may in april

May Klug ’19 in April. The morning of her thesis defense. At Long Lane Farm, tending the greens. A senior music and American studies major, May volunteers 10 to 12 hours/week at the student-run farm, and was a member of last fall’s Pumpkin Fest committee (where she performed). This winter and spring she’s devoted her time to giving the summer greens a good head start. She’s particularly proud of the peas.

 

 

 

 

sher ’07, students seek to improve material development through understanding electron transport

Meng-ju Sher Group

The research explored here, “Spectroscopic Studies of Hybrid Perovskite Solar Cells,” was undertaken as part of the College of the Environment’s Faculty-Student Research Grant Program, which provides opportunities for faculty and students to work together on research projects.

Meng-ju Renee Sher ’07 is assistant professor of physics, assistant professor of integrative sciences, and assistant professor of environmental studies at Wesleyan University. Sher received her bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan in 2007 and PhD degree from Harvard University in 2013.

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franceschi ’19 exhibits senior thesis photos

Kudos to art & art history and environmental studies double-major Paul Franceschi ’19, who showcased his senior thesis work, “Frontcountry Principles,” as part of an exhibition at Zilkha Gallery here at Wesleyan, earlier this month.

“One of the more expected ways to engage with the environment through images might be to highlight some kind of devastation that humans have wrought upon the natural world,” says Franceschi. “In my work I’m trying to identify a more subtle but possibly just as worrying impulse: a covering-of-tracks, a hidden curation and regulation of space, a totalization of the landscape. Rather than focusing on a conflict between the natural and human worlds, in my photos I’m trying to frame a kind of virtual reality of landscape, where images of the environment are illusory, malleable, and almost uncanny.”

Franceschi is also one of four environmental studies seniors to be inducted into Wes U’s Gamma Chapater of Phi Beta Kappa this academic year. Read more about the ceremony on News@Wes.

meet our 2019-20 student think tank fellows

Each year, our COE Think Tank brings together Wes students and faculty from across the university, plus a noted outside scholar, for a yearlong conversation on a topic of vital environmental importance. This year’s focus: how humans relate to and value the non-human part of the world. Read on to discover how our three student fellows have been exploring the topic in their work.

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mcleod ’19 hosts bears ears exhibit and screening

On February 22, the COE hosted a screening of the 2016 documentary short film Shash Jaa’: Bears Ears, followed by a Q&A with Navajo-Hopi filmmaker/director Angelo Baca. A post-showing reception featured a photo exhibit of the Bears Ears region by Fiona McLeod ’19.  Shash Jaa’ details the efforts of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition against the reduction of Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent after President Trump’s 2017 executive order. It is a continuation of the film Into America: The Ancestors’ Land, directed by Baca & Nadine Zacharias, which examined natural resource extraction in southeastern Utah.

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coe faculty-student grant program supports o’connell’s antarctic research

This past January, Nethra Pullela ’20, Liz Atalig ’21, and Jackie Duckett ’20 joined E&ES Professor Suzanne O’Connell on a journey to the center of the earth–traveling to  the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) at Texas A&M University to collect data and samples for O’Connell’s “Where Was the Antarctic Oligocene Ice?” project, funded by the COE’s Faculty-Student Research Grant Program.

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wesleyan’s 2018 pumpkin fest

On October 13, 2018, Wesleyan U and Middletown communities came together to celebrate the season at Pumpkin Fest, our annual fall festival held at Wesleyan’s student-run Long Lane Farm. More than 400 attendees enjoyed farm tours, produce and baked goods for sale, kid-friendly crafts, local vendors, free veggie burgers and apple cider, a pie-eating contest, musical performances, and more. The annual event is cosponsored by the COE. Click here for tons of photos!