Month: September 2011

Free Lunch Voucher for meal with your profs

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Dear Students, 

In order to promote informal faculty-student interaction outside the classroom, I am pleased to announce the Daniel Family Commons Free Lunch Program.  We have provided each faculty member with vouchers that enable them to take small groups of students to lunch at the Daniel Family Commons in the Usdan Center.  My office is making these same vouchers available directly to you!  Each voucher covers the cost of lunch for a faculty member and up to three students. Vouchers will be good for the remainder of the current academic year. 

Please consider inviting your favorite faculty member to lunch, and stop by the Student Affairs Office (219 North College-see Lorna Scott) to pick up a voucher.

Bon appétit!  Dean Mike Whaley

 

Matthew Barney: Film Screening of Cremaster 4 & Drawing Restraint 10 — 9/27

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Film Screening: Matthew Barney

In association with Mixed Signals:  Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports on view at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery through October 23, 2011  http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/events.html#exhibitions.  Co-sponsored by ARHA and PHED.

Cremaster 4 (1994) and Drawing Restraint 10 (2005)

Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 7:30pm
Powell Family Cinema, Center for Film Studies

Winnerof the Guggenheim Museum’s inaugural Hugo Boss Award (1996), Matthew Barney entered the arts world to almost instant controversy and success after he graduated from Yale University in 1991. Known for his intermingling of sports and art, his Cremaster films are a series of visually extravagant works that feature Mr. Barney in myriad roles, including characters as diverse as a satyr, a magician, a ram, Harry Houdini and even the infamous murdererGary Gilmore. The ongoing Drawing Restraint series was started in 1987 as a studio experiment, built upon the athletic model of development in which growth occurs only through restraint (i.e., literally restraining the body while attempting to make a drawing). Drawing Restraint 10 features Mr. Barney jumping on a trampoline which has been set at an angle, attempting to draw two linked field emblems on the ceiling.

Co-sponsored by Film Studies

WIRA: “Deciphering Pakistan and U.S.-Pakistan Relations” — 9/30-10/1 — limited seating, get tickets now!

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The Wesleyan International Relations Association invites you to its 2011 Conference,

“Deciphering Pakistan and US-Pakistan Relations”

organized in collaboration with

Wesleyan South Asian Studies Faculty and Wesleyan Pakistan Flood Relief Initiative.

The conference includes panel discussions, a key note talk,

 a sufi-rock concert by Junoon and a movie screening of Ramchand Pakistani. 

FREE TO ATTEND (Sept 30 – Oct 1). 

Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.

To get more details or to register, visit our website at www.wirac.org. 

Limited seats available

The conference aims to increase understanding and awareness about Pakistan from its culture to its politics, and US-Pak relations. The conference’s speakers are among the top commentators, officials and scholars on Pakistan and US-Pakistan relations, and the event will be open to the students, faculty and the larger public.

Panelists and guest speakers include:

– Shahid Javed Burki (Former Vice President of World Bank and Former Finance Minister of Pakistan) 

– Stanley Wolpert (Emeritus professor of History in University of California, LA, focuses on political and intellectual history of modern south asia)

– Najam Sethi (the editor-in-chief of The Friday Times and of Geo News in Pakistan. He is the only Asian journalist to receive three international press freedom awards in a decade).

– Ambassador Howard B. Schaffer (Former Ambassador of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh; spent 36 years of foreign service career focusing on US relations with South Asia)

– Asim Khwaja (the Sumitomo-FASID Professor of International Finance and Development at the Harvard Kennedy School and the faculty chair of the MPA/ID program).       

– Humeira Iqtidar (Research fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies and at Cambridge University. She focuses on secularism, feminism and Islamism).

– Najeeb Ghauri (the founder, Chairman and CEO of NetSol Technologies, Inc, and Vice President of US-Pak Business Council)

Social Events:

– Junoon Concert by Salman Ahmed. Junoon is a sufi rock band from Pakistan and is considered one of Pakistan’s most successful band; the Q magazine regarded them as “One of the biggest bands in the world” and The New York Times called Junoon “the U2 of Pakistan.” Ahmed is the pioneer of Sufi rock, author of Rock n Roll Jihad and UN ambassador for peace (Sample Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQQLeB7efog)

– Ramchand Pakistani Screening and Q&A with director, Mehreen Jabbar. Ramchand Pakistani is a Pakistani film that tells a true story about a boy who inadvertently crosses the border between Pakistan and India and the following ordeal that his family has to go through. The film has won the Audience award at Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland. (Trailer: http://www.ramchandpakistani.com/Preview.htm) 

Seats are limited. So, please register through the Registration Form.

If you want to buy the tickets for the Concert, Lunch and/or Dinner with the speakers, please go through the Wesleyan Box Office, either in person at the Usdan Univeristy Center or online at http://purchase.tickets.com/buy/TicketPurchase?orgid=24317.  The tickets for the concert, lunch, and dinner are titled respectively, Junoon, Pakistani/Indian Lunch, and Dinner/Discussion With the Speakers.  Tickets are limited, so please make your purchase soon.

For the schedule, visit: http://wirac.org/schedule.php.  Proceeds from the conference will go to Wesleyan Pakistan Flood Relief Initiative. For more details, please contact our team at wira.conf@gmail.com.

Regards, Wesleyan International Relations Association

Celebrating Students ’13: Taryn Murray

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I spent my as an intern at the Pancreas Center at Columbia University Medical Center.  Part of my time was spent on the more administrative aspects of a hospital.  For example, I Collaborated with the Administrative Director of the Pancreas Center to develop new tools to enhance the patient experience, created a personalized patient brochure for the Pancreas Center’s new marketing initiative, and conducted an internal audit for multiple research trials at the Pancreas Center to maintain compliance with the IRB regulations.  However, I was able to spend some of my time there shadowing Dr. John Chabot (the Vice President of Columbia Doctors, Chief of the Division of GI/Endocrine Surgery, and the Executive Director of the Pancreas Center).  I had the opportunity to scrub in for multiple surgeries, including a distal pancreatectomy and a Whipple (the Whipple involves removal of the head of the pancreas, the duodenum, a portion of the stomach, as well as the gallbladder and a portion of the bile duct).  The Whipple that I watched him perform lasted fourteen hours, though I only viewed the first eight.  Watching Dr. Chabot perform surgery was truly inspiring.  His passion was contagious and it further confirmed my desire to pursue a career in medicine. 

 

New Electronic Major Certification Form Now Available

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The Registrar’s Office is pleased to announce the launch of a new electronic Major Certification Form.  This online form replaces the old paper Senior Concentration form. The only students still required to use the paper form are University majors and December Completions in the Class of 2012.  The link to the new online form is in your portfolio.

You can access the Major Certification Form link in the Wesleyan Career bucket in your portfolio.  When you click on the link you will be brought to a landing page where all of your majors are listed.  If your particular major has multiple tracks or concentrations, you will see a separate link for each.  Since departments/programs do not currently require you to officially identify which track or concentration you are pursuing, you can navigate between them and see how each is progressing.

This tool is designed to directly interface with your individual academic history which means that if you have taken a course that has been pre-identified by your major as satisfying a requirement, that course will automatically pre-populate on the form and a check box will appear next to the course.  If you wish to use that particular course to satisfy a requirement, you simply need to check the box, click submit, and the course will be applied.

There is also an “override” feature that allows you to propose a course outside of the pre-approved course list.  You can either choose a course already posted to your academic record from a drop-down menu, or type in free-form text explaining what you would like to offer for consideration.  Once you submit an override request, your advisor will be prompted to take an action similar to those currently being used in drop/add.  Your advisor will be able to “approve,” “disapprove,” or click “see me” in response to your individual request.

There are also “planning text” links built into the form to accommodate departments/programs that require their students to project out and inform their advisor of how they intend to fulfill the major.  Once submitted, the planning text boxes become part of the online form until you choose to update or delete them.

We envision the electronic Major Certification Form to be a useful planning tool when registering for courses.  Each requirement displayed on the form contains a hyperlink to a complete list of courses that have been pre-approved to satisfy that requirement.

You can begin working with this electronic form from the moment you are accepted into a major.  Please consult with your individual department/program for any form-related deadlines.  Seniors will be required to submit their final version of the form at the end of Drop/Add in their final semester of their senior year for degree certification.  Your department/program will use this form to certify that you have completed the requirements for the major, whereas a committee will certify that you have completed all university requirements.

We will be offering training on the Major Certification Form to juniors and seniors on the following dates:  

  • Wednesday, October 12 from 4:15-5:00pm in SHAN107
  • Monday, October 17 from 12:00-1:00pm in SHAN107

We have posted documentation and FAQs on the registrar’s website http://www.wesleyan.edu/registrar/general_information/major_certification.html.  If you have any questions regarding this new application, please contact Susan Krajewski at x2738 or skrajewski@wesleyan.edu.

FGSS Symposium: “Confronting Gender Violence” — 10/7

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Please join us on Friday, October 7, 2 pm – 5pm for the FGSS 2011 Annual Symposium “Confronting Gender Violence: The Personal and the Political,” to be held in Usdan 108.

Panelists will include:

Professor Cynthia Enloe “Wartime Violence Against Women: What Do Soldiers’ Rapes of Women ‘Over There’ Tell Us About Rape Here at Home?” Department of International Development, Community, and Environment and Women’s Studies, Clark University;

Andrea Ritchie “Racial Profiling and Police Brutality Against Women and LGBT People of Color”  Feminist lawyer, scholar and member of the National Collective of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, National Coordinator of the Color of Violence III and member of the editorial collective for Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology; and 

Karen Singleton “Transforming Campus Communities: Creating and Sustaining Comprehensive Responses to Sexual Assault and Intimate Partner Violence”  Director, Sexual Violence Response at Columbia Health, Columbia University, New York 

Sponsored by Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, the Office of Student Affairs, and the Office of Diversity and Institutional Partnerships.   Event Organizers: Associate Professors Anu Sharma and Mary-Jane Rubenstein.

The event is free and open to the public.  For more information, please contact Jennifer Enxuto in the FGSS Office at x3296 or Jennifer Tucker at x5389.

 

 

Durham County Fair — 9/22-25

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CHECK OUT THE LONGEST RUNNING VOLUNTEER COUNTY FAIR IN THE COUNTRY!! — September 22 – 25, 2011

In 1916 the Durham Fair began a tradition. That tradition continues today during the last full weekend in September when the fairgrounds come alive and magically transform into Connecticut’s largest agricultural fair. Come visit the Durham Fair and you’ll see what a real fair is all about. Live entertainment, rides and games on the Midway, first-class animal competitions and discovery events on the Corn Stalk Stage. Along with a trove of crafts, exhibits, shopping and fun food. Yum! The Durham Fair is easy to reach yet hard to leave. We know you will have a great time!

The Durham Fair is owned and operated by the Durham Agricultural Fair Association, Inc., and is a private, not-for-profit corporation. The Durham Fair is the largest fair in North America managed entirely by unpaid volunteers. For more information click http://www.durhamfair.com/.

Note from Dean Brown: Headliners are KC and the Sunshine Band (a little retro disco anyone?) on Sunday night, Blues Traveler with harp afficionado, John Popper, on Saturday night, and Steel Magnolia on Sunday afternoon. There is an entrance fee for the fair whether you go day or night, so check that out on their website as well. Great rides, fair food, music, and exhibits of all types. Don’t miss this New England county fair!

Molecular Biophysics & Biological Chemistry Retreat — Thurs., 9/22

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We invite you to the 12th Annual Molecular Biophysics and Biological Chemistry Retreat to be held on Thursday, September 22, 2011 at the Wadsworth Mansion.  The retreat will feature four speakers from Wesleyan University, including two new faculty colleagues: Christina Othon (Physics) and Ruth Johnson (Biology). In addition, students in the Molecular Biophysics program will present posters on their research.

The keynote speaker for the retreat is Professor Vern L. Schramm from Albert Einstein College of Medicine; http://www.einstein.yu.edu/biochemistry/profile.asp?id=7856<http://rutchem.rutgers.edu/?q=node/54>  Professor Schramm investigates enzymatic transition state structures to enable development of powerful drugs against cancer and other diseases.

Molecular Biophysics is an interdisciplinary program that has been supported by an NIH training grant for over 25 years. The retreat is made possible by support from the training grant, Chemistry and MB&B departments.

Contact Professors David Beveridge, Ishita Mukerji, Manju Hingorani, or Erika Taylor with any questions.