Panel

Teaching Evaluations Panel — Mon., May 4, 7-8:30 p.m.

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Teaching Evaluations Panel

Monday, May 4 at 7-8:30pm in Usdan 110     *desserts and coffee*

Hosted by Female Economists of Wesleyan. This event is co-sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs, Society for Underrepresented Students in STEM, Women of Color in STEM Forum, and Wesleyan Women in Science.

PANELISTS:

Professor Joyce Jacobsen (Dean of Social Sciences, 2015-2016 Interim Provost), Professor Lisa Dierker (Psychology, Inaugural Chair of QAC), and Professor Brian Stewart (Physics), Professor Ellen Nerenberg (future Dean of Arts and Humanities).

What’s the deal with Teaching Evaluations? Do you have questions or concerns about how teachers or classes are evaluated at Wesleyan? Have you ever wondered how your evaluations at the end of the semester impact the professors and the structure of the classes that you take? Do you have strong opinions about professor tenure? Would you like to see your classes taught in a more interactive and less formulaic way? If you want to voice these and more questions, please attend the Teaching Evaluations Panel! 

The discussion will surround the current problems with Teaching Evaluations, faculty and administration’s continuing efforts to improve upon them, and on the role of course evaluations in those teaching evaluations. We want to raise student awareness about the problems with current evaluations and their effects on all of our academic experiences. Plus, we want to spur greater student involvement in Teaching Evaluation reform. Each panelist will speak for 5-10min, and then we will open the panel up to audience Q/A. We’ll have a list of questions ready just in case folks are shy, plus audience members will be able to write down questions to put in a friendly fish bowl.

 

“RISK” Symposium Sat., May 2 — 11 a.m. all day

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The Symposium is a day-long interdisciplinary critique, which:

Prompts the exchange of ideas and methods of inquiry between students and faculty across the curriculum;

Stimulates creativity and innovation; and

Serves as a platform for juniors to develop senior research topics.

Why Risk?

Notions of vulnerability, security, and susceptibility are central to the ways we think and avenues of inquiry. “Risk” can apply to issues of statistical probability, genetic citizenship and responsibility, immigration and the precarity of citizenship, or climate change. We are eager to engage in an interdisciplinary conversation that honors these dimensions and complexities from many different vantage points and on a variety of scales.

Symposium will be held on Saturday, May 2, beginning at 11 a.m.  Lunch and dinner will be provided. The event is free, but registration is required. Email Gabriel Frankel (gfrankel@wesleyan.edu) to register.

For more information: Symposium Schedule

 

Drugs, Harm & the Campus: “Drug Policy, Regional and National–The Policy Debate” April 28, 8 p.m.

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Drug Policy, Regional and National–The Policy Debate:  What is to be done?

The last of the three drug panels inspired by the Molly incident and arrests will take place April 28, 8PM, in Shanklin 107.  This panel focuses on regional and national policy, and panelists are very significant people in the field:

Ethan Nadelmann,  founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organization in the United States promoting alternatives to the war on drugs.  Described by Rolling Stone as “the point man” for drug policy reform efforts and “the real drug czar,” Nadelmann is widely regarded as the outstanding proponent of drug policy reform both in the United States and abroad.

Susan O’Connor, Program Director of Phoenix House Outpatient Services in Springfield, MA.  O’Connor is the author of a widely-read piece on Wesleyan, “Missing the Point with Molly” http://www.phoenixhouse.org/news-and-views/our-perspectives/missing-the-point-with-molly/?utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=tweet&utm_campaign=social.

Mike Lawlor, Under Secretary for Criminal Justice Policy and Planning. Lawlor is among the most influential members of Governor Malloy’s staff regarding drug policies in Connecticut.

Moderator:  Rob Rosenthal, Director, Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life

Post-Wes Journeys: A Panel with Wes Alums — Thurs., April 23 6 p.m.

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POST-WES JOURNEYS:

a panel discussion with Wesleyan alumni

 Are you thinking about your future career or considering going to grad/med/law school? Do you have a lot of questions about life post-Wes? Do you enjoy FREE MONDO PIZZA?

 Join the woodframe & Fauver CAs at the Alumni Career Panel where you can ask Wesleyan alumni all of your questions!

Thursday, APRIL 23rd, 6pm – 7:30pm

41 Wyllys, room 115

 Our awesome panelists have already made the transition from Wesleyan into the real world, so they will be able to provide some guidance for us students. Plus, most of them are interested in hiring Wes students after graduation! Come to learn, ask questions, and network with the following alums:

 Melissa McCaw ’01, Budget Director at the University of Hartford
Brian O’Donnell ’79, Attorney at Reid and Riege
Kevin Egolf ’05, Managing Director of Business Operations at Iroquois Valley Farms
Michael Andolina ’05, MBA Candidate at the Yale School of Management
Win Whitcomb ’84, Chief Medical Officer at Remedy Partners 

See you there!

 

Second Panel on “Drugs, Harm and the Campus:” “The Physiology of Drugs” — Tonight, April 15, 8 p.m.

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THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DRUGS

Wednesday, April 15, 8 p.m., Memorial Chapel

What is actually happening inside your body?

Mike Robinson, Assistant Professor of Psychology and of Neuroscience & Behavior

Stefanie Jones, Drug Policy Alliance

Mark Neavyn, M.D., Director, Medical Toxicology, Department of Emergency Medicine, Hartford Hospital

Moderator: Ishita Mukerji, Dean of the Natural Sciences and Mathematics

CAAS Distinguished Lecture: “The Geography of Resistance”–Dr. Cheryl LaRoche, March 27, 4:15 p.m.

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Please join us on

Friday, 27 March at 4:15 p.m.

for the

21st Annual CAAS Distinguished Lecture

Reception to follow! 

This year’s speaker is Dr. Cheryl LaRoche of the American Studies Department at the University of Maryland, College Park.  An award-winning archaeologist and historian, Dr. LaRoche teaches in the American Studies Department at the University of Maryland and has been influential in the archaeology of African American sites. She uses powerful interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary rubrics in her work to define and to reclaim 19th century African American cultural landscapes and their relationships to the Underground Railroad.  Her scholarship and practice combines law, history, oral history, archaeology, geography and material culture and she has been honored for her exemplary work in the field of African American archaeology.  A project historian for the Smithsonian’s newest museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, she also has worked closely with National Park Service, the National Forest Service, the African Meeting Houses in Boston and Nantucket, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore, and a number of other vital historical sites and projects.

AFAM lecture--3-27-15

 

 

CAAS Day-long Symposium: “Within Our Sites: Legacies and Imperatives of African American Historic Places” — Sat., March 28

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The CAAS Distinguished Lecture will lead into the Saturday, March 28 CAAS day-long symposium Within Our Sites: Legacies and Imperatives of African American Historic Places.  The symposium is inspired by the Beman Triangle that is part of our Wesleyan campus and that also stands as one of the  nation’s earliest-known African American planned communities.  Beman family members were at the forefront of many nineteenth-century religious, educational, social, and political movements and they had strong ties to the communities of color here in Middletown, Colchester, New Haven, Hartford, as well as Boston.  We look forward to a day of illuminating presentations and inspiring discussions. We hope to see you in CAAS!

AFAM Symposium 3-27-15

Africanizing Technology Conference — March 5 & 6

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This is an exciting conference on campus that will be of special interest to students who are exploring global studies, development, or science, technology, and medicine from a global perspective in their studies.  The keynote lecture is by Dr. Julie Livingston (Rutgers University), who is a recent MacArthur Genius Grant winner and author of Improvising Medicine: An African Oncology Ward in an Emerging Cancer Epidemic (Duke UP, 2012).  Her talk and the conference panels are open to the public.

Africanizing Technology

Wesleyan University 

 Thursday, March 5th

Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, Room 311

 

5:00pm            Keynote Lecture: Julie Livingston (Rutgers University)

“Pharmaceutical Technologies and the Nature of Efficacy in Botswana”

 

Friday, March 6th:  Conference Panels

Usdan University Center, Room 110

9:00am             Panel I: Technologies of Identity and Knowledge Production

Drew Thompson, Bard College–“Disputes over the Past: The biometric passport and studio photography in Mozambique, 1980-Recent Times”

Crystal Biruk, Oberlin College–“Standards and ‘gifts’: Soap as improvisational technology in Malawian survey research worlds”

Summer Wood, New York University–“Technologies of Identity in Tanzania”

Panel Chair: Jennifer Tucker, Wesleyan University

10:45am          Panel II:  Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Development        

Susan P. Wyche, Michigan State–“‘If God Gives Me the Chance I will Design my Own Phone’: Rural Kenyan Repairers and Reimagining Mobile Phone Design”

Sean Jacobs, The New School and “Africa is a Country” Blog–“Shifting African Digital Landscapes”

Gloria Emeagwali, Connecticut State University– “Interconnections between female entrepreneurship and technological innovation in the Nigerian  Context”

Solen Feyissa, University of Minnesota–“Contextualizing Educational Uses of Information Communication Technologies inside and outside of Ethiopian Classrooms”

Panel Chair: Mike Nelson, Wesleyan University

1:45pm            Panel III:  Imagining New Technological Cultures

Laura Ann Twagira, Wesleyan University–Becoming Master’s of Nature: Women’s Transformation of a Colonial Irrigation Project in French  West Africa”

Joshua Grace, University of South Carolina–“Tinkering, Techne, and Cars: The Africanization of a Hindi-named European Technology”

Mahriana Rofheart, Georgia Gwinnett College–“Fictional Technologies of Collaboration”

Jennifer Hart, Wayne State University–“Of Mammy Trucks and Men: African Automobility and the Politics of Development in Colonial Ghana”

Panel Chair: Heidi Gengenbach, University of Massachusetts Boston

3:15pm            Coffee Break

3:30pm            Panel IV: Technological Cultures of Health and Healing

Anne Pollock, Georgia Tech–“Africanizing synthetic chemistry?: Hope in Drug Discovery ‘by and for’ Africa”

Donna Patterson, Wellesley College–“Pharmacy, Biomedicine, and Gender in Senegal”

Tara Dosumu Diener, University of Michigan–“Practice Makes Perfect: Signal, Noise, and Clinical Imagination in the Maternity Ward”

Sarah Hardin, St. Anselm College–“Modern Potions: The Social and Health Repercussions of Pesticides in Senegal and the Francophone World”

Panel Chair: Paul Erickson, Wesleyan University

5:30pm            Closing Discussion

For more information please see the conference website:  africanizingtechnology.conference.wesleyan.edu

Or, contact the conference organizer Prof. Laura Ann Twagira (ltwagira@wesleyan.edu)

 

MLK Panel–Friday, 3:14 p.m., The Chapel

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Dr. Martin Luther King Commemoration  —   “We shall overcome:  How far have we come?”

All members of the Wesleyan and greater Middletown community are invited to a panel presentation and discussion to explore various perspectives about the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City to commemorate the life, civil rights and social justice legacy that Dr. King has left. The commemoration will be held in Wesleyan’s Memorial Chapel on Friday, January 30, at 3:15 pm. This is a ticketed, free event. Tickets to the event can be secured at the University Box Office.

The event will include music and an audio clip of Dr. King’s baccalaureate address to the Wesleyan community 51 years ago, followed by the panel presentation and discussion.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Antonio Farias, Vice President for Equity & Inclusion/Title IX Officer, and will include the following panelists:

Riché J. Daniel Barnes, Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies, Smith College

Dreisen Heath ’15, African American Studies and FGSS major, Wesleyan University

Kiese Laymon, Associate Professor of English, Vassar College

Chief Joseph Dooley, President of the CT Police Chiefs Association

The program will be followed by a brief dessert reception. Later in the evening there will be a series of discussions to be held in various locations on campus and a student-coordinated open-mic at 8:00 pm in the West College Cafe.  Details will follow regarding the evening events.

Film Crit Panel with A.O. Scott, moderator: Criticism Now! A Conversation on the State of the Art–this evening, 8 p.m.

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Come hear A. O. Scott, Distinguished Professor of Film Criticism at Wesleyan and a chief film critic at The New York Times moderate A.O.Scott 01a discussion about the state of criticism today with panel guests Laura Miller, journalist and book critic, co-founder of Salon.com, and author of The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia; Wesley Morris, film critic for Grantland, former critic for The Boston Globe, and 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner in criticism; and Emily Nussbaum, television critic for The New Yorker, and 2014 ASME winner for Best Columns and Commentary.

Date: Tuesday, November 11 Time: 8 PM Place: Center for Film Studies, Goldsmith Family Cinema