pipkin ’22 podcast to investigate land use in the smokies

Every year, the COE awards fellowships to fund summer research opportunities for Wesleyan students across all majors and class years.

Abi Pipkin ’22 is a government and environmental studies major interested in the question of land management in the United States. This summer she explored the Great Smoky Mountains region of Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina to learn more about how the privatization of land affects human stewardship of natural resources. The interviews and research she conducted will form a podcast she is developing this semester as part of her senior capstone for the environmental studies and government majors.

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forklift, wes workers collab on wesworks

WesWorks at Wesleyan University
Wesleyan facilities workers perform during WesWorks, October 14 & 15, 2021.

On October 14 & 15, 2021, Forklift Danceworks presented WesWorks, a performance celebrating the skilled movement and telling the often unheard stories of the people whose work sustains the daily lives of the Wesleyan campus.

WesWorks (2021) featured the movement and stories of Wesleyan U employees as directed by Forklift Danceworks of Austin, Texas, led by Artistic Director Allison Orr, Distinguished Fellow in the College of the Environment and Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, with Forklift choreographer and programs manager Gretchen LaMotte ’18.

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levan ’22 indulges appetite for entomophagy

Megan LevanEvery year, the COE awards fellowships to fund summer research opportunities for Wesleyan students across all majors and class years. Megan Levan ’22 is an environmental studies and South Asia studies in a global context (university major) major who was recently elected Wesleyan’s Gamma Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. Megan’s research this summer centered on how edible insect-based products are being promoted by companies and received by consumers in countries not known for their entomophagic practices. Megan believes diets of the future will need to be supplemented with other available protein sources, and her research explored how insects fit into the picture.

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scobell ’22 & parikh ’22 spend summer sequencing fish genome

Left to right, from back: Fatima Ejaz, Aashni Parikh, Sophie Scobell and Helen Lei. After successfully completing their first sequence!

Every year, the COE awards fellowships to fund summer research opportunities for Wesleyan students across all majors and class years. Sophie Scobell ‘22 is a biology and East Asian studies double major. Aashni Parikh ‘22 is an earth & environmental sciences and biology double major. Scobell and Parikh, along with Fatima Ejaz, ’22 and Helen Lei ’23, spent the summer in the Chernoff Lab, setting out to sequence what will be only the fifth fully sequenced fish genome.

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o’connell explores cryosphere growth and demise

Suzanne O’Connell is the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science at Wesleyan. She studies Antarctic paleoclimate using marine sediment cores from IODP (International Ocean Discovery Program) in order to understand how Antarctica has changed in the past, information that will help researchers to understand and model future climate change. In fall 2021 she is teaching CIS221/Research Frontiers in Sciences and E&ES497/Senior Seminar. 

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