Lauren RubensteinWhen Anna Haensch tells new acquaintances that she’s a mathematician, many people immediately recoil. “There’s this repellent nature to math,” she said. “There’s this big wall up around it—people find it terrifying or uninteresting.” That’s exactly why Haensch, a Ph.D. student who just successfully defended her dissertation, wants to learn how to communicate better to the general public about math. She is the recipient of a Mass Media Fellowship, administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Haensch's fellowship is sponsored by the American Mathematical Society (AMS). The 10-week summer program, which starts June 3, places graduate and post-graduate…
Olivia DrakeThe Wesleyan Freeman Asian Scholars Program welcomed 11 new students to the program during a Freeman Scholars Dinner Oct. 6. The program enables qualified young men and women from each of 11 countries or regions – The People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam to come to Wesleyan on full tuition scholarships. "I am fortunate to work with the Freeman Asian Scholars Association; so many are friends. I love their energy, good spirit and their wonderful creativity and culture they inject into the community," says Gina Driscoll, associate director…
한국말 하실 줄 아세요? (Can you speak Korean?) Judy Her '13 can. And by the end of this summer, she hopes to be fluent. As recipients of a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship, Her and Daniel Witkin '13 are spending 10 weeks in intensive language institutes this summer. The CLS Program provides fully-funded, group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences. Her is currently studying the Korean language in Jeonju City, South Korea at Chonbuk National University, and Witkin is studying the Russian language in Kazan, Russia at the Kazan Institute of Social Science and Humanities. "I…
Ten years from now, Daniela Ivanova ’10 envisions herself working as an advisor to a European commissioner or member of the Bulgarian government. Her next step in the quest will take place at the University of Oxford, in England. Ivanova is a recipient of a Weidenfeld Scholarship and Leadership Programme for 2010-11. Awarded by the London-based Institute for Strategic, the scholarship will allow Bulgaria native Ivanova to pursue her career goal by supporting her studies on European politics and society at Oxford. “Daniela came straight to Wesleyan from a high school in a remote Bulgarian provincial town,” says Peter Rutland,…
For 10 weeks, Eve Mayberger ’10 removed harmful matting of two Everett Shinn illustrations, conserved a William de Leftwich Dodge oil painting from 1916, X-rayed a basket made entirely of burrs and cleaned and documented an outdoor statue made of earthenware. As a recipient of a Wesleyan University Summer Experience Grant, Mayberger had the opportunity to get hands-on experience at the Smithsonian American Art Museum-Lunder Conservation Center where she worked 40 hours a week, unpaid, as an art conservation intern. The Summer Experience Grants are available to undergraduates who have completed their sophomore year. Awards are made up to $4,000…
From the day Carl T. West ’11 arrived on Wesleyan's campus, he wanted to study the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. Although reluctant at first, Tsampikos Kottos, assistant professor of physics, welcomed the eager frosh to his "Complex Quantum Dynamics and Mesoscopic Phenomena" research group. "To be honest, Carl was a kind of an experiment, for me," Kottos says. "I usually take sophomores and above at my group, but Carl was so confident on what he wanted, so I decided to involve a freshman in our research. It was a good and decision." In the past two years, West wrote an article…