Awards
Alongside celebrating the student graduates of 2024, the 192nd Commencement Ceremony also honors the esteemed individuals, alumni, and faculty whose work and service has educated and inspired so many to action and toward creating a better world.
Binswanger Prizes for Excellence in Teaching
Each year at Commencement, Wesleyan University recognizes three outstanding faculty members with the awarding of the Binswanger Prizes for Excellence in Teaching. Underscoring Wesleyan’s commitment to its scholar-teachers, these annual prizes are made possible by gifts from the family of the late Frank G. Binswanger Sr., Hon’85. Recipients are chosen each spring by a committee composed of faculty and members of the Alumni Association Executive Committee based upon strong recommendations from alumni of the last 10 graduating classes, as well as current juniors, seniors, and graduate students.
Abigail S. Hornstein
Abigail Hornstein is the Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics and chair of the economics department at Wesleyan University. Her research focuses on corporate finance of multinationals, with an emphasis on corporate governance and legal institutions. She has a particular expertise in the Chinese financial markets after spending five years working in Hong Kong financial institutions, including the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), as an economist and analyst before choosing an academic path. Her career switch reflected a desire to understand the systemic causes and consequences of the Asian financial crisis given the unique characteristics of China’s economic development. Hornstein holds a BA in East Asian studies from Bryn Mawr, and a PhD and MPhil in economics from the Stern School of Business, New York University. She regularly teaches courses in introductory and advanced econometrics, corporate finance, and foreign direct investment. Hornstein’s publications include articles in journals such as the Journal of Empirical Finance, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Journal of Corporate Finance, and China Economic Review. She founded and led the Liberal Arts Financial Economics Conference from 2015-2023. She also organized the 2015 conference “Teaching Finance at Liberal Arts Colleges.” Hornstein, who speaks Mandarin, has twice been a Mellon Foundation Summer Fellow and a Ford Foundation/Aspen Institute Fellow.
Michelle Aaron Murolo
Michelle Murolo is a professor of the practice. As a Barry Goldwater Scholar, she earned a BS in molecular biology from Clarion University of Pennsylvania. Murolo went on to earn a PhD in molecular microbiology from Yale University as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellow. After her graduate work, Murolo decided to share her love of science with others by devoting her career exclusively to teaching. She joined Wesleyan’s faculty in 2009, and for the past 15 years, she has been dedicated to working with the students enrolled in Principles of Biology lecture and lab. Murolo enjoys incorporating new teaching practices and lots of real-life applications of scientific principles into her lecture and lab courses. She works extensively with her students to ensure that they have a rewarding first year biology experience. With over 200 students enrolled in the Principles of Biology labs each year, she also works diligently to train and supervise the undergraduate course assistants and graduate teaching assistants who assist in teaching these foundational labs each semester. Murolo is also passionate about inclusivity, and she has worked closely with Wesleyan’s Math and Science Scholars (WesMASS) program. She is also well known for working with student groups to plan academic, social, and outreach events that help foster a sense of community among students.
Rashida Z. Shaw McMahon
Rashida Z. Shaw McMahon is an associate professor in English and an affiliated faculty member in African American studies, theatre, and Caribbean studies. Her course offerings and research exemplify interdisciplinary methodologies and collaborative approaches toward examining: the dramatic and performance traditions of African Americans and the larger African diaspora; American drama; American musical theatre; American and European theatre and performance histories; theatrical spectatorship; dramatic adaptations of poetry, novels, and historical fiction; and the application of critical race theories, gender theories, sexuality theories, and popular culture theories to drama and performance. Raised in St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands, Shaw McMahon graduated from Wesleyan in 1999, majoring in theatre (with a concentration in acting) and sociology and earning honors for her thesis in theatre. After Wesleyan, she received her PhD in theatre and drama from Northwestern University. Her latest book, The Black Circuit: Race, Performance, and Spectatorship in Black Popular Theatre (Routledge, 2020), examines “Chitlin Circuit” theatrical productions and the reception practices of African American spectators. Shaw McMahon’s scholarship has appeared in various print and online journals, as well as in edited anthologies on race, performance, media, and sociology. She is a member of the American Society of Theatre Research (ASTR), the Association of Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), the Black Theatre Association (BTA), and the International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR). In 2016, she was awarded the Mellon Mays Mentor of the Year Award at Wesleyan.
Honorary Doctoral Degrees
The honorary degree recipients will be Imani Perry, a 2023 MacArthur Fellow and distinguished Harvard University professor, who will also deliver the commencement address; Raj Chetty, renowned for his studies of higher education and social mobility, and Michael Greenberg ’76, P’14, one of the world’s most distinguished neuroscientists.
Imani Perry
Imani Perry is the Henry A. Morss, Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and African American Studies at Harvard University where she is also Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Perry is the author of eight books, including South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation which received the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and other award-winning titles: Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry and May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem. Her writing and scholarship primarily focus on the history of Black thought, art, organizing, and imagination. She is particularly concerned with the architectures of social, political and legal domination, and how communities imagine and pursue liberation. Perry earned her PhD in American Studies from Harvard University, a JD from Harvard Law School, an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center in 19th century property and contract law, and a BA from Yale University in Literature and American Studies. Perry publishes widely on art, culture, literature, and politics in publications including the New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper's Bazaar, and Harper's.
Raj Chetty
Raj Chetty is the William A. Ackman Professor of Public Economics at Harvard University. He is also the Director of Opportunity Insights, which uses “big data” to understand how we can give children from disadvantaged backgrounds better chances of succeeding. Chetty's research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to help design more effective government policies. His work on topics ranging from tax policy and unemployment insurance to education and affordable housing has been widely cited in academia, media outlets, and Congressional testimony. Chetty received his PhD from Harvard University in 2003 and is one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard's history. Before joining the faculty at Harvard, he was a professor at UC-Berkeley and Stanford University. Chetty has received numerous awards for his research, including a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship and the John Bates Clark medal, given to the economist under 40 whose work is judged to have made the most significant contribution to the field.
Michael Greenberg ’76, P’14
Michael Greenberg received a BA in Chemistry from Wesleyan University in 1976, and a PhD in Biochemistry from the Rockefeller University, New York, in 1982. In 1986 he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and he was made full Professor in 1994. Since 2008 he has been the Nathan Marsh Pusey Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. Greenberg’s seminal discoveries of activity-dependent gene transcription have revealed how nature and nurture cooperate to shape mammalian brain development and plasticity. Building on his early observation that neurotransmitter reception triggers the rapid induction of new gene expression, his work has focused on elucidating the nature and role of neuronal transcriptional programs induced in response to extracellular stimuli. Work in the Greenberg laboratory has characterized the signal transduction pathways linking calcium influx at distal synapses to the neuronal nucleus, uncovered an extensive network of neuronal activity-responsive cis-regulatory elements that coordinate these gene expression changes, and demonstrated significant neuronal cell-type- and species-specific diversity in these transcriptional responses. These studies have uncovered an important role for activity-dependent transcriptional responses in dynamically sculpting specific aspects of neuronal connectivity. Current work in his laboratory focuses on how these changes contribute to experience-dependent behavioral plasticity and understanding the basis of neurological diseases that arise when these processes have gone awry.