Bill DeWalt is the founding President and Director of the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM), an expansive $250 million institution that opened in April 2010 in Phoenix, Arizona. DeWalt was responsible for assisting in the design and overseeing construction of the 200,000-square-foot building, amassing a collection of more than 15,000 musical instruments from nearly every country in the world, and assembling a team of 110 employees and 350 volunteers. He currently manages the operations of the museum, as well as its world-class theater, which offers concerts by artists from across the globe. Continue reading
Month: April 2012
2011-12 Faculty Member of the Year Award: Virginia Hettinger
Dr. Virginia Hettinger’s path to an academic career took many twists and turns. She graduated from Indiana University with a double major in economics and folklore. Like many liberal arts majors at the time, she had little sense of what to do next or even how to go about finding something to do next.
After a brief stint as a retail manager and assistant buyer, Dr. Hettinger earned a Masters in Public Administration at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her second career took her to the Virginia Department of Planning and Budget and then the Virginia Department of Education. In both agencies she worked on evaluation projects and program reviews. Dr. Hettinger loved working on solutions for problems in areas as diverse as child support, educational equity, prison and jail population growth, and Medicaid expenditure growth, but she also wished to concentrate her focus on the questions she found most interesting as opposed to those deemed important by legislators and bureaucrats. Graduate school called to her again. Continue reading
2012 Distinguished Alumni Award: Marian Kennedy
After completing her undergraduate psychology Honors degree at the University of Connecticut in 1970, Marian Kennedy moved to California with a fellow Honors student. A year later she began law school at the University of Santa Clara. In 1974 she interned with the California Supreme Court, and has worked as an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board and the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board. In 1979 she entered Harvard Law School to complete her Master of Laws degree before moving to The Netherlands to marry a Dutch citizen she had met at Harvard. From 1981 to 1992, the couple worked in California, New York City, and The Netherlands. They also had two children, Nicole and Robert. Continue reading
Hayley Dunnack: Lasting Motivation and a Constant Smile
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By Julie Bruhn
Sophomore Hayley Dunnack genuinely values her time here at UConn. As a nursing student, she takes full advantage of the simulation labs and is excited to start her first hands-on clinical experience next semester. Hayley serves as secretary for UConn Irish, a cultural organization that focuses on Irish stepdancing. Furthermore, she enjoys her job at the Student Activities office and believes that working on campus is a great way to get involved and build connections. Continue reading
Class of 2012: Alexander Velázquez
By Lynnette Repollet ’12 (CLAS)
Alexander Velázquez’s passion for engineering first manifested itself when he was only 5 years old. “I told my parents I wanted to be an inventor,” he says. “I’ve always been very technically-inclined.”
Velázquez, who is graduating in May from UConn’s EuroTech program with a dual degree in computer science and engineering and German studies and a minor in mathematics, is fulfilling that childhood dream at an international level. During a four-month internship in Stuttgart, Germany in summer 2011, Velázquez contributed new code to the driving simulator, extending the traffic module that generates computer-controlled cars. Continue reading