, Virginia Pye '82, who wrote an original novella, stories by Bonnie Friedman '79 and some essays by Fraser herself. All works, ranging from long…
Hamidreza (Hamid) Ramezani Ph.D. ’13, recently won the Biruni Graduate Student Research Award. The award aims to promote and recognize outstanding research by a physics graduate student of Iranian heritage who is currently studying in one of the institutions of higher education in the United States, seeking originality, thoroughness, a teamwork spirit and ownership among the candidates. The honor comes with a cash award. Before graduating with his Ph.D. from Wesleyan in November, Ramezani studied cosmology and gravitational physics while earning his master’s degree at the University of Tehran. He completed his bachelor study in solid state physics at Sahed University.…
Max Perel-Slater ’11 has won an Advancing Leaders Fellowship from World Learning for the Tanzania-based project, The Maji Safi Movement (“maji safi” means “clean water” in Swahili; see majisafimovement.org). Maji Safi is focused on disease prevention and health promotion and particularly aimed at empowering rural communities in their efforts to combat water-borne and water-related diseases. The Movement encompasses both a local NGO and a US-based 501(c)3; Perel-Slater is president and co-founder of the U.S. arm and treasurer of the Tanzania-based organization. He has worked on water projects in Shirati, Tanzania, since 2009, when he led the construction of a rainwater…
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently appointed Shola Olatoye ’96 as chairwoman of the New York City Housing Authority. Olatoye’s last position was vice president at Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit organization that advocates affordable housing nationally. The previous head of the authority was John Rhea ’87. The mayor made the announcement at the Abraham Lincoln Houses in Harlem, a complex of 1,282 apartments in which de Blasio and other Democratic candidates spent a night during the mayoral campaign in order to get a firsthand look at the “moldy walls and broken cabinets” that constitute the disrepair of…