December 2005 / January 2006

	Students built ginger bread houses in early December in an activity sponsored by CCLA.

November 2005

Pomona people in action:

Kim Bruce, professor of computer science, presented three-hour tutorials titled "Teaching Java: An Eventful Approach" and "Foundations of Object-oriented Languages: Types and Language Design" Oct. 16 and 17 at the ACM Symposium on Object-Oriented Programming, Languages, Systems and Analysis (OOPSLA 2005) in San Diego.

Steve Erickson, professor of humanities and philosophy, taped a 24-lecture course(DVD and CD), "Philosophy as a Guide to Living," for The Teaching Company based in Chantilly, Va.

Eric Grosfils, associate professor of geology, presented a paper on the use of planetary data to enhance undergraduate courses at the annual meeting of the Geological Association of America in October in Salt Lake City. At the meeting he also concluded his fifth year of service as an officer for the Planetary Geology Division, most recently as chair, and commenced his new duties as past chair of the division.

Ann Lebedeff, associate professor of physical education and athletics, spoke on "NCAA Division III Recruiting Practices" at Orange Lutheran High School Recruiting Night Oct. 5. She will be a featured clinician at the National Intercollegiate Tennis Coaches' Convention, to be held in Miami in December, discussing the topic "What Makes a Great Coach?"


Michael McGaha, professor of modern languages, read a paper titled "Reading Don Quixote in Istanbul" at a conference on "Framing the Quixote" at Brigham Young University Oct. 14. McGaha also was quoted in a Knight Ridder Newspapers story about the 400th anniversary of Cervantes' Don Quixote de la Mancha. The story appeared in the Houston Post, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Edmonton Journal and elsewhere.

Nivia Montenegro, associate professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies, gave a talk and performance at the Huntington Park Public Library in early October. Her talk “Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s Havana”, was part of the Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration at the library and was sponsored by the library and the Patronato José Martí. Her performance came from one of the Havana voices of Three Trapped Tigers (1967), Cabrera Infante’s best known novel. At the celebration, Professor Montenegro received special recognition for her contribution from the mayor of Huntington Park.

	Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Known World, read from his work to a standing-room-only crowd in the Ena Thompson Reading Room in October.

Jerusha M. Ogden, assistant director of Annual Giving, married Jamie Barlow in their hometown of Sebastopol, Calif., on Sept. 10.

Kevin Quanstrom and Ron Nemo of the Grounds Department hosted a meeting of the Greater Los Angeles Basin Chapter of the Sports Turf Managers Association at Pomona in September.

Larissa Rudova, associate professor of Russian, had two articles (both written with Marina Balina) published recently in the Slavic and East-European Studies Journal. They are “Russian Children’s Literature: Changing Paradigms,” and “'Favorite Bastard': The Children’s Detektiv in Post-Soviet Russia.”

Donna Ruzika, production manager in Theatre and Dance, has been nominated for a prestigious LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award for her lighting design of Miss Saigon at the Fullerton Civic Light Opera. The Ovation Awards are the only peer-judged theatre awards in Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Times has called them "L.A.'s most coveted theater honor." Ruzika's husband, Tom, also has been nominated in the same category for his touring production of Kathy Rigby’s Peter Pan. "So we are in a friendly competition!,'' writes Ruzika.

John Seery, professor of politics, delivered two talks at The College of William and Mary Oct. 14. His topics were “The Politics of Grant Wood’s American Gothic” and "Jesus for President," a discussion of the Constitution's minimum age requirements for the presidency, Senate and House.

Beverly Wilson Palmer, research associate in the History Department, participated in a panel, "Women's Papers Projects: Sex, Race, and Documentary Editing," at the Association for Documentary Editing meetings in Denver on Oct 7.


October 2005



























CHESS CHALLENGE: The Smith Campus Center open house in early September brought chess master Ilia Serpile (left) to face off simultaneously against a slew of Sagehens.

The annual event also included live music, food, free video game play, caricatures and a screening of Spongebob Squarepants: The Movie. Nearly 500 students attended “The Hypnosis of Michael C. Anthony," one of the most popular events on campus each fall. ”During the show, 30 Pomona students were hypnotized and instructed to do things like “pretend your name is Cha Cha and you get really mad every time people mispronounce it.”


Pomona people in action:

Susana Chavez-Silverman, associate professor of romance languages and literatures, presented "The Perils and Pleasures of Writing and Publishing in Spanglish" at a conference on minority literatures at the University of Cape Town, South Africa in August. Chavez-Silverman will be doing a reading at the Modern Language Association of America's annual convention Dec. 27-30. The reading  from "Killer Crónicas" will be part of the panel "Multilingual Aesthetics in the Americas," sponsored by the Division on 20th Century Latin American Literature. Chavez-Silverman also will be reading "TransOcean(t)ics: Writing Latinidad Globally" at the Latin American Studies Association's annual meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico in March, 2006.

Cecilia Conrad, associate dean of the college and professor of economics, presented “Domestic Violence and the Economics of Identity” at the Macarthur Network on Family and the Economy meeting, in Aspen, Colo., in August. Conrad also participated on the panel “New Tools: Equipping African Americans for Full Participation in a Knowledge-Based Economy” at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Center for Policy Analysis and Research Future Focus Series in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 21.

Timothy Corcoran, visiting associate professor of chemistry, has filed a U.S. patent application on a novel fluorescent detection method which has particularly useful applications in biotechnology. An instrument prototype is now in progress.

Maria Donapetry, adjunct professor of romance languages and literatures, published two articles and a book review in August. "Juana la Loca en Tres Siglos: de Tamayo y Baus a Aranda Pasando por Orduña" appeared in Hispanic Research Journal (Univ. of London). "Almodóvar´s The Bad Education: A Love Letter to Himself" appeared in  Cinematic (The Harvard Annual Film Review). Her review of Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Sali was for www.39ymas.com.

Pierre Englebert, associate professor of politics, presented “The Poverty of African Democracy,” (co-authored with Monica Boduszynski, '03) at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Washington, D.C., in September.

Steve Erickson, professor of humanities and philosophy, was the discussion leader at a Liberty Fund conference on "19th Century German Liberalism and Nationalism," in September in Washington D.C., attended by both German and American academics.

Paula Goldsmid, graduate fellowships coordinator, has been elected to a four-year term on the board of the National Association of Fellowships Advisors. At the biennial national meeting this summer she was a panelist for "Pedagogy of Distinction: Fellowship Advising and the Liberal Arts," and organized and chaired "Size Matters," a discussion of the joys and challenges of fellowships work in small colleges.

Art Horowitz, assistant professor of theatre and dance, presented a paper, "The Bridge and Tunnel Effect: Sarah Jones and the Politics of Community," at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education National Conference: San Francisco in July. He also spoke to the Shakespeare Club of Claremont, presenting a paper, "The Tradition of the 'Co-Option' of Male Shakespearean Roles by Female Actors" at their final summer meeting. Currently, Art is serving as dramaturge on Unknown Theater's production of J.B. Priestley's play, "Johnson Over Jordan," scheduled to open in Los Angeles on Oct. 15.

Laura Hoopes, professor of biology and molecular biology, has been invited by Project Kaleidoscope to join a 14-member delegation traveling to Wuhan University for the ‘Sino-US Pro-Seminar Transforming Undergraduate Science Education.” Hoopes
will be representing Pomona College, the Claremont Colleges, and in some sense, all liberal arts colleges since she is the only delegate from a liberal arts college.

Kathleen Howe, director of the Pomona College Museum of Art, is co-curator and author of the catalogue for an exhibition that opened in August at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. “First Seen: Portraits of the World’s Peoples (1840-1880),” offers an extraordinary survey of 19th Century images, many of them unique, made in roughly the first four decades following the invention of photography. The exhibition highlights the first known photographs of peoples and races, classes and ranks on nearly every continent. Howe gave a lecture, "Facing Off: Photographic Encounters," in conjunction with the exhibition's opening. Howe co-curated the exhibition with SBMA Curator of Photography Karen Sinsheimer. The exhibition will be up through Jan. 8, 2006.

Thomas Leabhart, resident artist and professor of theatre, taught a five-hour workshop for the Theatre Department of Occidental College, and that evening performed “Bonjour, Monsieur Decroux” in the Keck Theatre. Thomas Leabhart edited, with Nancy Ruyter of the UC Irvine Dance Department, a volume of Mime Journal titled Essays on Francois Delsarte. For that volume he wrote an essay titled "Misunderstanding Delsarte."

Sherry Linnell, resident designer/professor of theatre, designed the costumes for a production of Joe Orton's Loot at Theatre East in Hollywood. The production runs Sept. 2 through Oct. 2.

Daniel Martinez, associate professor of biology, with colleagues at Harvey Mudd, Duke, Ohio State, Northern Illinois, Kansas and the University of Virgin Islands, received a grant of $69,590 from the National Science Foundation for his project “Collaborative Research: Assembling the Tee of Life-An Integrative Approach to Investigating Cnidarian Phylogeny."

Robert Mezey, professor of English, emeritus, will give a reading of his and Dick Barnes '54's translations of Jorge Luis Borges’ work at the convention of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics in Cambridge, Mass., in November. His
reading is set for 4 p.m. on Nov. 4.

Jonathan Miller, electronic music technician, has been busy with several musical scoring projects: "Kill House," his first score for a feature film, due out in early 2006; "Two Funny," a comedy series on WE; "Meet Tom Kramer," a television pilot screening at the New York Television Festival and "Dystopia," a short film screening at the LA International Short Film Festival.

Nivia Montenegro, associate professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies, as part of the Hispanic Heritage Month, will give a talk on "Guillermo Cabrera Infante y su Habana", at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 8, at the Huntington Park Public
Library.

Sheila Pinkel, associate professor of art, exhibited a 12-part work on Mumia Abu Jamal at Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica in August as part of an invitational group exhibition titled “Dead Wrong: International Posters Against the Death Penalty.” Her work was included in the catalogue for the exhibition, “PAC III” a joint exhibition featuring Vietnamese and American artists which was held in Hanoi.

Leonard Pronko, professor of theatre, on Aug. 28 discussed Shaw’s Arms and the Man for the newly formed Scholar’s Circle at A Noise Within, Southern California’s classical theatre in Glendale.

Lynn Rapaport, associate professor of sociology, published "The Holocaust in American Jewish Life" in the The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Faculty/Staff Wellness Program Update:

This fall the Faculty/Staff Fitness and Wellness Program is sponsoring the Autumn Department Pedometer Challenge and the Food Pyramid Challenge. Both programs run for eight weeks, from Sept. 19 to Nov. 13.

Autumn Pedometer Department Challenge
Sixty-nine aculty and staff (forming 14 teams) have joined the pedometer challenge. Participants determined their baseline, and then added 1,000 steps to establish their daily step goals. Points are earned for their team each day that they meet their step goal. Every two weeks, they add another 1,000 to their daily step goal.

Autumn Pedometer Challenge 2005 Teams:

Campus Life:
Frank Bedoya
Deanna Bos
Virginia Marshall
Joshua Nelson

Housekeeping:
Kathy Chalfant
Alicia Garcia
Tina Linker
Salud Torres

ITS/Duplicating:
Hilda Dinolfo
Chris Maynard
Herbert Perez

ASPC:
Bonnie Goff
Brenda Schmit
Susan Sellons

OSA:
Mark Beirn
Rhoda Borcherding
Rita Stachniak
Gail Sundberg

Kenyon House:
Judy Brown
Jan O'Neill
Alison Rauchfuss
Kathryn Van Horn

Art/Art History:
Bev Lopez
Susan Thalmann

Philosophy:
Ann Davis
Vicki Hirales
Peter Kung
Peter Thielke

Grounds:
Susan Alcarez
Heraclio Bernal
Jose Covarrubias
Barton Marks
Mike Muglia
Martin Munoz
Ron Nemo
Kevin Quanstrom

Admissions:
Elaine Baker
Juanita Davalos
Beth Hubbard
Sara Mitchell
Vivian Sizemore

Business Office:
Judy Arriola
Anna Chavez
Lucy Huff
Karen Lamb
Anita Miller
Erica Mooyman
Phuong Musgrave
Kaye Pereida
CJ Stearns
Carol Thompson
Lawrence Youhanna

PE/Athletics:
Anne Bages
Lisa Beckett
Carla Jackson
Kirk Jones
Jen Katsiaficas
Kirk Reynolds

Student Affairs:
Susan Deitz
Sheri Sardinas
Rita Shaw
Maria Tucker

Potpourri (CDO/Eng/HR/Soc/Mail/Treas):
Andrea Brown
Heather Brunst
Georgette Carter
Gabriela Fried
Annie Johnson
Julie Roberts

Food Pyramid Challenge

Sixteen faculty/staff are participating in the Food Pyramid Challenge. Last spring the USDA released the MyPyramid food guidance system. This system provides many options to help Americans make healthy food choices and to be active every day.  Each day, participants earn points when they meet the recommendations in any of the six different areas (5 are food groups and one is exercise).

Carol Thompson
Kaye Pereida
Sheri Sardinas
Karen Lamb
Herbert Perez
Tina Linker
Rita Stachniak
Mark Beirn
Carla Jackson
Kirk Reynolds
Lisa Beckett
Bonnie Goff
Anita Miller
Rita Shaw
Susan Deitz
Annie Johnson

The FSFW also offers classes before and after work, and during the noon hour. For more information contact Lisa Beckett.



September 2005

























SAGEHEN SLUGGERS: Experience trumped youth, but just barely, in the faculty/staff vs. students softball game played on Aug. 5. The faculty and staff led the entire game, until the students tied the score at 9-9 in the top of the eight and final inning.

The faculty and staff team won in dramatic fashion in the bottom of the eight with a single up the middle by lifeguard James Hacker, which allowed Nigel Davies (staff member in geology) to score the winning run from second. Final score: 10-9. Above, Jeff Mora of ITS and Daren Mooko of the Asian American Resource Center celebrate as Heath Elliott (far right) of Institutional Advancement looks on. Right: President David Oxtoby at bat.

Pomona people in action:

Mark Beirn is the new assistant director of Study Abroad. He is an honors graduate of Knox College with a major in international studies, and he studied abroad for a year in Berlin. He has six years of experience in the study abroad field; first at Knox, and then at Webster University, where he served as coordinator of the Office of Study Abroad. Mark has extensive advising experience for a diverse set of international programs, and was responsible for developing new programs in Thailand, China and Japan. He is widely traveled, and is particularly interested in language teaching and learning in study abroad programs.

Alfred Cramer, associate professor of music, spoke on "Material Melody, Immaterial Writing: Music and Stenography in Mid-19th-Century Germany" at the conference "Material Cultures and the Creation of Knowledge" presented by the Centre for the History of the Book in Edinburgh, Scotland in July.

Judson Emerick, professor of fine arts and art history, gave a talk titled "The Reliquary Altars of Pope Leo III" in the session on "Art and Ceremony in Medieval Rome" at the recent International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds in July. He spent the summer in Rome studying the ancient walls of the basilica of Sant'Anastasia, which he is more and more convinced must date to the last half of the 4th Century.

Tom Flaherty, associate professor music, has a new CD just released by Bridge Records.  Most of the performers on "Music of Tom Flaherty" are Pomona people, including pianists Karl and Margaret Kohn, violist Cynthia Fogg. Joseph Brennan, now at ITS, was recording engineer for some of the pieces, which were recorded in Bridges Hall of Music. The CD is available through Tower Records, Amazon.com and Bridge Records.

Meg Jolley, lecturer in dance, received her AMSAT teaching certificate in Alexander Technique in July. She is thrilled to be adding Alexander Technique to her Pomona teaching repertoire. She also has been asked by the Alexander Training Institute to teach developmental movement at their Santa Monica campus this fall.

Julie Journitz, director of client services in ITS, will be speaking at "Best Practices in IT Help Desk Service Desk Management" in Toronto Sept. 19-20.

Thomas Leabhart, resident artist and professor of theatre, taught an intensive workshop for members of the Atalaya Theatre in Seville, Spain, from May 30 through June 8. For the first two weeks of July he taught for Association Hippocampe in Paris, and for the second two weeks in Aurriac, France for La Montade.

Robert Mezey, professor of English, emeritus, will be teaching a course in verse writing this fall at USC. A book of poetry by the late Dick Barnes '54, edited by Mezey, was reviewed recently by The New Yorker. The reviewer wrote of A Word Like Fire that "there are no unnecessary words in these poems, and no unnecessary poems in this book."

Cristanne Miller, editor, and Andrea Carter Brown, managing editor, are pleased to announce publication of the first issue of The Emily Dickinson Journal since it moved to Pomona College earlier this year. The EDJ is the premier journal for Dickinson scholarship around the world. Stop in their office at Crookshank Hall, Room 7, Wednesday afternoons to see the Journal, pick up a copy of the Emily Dickinson "Poem of the Week," and check out their fabulous collection of Dickinson T-shirts.

Boots Y. Pascual, visiting assistant professor of acting and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance, directed and presented scenes from the ancient Greek tragedy Elektra by Sophocles at the International Festival and Encounter of Theatre Schools in Ancient Greek Drama held in Cyprus at the end of July. Pascual reports that Pitzer students Lynn Trickey '06 and Linda Luna '07 stunned the crowd as Elektra and Clytemnestra, respectively, with their passionate and powerful acting and created a genuine sensation among the audience which included experts on this genre of theatre. They included Greek/Cypriot professional actors Andros Kritikos and Despina Bebedeli, and Nicos Shiafkalis who is also artistic director of the annual International Festival on Ancient Greek Drama.

This moment marked the high point of Pascual's summer research and observation tour, during which he saw 21 plays, including some on Broadway and London's West End "just to make sure that I am not teaching my students less than the best."

Leonard Pronko, professor of theatre, spent several weeks this summer in Japan seeing kabuki and hiking in the mountains to see the old inland post road route. Then he went to France for three weeks, chiefly the Dordogne, and spent a month in Italy, traveling down to the heel of the boot. He ended his European trip with 10 days in London seeing plays day and night.


Donna Ruzika, production manager in Theatre and Dance, designed the lighting for the Utah Shakespearean Festival in the "Old-Globe" style Adam's Memorial Theatre. The productions included Doctor Faustus, Romeo and Juliet and Love's Labours Lost.

Wayne E. Steinmetz, professor of chemistry, reports that with support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute,  the Chemistry Department's NMR spectrometer has been adapted so that it can perform MRI on small objects. Now images can be obtained with a resolution of 0.1 mm. The ground work was done this summer by Cyrus Maher '06. He will develop experiments for the advanced physical chemistry laboratory that will employ MRI.

James Taylor, professor of theatre, spent much of the summer in Manila researching  the contemporary Philippine Theatre under a Freeman grant. He conducted theatre design workshops at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Philippine National Nigh School for the Arts, lectured on American theatre at Central Philippine University in LIoilo City and gave a talk about production design at St. Scholastica's College in Manila.

Paula Verdugo is the new internship coordinator in the Career Development Office. She has held positions in both human resources and career services. Most recently she has worked as a Career Counselor at Cal Poly Pomona and as the assistant director/employer specialist in the Career Services Center at the University of La Verne. She also taught graduate level courses in career development and theory, assessment, and higher education counseling at the University of La Verne. Verdugo earned her undergraduate degree in business and her master’s degree in psychology with an emphasis in career counseling.

Faculty/Staff Fitness and Wellness Challenge Update:

Eleven staff and faculty members completed the Summer Challenge Pedometer and Walking Program. Participants strove to complete their goals in walking steps, vigorous activity, eating fruits & veggies and eating whole grains. Congratulations to Toni Clark, Ann Davis, Evelyn James, Neil Gerard, Annie Johnson, Karen Lamb, Sara Mitchell, Kaye Pereida, Sheri Sardinas and Alene Stolz.

Overall winners:
First place: Kaye Pereida
Second place: Karen Lamb
Third place: Annie Johnson

Summer Challenge participants and award winners will be recognized at the FSFW orientation luncheon on Wednesday, Sept. 7 from 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Frank Dining Hall's Blue Room. Coordinator Lisa Beckett invites faculty and staff to come for lunch and find out more about the fitness program. Got questions? Contact Beckett at ext. 18428


August 2005

Tahir Andrabi, associate professor of economics, was a member of a recent World Bank study to conclude that only .7 percent of school-enrolled children in Pakistan between the ages of 5 and 19 matriculate in madrasas religious schools. The report, "Religious School Enrollment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data," contradicts a 2002 International Crisis Group report and popular misconceptions. Andrabi was quoted about the study in the May/June 2005 issue of Foreign Policy.

Anna Asker, research analyst for Institutional Advancement, was recently elected to the Board of the California Advancement Researchers Association (CARA).

David Becker, associate professor of biology, presented collaborative work on plants with altered steroid profiles at the annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists in Seattle last month. He collaborated with Dr. Robert Grebenok and his students at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY.

Graydon Beeks, director of music programming and facilities, read a paper on "George Frideric Handel's use of anthems in his oratorios" at the annual Handel Festival and Conference in Halle, Germany in early June. While there, he also took part in the meetings of the editorial board of the Hallische Haendel Ausgabe and the Vorstand of the Georg-Friedrich-Haendel-Gesellschaft.


Ralph Bolton, professor of anthropology, delivered a paper titled "DH Lawrence's Ashes: Where Did They End Up?" at the 10th International D. H. Lawrence Conference in Santa Fe, NM in June. He also lead tours of the Witter Bynner Estate for groups of scholars attending the conference. In addition, Bolton was cited in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (May 27) that reported on a controversy involving adult male circumcision as a tool for preventing the spread of HIV in Africa. Bolton was interviewed in connection with a symposium he had organized on this subject at the 2005 annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology.

Susana Chávez-Silverman, associate professor of romance languages and literatures, will participate in a panel at the Wisconsin Book Festival in October. The topic is "Double Margins: Jewish and LGBT Identities in Creative Writing." Chavez-Silverman is the author of Killer Cronicas: Bilingual Memories.

Clarissa Cheney, associate professor of biology, attended two Gordon Research Conferences in Andover, NH this summer. At the Developmental Biology Gordon Research Conference in June, she presented a poster, Mutational Analysis of Drosophila rab GDI," that included the work of Ryan Takeshita '04, Dan Holtzman '06, Michelle Keese '05 and Jesse Mays '05. At the Molecular Membrane Biology Gordon Research Conference in July, she presented a poster entitled "Drosophila rab GDI interacts with a UBX domain protein." This included the work of Brian Richardson '00, Kat Ayres '04, Naveen Sangji '05, Dan Holtzman '06 and Michelle Keese '05.

Russel Heskin, associate director of Alumni Relations, will be chairing the CASE Young Alumni and Student Programs Conference in Atlanta in November.

Cristanne Miller, professor of English, reports that her new book, Cultures of Modernism: Marianne Moore, Mina Loy, Else Lasker-Schuler. Gender and Literary Community in New York and Berlin has just been published by University of Michigan Press.

Denise Miller, senior secretary in LCS, reports that her daughter Elizabeth Miller and their pony Suncrests Ms. Tattletail pulled off another victory at POA International Horse Show in Shelbyville, TN in July. Horse and rider won Large Mares High Point 54-56", Timed Events, One Pony/One Rider along with Hunter Under Saddle (Versatility), Hunt Seat Eq. Under Saddle (English), Single Pole (Gymhkana) and Supreme Pony Award.

Nivia Montenegro, associate professor of Spanish, was invited to lecture at the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha in Cuenca, Spain, for a July seminar on Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante. She gave a talk on "Bodies of Cuba: Woman and Nation in Three Trapped Tigers." The seminar had a roster of distinguished international writers, among them Fernando Savater (Spain), Jorge Volpi (Mexico), Fernando Iwasaki (Peru) and Juan Cruz (Canary Islands). News of the seminar was reported in El Pais, one of the major Spanish newspapers.

Bryan Penprase, associate professor of physics and astronomy, reports that a team of eight Pomona students and four faculty members were on hand in July at Pomona's Brackett Observatory to witness the Deep Impact event, the collision between comet Tempel 9P and a NASA spacecraft. They gathered data from three of Pomona's telescopes, including remote observation using the Pomona one-meter telescope in Wrightwood. The students involved in the observations include Rachel Paterno-Mahler, and Gordon Stecklein, along with Alma Zook and Penprase, who were the faculty members responsible for the observations. A larger group of students enjoyed the drama of the event, as well as the excellent gourmet snacks prepared by Rachel's mom. Additional faculty and staff included Thomas Jarrett, Donald Hoard and Alper Ates.

The data gathered included polarization measurements of the comet impact and a series of high quality images during the impact which showed the comet brightening after collision with the spacecraft. Preliminary analysis of the data shows that the comet has brightened by a factor of two. The observations are ongoing and will contribute to a larger NASA and worldwide campaign of observations that includes hundreds of telescopes in Hawaii, Chile and other locations.

Bruce Poch, vice president and dean of admissions, reports on some promotions and new hires in his office. Joining the staff are new admissions officers Aurora Ignacio,
(Pitzer BA '04), Rashida Barner, (Spelman College BA '04 & Harvard Graduate School of Education '05) and Christopher Ward, (Swarthmore College, BA '05).

Art Rodriguez is promoted to senior associate dean of admissions, Daniel Takeshi Krause, Tamina Mencin and Shakila Williams are promoted to assistant dean of admissions and Santiago Ybarra is promoted to senior assistant dean of admissions.

Departing from the Admissions Office are Jess Lord, (who was senior associate dean of admissions and is the new dean of admissions at Haverford College), Justin Wright '99 (returning to his native Seattle area) and Jacqueline Dubose '04 (going on a Rotary Fellowship to South Africa).


July 2005

Sagehen baseball star Jase Turner '05 moves on to the minor leagues

Before his first minor-league game, Jase Turner ’05 endured an eight-hour trip from Idaho Falls to Casper, Wyoming on an old bus that blew its air conditioning while ascending a mountain.

The payoff came when he hit a double, then a homerun, as the Idaho Fall Chukars wiped out the Casper Rockies, 18-4.

The 6’3’’ first baseman is the latest Pomona-Pitzer baseball star to attempt the climb to the major leagues. He was a standout on Pomona’s team, batting .386 his senior year, and the Kansas City Royals signed him on as a 27th round draft pick.

”I was nervous, anxious, excited, overwhelmed,” said Turner. “Just not knowing what to expect.”

After graduating, Turner was only home in Oakland, Calif. for a few weeks before the baseball draft landed him in the Royals' farm system. Turner has extra inspiration for pursuing big league dreams. He was close to his grandfather, former major league catcher Jesse Gonder, who died last year.

Hitting a homerun in his first minor-league game boosted his confidence, but Turner realizes it's a challenging path to the majors.

The Chukars are part of a rookie advanced league where players are mostly straight out of college, like Turner. “Everyone’s going through the same thing,” he said.

Adam Gardner '04, a relief pitcher for the single-A Augusta (Ga.) Greenjackets, recently talked by phone with Turner, his former teammate. He thinks Turner has a good shot at moving up in the Royals' organization. In fact, Gardner suspects Turner helped him make it to the minors by attracting scouts to see the Sagehens play.

"Probably one of the reasons I got signed is guys were coming to see Jase," he said.

Pomona people in action:

Jay David Atlas, professor of linguistics and philosophy, presented on the topic of "What Do Reflexive Pronouns Tell Us About Belief?" at the Nijmegen Semantics Colloquium in The Netherlands in June. As part of the double session, Emiel Krahmer of Tilburg University addressed the topic of "Focus and Questions: Two Functions of Audiovisual Prosody."

David Becker, associate professor of biology, authored an invited opinion article, "A Case for Nonsurvey Introductory Biology Courses" that was published in Cell Biology Education (2005).

Betty Bernhard, professor of theatre, acted in a performance of Legislative Theatre titled "Civil Liberties" for the Theatre of the Oppressed conference at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel in July. The audience included two California legislators.

Heath Elliott, associate director of major gifts and coach of the faculty-staff softball team, reports that despite a challenging regular season, the Pomona faculty-staff co-ed softball team won when it counted most and took home the second place trophy in the City of Claremont's spring softball league. The impressive trophy, the first in the team's eight-year history, is on display in Heath's office in Alexander Hall.

Jamie Johnson, associate director of the Career Development Office, and her husband, Bob, volunteered at the Cerritos Performing Arts Center's Family Arts Festival on June 5. For the past five years, Jamie and Bob have helped with the Musical Zoo, a festival program designed to open the world of music to children by letting them have first-hand experience with a variety of musical instruments. This year Bob helped with the baritone and tuba while Jamie instructed children on the violin. Jamie reported one little child took the violin and started strumming furiously. It was his first time seeing a violin, and he thought it was the best thing he had seen yet. His mother had to coax him to let go since there were several children in line behind him.

Zayn Kassam, associate professor of religious studies, has won the 2005 American Academy of Religion Excellence in Teaching Award.

Carl Martellino, director of the Career Development Office, was interviewed on National Public Radio for the June 14th show, "Best and Worst Jobs in America," and was quoted about today's job market for teens in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Denise Miller, senior secretary in LCS, reports that her daughter, Elizabeth Miller, just returned from a competitive weekend showing her World and International Champion 2004 Pony Suncrests Ms Tattletail at the Cal-State POA Show in Tulare, California. Both rider and pony finished number one for "Overall One Rider/One Pony" and High Point Senior Pony.

William Peterson, professor of music and college organist, played a concert on the Taylor and Boody organ at Saint Joseph Memorial Chapel at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA in early April. This concert, part of the 2004-05 series celebrating the 20th anniversary of the installation of this instrument, included works of Scheidt, Scheidemann, Buxtehude and Bach.

Thomas Pinney, professor of English, emeritus, has written his second book on American wine history. A History Of Wine In America: From Prohibition to the Present is set for publication July 5. According to the publisher, "Pinney's sweeping narrative comprises a lively cast of characters that includes politicians, bootleggers, entrepreneurs, growers, scientists, and visionaries. ... He is the first to tell the complete and connected story of the rebirth of the wine industry in California, now one of the most successful winemaking regions in the world." This publication follows his 1989 book History of Wine in America: From the Beginnings to Prohibition.

Mike Riskas, retired professor of physical education and athletics, served as a Major League Baseball Envoy in in Athens, Greece helping promote and develop baseball for youth groups, club teams and the national team in May and June. From July 6 to July 17, he will serve as assistant coach for the national Greek baseball team when it travels to Prague, Czech Republic, for the European Senior Championship Tournament. In September, he will coach the Greek baseball team as they visit the Netherlands for the World Cup Baseball Championship Tournament.

Paul Saint-Amour, associate professor of English, attended the American James Joyce Conference at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY June 15-18, chairing a panel titled "Settling the Estate: Intellectual Property Issues." He gave a paper titled "'Quashed Quotatoes': Of Joyces and Joyceans." In August, Saint-Amour will be delivering a keynote lecture at the Dickens Project conference at UC Santa Cruz. The lecture will be called "'Christmas Yet to Come': Hospitality, Futurity, Dickens, and 'The Dead.'"

Beverly Wilson Palmer, research associate in the History Department, participated in a panel of documentary editors, "Advocates of Internationalism: Rare Finds from the Papers of Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, and Emma Goldman" at the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians on June 5.

Monique Saigal, professor of French, gave a lecture on “Means of Survival of Women in the French Resistance” at a synagogue in Geneva in April. On sabbatical since fall 2004, Saigal has completed her book, Héroïnes Françaises 1940-1945: Courage, Force et Ingéniosité. La Puissance dans l’Impuissance. The book has been accepted by les éditions du Rocher, but she doesn't have a publication date yet.

Faculty/Staff Walking Program Update:

June marked the beginning of the eight-week "Summer Challenge" pedometer and nutrition program. Each day participants can earn points for reaching their goals in any or all of the following four areas:

     -- Step goal
     -- 20 minutes of vigorous activity
     -- 6 or more fruits and veggies
     -- 3 or more whole grains goal.

More than 20 faculty and staff members have joined the Summer Challenge:

Lisa Beckett
Leslie Bergson
Toni Clark
Ann Davis
Erika Gamst
Neil Gerard
Carla Jackson
Evelyn James
Annie Johnson
Kirk Jones
Karen Lamb
Anita Miller
Sara Mitchell
Karen Parfitt
Kaye Pereida
Kirk Reynolds
Sheri Sardinas
Brenda Schmit
Rita Stachniak
Don Stachniak
Alene Stolz
Jill Walker Robinson

If you are interested in joining the Summer Challenge or learning about other FSFW opportunities,contact Physical Education Coordinator Lisa Beckett at ext. 18428 or lmb04747@pomona.edu.


June 2005

























The annual staff picnic in May offered food, fun and prizes on a perfectly sunny day.

Pomona people in action:

Jay David Atlas, professor of linguistics and philosophy, co-taught a graduate seminar in Linguistic Methods and Evidence in the Department of Computational Linguistics, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, in May, and lectured on the philosophy of mind to the Behavioral, Cognitive, and Neuro-Sciences Institute at the same university. This month, Atlas will be a research fellow at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. On July 11 he will lecture at the International Pragmatics Association Conference in Riva del Garda, Italy.

	View photos of Commencement 2005

David Becker, associate professor of biology, gave research seminar talks on "A Novel Model for Thermotolerance in Photosynthesis" at Harvey Mudd College's Biology Department and Oberlin College's Biology Department, both in April.

Betty Bernhard, professor of theatre, will be presenting a talk on her production of "Romeo and Juliet" in Ahmedabad, India, at the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference in Los Angeles this month.

Stephanie Harves, assistant professor of Russian and linguistics, has been invited to teach at the New York-St. Petersburg Institute for Cognitive and Cultural Studies in St. Petersburg, Russia this summer. Participants in this program take seminars with visiting international scholars in a range of fields in the humanities and social sciences, especially those that do not fall neatly into traditional discipline areas. She will offer a course on Universals in Human Language. In April, Harves gave an invited lecture in the Department of Linguistics at NYU titled "Unaccusativity, Distributivity and Non-Agreement in Russian." In May, she presented a paper titled "Non-Agreement, Unaccusativity, and the External Argument Constraint" at Princeton University at the annual Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics Conference.

Thomas Leabhart, resident artist and professor of theatre, lectured on Francois Delsarte for the USC-Annenberg School of Journalism in May at the Boston Court Theatre in Pasadena. Arts editors and writers from across the country attended.

Genevieve Lee, associate professor of music, has been in the process of recording the piano works of her colleague Tom Flaherty and Philippe Bodin this semester during her sabbatical. She performed a solo recital of this music at Smith College in February and she gave the European premiere of these pieces in Amsterdam earlier this May. She also performed works of Schumann and Debussy on a live radio program broadcast by AVRO (Radio 4), the national classical music station of the Netherlands. This live radio show is the most listened to classical program in the Netherlands.

Boots Y. Pascual, visiting assistant professor in the Department of Theatre & Dance and the Intercollegiate Department of Asian-American Studies, will present a paper titled "Theatre as a Parallel Polis: Re-inventing Citizenship in a Dictatorial Philippines under Marcos through Theatre" at the 2005 Annual Conference of the International Federation for Theatre Research on the theme "Citizen Artist: Theatre, Culture and Community," June 26-July 2 in College Park, Maryland.

Ken Pflueger, executive director of ITS, chaired the Second Annual EDUCAUSE Western Regional Conference in San Francisco the week in April. The conference theme was "Winds of Change: Charting the Course for Technology in Challenging Times." The conference was attended by more than 250 IT professionals from colleges and universities in California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Nevada.

Neela Silva, donor relations assistant, has earned her B.A. degree from the University of La Verne. She majored in Legal Studies and minored in English.

Kyla Wazana Tompkins, assistant professor of English and women's studies, had an essay on teaching race through food studies accepted at the Journal of Food, Culture and Society. She will be presenting this topic at the annual Association for the Study of Food and Society in Portland on June 11. Tompkins was awarded a Mellon Faculty Partnership to attend the Food Studies Reading Group at New York University during the school year 2005-2006, and to work with Amy Bentley, chair of the Food Studies Department at NYU. Tompkins also was elected to the Minority Scholar’s Committee of the American Studies Association for a three-year term. Finally, Tompkins was given an award as an outstanding Queer/Allied Faculty at the Claremont Colleges Lavender Graduation ceremony. This summer she will be researching the relationship between recipes and narrative in women’s journals of the 18th and 19th centuries at the American Antiquarian Society and revising her book project, tentatively titled Stomaching Difference: Race, Food and Literature in the Nineteenth-Century United States.

Walking Program Update

The Faculty/Staff Fitness and Wellness Walk Across America Pedometer Program organized 38 faculty and staff members into two teams to walk as many steps as it would take to go from Los Angeles to Boston. They started March 25. Six weeks and 6,454,000 steps later both teams arrived in Boston. On May 26, the participants celebrated their successful journey with a delicious lunch of whole wheat pizza, fruits and veggies at the Smith Campus Center courtyard. Since the teams tied, all members received Walk Across America t-shirts. Prizes also were given to the top individual finishers. First place went to Beth Hubbard, who averaged an amazing 185,000 steps or 92 miles per week. Anne Johnson, Anita Miller, Kaye Pereida and Kevin Quanstrom tied for second place.

Walk Across America Pedometer Program Teams:

Pomona Blue
Ron Nemo
Beth Hubbard
Kaye Pereida
Carla Jackson
Martha Orozco
Gary Smith
Rita Shaw
Nita Kansara
Brenda Schmit
Kirk Jones
Ann Quinley
Dennis Berger
Bertha Iraheta
Scott Rynne
Martin Munoz
Magdalena Garcia
Mike Muglia
Valerie Townes

Pomona White
Anita Miller
Lisa Beckett
Susan Thalmann
Mike Riskas
Barb Riskas
Cynthia Peters
Erika Gamst
Sara Mitchell
Kevin Quanstrom
Frank Pericolosi
Jesus Sanchez
Ric Townes
Kirk Reynolds
Annie Johnson
Raul Mendoza
Anne Bages
Karen Lamb
Sarah Visser

For information about future pedometer programs -- the Summer Challenge begins June 6th -- please contact Lisa Beckett at ext. 18428.


May 2005
























SAGEHEN CELEBRATION: Alumni take part in a Dr. Clue Treasure Hunt, put on by David Blum '85, who creates treasure hunts for a living.

This was only one of many memorable events during Alumni Weekend 2005, which included a symposium featuring notable journalists such as Bill Keller '70 (pictured at right), executive editor of the New York Times. In the keynote speech, Keller said the mainstream press remains relevant despite challenges from blogs and financial pressures.

Roughly 1,000 Sagehens returned to the Pomona campus for the April 29 to May 1 event, which also featured In-N-Out Burgers, a wine-tasting, musical performances and the nostalgia-filled "Through the Gates" ceremony in Bridges Auditorium.

Pomona people in action:

Betty Bernhard, professor of theatre, directed an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet in Ahmedabad, India as part of a Festival of Non-violence and got good reviews in the local press. The Divya Bhaskar-Gujarati Daily lauded the adaptation's relevance to contemporary Indian society. "Congratulations to the director Betty Bernhard and the entire excellent cast," wrote the newspaper. "With a few stage props and beautiful lighting, the artists from the performing group of Darpana showed excellent acting skills."

Cris Cheney, associate professor of biology, in February gave a seminar on  "Targeting rab GTPases and vescile transport" to the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department of the St. Louis University School of Medicine. In late March, she took two students and one alumnus to the Annual Drosophila Research Conference in San Diego. The students were Naveen Sangji '05 and Daniel Holtzman '06. Katharine Ayres '04, Mellon Postbaccalaureate Fellow in Cheney's lab, also went.
They presented two posters:
1) N.F. Sangji, K.L. Ayres, A. Chen, B.E. Richardson and C.M. Cheney, "Drosophila GDP dissociation inhibitor interacts with a protein containing a ubiqitin-like domain." 2) D. J. Holtzman, M.L. Keese, A. Chen and C.M. Cheney, "Mutational analysis of Drosophila rab GDP dissociation inhibitor (GDI) function." At the meeting they saw Brian Richardson '00, who is a third-year graduate student in the lab of Mary Baylies at Cornell University School of Medicine and Joe Park '99 who is an M.D.-Ph.D. student in the lab of Dennis McKearin at University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine.

Beverly-Jene Coffman, office manager and archivist in the Communications Office, presented an introductory study of Rick Warren's award-winning book, The Purpose-Driven Life, while on a short-term missionary trip April 14 to April 22 in Managua and Bluefields, Nicaragua.

Roberto A. Garza López, associate professor of chemistry, is first co-author of a paper, "Invariance relations for random walks on square-planar lattices," published in Chemical Physics Letters in April. Meanwhile, Garza López reports that Gerardo Lopez Mena '04, who worked in the professor's lab last year, has won a Mellon Postbaccalaureate Fellowship for the academic year 2005-06 to work in his lab. "He will be doing research in my group for a year as well as helping me with some minority high school students during this summer," writes Garza López.

	Frank and Carol Gonzalez dine in style at last year's staff picnic.

Carol Gonzalez, manager of advancement and alumni records, reports that June 1 will mark the 15th wedding anniversary for her and husband Frank Gonzalez, who works in housekeeping. "We still have fond memories of our wedding on Walker Beach during the housekeeping picnic!," writes Carol.

George L. Gorse, professor of art history, gave a paper on "The Virgin Mary as Queen of Genoa, 1637, or How a Republic Tried to Become a Monarchy" at the Renaissance Society of America conference at Cambridge University in England in April. Gorse recently published an article on "Renaissance Hieroglyphics and Sebastiano del Piombo's Portrait of Andrea Doria" in a volume on The Papacy of Clement VII: Politics, Religion, and Patronage with Ashgate Press in London.

Gail Gottfried, lecturer in psychology and linguistics & cognitive science, received a National Science Foundation grant for $307,700 to develop and test new curricular materials for an interactive video-based laboratory class in developmental psychology. The prototype, which formed the basis of the grant proposal, focused on parent-child conversation at the dinner table. "Special thanks to Paul Saint-Amour and Richard Fass and their families for allowing us to come to their homes and videotape them at dinner!," writes Gottfried. The project is collaborative with LessonLab, a Pearson Education company.

Jill Grigsby, professor of sociology, just received the Josephine Smith Award from the Claremont Committee on Aging. This annual award is the highest award for service that the committee gives. Her service for the Claremont Senior Programs since 1992 includes starting the monthly newsletter, Senior Scene; analyzing data from two separate surveys for the city of Claremont; and initiating a program (Claremont Avenues for Lifelong Learning) that allows older persons in Claremont to audit classes at the colleges.

Eric Grosfils, associate professor and chair of the Geology Department, recently received word that a new three-year proposal submitted to NASA's Planetary Geology & Geophysics program, on which he is a co-investigator, received funding. The project is entitled "The influence of flexural stresses in terrestrial planet lithosphere on magma ascent and volcano-tectonic surface structures." Grosfils is collaborating with Patrick McGovern of the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Andrew Freed of Purdue University, and James Zimbelman from the Smithsonian Institution's National Air & Space Museum. Grosfils' role will be to investigate the role of magma reservoirs within the volcanic systems they will be studying, and he expects to involve several Pomona students during the course of the project in summer work which will involve mapping and deciphering the volcanic and tectonic stratigraphy of several large volcanoes on Venus.

Art Horowitz, assistant professor of theatre, will be presenting a paper, "Peer Gynt, Our Contemporary: Three Recent Adaptations", at an Ibsen Society of America panel at the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies academic conference to be held at Portland State University in May.

Nina Karnovsky, assistant professor of biology, attended a Gordon Research Conference on Polar Marine Science where she presented the poster "Seasonal Changes in the Food Habits of Seabirds: a Multiple Indicator Approach Using Dietary, Stable Isotope and Fatty Acid Analyses." She was quoted extensively in a humorous article about Auks in the March issue of the literary magazine, The Believer.

Thomas Leabhart, resident artist and professor of theatre, performed, lectured and taught at the 14th International School of Theatre Anthropology in April in Wroclaw and Krzyzowa, Poland. Since 1994, Leabhart has participated in six meetings of ISTA as a member of the artistic staff.

Marjorie Harth, emerita director of the Pomona College Museum of Art, is compiling a book about Pomona's campus. She is interested in receiving reminiscences and anecdotes about particular buildings or areas of campus for possible inclusion. Please submit them at mharth@pomona.edu.

Lucia Miltenberger has been appointed director of Parent Relations. Lucia is no newcomer to Pomona College. For the past four years she has served as associate director in Public Policy Analysis (PPA). Lucia earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Portland in Oregon and her master’s degree from the University of Washington in Seattle. Lucia joined the Advancement staff on April 18 on a part-time basis while she finishes out the academic year in PPA. She will assume her full-time responsibilities in Institutional Advancement on May 16.

Civil rights attorney John Payton '73 will be the keynote speaker at Commencement.

Bryan Penprase, associate professor of physics and astronomy, is part of a Caltech collaboration, with Wallace Sargent, which is using the Keck telescope in Hawaii, largest telescope in the world. They are scheduled to have two nights to study absorption lines from quasars, to detect invisible galaxies forming near the edge of the universe. Their telescope operator is Julie Rivera '00, a Pomona physics and astronomy alumna.

Jennifer Perry, assistant professor of anthropology, and two of her students, Carrie Fields '06 and Harvey Mudd student Christopher Jazwa '05, attended and presented papers at the annual meeting of the Society for California Archaeology in Sacramento in late April. Jazwa presented on his senior thesis for his anthropology major at Pomona, which is titled "Spatial and Temporal Patterning in the Exploitation of Chert Quarries on Eastern Santa Cruz Island, California." Fields presented on "Incised Stone Artifacts in the California Archaeological Record." Perry presented on "Cosmological Intersections: How Did the Island Chumash Relate to the Mainland Landscape?"

 In late March Perry attended the annual meeting for the Society for American Archaeology in Salt Lake City. She co-organized and was the chair of a symposium titled "Theory, History, and Archaeology: Explaining Variability and Continuity among the California Islands." In this symposium, she presented a paper titled "The Influence of Environmental Variability on the Nature of and Responses to Population-Resource Imbalances on the California Islands." She also wrote and presented a paper, "Investigations into Middle Period Fishing Economy of Western Santa Cruz Island," on behalf of a recently deceased colleague.

Chris Ponce, vice president for institutional advancement, has been chosen by the CASE Board of Trustees to serve as a member of CASE's Commission on Philanthropy.

Neela Silva of Trusts and Estates was one of the organizers of the Tsunami Benefit show held at Bridges Auditorium in February, sponsored by KidCare International. Silva was grateful that she could contribute, along with her friends and performers who gave donations and their time, to help her native country, Sri Lanka, which was devastated by the tsunami. The evening consisted of a pageant of Sri Lankan drummers and dancers, a fashion show, a silent auction and the famous rice and curry. President David Oxtoby showed up to top off the evening, and other dignitaries included Ted Chen of Channel 4 News and Claremont Mayor Sandy Baldonado. Neela and her son, Niran, who is now in Sri Lanka helping out with this cause, were featured in a documentary on Wealth TV in San Diego recently. The evening raised $20,000, which was presented to Lions Club of Colombo Orient, Sri Lanka.

Patricia Smiley, associate professor of psychology, presented two posters highlighting results of her ongoing research at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, held in Atlanta in April.  Her colleague, visiting Professor Joelle Greene, was co-author on the poster titled "Gestures and Words in Early Requests for Action and Information" and her CGU graduate student, Sae Ryung Lee, was co-author on the poster entitled "Parent Beliefs About Intelligence and Learning Processes."

Motts Thomas, director of community programs, has been nominated and will be honored at a Pomona Unified School District Board of Education Community Service Awards recognition ceremony for his contributions to the school district. The ceremony will be held May 3 at the Board Conference Center at The Village, at Indian Hill Boulevard and East Holt Avenue.

Margaret Waller, professor of French, was invited by a former student, Corinne Scheiner '91, to speak to faculty and students at Colorado College in April about "The Two Sides of Napoleon's Closet: Modern Masculinity as Display, Cover-Up and Exposure."

Ken Wolf, professor of history, has a new publication: The Deeds of Count Roger and of His Brother Duke Robert Guiscard (Michigan, 2005), an original translation of the principal source for the 11th-century Norman conquest of Muslim Sicily. Wolf's The Poverty of Riches: St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered (Oxford, 2003) just came out in paperback.


April 2005


                                                                                     Photo by Sam Farina-Henry '07
Construction continues on the consortium's $7 million, 22,845-square-foot Student Services Center, which will house health services, counseling and other programs. Completion is expected in the summer.

Pomona people in action:

Jay David Atlas, professor of linguistics and philosophy, will be presenting a commentary on a paper by Rutgers University philosopher Jason Stanley at a USC Conference "Syntax and Semantics with Attitude", April 16-17. For the month of May 2005, Atlas will be a visiting research professor in the Department of Information Science, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, where he will participate in teaching a graduate seminar on Methodology and Statistics in Linguistics and lecturing on the Philosophy of Mind in the university's Behavioral, Cognitive and Neuro-sciences Institute. For the month of June, Atlas will be doing his research as a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Insitute for Psycholinguistics, Nijemgen, The Netherlands. In July, he will be lecturing on philosophy of language at the 9th International Pragmatics Conference, July 10-15, at Riva del Garda, Italy.

Tzu-Yi Chen, assistant professor of computer science, received a National Science Foundation Career Grant for $400,000 over five years. The title of the project is "Career: Preconditioning Large, Sparse Linear Systems: Theory and Practice."

Eric Grosfils, associate professor of geology and department chair, attended the 36th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, where he presented an overview of the results of his four-year NASA-funded mapping study of the Ganiki Planitia quadrangle on Venus. Also attending the conference were four students (out of six currently involved in the Venus mapping effort), who presented their own research results. These included Elizabeth Venechuk (Scripps '06), Debra Hurwitz '07, Sylvan Long '07 and Brian Kastl '07. Joey Richards '05 also had a poster on his work accepted but was unable to attend.

During the same trip, acting in his role as chair of the Planetary Geology Division of the Geological Society of America, Grosfils gave a plenary presentation at the 36th LPSC to announce the Dwornik Awards for best student oral presenter and the best student poster presenter from the 35th LPSC. In addition, he wrapped up his third and final year on NASA's Planetary Cartography and Geological Mapping Working Group panel, which provides oversight for many critical components of the U.S. Geological Survey's planetary mapping effort.

Thomas Leabhart, professor of theatre and resident artist, taught and lectured for six days in late March and early April in Los Angeles for the NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Theatre. Twenty-five practicing arts journalists from across the United States attended the Institute, sponsored by the USC Annenberg School of Journalism.

Michael McGaha, professor of modern languages, in March read a paper titled "St. Teresa of Ávila and the Question of Jewish Influence" at the joint meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Society of Biblical Literature, Western Jewish Studies Association, and American Schools of Oriental Research, Arizona State University.

Anne McMenamin will join Institutional Advancement as associate director of Trusts & Estates beginning April 25. Anne returns to The Claremont Colleges after eight years at Caltech. For 13 years ending in 1996, Anne was a financial analyst and trust administrator at Claremont University Center. Since 1997, she has been the manager of Trusts and Bequests and, most recently, the director of the Gift and Estate Planning Program at California Institute of Technology. Anne received her B.A. from Pitzer and is enrolled in the Executive MBA program at CGU's Drucker School of Management. Anne and her daughters Megan, Kristina and Vanessa live in Claremont.

Jonathan Miller, electronic music technician, just completed the theme and underscore for the Discovery Home and Leisure television show, Flip Stories. The show, Big! on Discovery Channel, which featured his music, was broadcast in the UK during February and March.

Leonard Pronko, professor of theatre, was busy in March. He presented a pre-play lecture on Moliere and The School for Wives at A Noise Within theatre company in Glendale and gave a kabuki lecture demonstration at the Pasadena Senior Center. On campus, he discussed the art of kabuki as part of a Pacific Basin Institute event that also featured artist and author Sheng Hua discussing Peking opera. From March 31 to April 2, Pronko taught on kabuki, Japanese movement and Noh theatre at Austin College in Texas.

John Seery, professor of politics, presented the keynote address, "The Future of Liberal Arts Education," at The Future of American Education and Politics Conference at Berry College in Rome, Georgia, on March 31. On April 1, Professor Seery led a faculty seminar on Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies at Olgethorpe University.



Paul Saint-Amour, associate professor of English, received a year-long residential fellowship at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, N.C. and a Howard Foundation Fellowship. During his upcoming sabbatical, Saint-Amour will be working on a new book, tentatively titled Archive, Bomb, Camera: Modernism in the Shadow of Total War.

Pamela Smith, professor in the social sciences and associate professor of history, received a National Science Foundation grant for a conference to be held in London in July titled “Ways of Making and Knowing: The Material Culture of Empirical Knowledge.” It will include lectures and object sessions in five different museums in London.

New Walking Program:

In late March, 36 Pomona staff, faculty and family members started off on the long walk across America, and they're still at it. Let's explain: The newest twist in the Faculty/Staff Fitness and Wellness Pedometer Program has two teams of staff and faculty members striving to walk enough steps in their daily routines to match the 6,454,000 steps between Los Angeles and Boston. It should take them about six weeks. Participants score points for meeting their daily step goal and and for eating three or more whole grains daily. It's not too late to sign up. Contact Physical Education Coordinator Lisa Beckett for more information at ext. 18428.


March 2005



College dedicates new, energy-conscious biology building

On February 26, the College officially opened the new Richard C. Seaver Biology Building, the first on campus designed to meet special energy-saving building standards. Two hundred faculty, students, staff, donors, trustees and community members were on hand for the dedication ceremony and open house.

The building honors Pomona alumnus and Honorary Trustee Richard C. Seaver ’43, who served as the chairman of the trustee Buildings and Grounds Committee for more than two decades. The Richard C. Seaver Biology Building joins the chemistry and geology labs — Seaver North and Seaver South — and Millikan Laboratory in a “suite” of science buildings funded by Frank R. Seaver, an alumnus of the Class of 1905 and Richard Seaver’s uncle. Seaver Theatre honors Richard Seaver’s father, Byron D. Seaver, an alumnus of the Class of 1908.

“We have, I would guess, the largest concentration of Seavers at Pomona College since the early days of the last century, when Richard’s father and five of his aunts and uncles themselves were students here,” noted President David Oxtoby in his opening remarks for the dedication ceremony. Richard Seaver’s five children, their spouses and children all were on hand to honor him. President Oxtoby also noted that bow ties seemed to be profuse, a reference to a sartorial trademark of some men in the Seaver family.

Biology Department Chair Lenny Seligman and senior molecular biology major Michelle Keese ’05 accepted the building on behalf of the faculty and students, joining President Oxtoby and Chairman of the Board of Trustees Stewart Smith ’68 in thanking Richard Seaver and the Seaver family. Pomona alumnus Thomas D. Pollard ’64, professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale University, delivered the keynote address for the event, reminiscing about his own education and making anecdotal connections to other Pomona alumni who had studied in Seaver buildings.

Biology professors and their students were in their labs to demonstrate the building to the public immediately following the dedication. The events of the day concluded with a symposium sponsored by the Department of Biology that featured the work of professors David Becker, Andre Cavalcanti, Karl Johnson and Nina Karnovsky.

By early summer, the College hopes to complete a silver certification by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. This would place the building in the top one percent of all academic laboratory buildings in the country in terms of energy-conscious design.

The design achieved the College’s environmental goals by maximizing natural light filtration with large windows, light shelves and a three-story glass atrium. Other "green" features include the use of high efficiency indoor lighting, photovoltaic panels for solar energy, certified renewable wood, recycled construction materials and a thermal energy storage system that will help reduce energy use during peak demands.

In addition to the "green" features, the building also is unique for its playful glass rotunda, cubistic student lounges and skywalks that connect the building to Seaver North and South. The interior mixes “rough,” utilitarian finishes in the lab and work spaces with richly appointed and warm interiors for the classrooms, offices and student lounges. -- David Scott

Pomona people in action:

Jay David Atlas, professor of linguistics and philosophy, will be honored with a two-day conference April 1 and 2. "Asserting, Meaning, and Implying: A Conference in Linguistics and Philosophy In Honor of Jay David Atlas" will celebrate the professor's 60th birthday, and President David W. Oxtoby will deliver the opening remarks.

In February, Oxford University Press, New York, published Atlas's new book in philosophy of language, "Logic, Meaning, and Conversation: Semantical Underdeterminacy, Implicature, and Their Interface". It develops a theory of conversational inference and considers the philosophical consequences thereof. Atlas is the author of scholarly articles in philosophy and in linguistics and is the author of "Philosophy without Ambiguity" (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989).

Susana Chávez-Silverman, associate professor of romance languages and literatures, read and signed her new book, Killer Crónicas: Bilingual Memories, at Borders Books in Montclair on February 6 and at Carleton College on February 18. She will present at University of Redlands on March 9 and at Boise State University on March 30.

Cecilia A. Conrad, associate dean and professor of economics, co-edited African Americans in the U.S. Economy, (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers), which was published in February. She edited the textbook with John Whitehead, San Francisco Community College; Patrick Mason, Florida State University; and James Stewart, Penn State University.

Alfred Cramer, associate professor of music, spoke about "Conceptualizing Early Atonal Sound" as part of the Duke University Music Department lecture series in January.

Robert Mezey, professor of English, emeritus, has edited A Word Like Fire, a collection of poems by the late Dick Barnes '54, a longtime Pomona professor of English. Many of his poems involve the vast Mojave Desert. A Word Like Fire is scheduled to be published in April by Handsel Press, an imprint of Other Press.

Nivia Montenegro, associate professor of Spanish, was invited to lecture about "Politics of the Body in the Novels of Zoe Valdes" at the University of Southern California in late January. Valdes was also present and took part in the panel discussion of her work and her impact on Cuban literature and culture. Valdes, who left Cuba in 1995, has published more than 10 novels and her work has been translated into 25 languages.

Leonard C. Pronko, professor of theatre, lectured on Bernard Shaw and his play Heartbreak House to the Senior Seminar of Pasadena in January. Last month, he spoke on Greek tragedy, especially dealing with Euripides and his Medea, to a National Endowment for the Arts Seminar in Los Angeles. In March, Pronko will present a pre-performance lecture on Moliere and The School For Wives, at A Noise Within in Glendale.


Andrew Roth, visiting assistant professor of sociology, reports that his research article on "The Media Standing of Urban Parkland Movements: The Case of Los Angeles' Taylor Yard, 1985-2001," co-authored with Emilie Vander Haar '04, will be published in a forthcoming issue of City & Community, the American Sociological Association's journal for urban sociology.


February 2005

Enriqueta Ramirez '00, wearing her trademark lab coat, is dedicated to teaching science to students at a middle school in a low-income area of Pomona. She combines creative teaching approaches with high expectations for her students.

A mother of four, Ramirez overcame many challenges to become a star teacher. She will receive the College's 2005 Inspirational Young Alumni Award in April. More about Ramirez.


Pomona people in action:

Jack Abecassis, professor of French, recently had a book published titled "Albert Cohen: Dissonant Voices" (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).

David Becker, associate professor of biology, has published a paper in the journal Phytochemistry. Full title: Heyer, J., Parker, B., Becker, D., Ruffino, J., Fordye, A., De Witt, M., Bedard, M., and Grebenok, R. (2004). Steroid profiles of transgenic tobacco expressing an Actinomyces 3-hydroxysteroid oxidase gene. Phytochemistry 65, 2967-2976.

Betty Bernhard, professor of theatre, is in Ahmedabad, India directing her
adaptation of Romeo and Juliet in English and Gujarati for the Darpana Academy of
Performing Arts Festival of Non-Violence on January 30th as part of her sabbatical
activities.

Clarissa Cheney, associate professor of biology, took two students, Michelle Keese
'05 and Naveen Sangji '05, and an alumna, Katherine Ayres '04, to the 44th annual
meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in Washington D.C. in December. They presented a poster titled "rab GDI binds to a UBX-domain protein." They also ran into Tom Pollard '64 who received the prestigious E. B. Wilson Award at the meeting.

Heath Elliott, associate director of major gifts, completed the Carlsbad half
marathon on January 16th. His goal is to run the Los Angeles marathon in March and he'd like to know know if any other faculty or staff plan to do the same. Elliott also spoke at the CASE District V regional meeting in Chicago in December, presenting on "Persuasive Writing" to a crowd of about 95 people.

George Gorse, professor of art and art history, appeared recently on The History
Channel to discuss Leonardo Da Vinci and The Last Supper for the program "Beyond the Da Vinci Code" a discussion of Dan Brown's book. He was interviewed at St. Vincent's Church in Los Angeles with a stained glass window as a backdrop.

Art Horowitz, assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance, led a workshop at the Young Audience Educational Conference at Cal State Los Angeles in conjunction with the Mark Taper Forum production of The School for Scandal. His presentation for local high school English and drama teachers was titled "Strike the Wig and Fan! - Richard Sheridan's The School for Scandal: an Historic, Theatrical and Cultural Perspective."

Kathleen Howe, director of Pomona College Museum of Art, will present a lecture in New York at the Dahesh Museum in conjunction with the exhibition "First Seen:
Photographs of the World's Peoples 1840--1880," which she co-curated. The Dahesh Museum is the opening venue on the international tour of the exhibition. The lecture, "Facing Off: Photographic Encounters," is set for February 3. Howe is the author of the exhibition catalogue.

Nina Karnovsky, assistant professor of biology, presented two papers at the recent
Pacific Seabird Group/Waterbirds annual meeting in Portland, Oregon. The papers
were "Seasonal Changes in Food Habits of Seabirds in the North Water Polynya: A
Multiple Indicator Approach Using Dietary, Stable Isotope and Fatty-Acid Analysis"
and "Distribution and Abundance of Xantus's Murrelets in the Pacific Ocean." She
also presented the poster, "At-sea Distribution of Xantus's Murrelets Around Santa
Barbara Island, 1975-1977."

Karnovsky recently received a "Mellon 8" grant to support her summer research on the effects of climate change on upper trophic predators in the Arctic and to support a student to go with her to Svalbard to assist with the research and to conduct an
independent project. She also received a Hirsch Foundation Grant. She will use those funds to receive training in otolith (fish earbone) aging techniques and to purchase a special training microscope which can be used by two people simultaneously.
 

Thomas Leabhart, professor of theatre and resident artist, reports that his article "Jacques Copeau, Etienne Decroux and the 'Flower of Noh'" was published in New Theatre Quarterly (Cambridge University Press), Volume XX, Part 4, November 2004.

Ann Lebedeff, women's tennis coach and associate professor of physical education, gave a presentation on "Developing Your Team for Success" at the National
Intercollegiate Tennis Coaches' Convention in Miami in December. The conference is attended by all collegiate tennis coaches regardless of NCAA division, plus NAIA and community college coaches.

Rachel Levin, associate professor of biology, presented a seminar at the national meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) in San Diego in January. The seminar was titled "Understanding Patterns of Variation in Avian Life History Traits: Comparisons of Temperate & Tropical House Wrens." The paper had two Pomona student co-authors, Kate Freund '03 and Matt Fuxjager '04.

Cristanne Miller, professor of English, in January became editor of the Emily
Dickinson Journal, which is published twice yearly. Prize-winning poet Andrea Carter
Brown was signed on as managing editor.

Dan O'Leary, associate professor of chemistry, reports that a new and improved
method for determining if a molecule is left- or right-handed has been discovered by
a student conducting senior thesis research in his laboratory. Their findings were
recently published in the January issue of the Journal of the American Chemical
Society. Ben Allen '03, a chemistry major and Pomona College Beckman Scholar, conducted his thesis research in Claremont and Saclay, in collaboration with a group at the French Atomic Energy Commission. The Pomona/Saclay approach will provide chemists with a "better set of lenses" for unraveling the mysteries of biosynthesis, a general term for chemical reactions used by organisms to construct life-sustaining and often complex molecules from simple precursors.

Karen Parfitt, associate professor of biology, and Sidney Kuo '04 presented their
work on "Changes With Aging in Cyclic AMP in the Hippocampus" at the 2004 Society for Neuroscience meeting, held in San Diego in October. Sidney was the recipient of a Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience (FUN) Travel Award, and also presented the work at the FUN Undergraduate poster conference, held the same week. He is currently working as a research assistant in the Dept of Neuroscience at University of Minnesota and applying to graduate programs in Neuroscience.

Bryan Penprase, associate professor of physics and astronomy, and Elena Scire '04, have teamed with a group of Caltech astronomers using both of the world's largest telescopes (the Keck 10 meter I and II). Led by Caltech astronomer Rachel Akeson, the team is studying the structure of young stars as they form. The results have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal's March 2005 edition. This
research made use of the Pomona College one -meter telescope and the new infrared camera, to measure the infrared emission from young stars known as "T Tauri stars." The work was Elena Scire's senior thesis, and the infrared photometry helped the Caltech astronomers constrain the size and structure of the very small inner disk of
the T Tauri stars, which are swirling masses of gas and dust just beginning to shine
by nuclear fusion. The authors of the paper and the title are: Akeson, R.L., Walker, C.H., Wood, K., Eisner, J.A., Scire, E.*, Penprase, B.E., Ciardi, D.R., van Belle, G.T., Whitney, B., and Bjorkman, J.E., 2004, "Observations and Modeling of the Inner Disk Region of T Tauri Stars"

Bruce Poch, dean of admissions, wrote a chapter titled "Sanity Check" in the
Education Conservancy's recent book, Colleges Unranked. The Chronicle of Higher
Education described the tome as "a seminal book of essays addressing commercial
influences in college admissions. This book presents vision and recommendations
through the collective wisdom of admission deans, college presidents and educators. It speaks to parents, students, high schools, and colleges."

In the fall, Poch participated in a roundtable discussion titled “The College Admissions Race: Who Wins? What is Lost?” held at NYU's Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy. The event featured an address by James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, with responses by Poch and Christopher Avery, professor of public policy at Harvard University.

Patricia Schiaffini, director of Oldenborg Center, gave birth to a baby boy,
Gabriel, in December.

Kimberly Dodgson Labinger '80 is named California Teacher of the Year. More ...

Nancy Treser-Osgood, director of Alumni Relations, was re-elected treasurer of the
Council for Advancement and Support of Education Far West District VII (including
the states of California, Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah) at the annual business meeting held in San Francisco in December. Her term as district treasurer runs until 2007. Nancy has been on the CASE VII Board of Directors since 1998.

David Tanenbaum, associate professor of physics, reports that he and Dr. Monica Plish will run a workshop in February for high school physics teachers, offering ideas and materials they can use in the classroom. The workshop is being offered by the Pomona College Department of Physics and Astronomy and Cornell's Center for Nanoscale Systems' Institute for Physics Teachers.

Jonathan Wright, associate professor of biology, has published a paper co-authored
with Mariasol Peña-Peralta '04 in the Journal of Comparative Physiology. Full title: Wright, J.C. and Peña-Peralta, M. (2005). Diel variation in ammonia excretion, glutamine levels, and hydration status in 2 species of terrestrial isopod. Journal of Comparative Physiology B, 175 (1), 67-75.

Wright has also had a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Crustacean
Biology, co-authored with Pomona student Debra Ouyang '04. Full title: Ouyang,
D.M-W. and Wright, J.C. (2005). Calcium accumulation in eggs and mancas of
Armadillidium vulgare (Isopoda: Oniscidea). Journal of Crustacean Biology 25(3), in
press.

Wright recently received a Mellon Faculty Partnership Grant for $1,800 to support
collaborative research with colleagues in Canada and Denmark. The funds will support studies using microcalorimetry to explore how certain specialized insects and crustaceans are able to condense water from sub-saturated humidities.

Charitable Giving Report:

Donations to 2005's Pomona College Charitable Giving Campaign increased 29 percent over last year. Sixty-three faculty and staff members gave a total of $26,962.

Spearheaded by Economics Professor Jim Likens and Susan Dollar of Institutional Advancement, the campaign invited employees to contribute donations in one of three ways: to the Inland Empire United Way, to the Pomona College Assistance Fund or directly to one of the six organizations that make up the Assistance Fund. Organizations benefiting from Pomona College employees’ dollars were Foothill AIDS Project, Fremont Middle School, House of Ruth, Inland Valley Drug & Alcohol Recovery Services, Planned Parenthood and SOVA Hunger Program.

Faculty and staff members gave in amounts ranging from $5 to $5,000. Special thanks to Leah Fuller in Institutional Advancement and Karen Lamb in the Business Office for their help administering the campaign.

Walking Program Update:

Physical Education Coordinator Lisa Beckett offers congratulations to the latest
people to earn awards in the "10K-A-Day" walking program. Tom Moore and Joyce
Kirk-Moore reached their goals for months one, two and three, earning a visor,
walking book and a fanny pack. Christen Pierce earned a fanny pack and a Faculty-Staff Walking Program t-shirt for completing months three and four. Anna Asker, Sara Mitchell, and Donna Lane earned a top of the line Digiwalker pedometer for completing month five of the program.

In other walking news, 33 faculty and staff members completed the eight-week "Walk Your Way Through the Holidays" pedometer program. The goal of the program was to increase daily steps by 1,000 (1/2 mile) and to eat five or more fruits and vegetables a day. First, second and third place winners in both the individual and team categories will receive awards at the FSFW Smoothie event in February.

Individual winners:
first place: Kaye Pereida
second place: Kevin Quanstrom
third place: Susan Thalmann

Other finishers:
Deb Dearinure
Galina Fish
Lucy Huff
Denise Miller
Brenda Schmit

Team winners:
First place: BOSS (Business Office Struttin' Striders) Janis Moorman, Karen Lamb,
Anita Miller
Second place: Titanic
Kirk Jones, Hans Palmer, Beverly Palmer, Lisa Beckett, Dennis Berger
Third place: Oldenborg
Magdalena Garcia, Nora Perez, Raul Mendoza, Martha Orozco

Other finishing teams:
Fatigued Fantastiks
Sara Mitchell, Hilda Dinolfo
Honeymooners
Cynthia Peters, Leah Fuller, Jill Walker Robinson
One Token Male
Gail Sundberg, Sandy Price, Karen Parfitt, Lauri Bell, Nina Karnovsky, Laura Hoopes
Walking New Mania
Kirk Reynolds, Carla Jackson

Pedometer programs are a fun and easy way to increase your activity level and
improve your health. Anyone interested in participating should contact Lisa Beckett at ext. 18428.

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