Mike SembosIn November 2013, the White House nominated Stefan Selig ’84 as under secretary of international trade for the United States Department of Commerce. Since 2009, he’s served as executive vice chairman of global corporate and investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The Obama administration rarely appoints Wall Street bankers, especially from Bank of America, so this is an exceptional case. If confirmed by the senate, Selig will head the International Trade Administration, working toward the expansion of American industry, job creation and the promotion of exports. Selig earned his BA from Wesleyan and an MBA from Harvard Business…
Gabe Rosenberg '16Aram Sinnreich ’94 is the author of the new book The Piracy Crusade: How the Music Industry’s War on Sharing Destroys Markets and Erodes Civil Liberties (University of Massachusetts Press). An assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, he served as an expert witness on the 2010 court case Arista Records vs. Lime Group, which was settled out of court before he could present his 20,000-word report. The Piracy Crusade was built on the foundation of his unused research at the time. Sinnreich argues that Hollywood, the recording industry, and the United States government are acting as…
The artwork of Assistant Professor of Art Sasha Rudensky ’01 has been featured in a multi-page spread in the January 2014 issue of Rangefinder, a monthly magazine for the professional wedding and portrait photographer. The story is called “Culture of Brightness,” and it explores Rudensky’s “Brightness” photo series, in which she documents the lives of everyday Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. The collection was four years in the making. Rudensky herself was born in Moscow in 1979, and in the article she explains that in Russian-Ukrainian culture, the concept of “bright” is a synonym for “being beautiful, unforgettable — something that…
Kate CarlisleGuy Geyer Marcus '13 has won the Leroy Apker award for the American Physical Society, the highest prize offered in the United States for an undergraduate thesis in physics. Marcus is the second Wesleyan student to win the prize in three years; Wade Hsu ’10 also claimed the prestigious award. In 2008, Gim Seng Ng ’08 was a finalist for the Apker. “This achievement naturally highlights the quality and seriousness of our undergraduates and our undergraduate program,” said Physics Department Chair Brian Stewart. Marcus' Wesleyan advisor was Greg Voth, associate professor of physics. Marcus is working toward a Ph.D in…
Hankus Netsky, who received a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan in 2004, has been chosen by the editorial staff of The Forward — a well-respected weekly newspaper covering the Jewish world — as one of the 50 American Jews who have had the greatest impact on the world in 2013, alongside the likes of Harvey Fierstein, Mandy Patinkin and Janet Yellen. Netsky is the chair of the contemporary improvisation department at the New England Conservatory of Music. He has mentored countless young Jewish musicians, many of whom attended NEC primarily to study with him, and has guided jazz and classical…
Cynthia RockwellJoseph Fins ’82, MD, MACP, The E. William Davis, Jr. M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics and Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College, was elected an Academico de Honor of the Real Academia National de Medicina de España or the Royal National Academy of Medicine of Spain. This is a significant honor, as the general membership appoints an Academico de Honor (honored or distinguished member) only when death vacates the one of fewer than 20 positions. Fins, the sole Academico de Honor elected in 2013, will be formally inducted in 2014, when he will give…
David LowCharles Newell ’81 was recently awarded the prestigious Zelda Fichandler Award, which recognizes an outstanding director who is transforming the regional arts landscape through singular creativity and artistry in theater. He received the prize, an unrestricted grant of $5,000, from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF). Over the years, Newell has become one of the nation’s foremost theater directors. He is currently in his 19th year as artistic director of the Court Theatre, the renowned professional theater in residence at University of Chicago, where he had directed more than 40 productions. Newell comments: “To receive The Zelda Fichandler Award…
Maggie McLean Suniewick ’97, who served as vice president of programming for Comcast Cable, has been named senior vice president of Strategic Integration, linking NBCUniversal and Comcast. It is now her task to find creative, technological and strategic opportunities between Comcast, the nation’s largest video, high-speed Internet and phone provider, and NBCUniversal’s portfolio, which includes broadcast networks (17 cable networks and more than 50 digital properties), a motion picture company, television production operations, a television stations group and theme parks. Suniewick — an economics major at Wesleyan who went on to obtain an MBA from Columbia — will lead the charge on NBCUniversal’s…
Mike Cardozo ’08 has produced a new CD titled Something Better, performed by the band Show of Cards (showofcards.com), of which he is a member. The band was originally formed as a trio of Cardozo siblings: singer-songwriter Karen (of Chattering Magpies), bassist Joe (of Cold Duck Complex) and lead guitarist Mike. With drummer Makaya McCraven and engineer Justin Pizzoferrato, they released their debut Leap Year in 2009. With Something Better, Mike puts on his production hat to showcase his sister Karen's thoughtful songwriting in the textures, rhythms, and arrangements of musical languages from jazz to West African to classical. Karen and Mike are…
Taft Armandroff ’82 has been appointed as director of the University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas. He’ll be moving to the Lone Star State in June 2014 to claim his new position. Armandroff’s specialties include dwarf spheroidal galaxies, stellar populations in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, and globular clusters. He will soon be leaving his current position as director of the W.M. Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Prior to Keck, he worked for 19 years at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) in Tucson, Ariz., having earned his BA in astronomy with honors…
Spelman College President Beverly Daniel Tatum ’75 was presented with a national academic leadership award from the Carnegie Corp. of New York in December 2013. She was the first recipient from a historically black college and the first ever in the state of Georgia. Tatum was selected because of her work supporting female students pursuing science, technology, engineering and math at the university. More African-American women earned doctorates at Spelman in those fields between 1997 and 2006 than at Georgia Tech, Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill combined. Tatum was a psychology major at Wesleyan who went…
Since September 2013, Paul Chill ’78 has been presiding as the associate dean for clinical and experimental education at the University of Connecticut School of Law. He first joined the UConn faculty in 1988 and is known for his advocacy on behalf of parents and families. Chill teaches legal ethics, legal interviewing, counseling and negotiation, torts and criminal law and has supervised clinical programs relating to child protection, civil rights, disability, mental health law and mediation. Between his time as a government major at Wesleyan and the present, he has worked with dangerous juvenile offenders, graduated from UConn Law (in…