A series of African films and an accompanying lecture provide glimpses into the diversity of African cultures through issues such as gender and class.

Senior Kara Schamell's research into the meaning of a spiritual Zimbabwean music form played on an indigenous instrument and its transformation as a secular art form embraced in the World Music industry won recognition as the best undergraduate project of the year at a regional anthropology conference.

Wheaton seniors Jennifer Bombasaro-Brady and Ru-Shyan Yen are two of 50 college students nationwide selected today to receive a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. The $25,000 award will support a year of travel and research for each student. Bombasaro-Brady plans to investigate the social significance of historical re-enactments; Yen will explore varied artistic techniques for creating batik.

Wheaton Associate Professor of English and playwright-in-residence Charlotte Meehan has been awarded a coveted Alpert/MacDowell Colony Fellowship. The MacDowell Colony was established in Peterborough, N.H., in 1907 to nurture the arts by offering talented individuals an inspiring environment in which to produce their work.. Meehan joins the impressive company of previous MacDowell fellows, including award-winning playwrights Suzan-Lori Parks, Wendy Wasserstein and Thornton Wilder.

Computer science professor Mark LeBlanc and four of his students are developing a searchable database of local historic images at the Norton Historical Society.

Acclaimed artist, author and activist Faith Ringgold, who has published 14 children's books, visited Wheaton recently to share her work with local schoolchildren and the campus community.

Thanks to the Kathryn Wasserman Davis 100 Projects for Peace initiative, Ann Kwan '09 and Kelly Maby '09 have each won $10,000 grants to promote world peace through projects to be undertaken this summer. Kwan will establish a handicrafts shop for a Cambodian non-profit, while Maby will take urban high school students on a tour of the American South to learn from Civil Rights leaders.

Wheaton students, faculty and staff will again join the American Cancer Society in the fight against cancer by raising funds through the Relay For Life, an all-night campus walk-a-thon.

April 12, 2008, from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.

On April 12, a campus conference entitled "Building Bridges: A Celebration of 100 Alumni Men of Color," will highlight the experiences and accomplishments of alumni and male students of color since the college began admitting men in 1987.

Eight Wheaton students performed at the Song Festival of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing on March 1, and five of them came away with honors in the annual competition.

Representing the broad diversity of scholarship and achievement on campus, a dozen Wheaton students have won awards and national honors this spring, including two seniors who have earned coveted Watson Fellowships for independent study abroad. The students have won recognition for their scholarly work, proposed research and service projects, as well as achievements in the arts.

The latest feature film by Wheaton professor Jake Mahaffy won the award for best "feature film" at the South By Southwest Film Festival held recently in Austin.

Abdolkarim Soroush, a leading light in the Islamic reform movement, will give a lecture entitled "Islam and Democracy: Democratic Voices within the Islamic World" at 7 p.m. on Monday, April 7.