Cynthia RockwellJennifer Sorenson ’01 is one of only three women from the Natural Resources Defense Council’s San Francisco office to be recognized as a "rising star." In an NRDC press release, the women were lauded as “represent[ing] the next generation of the Bay Area’s environmental movement, seeking innovative new solutions to the world’s greatest environmental and health challenges.” Sorenson was one of 12 lawyers to receive a Distinguished Environmental Advocates Award at the American Bar Association's Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources (SEER) at their annual spring conference in March. Sorenson serves as chief litigator in a case challenging the U.S.…
Gabe Rosenberg '16Andrew McCulloch ’76, president of Kaiser Permanente’s Northwest region, was one of a team of 11 “Health Care Heroes” honored as Statesman of the Year by the Oregon Business Association in 2012. Instead of one “Statesman,” the association decided to recognize pre-eminent contributors to health reform. Kaiser Permanente is an integrated health care delivery organization combining a nonprofit insurance plan with its own hospitals and clinics. With over 37 hospitals, 17,000 doctors, and a state-of-the-art electronic medical record system, the organization has achieved highly coordinated and personalized patient care while focusing on keeping people healthy and preventing illness. As president…
The 36th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held in Brooklyn, N.Y. March 8–10 proved to be a great place for Wesleyan alumni to shine. Out of nearly 600 contestants from all over the country, Jesse Lansner ’96 came in 57th; Olin Documents Librarian Ehrhard Konerding MALS ’82 came in 62nd—both in the top 15 percent. “This is my fifth time at this competition,” said Konerding, adding, “my first year, when Jesse and I were rookies, we got second and I got third in that category.” Konerding noted that the puzzlers tend to know each other, traveling around in the same circuit…
David LowBetty Goes Vegan (Grand Central Publishing) by Annie and Dan Shannon ‘01 is one of the first comprehensive, everyday cookbooks for creating meals for today's vegan family. This must-have guide features more than 500 recipes inspired by The Betty Crocker Cookbook, as well as hundreds of original, never-before-seen recipes that may also entice meat eaters. In preparation for the book, the authors attempted to cook all the Betty Crocker recipes vegan-style. The book offers insight into why Betty Crocker has been an icon in American cooking for so long—and why she still represents a certain style of the modern super-woman…
Olivia DrakeSinger-songwriter Tess Amodeo-Vickery '07 debuts her first music video "When I Think about You" on YouTube. The video was filmed in Rome, Italy with director Federico Iris Osmo Tinelli. [youtube width="640" height="420"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz3RVJ2GnKo&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
Jodi Daynard ’79 recently published her first novel, The Midwife’s Revolt (Opossum Press), a work of historical fiction set during the founding days of America. The novel centers on midwife Lizzie Boylston from her grieving days of widowhood after Bunker Hill, to her deepening friendship with Abigail Adams, and finally to her dangerous work as a spy for the Cause. Daynard takes the reader into the real lives of colonial women patriots and explores human connections in a violent time. According to Publishers Weekly, the book is “a charming, unexpected, and decidedly different take on the Revolutionary War.” Daynard also is…
Respected tax scholar Leonard Burman ’75 is the co-writer (with Joel Slemrod) of Taxes in America: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press), a clear, concise explanation of how the U.S. tax system works, how it affects people and businesses, and how it might be improved. This highly accessible book, organized in a question-and-answer format, describes the intricacies of the modern tax system in an easy-to-grasp manner. The book starts with the basic definitions of taxes and then examines more complicated and controversial issues. They address such questions as: How much more tax could the IRS collect with better…
Bill HolderA $3 million gift to support writing programs at Wesleyan was announced March 1 at the Board of Trustees dinner on campus. The gift from John Shapiro ’74 and Shonni Silverberg ’76, a Wesleyan trustee, builds on their 2009 gift establishing the Shapiro Creative Writing Center. Shapiro said he was delighted with the speed with which the center was developed. “We were gratified that the university moved quickly and got this program launched and established,” Shapiro said. “I’ve had good feedback from people both at Wesleyan and elsewhere. It has generated’ a bit of a buzz.” This new gift will…
Five years ago, Terrance “Munch” Williams ’02 began coaching a group of 12-year-old boys, playing basketball in the gym of a New York City recreation center. Now, that same group of boys is ranked first in the country, champions of the 16u Invitational Division at the Las Vegas Fab 48 tournament. The boys are members of Team SCAN, an afterschool program devoted to developing student athletes academically, socially and athletically in the South Bronx and East Harlem areas. Under the management and coaching of Justin Weir ’02, Williams, Andre Charles ’06 and Jason Forde ’01 work with Team SCAN to…
Acclaimed National Geographic photographer Michael Yamashita ’71 has just published a new book of photographs Shangri-La: Along the Tea Road to Lhasa (White Star Publishers). His latest photography collection is a rare, intimate look into the Tibet’s changing world—both ancient and modern, sacred and commonplace, the rarefied and the gritty—before the legends and mysteries of the Chamagudao, the Tea Horse Road, disappear into the Tibetan mist. Yamashita captures stunning images of the Tea Horse Road, which winds through dizzying mountain passes, across famed rivers like the Mekong and the Yangtze, and past monasteries and meadows in a circuitous route from Sichuan…
The University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering recently appointed John Keith ’01 as assistant professor and the inaugural R.K. Mellon Faculty Fellow. With funding from a 2012 Richard King Mellon Foundation grant, the university’s Center for Energy brought in Keith as part of a program to build an interdisciplinary foundation toward energy research, focusing on functional materials for energy applications. Keith’s research will focus on developing and applying computational methods to enhance processes that convert CO2 and water into useful chemicals and fuels. By collaborating with experimentalists, Keith aims to contribute to finding economically feasible routes for energy solutions,…
As part of its recent “Legends of Sedimentology” event, The Houston Geological Society named George Devries Klein ’54 alongside three other speakers as having made a substantial contribution to the field of sedimentology.Klein is a sedimentologist, sedimentary geologist, sequence stratigrapher, basin analyst, regional geologist, petroleum geologist, and author of 383 papers, books, reports, abstracts, and reviews. He opened his consulting firm, SED-STRAT Geoscience Consultants, Inc. in Houston, Tex. in 1996, after serving for three years as the executive director of the New Jersey Marine Science Consortium and as New Jersey Sea Grant Director. He is also the author of Rocknocker:…