How to Choose a (Our) University

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Last year in mid April I posted a blog about the challenges of choosing a college or university now that students know into which schools they have been accepted. I thought it might be useful to re-post, with a few revisions.

The thick envelopes (or weighty emails) arrived a couple of weeks ago, and the month of April is decision time. Of course, for many (especially this year) the decision will be made on an economic basis. Which school has given the most generous financial aid package? Wesleyan is one of a small number of schools that admits students irrespective of their ability to pay and seeks to meet full financial need according to a formula developed over several years. There are some schools with larger endowments that can afford to be even more generous than Wes, but there are hundreds (thousands?) of others that are unable even to consider meeting financial need over four years of study.

After answering the question of which schools one can afford, how else does one decide where best to spend one’s college years? Of course, size matters.  Some students are looking for a large university in an urban setting where the city itself plays an important role in one’s education. In recent years, campuses in New York and Boston, for example, have become increasingly popular. But if one seeks small classes and strong, personal relationships with faculty, then liberal arts schools, which pride themselves on providing rich cultural and social experiences on a residential campus, are especially compelling. You can be on a campus with a human scale and still have plenty of things to do. Wesleyan is somewhat larger than most liberal arts colleges but much smaller than the urban or land grant universities. We feel that this gives our students the opportunity to choose a broad curriculum and a variety of cultural activities on campus, while still being small enough to encourage regular, sustained relationships among faculty and students.

All the selective small liberal arts schools boast of having a faculty of teacher/scholars, of a commitment to research and interdisciplinarity, and of encouraging community and service. So what sets us apart from one another after taking into account size, location, and financial aid packages? What are students trying to see when they visit Amherst and Wesleyan, or Tufts and Middlebury?

Knowing that these schools all provide a high quality, broad and flexible curriculum with strong teaching, and that the students all have displayed great academic capacity, prospective students are trying to discern the personalities of each school. They are trying to imagine themselves on the campus, among the people they see, to get a feel for the chemistry of the place — to gauge whether they will be happy there. Hundreds of visitors will be coming to Wesleyan this weekend for WesFest (our annual program for admitted students). They will go to classes and athletic contests, musical performances and parties. And they will ask themselves: Would I be happy at Wesleyan?

I hope our visitors get a sense of the personality of the school that I so admire and enjoy. I hope they feel the exuberance and ambition of our students, the intelligence and care of our faculty, the playful yet demanding qualities of our community. I hope our visitors can sense our commitment to creating a diversity in which difference is embraced and not just tolerated, and to public service that is part of one’s education and approach to life.

We all know that Wesleyan is hard to get into (even more difficult this year!). But even in the group of highly selective schools, Wes is not for everybody. We aspire to be a community committed to boldness as well as to rigor, to idealism as well as to effectiveness. Whether in the sciences, arts, humanities or social sciences, our faculty and students are dedicated to explorations that invite originality as well as collaboration. The camaraderie around the completion of senior theses this week says a lot about who we are. We know how to work hard, but we also know how to enjoy the work we choose to do. That’s been magically appealing to me for more than 30 years. I bet the magic will enchant many of our visitors, too.

[tags]liberal arts college, WesFest, Tufts, Amherst, Middlebury, campus feel[/tags]

Recognition, Acknowledgment and Celebration

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Today I attended the luncheon to acknowledge the winners of the Roger Maynard Scholar-Athlete Award. Beth Kenworthy (Soccer – Neuroscience & Behavior), Clare Smith (Lacrosse – Science in Society), Jory Kahan (Soccer – Neuroscience & Behavior), and Keisuke Yamashita (Soccer — Math/Economics) were this year’s winners. Their stellar academic work and extraordinary athletic performance were described by their coaches and academic advisors. Congratulations to these wonderful Wes students and their families!


This weekend I’m sorry to miss The Mystery of Irma Veep, directed by Professor Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento. The comedy is part of actor Mark McCloughan’s senior thesis, and I’ve heard great things about it. The show is in the Patricelli ’92 Theater. Speaking of theses, I know that many will be burning the midnight oil over the weekend. Good luck to you, as well as to those giving recitals (like Vicki Cheng, who will be singing German Lieder and Jazz Saturday afternoon in Russell House).

Staying with the theme of recognition and acknowledgment, Kari and I will join in the celebration of the wedding of my esteemed assistant, Joan Adams, to her long-time partner Mary Rustico. Joan has been part of the Wesleyan family for years, and we are delighted to join with her and Mary as they make their vows (and dance up a storm!).

[tags]Roger Maynard Scholar-Athlete Award, Clare Smith, Beth Kenworthy, Jory Kahan, Keisuke Yamashita, Mark McCloughan, Vicki Cheng, Joan Adams, Mary Rustico, senior theses, The Mystery of Irma Veep, German Lieder[/tags]

A Jewel of an Archive

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One of the great resources on the campus is surely the Ogden and Mary Louise Reid Cinema Archives. Although the fame of our undergraduate film major is well known to the Wes family, only those with a really serious interest in cinema scholarship may know about the treasures right here on campus.

The Cinema Archives are the home for some stellar collections, and I can start by mentioning three major American directors. Frank Capra, Elia Kazan and Martin Scorsese have deposited archives here, and scholars from around the world come to Middletown to consult them. Head Archivist Joan Miller recently told me about some of the work going on in the Reid Archives.

This year marked the Centenary of the birth of Elia Kazan, and works by several researchers who came to the Archives will be published. Knopf will bring out a collection of Selected Letters, and James T. Fisher’s new interpretation of On the Waterfront will be published by Cornell University Press. Our own faculty member Lisa Dombrowski has edited a volume on Kazan that will be released by Wesleyan University Press in a few months.

Frank Capra’s Collection is a key part of Wesleyan’s archive. Recently, filmmaker Chip Hackler, another visitor to the Archives, put together a film about Capra’s anxious reaction to the success of his great comedy, It Happened One Night. Researchers interested in television in the 1950s have been working through the Omnibus Collection. Anna McCarthy’s new book on media and citizenship, which draws on this collection, will be published this year by the Free Press. Biographical studies of Scorsese have been started here in Middletown, as have reconsiderations of multi-talented director and artist John Waters.

bergman

Finally, I should mention the Ingrid Bergman/Roberto Rossellini collection, which has continued to inspire research (and more than a little awe). Filmmakers and biographers visit Wes to consult the extensive paper and photographic archive. If they are lucky, they may even get an opportunity to visit with Jeanine Basinger, who has carefully stewarded our donors and added another jewel to Wesleyan’s crown.

[tags]Ogden and Mary Louise Reid Cinema Archives, Frank Capra, Elia Kazan, Martin Scorsese, Lisa Dombrowski, On the Waterfront, It Happened One Night, Ingrid Bergman/Roberto Rossellini Collection[/tags]

Teaching, Research and a Busy Weekend

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Yesterday felt like the first warm spring day since students returned from Spring Break, and it was great to see Andrus Field and Foss Hill fill up in the late afternoon. I’d begun the day with a visit to our pilot program at the Cheshire State Correctional Institution. VP Sonia Manjon and I visited Melanye Price’s class in political science, and I was struck by the seriousness with which the men were approaching complex issues in American political culture.  Russell Perkins ’09, who helped get this program underway and continues to coordinate it, met us at the prison. It was important to see first-hand some of the issues that arise in a program that teaches liberal arts classes in correctional institutions.

For the last year or so Provost Joe Bruno and I have sponsored talks by faculty for their colleagues across the campus. The faculty lunch lecture yesterday was delivered with panache by Stewart Novick, one of our star professors of chemistry. Stew’s subject was astrochemistry, and he did a masterful job of explaining the “rich chemistry” of dense interspatial dust clouds — even to someone as chemistry-challenged as I! I was especially impressed by the interdisciplinary importance of the work for astronomy, physics and cosmology. The collaboration on this sophisticated research by undergraduate and graduate students was yet another sign of how our science programs are dedicated to the scholar-teacher model at the highest level.

Busy weekend on the horizon at Wesleyan. The senior theses art exhibitions at Zilkha gallery are always worth checking out. This week Sarah Abbott, Julian Wellisz, Rachel Schwerin, Megumu Tagami and Yang Li have their recent work on display.

Baseball hosts Middlebury today and Saturday afternoon, and the softball team is at home against Hamilton. Men’s lacrosse is at home against the always strong Tufts team. Come out and support the Cardinals!

[tags]Cheshire State Correctional Institution, Russell Perkins ’09, Provost Joe Bruno, Stewart Novick, senior art theses[/tags]

Home Games, Great Performances

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This is the first weekend in more than a month that I’ve been able to be on campus. I thought it would be pretty quiet, but it was anything but. The excitement came through the great performances of our lacrosse, baseball and softball teams, all of which turned in outstanding efforts here at home.

The baseball team looked extremely impressive in taking a double-header from Amherst. Pitchers Brett Yarusi ’12 and Derek Lukin ’13 kept a lid on the powerful team from the north, and Chris Bonti ’13 smashed a three-run homer. The game ended with a perfect double-play to snuff out an Amherst rally.

Great endings also ruled in men’s lacrosse and women’s softball. The lacrosse team had an improbable come-from-behind win over Bates, with three goals in the final minutes. When Teddy Citrin ’12 scooped in the game-winner with just over 3 seconds left, we all went wild.

We did the same on the frozen field as the Wes Women beat Bates in extra-innings in game 1 of a double-header. Each time Bates went ahead, the Cardinals came up with our own great plays. Meaghan Dendy ’10, who always comes through in the clutch, scampered home on a wild pitch. In the second game, Wes erased a 12 run deficit and Dana Levy ’12 punched in the winning run in the 7th inning.

From athletics to the arts, this has been an exciting couple of days. But no rest for the weary. Kari and I are looking forward to hearing Hansel Tan ’10 and the Wesleyan Ensemble Singers tomorrow at 8 pm in Memorial Chapel. It should be a great evening of adventurous music. There are sure to be more great endings!

[tags]Meaghan Dendy ’10, Dana Levy ’12, Brett Yarusi ’12, Derek Lukin ’13, Chris Bonti ’13, Teddy Citrin ’12, Hansel Tan ’10, Wesleyan Ensemble Singers[/tags]

Spring is Finally Here, Get Ready for Summer and Fall

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Although we are just in the thick of the spring semester,students next week will be asked to plan their classes for the coming semester. This year we have the added choices offered by Wesleyan’s Summer Session, which runs from June 7 – July 9. The program not only promises opportunities to take required classes (like pre-med staples Calculus and Organic Chemistry) in small courses with great faculty, but it also includes studies in financial analysis, economic theory, photography and fiction writing. I am particularly excited about the “Institutes” that combine two related classes: Computer Science and Experimental Music; Cultural and Biological Approaches to Psychopathology; Acting and Directing. Students will receive two course credits for completing the Institutes in the early part of the summer. See http://www.wesleyan.edu/summer/courses.html for more information.

The curriculum at Wesleyan is always evolving, and I recently received lists of new courses from our Divisional Deans.

  • Biol 173: Global Change and Infectious Disease — Fred Cohan is currently teaching this new Gen Ed course, which comes out of his research interests in the evolution of bacterial species (and involves a significant dance component!).
  • Chem 378:  Materials Chemistry and Nanoscience — Brian Northrop’s research is directed at understanding molecular interactions and self-assembly processes that might be used in nano-scale devices – e.g. molecular sensors or motors.
  • Psyc 392: Behavioral Methods in Affective Neuroscience- Charles Sanislow is currently teaching this course linked to his research in post-traumatic stress syndrome, depression and other affective disorders.

Assistant Professor Laura Stark, Science in Society Program, has proposed a course called Reading Medical Ethnography (a study of different ways of approaching the study of health and illness); Professor Ann duCille has proposed an African-American Studies class called Love in the Time of Slavery (drawing on songs, poetry, fiction, and examining representations of love, intimacy, and marriage in early African American literature); Assistant Professor Michael Nelson, has proposed Government, Global Environmental Politics (which covers a variety of environmental issues, along with the design and use of international institutions for managing cooperation and conflict on these issues). The Center for the Humanities will be sponsoring a group of courses examining Genealogies of Reason, with seminars on ghosts of the Enlightenment and the history of human rights.

I’ve developed a lecture course for the fall called The Modern and the Postmodern. We’ll read literature, philosophy and critical theory to try to better understand how the idea of the modern came to inform our sense of ourselves and of our history in the West.

The curriculum has been evolving and will continue to do so. We can thank our scholar-teacher model for that! It’s through their scholarship and creative practice that our professors develop new ideas that energize the classroom, and we are all the better for it, in every season!

[tags]Summer Session, “Institutes”, Wesleyan curriculum[/tags]

Quiet Campus….People Working

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I have been traveling for Wesleyan a lot recently, and it’s always good to return home to campus. During mid March, though, the place is startlingly  quiet. Many of the administrators take some vacation time before the final big push to Commencement, and faculty are busy grading papers or exams and trying to make progress on research projects. Looking out my office window toward Foss Hill, I see the physical plant staff (led by Dave Hall) getting the field ready for the baseball team, but otherwise there is  little visible activity.

But many students have been extremely busy during the March break. Let’s start with the athletes. Baseball is off to a great start, winning its first eight games against an impressive variety of opponents. Julian Sonnenfeld ’11 has been hitting up a storm, as has Talia Bernstein ’11 on the softball team. Softball also won its first eight games! The tennis teams are also starting off strong, with Genevieve Aniello ’13 for the women and Michael Piderit ’12 for the men having fine early seasons. The lacrosse teams have been hard at work, with Teddy Citrin ’12 for the men and Jess Chukwu ’11 and Erin McCarthy ’10 for the women playing like scoring machines. Crew is rowing back in CT after a very successful southern swing.

My athletic activities are just to keep the pounds off, and in the gym yesterday I ran into Greg Hurd ’10, who just finished a great wrestling career at Wesleyan. But no rest for the weary, as he’s now hard at work on his senior thesis in Earth and Environmental Science. Greg has spent a considerable amount of time doing fieldwork in the Southwest and is now writing up the results. There are many thesis writers on campus making the final push. Art projects will be going up soon, and I especially look forward to seeing Gregory James’s ’10 installation. Rebecca Krisel ’10 is writing on counter-insurgency, while Emma Van Susteren ’10 is focusing on the slow food movement. Kalen Flynn ’10 is writing about holocaust historiography and its effect on how we think about the representation of the past more generally. These are just a few of the theses that young scholars, artists, writers and scientists are busy bringing to completion. No spring break for them!

Not all senior projects take the form of theses. Some are writing stories, essays, or engaged in community service projects. Sam Hart is majoring in Chemistry and Molecular Biology, but he decided to do an art project that brings together his scientific and aesthetic interests. In addition to building the piece, he has written a computer program that will bring his sculpture to life through moving color field patterns. Check it out in the Zilkha Gallery in mid April.

Good work is its own reward, but sometimes there’s more.   Wes senior Liana Woskie has just won a Watson Fellowship ($25,000!) in support of her project entitled “Bringing Primary Healthcare Home: The Community Health Worker, Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Tanzania, Lesotho. In the words of  Cleveland Johnson, Director of the Watson Fellowship Program, “Watson Fellows are passionate learners, creative thinkers, and motivated self-starters who are encouraged to dream big but demonstrate feasible strategies for achieving their fellowship goals.”  No surprise to me that a Wes student is one of this year’s winners!

Congratulations to Liana and to all Wes students who are giving their all!

[tags]Julian Sonnenfeld ’11, Talia Bernstein ’11, Genevieve Aniello ’13, Michael Piderit ’12, Teddy Citrin ’12, Jess Chukwu ’11, Erin McCarthy ’10, Greg Hurd ’10, Gregory James ’10, Rebecca Krisel ’10, Emma Van Susteren ’10, Kalen Flynn ’10, Sam Hart ’10, Liana Woskie ’10, Watson Fellowship[/tags]

Congrats Rae Armantrout and Wes Press!

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The National Book Critics Circle award in poetry went to Rae Armantrout’s Versed. The announcement praised the book “for its demonstration of superb intellect and technique, its melding of experimental poetics but down-to-earth subject matter to create poems you are compelled to return to, that get richer with each reading.” Rae Armantrout has been celebrated as a great American poet, and we are proud to publish her at Wesleyan University Press.

Our small but mighty Wes Press has been making a distinctive and powerful contribution to American poetry for decades. Congratulations to all for this latest recognition of the extraordinary quality of Wesleyan University Press!

[tags]Rae Armantrout, Wes Press, National Book Critics Circle Award, Versed[/tags]

Trustee Meetings: A Grand Gift, MoCon, Tuition, Liberal Arts

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This past weekend the Board of Trustees was on campus. Despite the blizzard in the Northeast, trustees managed to get here for key meetings, engaging conversations and for some important decisions. One of the great moments of the weekend was the dinner to honor Wesleyan volunteers. At this celebration I was delighted to announce that Joshua Boger ’73, P ’06, P’09 and Amy Boger, M.D., P’06, P’09 have pledged 12 million dollars to our fundraising efforts. This will establish the Boger Scholarship Program and the Joshua Boger University Professorship of The Sciences and Mathematics. The first recipient of the chair appointment will be David L. Beveridge, professor of chemistry.

Here are some other highlights from the Board’s meetings.

The Campus Affairs Committee has an extraordinarily wide portfolio of concerns. They receive reports on Admissions (plenty of good news there!), co-curricular initiatives and core academic affairs. We discussed some of the current departmental models for assessing student learning and heard a report on the summer session pilot program. This committee also forwarded its recommendation to grant tenure to two stellar young scholar-teachers: Matthew Kurtz in Psychology and Typhaine Leservot in Romance Languages and the College of Letters.  Matt works on the neuroscience of cognitive rehabilitation for schizophrenia, and Typhaine’s research concerns changing modes of literary analysis (postcolonial, feminist) for contemporary Francophone writing. Congratulations to both!

The Finance Committee has a lion’s share of the work at the February meeting because it’s here that we propose our tuition for next year in the context of our budget projections. For next year the Board approved a 5% increase in tuition and fees, and we also project an 11% increase in our financial aid expenditures. We had plenty of discussion about how we might find ways to reduce costs so as to restrain future tuition increases without sacrificing the quality of student experience. This is a high priority going forward.

A topic that came up in various venues throughout the weekend concerned the future of McConaughy Hall. I knew the building well as a student, living just across from its front doors as a frosh. I remember with real fondness its grand staircase and wonderful light, and I also think back to some great parties and concerts I attended there. The building has been empty since I began my presidency, and since that time I’ve been trying to find an alternative use for it. The structure turns out to be terribly inefficient, and in great disrepair. Still, I had hopes that we might transform it (as we have done with Davenport and Fayerweather, and will do with Squash) for some community use.

I haven’t found an alternative use for MoCon. But given all the strong feeling, which I share, about trying to find alternative uses, I’ve delayed signing contracts for its demolition. The building has been here for almost 50 years, and I don’t take this decision lightly. But I also will not spend significant university funds every year without having a real function for the building. So, I am reviewing options (with appropriate professional guidance) one more time. I appreciate the input I’ve gotten, and I will be writing again soon on this subject.

At the main Board meeting we held an open discussion concerning changes in the liberal arts curriculum. How should we steer liberal arts learning in the future? I was particularly interested in hearing what fields the Board thought should be added to a liberal arts education, and which areas should be cut or reduced in importance. For example, I’ve been exploring the possibility of developing a liberal arts approach to engineering, and I’m also interested in how design thinking can have a more prominent role in our curriculum. Integrating our arts programs more fully into our academic programs (as with our new efforts in creative writing) is an important priority for many of us at Wes. I can ask readers here what I asked the Board: What would you like to see Wesleyan doing more of, less of?

Our conversation centered on three main areas for growth, and, truth be told, no real places for cutting: (1) public policy domestically and internationally, (2) engineering and design, (3) and the study of the impact of technology on culture and society. Dean Don Moon reminded us that while it might be good to have these general conversations at the Board level, each year the Wesleyan faculty develops dozens of new courses. The curriculum has been evolving and will continue to do so. We can thank our scholar-teacher model for that! It’s through their research that our professors develop new ideas that energize the classroom, and we are all the better for it!