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View ways to support research by Wesleyan students and professors.
Consider other questions asked at Wesleyan.
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3. Support distinguished research.
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How will different societies adapt to the effects of global warming?
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Gary Yohe of the Economics Department, who works with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is a front-runner in assessing the impact of climate change across the globe. The National Science Foundation provides significant funding for his research. At Wesleyan, Professor Yohe has co-authored seven papers with students that were published in peer-reviewed journals, and continues to submit co-authored papers and to encourage faculty-student collaboration on microeconomic theory and climate change.
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Wesleyan faculty members are advancing knowledge and engaging undergraduates in the process. In 1999 alone, as recognition of the important work they are doing globally, our faculty won $7.4 million in highly competitive fellowships and grants for their research and scholarship.
Research at Wesleyan tackles questions of national and international significance. Ann duCille, the William R. Kenan Professor of the Humanities and a former Guggenheim Fellow, who has returned to Wesleyan from the University of California at San Diego, hopes to transform the Center for African American Studies into a nationally prominent research institute for the study of race, diversity, and public policy. Jim McGuire, associate professor in the Government Department, won a Senior Fellowship in 2000 from the American Council of Learned Societies and a Residential Fellowship for 2000-2001 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Both fellowships support his research into why some countries in Latin America and Asia have fared better than others in lowering infant mortality and increasing longevity.
With graduate departments in the sciences and mathematics, Wesleyan supports a thriving research community that wins increasing amounts of funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, as well as private organizations. The intimate scale of our science departments allows undergraduates to be directly involved in top-level laboratory research within a research community renowned for its emphasis on mentoring.
SOME POSSIBILITIES FOR YOUR GIFT
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A $3 million endowment gift names a University Professorship or an academic center directorship, and includes program funds and research support.
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A $5,000 gift to the Wesleyan Annual Fund can help provide library resources for student and faculty researchers.
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A gift of $250,000 to the Campus Renewal Fund helps renovate multimedia classrooms, each is equipped with computers, a high-resolution data projector, and other electronic components that allow faculty members to engage students in original research.
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QUESTIONS ASKED AT WESLEYAN
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How do embryonic cells know what to turn into?
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In Professor Stephen Devoto's laboratory, many tanks filled with dark blue and silvery striped zebra fish line the walls. These fish, Danio rerio, of India, are a key link in understanding how embryonic cells develop. Professor Devoto and his students, who are in the forefront of developmental biology, work long hours to unlock mysteries that will lead to a better understanding of the causes of birth defects, muscular dystrophy, and heart disease. "I could conduct similar laboratory research at other universities, but I would miss the close relationships among my colleagues, graduate students, and a very talented group of undergraduates," says Professor Devoto, who has been at Wesleyan since 1997.
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How have the relationships changed between Christian missionary-founded colleges in China and their parent institutions in the United States?
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With a three-year grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, Ellen Widmer of the Asian Languages and Literature Department at Wesleyan is studying the evolving relationships between colleges established by Christian missionaries in China in the early 1900s and their parent institutions, including Wesleyan. She is looking for points of comparison in the curricula and, in collaboration with other faculty members and librarians, will develop teaching materials that embrace the parent institutions themselves as well as Chinese schools.
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