The "Hidden" Wellington Wang Collection

Many of the interesting stones donated over the past few years by collector Wellington Wang to UNH are packed away on shelves in a storage room in the library.

Photographs by Brandon T. Bisceglia.

If you've ever walked into the MarvinK. Peterson Library at the University of New Haven, you've probably noticed a set of glass display cases with shelves of strange-looking rocks prominently displayed along one wall. If you've taken the time to look inside those cases, you probably know that the rocks are part of a collection donated to UNH by the famous Chinese collector Wellington Tu Wang.

What you may not have realized, though, is that UNH's Wellington Wang collection comprises many, many more pieces than the ones on display.

Some of the pieces are scattered throughout campus, on the desks of administrators and staff members. But the vast majority are tucked away in a locked storage room on the upper floor of the library. A number of them are still in boxes or bubble-wrap.

UNH actually has two collections from Wang, explains Director of University Special Events Jill Zamparo. The first, donated in 2009 when Wang was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from UNH, is called the “Scholar's Rocks” collection, and contains 115 stones that were originally from China, but were scattered around Europe and North America after Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s.

The other collection is made up of soapstone carvings ranging from the sixth century to the twentieth century. Soapstone, also known as steatite, is a metamorphic rock composed mainly of talc, making it easy to carve. Soapstone carvings from China's Fujian Province have been prized for well over a thousand years. That collection was donated to UNH in 2011.

Zamparo has become the de facto curator of the collections since the recent departure of former Seton Gallery director Kerry O'Grady. She keeps records of the collections, including a listing of where the various pieces are located.

After Wang gave the collections to UNH, Zamparo says she could not find places to put them all.

“I chose the ones to display in the library based on whether they would fit on the shelves,” she says, laughing. Many of the Scholar's Rocks were much too large. Indeed, one piece sitting in its box in the storage room is listed as being 66 centimeters - more than two feet - tall

Some administrators offered to keep pieces they liked from the collections in their own quarters. A portion ended up in President Steven H. Kaplan's office, where they line the shelves or sit on stands on the floor. A few, including a gigantic bloodstone, are located in Associate Vice President of the Institute of Forensic Science Henry C. Lee's office.

A few of the stones are in Zamparo's own office, arranged on a plate lined with faux lettuce to resemble a meal of meat and potatoes.

Zamparo says that she and Kaplan would like to eventually display the collections in multiple locations on campus, but they worry about the stones being mishandled, broken or stolen. They would have to install glass cases with locks first.

In the meantime, the pieces remain in the darkened storage room, waiting for the day when a new generation of people can once again enjoy their ancient and intricate beauty.

See selections from the "hidden" collection below!

Though Crucial, UNH Science Building Has a Long Way to Go

In this historic 1966 image, laboratory technician Russel Carver, was shown seated at his U.V. microscope, while in the background is a projection of a fluorescent-stained photomicrograph. Photograph courtesy of CDC.gov. Public domain image.

Steven H. Kaplan has thought the University of New Haven needed a building dedicated to the sciences since he first became president of the university in 2004.

Last month that goal came closer to reality when an anonymous donor gave the university $3 million toward the building.

As generous as the donation was, however, it was only a small step in a process that began several years ago and will likely take several more to complete.

Kaplan says the project is in part a response to a desperate need for space on campus.

“We can meet students' needs right now in the classroom, but we have very little space for students to do projects, to do research, and for faculty to do research. That's the real tight spot,” he says.

Right now, the chemistry and biology departments are spread out among the various buildings, with parts of them housed in Dodds, Buckman and Maxcy halls. That arrangement, says Kaplan, prevents the expansion of non-science departments, too.

“We just need more space, and the best way to accomplish that is to have one central place for science,” says.

Pauline Schwartz, chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, says that even on a small campus like UNH's, the distance between the science departments causes inefficiencies in the use of space, equipment, resources and instruments. She also says it does not foster collaborative research between the departments.

Schwartz says that there are two major problems when it comes to space. “First, we are at our very limit for running lab courses during the week; it is absolutely essential to restrict the number of students in our lab classes for safety reasons,” she explains. “Second, we have limited space for conducting research. More faculty and students wish to engage in independent projects that require use of space and equipment that is not available when classes are in session.”

Even for routine classwork, there are problems with being divided between different buildings. For instance, Schwartz says, classrooms in Dodds or Kaplan do not have Periodic Tables that are easily accessible for classroom demonstrations.

When Kaplan presented his proposal to build a new science building about two years ago to the Board of Governors, the group of alumni and local leaders who oversee UNH's fiscal and governance policies, they agreed that with him on the need for such a project. Chair of the Board Sam Bergami, Jr., who is also president of the Milford-based precision manufacturing company Alinabal, says he sees broader reasons for embarking on the project.

“Science is at the root of everything we do, whether we realize or not,” he says. “It should be the intellectual hub of the college community, and everything else should come out of that.”

Bergami also notes that most of the better schools have their own buildings dedicated to the sciences.

He explains, however, that there is a lot of work that goes into such a project. First and foremost is the cost.

“It's a huge amount of money. To expect one or even a few benefactors to provide all of the funding is unrealistic,” he says.

Kaplan, who leads the fund-raising effort, estimates that he will need to raise anywhere between $30 million and $35 million in private gifts for the project. The university would then borrow another $10 million, putting the entire project in the $45 million range.

“That's the ideal amount,” he adds. “We'll do a science center no matter what.”

The anonymous donation that came at the end of January is the only money he has gotten so far. He says, however, that he is talking to three other potential donors who have expressed an interest in giving large sums toward the project, though he could not reveal their names.

“I am very optimistic that we will get the funding in the next year or two,” he says.

If the university is able to procure enough funding to meet its target, Kaplan says the proposed building would contain 40,000 to 50,000 square feet of space. Two spots on campus are currently being considered for the building: where South Campus Hall is, or next to the Tagliatela College of Engineering.

Other facets of the construction have yet to be determined. As more money is raised over the next few years, the university will hire an architectural firm to draft a design plan. At that point, Kaplan says, the Board of Governors would approve the design, the Facilities Department would get involved, and Kaplan would work closely with the science faculty to get their input on how their specific needs can be met by the new building.

Schwartz says she and her colleagues are excited to be involved in the project.

“Although plans have yet to be designed, we are very hopeful that our input will encourage space for faculty research and for core resources for new instruments,” she says.

Throughout the process, the Board of Governors would continue to receive regular progress reports on the project through its Physical Resources Committee, which is responsible at a high level for handling major construction projects on campus. Bergami says they would have little involvement in day-to-day operations, however.

Kaplan says that given the time it takes for fund-raising and gaining various approvals with the university and the city of West Haven, he hopes to break ground on the building in the next two to two-and-a-half years.

Once it's finished, though, Kaplan says UNH will be poised to expand its regional contribution to cutting-edge scientific pursuits.

“I expect science, the life sciences in particular, along with chemistry, to play a very large role at the university,” he says.

Synopsis: How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming

By Mike Brown

2010: Spiegel & Grau 

Mike Brown discovered Eris by comparing these and other successive images of the sky and tracing its movement across those images. The circled object is Eris, moving slowly across a fixed backdrop of stars over the course of three hours.

Image courtesy of PalomarObservatory/NASA.

Most of us grew up knowing that there were nine planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, and distant, frigid Pluto.

But we were wrong.

Mike Brown explains how he discovered the tenth planet, Eris, and why his discovery led to an international identity crisis that ended with the kicking of Pluto out of the planetary club.

Brown says he didn’t set out to demote Pluto. In the 1990s, hundreds of small rocky objects were discovered out at the edge of the solar system. Collectively known as the KuiperBelt, they reminded astronomers that there were still major features of our own neighborhood that we hadn’t noticed.

The Kuiper Belt discoveries convinced Brown that there might be another planet lurking somewhere in the shadows of the stars. He knew that no systematic search had been conducted in over 70 years. Telescopes had grown much more precise since then; computers hadn’t even existed at the time.

“How could it be that if someone went and looked again for a new planet they wouldn’t find something that had been just beyond the reach of the telescopes in the 1930s?” Brown writes. “There had to be a tenth planet.”

Through the late 1990s and early 2000s, Brown devoted most of his time to proving himself correct. The journey he relates is one of contingency, surprise, and international intrigue.

Brown and his colleagues began a daunting survey of the sky. He quickly found that modern telescopes, most of which were designed to look at far-off stars and galaxies, were actually too precise for his task. So he took up residence with the largely unused Schmidt Telescope at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif. The machine was so underutilized that it still employed glass photographic plates to take pictures, as it had when it was constructed in the 1950s.

Yet the Schmidt Telescope’s primitive method ended up being key to the search for planets close to home. Unlike with digital cameras, the photographs wouldn’t lose resolution when taking pictures of large swaths of the sky. As Brown points out, “to see as much sky as you could see with the photographic plate you would need a five-hundred-megapixel digital camera. Even today that is a daunting number.”

Along the way, he discovered numerous bodies that changed astronomers’ understanding of the solar system. The first of these, dubbed Quaoar, was half the size of Pluto, but otherwise similar in its properties. Brown called it “a big icy nail in the coffin of Pluto.”

Soon thereafter, Brown came across another oddball that he eventually named Sedna, which was “unlike anything else in the known universe.” It never came close to any other planets; at its closest, it didn’t even touch the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt. And for most of its orbit, Sedna was so far away that “the sun would be just an extrabright star in the sky.”

Yet Sedna was clearly not a comet, because comets have complex orbits that are influenced by passing near multiple stars. Sedna only circles the Sun today. Nevertheless, its wildly divergent path suggested that during our solar system’s earliest years the Sun had been one half of a pair of twin stars.

Although discoveries like these were exciting for Brown and his colleagues, they didn’t quite reach the threshold for claiming a new planet—something that was larger than Pluto.

Then came Eris (originally nicknamed Xena). At the time of its discovery, it was almost four times the distance from the Sun as Pluto. It took 557 years to complete one circuit around the Sun. And it was nearly twice the size of Pluto.

Brown already understood by this time that discovering something bigger than Pluto would cause questions to arise about the definition of a planet. Indeed, he writes about pondering this subject since before he began his quest. At one point, he asked a friend with a degree in philosophy, “What does a word mean when you say it?”

“‘Words mean what people think they mean,’ was his smoothly philosophical reply. ‘So when you say ‘planet’ it means what you are thinking when you say it.’”

From Brown’s personal quandary about what defines a planet, he came to conclude that Eris—and therefore Pluto—could not possibly qualify unless he also chose to include hundreds of other objects in the Asteroid Belt and the Kuiper Belt.

In August 2006, the International Astronomical Union did something in response to Brown’s discovery that had never been done in a millennium of astronomy: it voted on a formal definition of the word “planet.”

Tensions ran high during the IAU’s meeting, with politics playing as much of a role as science. A pro-Pluto faction grew within the group that aimed to devise a definition that would keep the nine-planet system without seeming unscientific.

Brown, watching the proceedings from California with a bevy of reporters, kept explaining to them why he, who might become the only living discoverer of a planet if the IAU decided to vote a certain way, didn’t think Eris or Pluto belonged in the pantheon.

In the end, science won out. The eight planets were given their own formal category. Pluto was relegated to a new class of “dwarf planets,” along with Eris and a few other objects in the solar system.

Innocent Pluto, a bystander in the entire affair, was collateral damage in the crisis caused by Eris.

Since the IAU’s decision, Brown writes that he’s been accosted everywhere he goes, with people asking him, “What did Pluto ever do to you?”

Despite the harassment, and despite the fact that he will never find another thing he can call a planet, he says that he’s “thrilled that astronomers…chose to put a scientific definition behind what most people think they mean when they say the word planet. They don’t mean ‘everything the size of Pluto and larger,’ and they certainly don’t mean ‘everything round.’ Instead, when people say ‘planet,’ they mean, I believe, ‘one of a small number of large important things in our solar system.’”

New Challenges, Opportunities as UNH's International Student Population Grows

The International Services Office, adorned with objects from cultures around the world, is a reflection of the University of New Haven's growing cross-cultural student body.
Photograph by Brandon T. Bisceglia.

It took Fahad Almutairi 16 months to learn English well enough before he was ready to go to college in the United States.

Almutairi, a 20-year-old native of Saudi Arabia, wanted to earn a bachelor's degree in fire protection engineering. He looked at several colleges in the U.S. that offered the program, including the University of Maryland. He chose the University of New Haven, he said, because it was the best.

“Fire protection is popular in Saudi Arabia, but they have no schools with bachelor's [programs],” he said. “There are petroleum companies and oil companies there, so they need fire protection.”

Almutairi began at UNH in the fall 2011 semester. He said the college is perfect for international students, whether they are “African, Arabian or South American.”

Other international students apparently also feel that UNH is perfect for them. According to a report by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute of International Education, UNH had the fourth-highest number of international students in Connecticut in 2011, ranking it behind only the University of Bridgeport, Yale University, and the University of Connecticut.

The international student population at UNH reached 773 in 2011, accounting for more than 12 percent of the university's overall enrollment of 6,385 for the year. International students accounted for just over 10 percent of the total in 2010, or 602 out of 5,949 students enrolled.

The growth rate for international student populations at colleges in Connecticut was 9.4 percent for 2011, nearly double the nationwide growth rate of 5 percent, according to the IIE's report. Overall, there were 10,137 international students at colleges throughout the state.

Karima Jackson, the director of UNH's International Services Office, said that international students bring benefits that domestic students can't get any other way.

“They have something that the American students usually don't have – experience with studying abroad,” she said. “They also bring business and diversity. When we mix, it creates a more whole student.”

The IIE report also emphasizes the economic benefit that international students bring. In 2011 alone, estimated foreign student expenditures in Connecticut reached approximately $300 million. That money is not just spent in the universities. Students spend at local businesses on food, clothing, entertainment, and more.

Jackson only joined the ISO in September, but said she has noticed the increase in students from other countries over her short time there. She said it may be because of several factors, including the recruiting agencies that UNH uses and the trimester schedule that allows some students to graduate more quickly.

The most important factor, she said, are the high-quality programs that the university offers, such as electrical sciences, engineering and MBA.

The ISO's main goal is to help international students maintain the F1 visas they need to attend college in the U.S., but Jackson said they end up helping with all sorts of other issues. Students may need to get drivers licenses. They may have confusion about where to go for academic needs. They may want advice on navigating some uniquely American institution outside the university.

“The list can go on,” she said. “Every day, it's something new.”

One of the difficulties is that there are over a hundred countries for international students to come from, all with different cultural expectations and practices. For instance, Fahd Jadoon, a second-year graduate student in UNH's MBA program who works in the ISO, said that when he first moved to Minnesota from his home of Pakistan, he had trouble finding food that was kosher.

“There were not a lot of international restaurants in the area,” he said.

He later discovered that Minneapolis had a much more diverse offering of foods. He said he feels comfortable now living in the New Haven area, which has a similar wealth of diversity.

Jackson thinks that one of the biggest current challenges for the university is figuring out how to bridge gaps between the international students and their American counterparts. She said she has been working on several outreach efforts to bring different groups of students together, partly by involving other faculty and staff to encourage cultural exchange.

“They [international students] are not being acclimated to the university as well as they should be,” she said.

Jadoon, on the other hand, said that the teachers at UNH do a good job of fostering interaction between students. As an example, he pointed out that teachers will often assign groups of students to work together, rather than allowing them to choose their own groups and self-segregate.

Jackson also has high hopes. She said her office is preparing for more growth, and is looking forward to putting on the International Festival in April. The event will be a chance for groups from all over the world to share their cultures with other students.

Meanwhile, Almutarai says he is already happy to be making new friends. For him, being an international student at UNH is one of the most positive things he's done.

“It's a great experience that you can learn a new culture, learn a new language, and get a bachelor's,” he said.

People Without Cars

Photograph by Brandon T. Bisceglia.

During the first week of February, reporters from the Connecticut Post wrote about their adventures as they tried to get from assignment to assignment without their cars, placing them at the mercy of the area’s disjointed public transportation system.

I sent the following letter to the editor, which the newspaper published, in response to their stories:

Hats off to the Connecticut Post reporters who spent this week attempting to get around without a car while sharing their observations.

If they had done this project last year, they would have encountered a glaring display of the preference our society gives to automobiles.

Several days after one of the heavy snowstorms, I tried walking down the Boston Post Road in Fairfield to the public library. At every juncture where the sidewalk met a parking lot or road, I encountered colossal mountains of snow, sometimes higher than myself.

These piles were not the product of lax shoveling. The snow had been piled directly into the path of pedestrians to make space for other people to drive and park.

I’m young and healthy, and managed to scale the slippery peaks with some effort. Had I been older or disabled in some fashion, however, I cannot imagine having gotten very far.

This experience wasn’t a fluke. Many bus stops and pathways all over the area are rarely cleared, even when the snow is merely ankle-deep.

It’s hard to avoid the impression that these practices send a clear message: if you’re too poor to own a car, cannot drive for some reason, or choose not to, then you don’t matter as much as the people who have vehicles.

That’s the wrong message for an age in which we need to learn the value of alternative modes of transportation – even if, as I am, you’re among those privileged enough to own a car.

Changes to Liquor Laws Unlikely to Impact UNH

Photograph by Brandon T. Bisceglia.

A proposal by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to ease Connecticut's restrictions on alcohol sales would be unlikely to have much of an impact on campus life at UNH.

Currently, stores in the state cannot sell alcohol at all on Sundays or later than 9 p.m. on other days. Bars and restaurants must stop serving alcohol at 1 a.m.

If adopted by the state legislature, Malloy's proposed changes would allow stores to sell alcohol until 10 p.m. every day, including Sunday. Bars and restaurants would be allowed to continue serving alcohol until 2 a.m.

Connecticut is one of one of only two states in the U.S., along with Indiana, that does not allow off-premises sales of alcohol on Sundays. Georgia had a state ban on Sunday sales until last year.

Several UNH students are in favor of Malloy's proposed changes. “I've always found it incredibly backwards that alcohol isn't sold on a Sunday,” said UNH student Kathleen Sandin, who grew up in New Hampshire. “I don't drink personally, but to me, Sunday is just another day.”

For the people Sandin knows who do go out and drink, she didn't think much would change. “They usually are home by midnight anyways,” she said.

UNH Student Chris Griebert also favors the proposals. He referred to the current laws as “puritanical,” and said that the state should not be restricting activities that were both “safe and for adults.”

When asked if he thought the later hours at bars might lead students to drink when they should be resting or doing homework, he pointed out that “limiting access doesn't necessarily change peoples' habits.”

UNH policies allow students who are 21 or older to possess and consume alcohol in some areas of the campus. According to the student handbook, however, there are multiple restrictions. Students in residence halls and apartments cannot have alcohol if anyone else in the living space is below drinking age, unless they are assigned roommates. Open containers are not allowed in public areas. Drinking contests are prohibited, as are “common source” containers, such as kegs.

Alcohol is generally not allowed at on-campus and athletic events, though the handbook does allow exceptions at some events and provides guidelines for obtaining permission to serve alcohol.

In addition, students of any age are violating the university's conduct policy if they are found intoxicated.

UNH publishes an annual security report that includes information on alcohol violations. In 2010, the last year for which statistics are available, there were three liquor law arrests. All occurred in residential facilities. There were also 304 liquor law violations that were referred for disciplinary action. Of those violations, 275 occurred in residential facilities.

Westport Group to Hold Fourth Annual Darwin Day Dinner



A recent Darwin Day celebrant with old Charlie.
Photograph by Cary Shaw. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

 The Southern Connecticut Darwin Day Committee will hold its fourth celebration of science and humanity on Feb. 11 at the Inn at Longshore in Westport.

This year's Darwin Day Dinner will feature a talk by Rene Almeling, assistant professor of Sociology at Yale University. She will discuss her 2011 book, “Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm.”

The event will include a cocktail hour and a full course dinner. There will also be a science quiz during which each table will collaborate on the answers. The table with the highest score on the quiz will win prizes.

“I first learned about the celebration of Darwin Day when the organizers of the event called me to speak, and I think it is a wonderful way to promote science education,” Almeling said in an email interview.

Committee Treasurer John Levin said he feels quite fortunate to have Almeling speak at this year's event.

“Human reproduction has resonance with every person, and the processes are really changing,” he said.

The Darwin Day Dinner is held every year around the birthday of naturalist Charles Darwin, who is most famous for describing the process of biological evolution through natural selection. Darwin was born Feb. 12, 1809.

The first dinner was held in 2009 on what would have been his 200 birthday. Levin said he and several of his friends began organizing the dinners that year after learning that there were celebrations planned in other cities around the world, but none in Connecticut.

Since then, he said the event has grown moderately, drawing 133 people last year.

In previous years, the dinner took place on a Friday; this is the first year it will be held on a Saturday. Aside from that change, Levin said the event will be similar to the earlier ones.

“We think that we've had a winning formula, and as a consequence we have kept that same formula,” he said, adding that no one has had any major complaints or suggested any meaningful changes in past years.

Levin said that Darwin Day as an international phenomenon seems to be growing in subtle ways. He would like to see it eventually become as popular as more recognized holidays that have religious or national themes.

“There's nothing right now really devoted to enlightenment, science or rationality,” he added.

The Darwin Day Dinner is sponsored by The Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Fairfield County; The Wilton Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers); the Unitarian Church in Westport; and the Norwalk Public Schools Science Department.

The deadline to register for the event is Feb. 3 The cost is $55 per person. Excess proceeds will be donated to the National Center for Science Education.

To learn more about the Darwin Day Dinner or to register, visit www.darwindayct.org.