THISISWHY – Page 5

#THISISWHY In this Q&A, we speak with Peter Blasser, a music graduate student. Q: What was your first experiences with music? When did you decide that music would be your life work? A: I was in elementary school in the 1980s when music programs were still part of the public school curriculum. I remember that those music classes were not very noteworthy at the time. In middle school I took a wood shop class and liked working with the tools. After taking classical civilization classes, I started to triangulate all three — I wanted to work with wood to make ancient Greek…

#THISISWHY About 30 Wesleyan students and faculty gathered for a Wesleyan Women in Science (WesWIS) Tea Reception Feb. 19 at the Wasch Center. Women in Science is a student group composed of undergraduates, post-docs, staff and faculty dedicated to issues affecting women in science. The group is open to all majors and genders. During the gathering, guest speaker Michelle Francl, professor of chemistry on the Clowes Fund for Science and Public Policy at Bryn Mawr College, spoke to the group about physicist and chemist Marie Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. Francl handed out copies of her commentary titled…

#THISISWHY In this Q&A, we speak with Hannah Steinberg from the Class of 2016. Q: Hannah, you studied abroad through the School for Field Studies’ (SFS) Costa Rica program in Spring 2014. Why did you choose this program and why did you decide to conduct research during your study abroad experience? A: I chose SFS Costa Rica because I wanted to go to Latin America to improve my Spanish skills and get practical hands-on experience in biological science. Another cool part of the program was that it was situated on a sustainable orange and mango farm in central Costa Rica,…

#THISISWHY On Feb. 3, President Michael Roth gave a talk on “How to Destroy Liberal Education” in Memorial Chapel. Since the publication of his book, Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters (Yale University Press, 2014), Roth has been speaking about liberal education to Wesleyan alumni and many others at various venues around the country. At this event, he spoke to students, staff and faculty about the relevance of the kind of education offered so compellingly at Wesleyan. A video and more photos of the event are below: (more…)

#THISISWHY Research Professor Ellen Thomas grasps a glass-enclosed sample of hundreds of microfossils, each a white fleck of limestone barely visible to the human eye. "The first time students look at these they say, 'they all look the same to me,' but in reality, they are all have very different shapes," Thomas says. "Even under a microscope, it can be difficult for a new eye to see the differences, but each species has its own shape; some have a much more open, light structure because they lived floating in the oceans close to the surface. Others have denser shells and lived on the bottom of the ocean,…

#THISISWHY For many years, pilots in the Air Force, scientists conducting research with high-powered lasers, and others have struggled to protect their eyes and sensitive equipment from being damaged by intense laser pulses. In many cases, this was achieved by intense power filters, which offered protection, but self-destructed. Now they have a solution, which provides protection without damaging the filters themselves, thanks to a research collaboration between the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and a team of researchers in Wesleyan's Physics Department. The research, led by Tsampikos Kottos, the Douglas J. and Midge Bowen Bennet Associate Professor of Physics, is included…

#THISISWHY In this Q&A meet Alicia Gansley from the Class of 2015. (Story by Rosy Capron '14, civic engagement fellow at Wesleyan’s Allbritton Center.) Q: Alicia, what are you majoring in? A: I'm majoring in computer science and I'm also completing the economics minor and Civic Engagement Certificate. Q: Last fall, you brought your programming knowledge to COMP 342: Software Engineering, a service-learning course where groups of computer science majors develop special projects for local organizations. Tell us more about your project. A: My group made a web application for Green Street Teaching and Learning Center to use to sign students up for one of…

#THISISWHY Linda Hurteau, library assistant, was recently presented with a Cardinal Achievement Award for her work in anticipation of moving the Art Library collections into Olin Library. Hurteau created a plan to make space for and integrate transferred books from Olin Library into the Science Library. She planned the project, supervised student employees to do a major shift of the Science Library’s monographic collection, and had the space allocated and ready when professional movers relocated the books. The planning work that Linda did resulted in significant savings to the library and the university. Hurteau also planned and initiated a project…

#THISISWHY In this Q&A meet Laila Samy from the Class of 2018. Q: You came to Wesleyan from your hometown of Cairo, Egypt. Can you describe your life growing up in a foreign country? What was your secondary-school education like? A: Growing up in Egypt and going to school there made me feel very grateful because I had a great opportunity to both play squash and get a decent education which lead me to move on to the next experience which is completing my last two years of high school in the U.S. and that lead me to be able to…

#THISISWHY The Office of Human Resources presented three Cardinal Achievement Awards to University Relations staff in December 2014. Charles "Chuck" Fedolfi '90, director of annual giving, was honored for his work on Giving Tuesday, Dec. 2, when the Wesleyan community joined together in an unprecedented show of support for students. Led by Fedolfi, a team of colleagues and volunteers inspired alumni, parents, faculty and staff to make 2,059 gifts totaling over $500,000 – far exceeding the original goal of 1,000 gifts (more…)

#THISISWHY (by Christine Foster. Originally published in Wesleyan Magazine, Dec. 10, 2014) Professor of Art Tula Telfair’s epic and massive landscape paintings fill the walls of Wesleyan’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. They call forth our memories of the most stunning scenic vistas—craggy mountains topped by threatening clouds; impossibly moist, green valleys; icebergs jutting hundreds of feet out of the freezing aqua waters below. From a distance, they appear to be photographs, but they aren’t. These views don’t even exist, except in Telfair’s mind and on her canvases. Still—even knowing they are imagined— the viewer is tempted to look for signs of…

#THISISWHY On Giving Tuesday, Dec. 2, the Wesleyan community joined together in an unprecedented show of support for students. More than 2,000 Cardinals made gifts totaling more than $500,000 — far exceeding the original goal of 1,000 gifts for the day — and setting a record for the largest number of gifts Wesleyan has ever received in one day. The university thanks all the members of our community who made gifts, the hundreds of volunteers who gave their time and passion, and Catherine Klema P'13 and David Resnick '81, P'13 who provided an inspirational challenge: when Wesleyan reached its goal…

Graduate Student Blasser Hand Crafts Analog Instruments

Women in Science Gather for Tea Reception, Female Scientists Discussion

Steinberg ’16 Studies Effects of Artificial Feeders on Hummingbird Diversity, Interactions in Costa Rica

President Roth Speaks about Liberal Education (with video)

Thomas Uses CT Scans, Computer-Aided Visualizations to Study and Teach Microfossils

Wesleyan Physics Lab, U.S. Air Force Partner on Groundbreaking Research

CS Major Gansley ’15 Hopes to Use Programming Skills to Help with Good Causes

Hurteau Earns Cardinal Achievement Award for Planning Library Project

Samy ’18 Begins Collegiate Squash Career with 12-0 Record

Fedolfi, Kini, Kaufman Receive Cardinal Achievement Awards

Telfair’s Imaginary Landscapes Garner Attenton from Artists, Scientists Alike

Record Support for Students on Giving Tuesday 2014