Current News

For years, the hidden history of the Abenaki peoples of the northeastern United States and Canada has captivated Wheaton College senior Ashley Smith, who has been researching the historical and contemporary lives and cultures of this Native American group. Now she gets to dig deeper. The Madison, Maine resident has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to conduct research in Canada on the Abenaki.

The Department of Athletics held its annual awards ceremony at Emerson Dining Hall on Tuesday night. Highlighting the evening was the announcement of the five major awards, including two that went to senior Erin Davis (Easton, CT/Joel Barlow), and acknowledgment of Dean of Students Sue Alexander and her 21 years of support for Wheaton athletics.

Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, a nationally acclaimed public health leader, will deliver a lecture titled "Violence Prevention: A Public Health Mandate" at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, April 29, in Watson Auditorium.

The Wheaton College greenhouses will offer an open house and repotting clinic on Friday, May 16, from 1 to 4 p.m. Horticulturalist and greenhouse caretaker Jane Young will be available to answer questions.

Russian Studies major Michael Freese '08 will head to Russia later this year to teach English as a 2008 Fulbright Scholar.

Derron J.R. Wallace, who graduated from Wheaton in May 2007, has been awarded a 2008 Fulbright to teach English and conduct research on education reform in Thailand. In his Fulbright proposal, he said that as a teaching assistant he hopes to help Thai students gain higher levels of fluency in English and a broader, fuller understanding of the diversity and complexity of American culture.

Senior Ashlan Musante has been awarded a 2008 Fulbright Scholarship to join the research team of Dr. Tanja Weil at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany. The team's work involves the design and cellular characterization of customized polymeric architectures.

Meghan Kenny, a Wheaton College senior majoring in theatre studies and dance with a minor in sociology, has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to teach English in Malaysia.

Senior history major Caroline Teague has won scholarships from the St. Andrews Society of New York to support her studies at the University of Edinburgh's School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Rachelle DeCoste has been awarded a $6,000 grant from the Mathematical Association of America/Tensor Foundation that will support a newly created workshop for women in mathematics. The workshop will be held at Wheaton College July 27-29. The registration deadline is May 1.

Wheaton senior Esther Jeong has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to research changes in traditional dance styles and the cultural shifts that have occurred as globalization has taken place in contemporary South Korea. Fulbright scholarships are awarded for a variety of educational activities, including university lecturing, advanced research, graduate study and teaching in elementary and secondary schools. Participants are chosen based on their academic merit and leadership potential.

Wheaton has received approval to participate in the federally funded William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program. The college plans to implement this new program for the 2008-2009 academic year. The move will allow Wheaton students and their families to avoid the increasingly volatile market for Stafford and PLUS loans offered by third-party lenders.

An interactive "hunger banquet" was held at Wheaton on February 28 to help raise campus awareness of global hunger, poverty and fair trade.

Blair Rossetti '09, a biochemistry major from Plymouth, Mass., has been named a Barry M. Goldwater Scholar for 2008. Awarded to outstanding college juniors and seniors in the fields of mathematics, science, and engineering, the Goldwater Scholarship is the premier national award for undergraduates in these areas.

A Wheaton tradition that dates back to the 1920s returns center stage on Friday, April 11, courtesy of senior Michael Balderrama, who is staging a Greek tragedy on the steps of the Madeleine Clark Wallace Library. Euripides's Orestes: A New Translation will be performed from 1 to 2:30 p.m. as part of Balderrama’s senior honors thesis during Wheaton’s 17th annual Academic Festival.

Wheaton College is ranked among the top 15 percent of over 400 NCAA Division III institutions in the final winter United States Sports Academy Directors' Cup standings.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The Wheaton College greenhouses will be open for tours and a repotting clinic on Wednesday, March 12, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.