Tag Archives: Academic Affairs

FEATURED
All Campus Email: Changes in Course Re-Take and Incomplete Policies

As #FinalsSzn rapidly approaches/has already begun for many of us, Wesleyan has implemented some new policies which may impact how you address academic challenges this semester and in the future.

This afternoon, Dean for Academic Advancement Louise Brown in Student Affairs sent out an email detailing some changes to academic policies. If you haven’t been keeping a close eye on WSA agendas and committee reports (which are emailed out to the student body prior to weekly Sunday night meetings), you may have been caught off-guard by these seemingly sudden changes to policies that many students don’t even know exist. I do read all the WSA emails (bc I’m a big dork and like to look for fun things to report about), so I was vaguely aware of the new re-take policy, but I had no idea that the incomplete policy was changing.

Here’s a breakdown of what changed, what didn’t, and what it means for students and professors:

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EVENT
Queer Past, Queer Future

Alumni Jennifer Boylan ’80 and Alexander Chee ’89 read recent work, discuss queer lives and storytelling, and share their own experiences as LGBT writers at Wesleyan.

Jennifer Boylan, a professor at Barnard College, is the author of 15 books, including She’s Not There, the first bestselling work by a transgender American, and I’m Looking Through You, which contains a chapter on Wesleyan. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and currently serves as the national co-chair of GLAAD, the media advocacy nonprofit for LGBTQ people. Her new novel, Long Black Veil, is forthcoming in April 2017.

Alexander Chee teaches fiction writing and the essay at Dartmouth College. He is the author of the novels Edinburgh (Welcome Rain, 2001; Picador, 2002) and The Queen of the Night (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016). Edinburgh, which partly takes place at Wesleyan, won the Iowa Writers’ Workshop’s Michener Copernicus Prize in Fiction, the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Editor’s Choice Prize, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Literary Award.

Sponsored by the Friends of the Wesleyan Library with support from Academic Affairs.

Date: Friday, March 3rd
Time: 5:00 p.m.
Place: Smith Reading Room, 1st floor Olin Library

WSA Passes Resolution to Keep Spring Fling Day

The sun’s shining, birds are chirping, and there’s music playing.   Finals are coming up quick, but maybe you just want to relax, take a breather.  Why not rock out to some good music with hundreds of your fellow Wesleyan students?  Spring Fling is that opportunity.

Every year, we have one day—just one day—to all be together and do nothing but listen to music and hang out.  And now, that day is under threat of going away.  The Educational Policy Committee of the University, which sets the school’s academic calendar in five-year increments, is considering removing a day dedicated to Spring Fling.

In response, the WSA passed legislation at its five-hour meeting this Sunday titled “Resolution 6.34 Resolution on Reading Period and Spring Fling.”  The resolution notes that we are already pretty stressed about finals with only four days each for Reading “Week” and Finals “Week,” and this would just make things worse.  Students have been pretty insistent that they need more time to study, not less.  We’re already evicted just hours after finals end, leaving little time to pack.  There’s explicit concern about students’ health expressed in the resolution.  As a member of the WSA, I voted for the resolution and have to say, this is not good for academics, not good for campus spirit, and not good for health.

Read the full resolution here.  Email wsa[at]wesleyan[dot]edu if you want to reinforce the point, and share your thoughts in the comments here too.

EVENT
Insurgent Research: Looking for Autonomy in the Production of Knowledge with Social Activist and Post-Development Theorist Dr. Gustavo Esteva

Super awesome event real, real soon:

The Foucauldian challenge to the institutional production of
“truth” (the statements governing our behavior) is not coming from
universities or research centers but from social movements: insurgent
research, militant research, reflection in action…from Colectivo
Situaciones in Argentina to Unitierra in California or Chocosol in
Toronto, autonomous centers for the production of knowledge are
proliferating. Is this an ephemeral, marginal fashion? What is the
role of these centers in the current wave of mobilizations? Do they
represent alternative, valid ways of knowing?

BRING YOUR LUNCH!

Co-sponsored by the Adelphic Educational Fund, Infoshoppe Collective, Ajúa Campos,
Hermes, Occupy, Center for the Americas, LAST, Academic Affairs, the
Service Learning Center and the Sociology and Anthropology
departments.

More super awesome details after the jump.

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