Roth on Wesleyan

Students are winding up midterms, writing papers and preparing for performances. The semester has been growing more intense, and that’s why it’s good to have a moment to catch one’s breath during Fall Break. It’s just a couple of days tacked onto this weekend, but for professors and their students it offers a happy holiday before the pressures of the second half of the term kick in.

Lots of folks, though, don’t get much of a break at all. Tennis, cross-country, volleyball and football will all be busy competing. The gridiron crew heads back to Maine after earning a tough victory there last week. Sebastian Aguirre ’14 earned special team player of the week honors for kicking the winning field goal with less than a minute to play. Coach Whalen’s boys are undefeated going into the fourth week of the season, something we haven’t seen around here for many a year. Wes plays Bates this weekend, and they promise to be a challenging opponent.

Here on campus, Dean of the Arts and Humanities Andrew Curran is welcoming more than 100 18th century scholars for a conference that focuses on the Enlightenment. I understand they kicked things off with a plenary talk on the banjo! There are many people on campus getting ready for the Navaratri festival, which gets underway on Wed, October 16. That will lead us right into Homecoming Family Weekend!

I’ll be spending time meeting with alumni and parents, raising money for scholarships and the curriculum. Some of those meetings will be with Jeanine Basinger, recently singled out in Variety’s “Women’s Impact Report” as one of only two academics for her work at “helping turn [Wesleyan's] film program into one of the best in the nation, as well as developing some of the industry’s most powerful talent, with protégés like Joss Whedon ’87, Paul Weitz ’88 and Alex Kurtzman ’95.” I’m star struck!

The extended Wesleyan family loves hearing news from campus. I hope to be able to return with some news (and support) from them!