David LowJim Margolis ’93, a six-time Emmy Award winner, left his job last year as an executive producer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to become the show runner for a new series, Newsreaders, which airs at midnight Thursday on Adult Swim, part of the Cartoon Network. Co-created by Rob Corddry, Jonathan Stern and David Wain, Newsreaders is a sketch comedy show in the form of a fake TV news magazine and a spinoff of a successful Adult Swim series, Children’s Hospital, a parody of the hospital drama genre. The new series features both established and up-and-coming comic talents. In…
Olivia DrakeAn audio-archive project managed by Jorge Arévalo Mateus PhD '12 will be available to the general public in the United States and the Dominican Republic in 2013. The project, "The Sacred and Festive Music of the Liboristas Communities of the Dominican Southwest," contains 32 hours of field recordings gathered between 2001 and 2004. With support from the GRAMMY Foundation® in the category "Preservation and Archive," Arévalo Mateus digitally preserved music audio recordings captured in rural areas of the Dominican Republic preserving more than 20 genres. The result is the first archive documenting the different genres of music played at Liboristas communities…
Halley Feiffer ’07 is the star and co-writer (with Ryan Spahn) of the feature film of He's Way More Famous Than You, which premiered in the dramatic competition at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah in January. The film is directed by Michael Urie, the star of Ugly Betty and Partners, and co-stars Urie, Spahn, Jessie Eisenberg (with whom Feiffer appeared in The Squid and the Whale), Natasha Lyonne, Mammie Gummer, Tracee Chimo, and Ralph Macchio. Feiffer plays a struggling actress will stop at nothing to get her movie made in this sharp, satiric comedy about the film…
Cynthia Rockwell(Story contributed by Susannah Betts ’15) Dr. Joseph Fins ’82 was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in a ceremony on Oct. 6, 2012, along with 180 other influential artists, scientists, scholars, authors, and institutional leaders, according to a press release from Weill Cornell Medical College, where Fins is The E. William Davis Jr., M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics, and professor of medicine, public health and medicine in psychiatry. Fins, a leading expert on medical ethics and health policy, is the author of more than 200 publications and several books, including the soon to be published Rights…
Philip Stern ’97, assistant professor of history at Duke University, received the 2011 Morris D. Forkosch Prize for the best book in the field of British, British Imperial, or British Commonwealth history since 1485. The prize, awarded by the American Historical Association, recognizes Stern’s The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford University Press, 2011). The prize committee calls Stern’s book a “sophisticated study of the East India Company …[that] challenges a long-established account of the chartered company as a trading venture that only belatedly became a territorial power” and lauds him…
Susan Rodrigue McFarland ’90 was appointed director of health, safety and environmental affairs at the Barnes Group, Inc., in Bristol, Conn. A molecular biology and biochemistry major at Wesleyan, McFarland earned a master’s degree in environmental sciences at the University of New Haven and an M.B.A. from Rensselaer in Hartford, Conn. She has worked in environmental compliance and occupational safety for 22 years. Prior to joining the Barnes Group, she worked at Pratt and Whitney, Sikorsky Aircraft and Carrier Corporation.
(Story contributed By Susannah Betts ’15) Elizabeth Liang ’92, who graduated from Wesleyan with a B.A. in English literature, is the author of two recently-published essays. Her essay, "Transforming Three Sisters, A Hapa Family in Chekov’s Modern Classic," was included in the academic journal Asian American Literature: Discourses and Pedagogies published by San Jose State University. It's published online here. Another of her essays, "Checked Baggage: Writing Unpacked," is in the anthology Writing Out of Limbo: International Childhoods, Global Nomads, and Third Culture Kids published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Morten Ender, professor of sociology at the United States Military Academy at…
Ralph Jones III '78 was recently named president and chief operating officer of SPARTA Insurance. An economics major at Wesleyan, he began his insurance career at Chubb and Son, with underwriting positions of increasing responsibility in their offices on both the East and West coasts. Named chief underwriting officer for Europe, he moved to London and later became president of Chubb Europe. In 1999, he was named CEO of Chubb Executive Risk (later Chubb Specialty Insurance). In 2003, he joined Arch Worldwide Insurance as their CEO and then, five years later, joined Everest Reinsurance Holdings as president and COO. Jones…
Mark Puzella ’94 joined the law firm of Fish and Richardson in Boston as a principal in its intellectual property litigation group. He will continue to focus his practice on copyright, trademark, false advertising and licensing disputes for clients. Previously a partner at Goodwin Procter, he had recently served as co-lead counsel for Aereo, Inc., in a high-profile copyright case brought by major television networks regarding technology that enables access to over-the-air television broadcast signals and other services. Attorney Ann Cathcart Chaplin, the litigation practice group leader at Fish, says that the addition of Puzella “will help us build on…
Q: Dana, you're Wesleyan's first Civic Engagement Fellow. How do you describe your role? A: As the Civic Engagement Fellow, I focus on promoting civic engagement throughout the entire university, with students, faculty and staff. While the focus may be broad, I mainly work with two specific centers: the Center for Community Partnerships, under Director Cathy Lechowicz, and the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship, under Director Paul Gagnon. At CCP, I’m primarily involved in informing students about the many opportunities for immediate impact here in Middletown, and in assisting student coordinators of the Office of Community Service's programs. We’re also developing…
Lauren RubensteinHistory major Solomon “Zully” Adler ’11 has been named a Marshall Scholar for 2013-14, an honor that will allow him to study toward a graduate degree at a British university. He is Wesleyan’s eighth Marshall Scholar, and the first since 1996. The Marshall Scholarship was founded in 1953 in honor of U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall to commemorate the humane ideals of the Marshall Plan (the American program to help European economies rebuild after the end of World War II). Each year, up to 40 intellectually distinguished young American scholars are selected to receive full financing of a…
Gabe Rosenberg '16Sara Molyneaux ’77 was recently elected first female chair of the Trustees of the Conservation Law Foundation (CFL), a nonprofit environmental protection agency for New England. Molyneaux, who has served on the board since 1998, succeeds Michael Moskow, chair since 2002, and is only the fifth board chair for the 46-year-old organization. In her new capacity, she will help CFL tackle local environmental challenges, such as the impact of recent storms, reducing transportation emissions and building livable cities, creating sustainable food systems and fisheries, and addressing the issue of water pollution in the region. Molyneaux, described as a “passionate environmental…