Featured Stories Archive – December, 2006
Branker hits high note in leading jazz program
By Eric Quiñones · Posted December 21, 2006; 12:10 p.m.
Anthony D.J. Branker, director of Princeton’s jazz program, spent the fall 2005 semester helping the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre develop its jazz studies curriculum. For Branker, a 1980 Princeton graduate, the challenge hearkened back to his own return to campus in 1989.
As a music student at Princeton, Branker envisioned one day coming back to help transform the University’s small jazz program. He has fulfilled that goal by broadening course offerings, bringing in notable musicians to teach and perform with students, and entertaining audiences at Princeton and beyond with the award-winning University Jazz Ensembles.
Student sows seeds of community-helping technology in Africa
By Hilary Parker · Posted December 18, 2006; 10:40 a.m.
Since her arrival at Princeton, junior Ishani Sud has made a difference by thinking inside the box. Not just any box, but rather a solar-powered oven she designed her freshman year with classmate Lauren Wang, under the guidance of Wole Soboyejo, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Powered by the sun’s energy and constructed with locally available materials, the ovens can be built and used in developing nations, thereby allowing advancement while preserving the environment and local economies. In many communities, the ovens could slow deforestation that results from harvesting wood for cooking fires.
Winter Holiday Festival celebrates world cultures
By Staff · Posted December 14, 2006; 11:20 a.m.
Music, food and crafts celebrating holiday traditions from around the globe filled the Frist Campus Center at the annual Winter Holiday Festival on Wednesday, Dec. 13.
Kakinuma creates massive artwork for campus-wide use
By Cass Cliatt · Posted December 11, 2006; 11:45 a.m.
Koji Kakinuma, a renowned calligrapher and lecturer in Princeton's Department of East Asian Studies, exhibited the Japanese art of calligraphy known as Shodo in a performance titled "Tygers" on Saturday, Dec. 9, on the south lawn of the Frist Campus Center.
Seeing culture through technology and technology through culture
By Teresa Riordan · Posted December 4, 2006; 11:16 a.m.
It was 7:30 on a recent Wednesday evening and nine freshmen were taking their seats in Room 121 of Forbes College while Szymon Rusinkiewicz, assistant professor of computer science, displayed their art projects for the week on a wide screen. The students’ inspirations may have been great painters like Braque, Dali and Hockney, but their canvas was a computer and their palette Photoshop, version 8.0.
Meryl Streep talks about the 'mysterious' art of acting
By Jennifer Greenstein Altmann · Posted December 1, 2006; 12:03 p.m.
"I'm here under false pretenses," actress Meryl Streep told a packed crowd at Princeton University on Nov. 30. "My achievement, if you can call it that, is that I've basically pretended to be extraordinary people my entire life, and now I'm being mistaken for one."The Academy Award-winning actress was invited to Princeton as the Belknap Visitor in the Humanities, a program that brings distinguished writers and artists to campus for one or two days to interact with students, faculty and members of the community. The program was created in memory of Chauncey Belknap of the class of 1912, and the event was presented by Princeton's Council of the Humanities.