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| Pomona
College News Highlights 2004-2005 |
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6/23/05 |
Former Pomona-Pitzer coach Gregg
Popovich leads San Antonio Spurs to Third NBA
Championship.
The San Antonio Spurs tonight locked up their
third NBA Championship under the leadership of Coach
Gregg Popovich, beating the Detroit Pistons 81-74 in
the last game of the finals.
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Gregg Popovich, at center, during his Sagehen days. |
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During the series, Popovich's experience as Pomona-Pitzer's
coach was the subject of sports section
columns by the Los Angeles Times'
Bill Plaschke and the Orange County Register's
Mark Whicker.
"To the rest of the world, Gregg Popovich is the
white-haired Red, the fox in the Zenhouse, the guy
who has quietly become the NBA's best coach, of its
best team," Plaschke writes in a column titled "The
Value of Sagehen Wisdom." "To the guys at Pomona-Pitzer,
he was a coach who lived in a dorm and worked out of
a converted storage closet and drove the school van
and directed … intramurals?"
Popovich coached Pomona-Pitzer men's basketball from
1979 to 1988, leading the team to its first outright
title in 68 years. Then he jumped from Division III
to the NBA, taking a job as an assistant coach at
San Antonio. He took the Spur's top coaching job in
1994, but he still maintains close ties to
Pomona-Pitzer hoops.
In the Register column,
Popovich recalls loving every minute at Pomona-Pitzer,
where he lived in the residence halls for a time. "I
thought I would always be there," he told the paper.
Times column (registration required)
Register column (registration required)
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6/7/05 |
Pomona students research and teach around the globe
with prestigious Fulbright grants.
 Pomona students will research healthcare in
Thailand, study astronomy in Chile and work in a
molecular biology lab in France as part of the
prestigious Fulbright program sponsored by the U.S.
Department of State.
Jennifer Ah-Kee, Satusuk Joy Bhosai,
Constance Harrell
and Joseph Richards were awarded research
grants. Noah Buhayar, Angelica DeWitt
and Anne Paprocki received teaching grants.
They all are members of Pomona's Class of 2005.
These seven Pomona students are among more than 1,000
nationwide who will travel abroad for the 2005-2006
academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Program,
established to build mutual understanding between
the people of the United States and the rest of the
world. The grants are awarded each year on the basis of
applicants' academic or professional
achievements as well as demonstrated leadership
potential in their fields.
More ...
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5/23/05 |
Kingdom of Heaven
is a step forward in portrayal of both sides in
Crusades, says history professor.
 As
with many movies dealing with historical topics, the
recent release Kingdom of Heaven is lacking
in some accuracy, but it represents a step forward
in the complexity with which popular culture handles
the Crusades, according to Ken Wolf, professor of
history at Pomona College.
Wolf has done research on Christian-Muslim
interactions during the Middle Ages, the Norman
conquests and the first Crusade.
His latest
book is the first English translation of a
history of the Norman conquest of Muslim Sicily,
which occurred just prior to the first Crusade.
Wolf was pleased to see evidence of real research in
the making of the film. "The movie is indeed based
on some historical facts," he said. " But there are
significance changes to make it work."
The plot of the movie concerns a former blacksmith,
Balian (played by Orlando Bloom as seen in the
publicity photo above), who follows his father to
fight with the Crusades. After the death of the king
of Jerusalem, a power struggle results in the
crowning of a hawkish king who incites the Muslims
to fight.
More ...
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5/19/05 |
Students travel up and down state
to raise awareness of Darfur crisis.
 Pomona College junior Melinda Koster
has set off on a summer-break road trip with a serious
purpose. Koster and four other students from the
Claremont Colleges are traveling up and down
California on an 11-day campaign to bring attention
to the
crisis in Darfur, the region of Sudan
devastated by an ethnic conflict rife with killing
and rape.
Stopping in cities from San Diego to Stockton,
Koster and the other students are visiting schools,
synagogues, public places and the state capitol to
inform people about the genocide in Darfur. They
will raise relief funds by selling "Stop genocide in
Sudan" shirts, collect petition signatures and visit
the San Francisco offices of U.S. Senators Barbara
Boxer and Dianne Feinstein.
Koster is traveling with Betsy Marder (Pitzer
College),
Talia Kahn (Claremont McKenna), Daniela Urban
(Scripps) and Candice Camargo (Claremont McKenna).
The students believe it is important to bring spread
information about the crisis beyond college campuses.
"Ultimately, we hope to inspire other people to
engage in activism around this issue,'' writes
Koster. " We need more active and concerned citizens
in order to finally raise awareness and stop this
genocide. "
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5/17/05 |
Six professors are honored by students for
excellence in teaching.
Pomona students have elected six professors to
receive the 2005 Wig Distinguished Professor Awards
for Excellence in Teaching. Their subjects range
from biochemistry to Victorian literature, from
Islam to athletics, but all six faculty members
received high marks for the way they work with
students. The Wig Award
winners are:
-- EJ Crane, an assistant professor of
chemistry, teaches Biochemistry and Advanced
Biochemistry. “Professor Crane has a talent for
capturing and presenting the most interesting
aspects of the subject matter he teaches," wrote one
student.
-- Paul Hurley is a professor of philosophy
who teaches Ethics; Political
Philosophy; Philosophy of Law; and Freedom, Markets,
and Well-Being. This is his third Wig Award.
Students find him “an absolutely fantastic lecturer,
who really brings the material to life.”
-- Zayn R. Kassam, associate professor of
religious studies and chair of the Religious Studies
Department, teaches Islamic Thought and Engendering and
Experience: Women in the Islamic Tradition. This is
her second Wig Award. Students say: “Class
discussions [spill] out of the classroom, into the
dining and residence halls, and even onto forums in
cyberspace.”
-- Michael K. Kuehlwein is an
economics professor and three-time Wig Award
recipient, who teaches Principles of Macroeconomics
and Macroeconomic Theory. “I have never seen a
man so excited to run up to a blackboard to draw a
supply and demand diagram," wrote one student. " His
excitement about economics is contagious.”
-- Patrick H. Mulcahy, a professor of
physical education, is also the Pomona-Pitzer men’s
track and cross-country coach. Since his arrival in
1969, he has coached 38 athletes to 67 NCAA
All-American performances. Students find that:
“Pat's influence extends beyond the athletic field,
and into so many other important aspects of his
athletes' lives.”
-- Paul Saint-Amour, an associate professor
of English, teaches Literature of the Victorian
Period and Henry James and his Contemporaries. This
is his second Wig Award. Writes one student: "He
embodies everything we should cherish as an
intellectual community: brilliance, eloquence,
humility, and most importantly, compassion.”
More ...
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5/09/05 |
Women's
water polo wins Collegiate Division III
National Championships.
 Pomona-Pitzer won the Collegiate Division III
Women's Water Polo Championships Sunday after Lauren
Moore '05 scored against Cal State East Bay with
only four seconds to go.
East Bay was ahead 4-3 in the third quarter, but the
Sagehens evened it up early in the fourth. East Bay
scored to move ahead 5-4, then Pomona-Pitzer
quickly tied the game again. With 19 seconds left,
Pomona-Pitzer called a time out to make plans to
capitalize on its one-player advantage
over East Bay, which had a player in the ejection (penalty) area.
According to Coach Scott Smith, the Sagehens set up
a formation to stretch East Bay's defense, and
Moore, the teams' strongest shooter, was left open
and scored.
Moore, who scored two goals in the game, was named
MVP for the tourney, which was hosted in Haldeman
Pool on Pomona's campus May 6-8. Also scoring for
the Sagehens in this game were Lara Kruska (2), Toby
Branz and Cherise Saito.
Pomona-Pitzer (pictured in white caps above in a
previous match) competes in the Southern California
Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, where the team
finished the season in second place.
The Pomona-Pitzer women’s water polo team is
consistently ranked in the top 5 nationally among
Division III schools.
More about the team...
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5/09/05 |
Pomona senior takes second prize
in ethics essay contest.
Christine Henneberg '05 has won second place in the
Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics 2005 Essay
Contest. This is the second year in a row that a
Pomona student has taken honors in this
highly competitive contest.
Her award-winning essay, "The God on My Grandfather's
Table," focuses on how the elderly are perceived and
treated in the Western world. Instead of viewing the
elderly as fragile and irrelevant, Henneberg
suggests that we take examples from other cultures,
such as the Japanese, and revere the elderly for
their wisdom. Henneberg will receive $2,500.
Last year, Pomona senior Leslie Barnard took first
place and $5,000 for her essay, “Forty-three Cents.”
Inspired to enter the contest in part by the ethics
classes she took at Pomona College, Barnard based
her essay on the summer she spent living in a
Buddhist nun’s hostel and teaching English to local
schoolchildren in India.
The Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics Essay Contest is an
annual competition that is designed to
challenge college students to analyze the urgent
ethical issues confronting them in
today's complex world. The contest is run by the
Elie
Wiesel Foundation for Humanity,
established by Elie Wiesel and his wife, Marion,
soon after he was awarded the 1986 Nobel
Prize for Peace. The Foundation's mission, rooted in
the memory of the Holocaust, is to
advance the cause of human rights by creating forums
for the discussion and resolution of ethical issues.
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4/28/05 |
Pomona named one of "America's
Best Value Colleges."
The Princeton Review named Pomona College as one of
"America's Best Value Colleges" for 2005 in a new
publication out this month. It profiles 81 schools
the education services company commends for
"outstanding academics, generous financial aid
packages and relatively low costs."
The book cites Pomona's small classes,
extracurricular activities and proximity to Los
Angeles. "If it weren’t for the work load, students
may think they’d died and gone to heaven (especially
since they can travel just one mile east or west to
pick up an In-N-Out burger)," says the book.
Princeton Review also reports that "few if any of
Pomona’s peers in exclusivity come close to matching
the small-college atmosphere that makes learning
here so much fun. With only 1,500 students, Pomona
can keep classes small and discussion-based, yet
through its affiliation with ... the Claremont
College system, it can offer a university-style
smorgasbord of academic options."
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4/27/05 |
Students work together to
collect shoes for the poor in India.
 The Pomona College chapter of the National Society
of Collegiate Scholars has successfully collected
more than 1,000 pairs of shoes for impoverished
people in India. Shoes Over Sickness (SOS) has been
the primary focus of the chapter all year, and it
finally neared completion in late April when
volunteers gathered on Pomona’s campus to ship the
donated footwear.
Carried out in collaboration with other NSCS
chapters, the project entailed collecting practice
shoes (tennis, running, cross-training, etc.)
to send to poor villages in India. Many Indians die
every year from diseases contracted through
inadequately protected feet, especially during the
summer monsoon season when waterlogged streets can
contain and conceal glass pieces, stone chips,
slivers of wood and other sharp objects. These can
seriously injure bare feet, leaving people
vulnerable to infection and disease.
The Pomona College NSCS chapter was founded four
years ago by the College’s Career Development Office
(CDO). In addition to the SOS project, the
organization also sponsors two or three service
activities each semester, including outreach to
local schools and events with Ability First, an
organization assisting developmentally disabled
children and adults.
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4/25/05 |
Students
earn many prestigious scholarships as year winds
down.
This is the time of year when students receive word
on many highly-competitive scholarships and
fellowships. And, once again, Pomona students have
earned many of these prestigious honors:
-- Robert Beahrs '05 has been awarded a
Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship, providing
$22,000 for one year of independent exploration and
travel outside the United States. Beahrs will travel
to Russia, Mongolia, India, Quebec, Sardinia,
Corsica and Norway to study the role of
throat-singing in different cultures.
More ...
-- Four Pomona students – Charles S. Hummel,
Andrew G. Lytle, Paul J. Robustelli
and Alan W. Tarr – are recipients of the
Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for 2005-06. The
scholarship program is designed to encourage
outstanding students to pursue careers in
mathematics, natural sciences and engineering.
More ...
-- Angela Nierman '06 is one of just 18
juniors nationwide to be awarded the Beinecke
Brothers Memorial Scholarship, which provides up to
$30,000 for study toward a doctorate in humanities,
arts and social sciences.
More ...
-- Kameelah Rasheed '06 has received both a
Harry S. Truman Foundation Scholarship and a
Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowship for Students of
Color Entering the Teaching Profession, which
combined will provide up to $46,000 for graduate
school study.
More ...
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4/21/05 |
Pomona students
get rare opportunity involving Mars spacecraft.
Students in a Pomona College Planetary Geology class
are in the midst of an opportunity that many
planetary scientists only dream about. On April 19,
they ordered photographs of specific geologic
features on Mars to be taken by NASA’s Mars Odyssey
orbiter for their own student-designed research
projects. They’ll receive the beautiful photos by
April 26, if all goes as planned.
The photos from Mars Odyssey’s thermal emission
imaging system (THEMIS) will be used by the students
to investigate aeolian (wind-blown) processes, a
potential ocean shoreline, outflow channels and the
complex interplay between subsurface ice and impact
craters.
According to Professor Eric Grosfils, who teaches
Planetary Geology, the Pomona students, who are
primarily freshmen and sophomores, will be one of
the first college classes to have this type of
opportunity. To date most of the Mars Student
Imaging Project (MSIP) education outreach effort has
focused on K-12.
“For that matter,” says Grosfils, “I’ve never gotten
to target a Mars spacecraft to have it collect a
particular image in my 15 years in geology. It’s
incredible that my introductory students have this
opportunity.”
More ...
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4/20/05 |
College
will hold its 112th Commencement on Sunday, May 15.
 Pomona College will hold its 112th Annual
Commencement Exercises on Sunday, May 15, beginning
at 2:30 p.m. Approximately 375 members of the Class
of 2005 will receive their undergraduate degrees
during the ceremonies, which will be held at Bridges
Auditorium.
John Payton, considered to be one of the nation's
leading civil rights attorneys, will give the
keynote address and receive an honorary degree
during the event. A member of the Pomona Class of
1973, Payton, pictured at right, is a partner in the firm Wilmer Cutler
Pickering Hale & Dorr and was the lead counsel for
the University of Michigan in the two landmark
college admissions affirmative action cases decided
by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004.
He has served in leadership roles in the National
Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the
Free South Africa movement. A native of Los Angeles,
Payton earned his law degree from Harvard Law
School.
In addition to Payton, Steve Koblik and Thomas Dean
Pollard, M.D., will also receive honorary degrees
for their important achievements and will address
the audience as well. Koblik is president of the
Huntington Library, Art Collections & Botanical
Gardens. Pollard, Pomona Class of 1964, is is chair
of Yale University's Department of Molecular,
Cellular and Developmental Biology.
More ...
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4/18/05 |
Best-selling
mystery writer Paula L. Woods to teach class at
Pomona.
Award-winning mystery writer Paula L. Woods, author
of the acclaimed Charlotte Justice mystery series,
has been named the 2005-2006 Moseley Fellow in
Creative Writing at Pomona College. Woods will teach
the advanced creative writing course “Mean Streets:
Writing and Reading Mystery Fiction” in fall 2005.
Woods launched her Charlotte Justice mystery series
with the book Inner City Blues (1999), whose
lead character is a smart, tough LAPD homicide
detective. Inner City Blues was on the Los
Angeles Times bestseller list for three weeks
and was named by the newspaper as one of the Best
Books of 1999. The second installment in the series,
Stormy Weather was named one of the Best
Books of 2001 by the Los Angeles Times and
the Florida Sun Sentinel. Dirty Laundry,
the third novel, was recognized by both of those
papers and the Seattle Times.
Previous Moseley Fellows include: Verlyn Klinkenborg, an acclaimed
essayist, author and a regular contributor to the
New York Times; Salvador Carrasco, writer and
director of the feature film The Other Conquest
and poet B.H. Fairchild, author of Early
Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest.
More ...
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4/11/05 |
Pomona students use high-tech approach to help
low-income people.
Fasting during his sophomore year, Michael Gechter
’05 was feeling disillusioned about his ability to
make a difference as a college student. The fast
called for peace in Iraq, but Gechter felt
frustrated. While the action had some symbolic
importance, it was doing very little to effect
change.
 Gechter
expressed his frustration to neighbor David
Henderson ’05. “So we moved the conversation inside
my room, and it was right then and there that we
decided, ‘let’s do something,’” says Henderson,
pictured at left.
From that decision, Pomona Valley Low-Income
Services was born, a group that has worked to
increase the incomes of more than 200 people in the
greater Pomona Valley—averaging an additional $400
per month per client. With their “PVLIS: Case
Manager” software, volunteers steer clients toward
significant resources that are available yet unknown
to many who are unemployed, homeless or struggling
to make it.
More ...
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4/05/05 |
Professor wins $400,000 grant
from National Science Foundation.
 Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Tzu-Yi Chen has been awarded a National Science
Foundation Career Grant of $400,000. The grant,
which will be distributed over five years, will fund
a project on “Preconditioning Large, Sparse Linear
Systems: Theory and Practice."
The National Science Foundation's Career grant is
its most prestigious award supporting the early
career-development activities of those
teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the
academic leaders of the 21st century. Chen's funded
project focuses on preconditioners, which are
methods for solving large linear algebra problems
more quickly and accurately. The goal of this
project is the development of better preconditioners,
as well as tools to help users choose
preconditioners that are likely to be beneficial for
their particular problem.
Chen plans to involve up to four students per year
in the research. In addition to reaching out to
groups traditionally underrepresented in computer
science, she also plans to develop and refine
courses that emphasize the role of mathematics in
computer science.
More ...
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4/01/05 |
College will
host health fair to serve culturally diverse
communities.
Pomona College will host its first Annual Community
Health and Awareness Fair on Saturday April 16, from
10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The health fair will feature
various community-based organizations that serve
low-income families and address health issues as
they relate to culturally diverse communities. Some
free
medical services and insurance consultation for
families also will be offered, and translators will
be available. The health fair is
free of charge and open to the public.
The event will take place in the College’s
Smith Campus Center, 170 E. Sixth St., Claremont.
The health fair is organized and sponsored by the Pomona
College Asian American Resource Center (AARC) and
Pomona Valley Low Income Services (PVLIS). Founded
in 2002 by two Pomona College sophomores, PVLIS is a
non-profit organization offering free referral and
case management services to local low-income adults and families.
The fair will bring together the services of many
prominent health organizations, providing free
insurance consultations, blood pressure and
cholesterol evaluations, body mass index tests and
educational material covering a variety of health
concerns. Dental technicians from San Joaquin Valley
College will provide dental care demonstrations for
children and Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches will
be registering bone marrow donors to add to their
database.
More ...
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3/31/05 |
Top experts
will debate poverty causes and solutions in April 1
event.
A pair of nationally recognized experts will debate
solutions to the problem of poverty in an event
sponsored by the Pomona Student Union. NYU's
Lawrence Mead and University of Michigan’s Sheldon Danziger will debate the causes of and appropriate
policies for addressing poverty at noon on April 1
in Pomona College’s Frank Dining Hall Blue Room, 260
East Bonita Avenue, Claremont. There is no charge to
attend.
Since 1979, Mead has been a professor of politics at
New York University, where he teaches public policy
and American government. He has also been a visiting
professor at Harvard and Princeton, and a
visiting fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute.
Professor Mead also testifies regularly to Congress
on issues of poverty, welfare and social policy.
His books include Beyond Entitlement and The
New Politics of Poverty, presenting the
theoretical background and practice for mandatory
work programs.
Danziger is a professor and co-director of the
National Poverty Center at the Gerald R. Ford School
of Public Policy. He has conducted a great
deal of research on poverty and inequality, looking
specifically at the consequences of the 1996 welfare
reform, and at the effects of both government social
benefit programs and economic and demographic
changes on disadvantaged groups. His books include
Understanding Poverty and Economic
Conditions and Welfare Reform.
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3/29/05 |
Pomona
students earn maximum number of prestigious
Goldwater Scholarships for math and science work.
Four Pomona College students have won the
prestigious 2005-2006 Goldwater Scholarships to
continue their work in math and the sciences.
The scholarship program honoring Senator Barry M.
Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage
outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields
of mathematics, the natural sciences and
engineering. Pomona's winners are: Charles S. Hummel
(chemistry), Andrew G. Lytle (molecular biology),
Paul J. Robustelli (chemistry) and Alan W. Tarr
(pure mathematics/physics).
They are among 320 winners chosen from a field of
more than 1,000 students nominated by the faculties
of colleges and universities nationwide.
Institutions are invited each year to nominate up to
four candidates for these scholarships. Pomona was
one of only 13 colleges and universities that had
all four of its nominees receive the award. Last
year, three Pomona students earned the scholarship.
The Goldwater Scholarship covers the cost of tuition, fees, books, and
room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year.
Congress established the program in 1986, and recent
Goldwater Scholars have been awarded 58 Rhodes
Scholarships and 72 Marshall Awards.
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3/28/05 |
College cuisine competition
heats up with "Cast-Iron Chef" finale.
 Students are tasting culinary battle as
Pomona College hosts its Third Annual Cast-Iron Chef
Competition. Four teams of Pomona students are
attempting to out-cook each other in this
event based on “Iron Chef,” a Japanese television
show that became a cult hit in the United States.
Preliminary rounds are over, and the grand finale
competition will be held on Wednesday, March 30 in
Frank Dining Hall, 260 E. Bonita Ave., Claremont.
The competition will run from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Contestants will be given costumes and a basket of
secret ingredients to be used in creating a
three-course meal. Last year’s ingredients included
both alligator and ostrich meat.
In the television show “Iron Chef,” master chefs in
various culinary styles are pitted against
challengers who try to prove their culinary prowess
and skill. A guest panel judges the menus to
determine who is victorious and who is vanquished.
The show ended its weekly run in Japan, but reruns
still air in the United States on the Food Network.
The network’s “Iron Chef America,” featuring Bobby
Flay, Mario Batali, and Masaharu Morimoto, premiered
in January 2005.
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2/28/05 |
Men's
basketball team takes second consecutive conference
title
and will go on to compete for NCAA Division III
Championship.
 The
Pomona-Pitzer men’s basketball team has won the
Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic
Conference title for the second consecutive year.
The team finished the regular season 17-8 overall
and 12-2 in conference play. Conference champions
are guaranteed a berth in the 2005
NCAA Division III Championship. This year's
Sagehen squad has been given a first-round bye, and
will play their first game on Saturday, March 5 at
7:30 p.m. in San Antonio, Texas against Trinity
University.
Meanwhile, Pomona-Pitzer men’s basketball player
Alex Lloyd has been named SCIAC Player of the Year
for 2004-2005. Lloyd, a senior from Vermont,
averaged 12.2 points per game, and 6.4 rebounds per
game. Joining Lloyd on the All-Conference First Team
is junior Tom Hollo, who averaged 8.1 points per
game and led the team in field goal percentage at 56
percent. Kamau Norman-Terrance was named to
the All-Conference Second Team. A senior from Santa
Cruz, Norman-Terrance averaged 8 points per game and
led the team in free throw shooting at 83 percent.
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2/28/05 |
Jim Taylor,
Class of '84, wins the Oscar for Sideways
screenplay.
 Pomona
alumnus Jim Taylor '84 and writing
partner Alexander Payne
last night won the Academy Award for their adapted
screenplay for Sideways. "My mother taught me
to write and she died before she could see any of
this," Taylor (shown at right) said as he accepted the statuette
before a television audience of millions. "This is
for you, mom."
Sideways, a comedy about a pair of friends
roaming through wine country and meeting women, had
been nominated for five Oscars. Taylor mentioned
that he attended Pomona during the post-award press
room interview, where reporters from around the
world pepper the winners with questions.
Last month, the writing pair won the Golden
Globe Award for their script. Taylor and writer-director Payne have collaborated on
three other well-received films: Citizen Ruth,
Election and About Schmidt. The
screenplay for Sideways is adapted from the
Rex Pickett novel of the same name and Rolling
Stone's Peter Travers writes that the "nuanced
script ... serves as a model of screen adaptation by
shaping dialogue into classic comic contours."
Taylor is only the latest Pomona alumnus to win an
Oscar for screenwriting. David Ward, Class of 1967,
won an original screenplay Oscar for The Sting
in 1973. Robert Towne, Class of 1956, took home the
award in 1974 for his Chinatown
screenplay. Taylor and Towne will be
featured in the next issue of Pomona College
Magazine.
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2/15/05 |
Pomona-Pitzer men's basketball team to play
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps in battle for 6th Street
supremacy.
 The
first-place Pomona-Pitzer men's basketball team will
take on the second-place Claremont-Mudd-Scripps
team at home at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 16
in Voelkel Gymnasium.
The defending conference champion Sagehens
(14-7 overall, 9-1 in conference play) are going for
their ninth straight victory, while the Stags (11-10
overall, 7-3 in conference play) had won five in a
row following a loss to the Sagehens on January 22.
Pomona-Pitzer men's basketball has established
itself as one of the nation's premiere NCAA Division
III programs. Since 1986 the Sagehens have made nine
trips to the NCAA National Tournament and captured
nine Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic
Conference (SCIAC) Championships. Pomona, Pitzer,
Claremont McKenna, Scripps and Harvey Mudd colleges
are all part of the Claremont Colleges, a unique
consortium of five undergraduate and two graduate
institutions.
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2/15/05 |
Civil
rights attorney John Payton '73 to speak about
Supreme Court rulings on diversity.
Noted civil rights attorney John Payton, who served
as lead counsel for the University of Michigan in
two recent landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases concerning
diversity in higher education, will speak at Pomona
College on Tuesday, February 22. His lecture on
“Lessons and Challenges of the University of
Michigan Cases” is set for 4 p.m. in the Rose Hills
Theatre of the Smith Campus Center.
In two cases decided in the summer of 2003, the
U.S. Supreme Court rejected the university's
undergraduate admissions policy, in which race was
considered according to a formulaic point system,
but upheld the more individualized race-conscious
admissions policy of the university's law school,
affirming that race can be considered as one of many
factors in admissions. Payton, who graduated from
Pomona College in 1973, led the argument on
behalf of the university in both cases.
“The Michigan cases have provoked a hard look at our
society, particularly how racially diverse we are
and yet how racially divided we remain,” Payton said
recently. “The University of Michigan cases focused
on how important it is for institutions of higher
education to confront these realities, but they also
pointed out how much remains to be done with respect
to race in our society.”
A native of Los Angeles, Payton graduated from
Pomona College in 1973 and went on to earn his law
degree from Harvard Law School. He came to the
University of Michigan lawsuits with a history of
work on other civil rights cases, including
leadership roles in the national Lawyers Committee
for Civil Rights Under Law and the Free South Africa
movement.
The event is co-sponsored by the Hart Institute for
American History and the Office of the President.
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2/7/05 |
Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist to discuss "How Israel
Lost."
 Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer will
visit Pomona College on February 15 to talk about
his latest book, How Israel Lost: The Four Questions
(Simon & Schuster, 2004). The questions are modeled
after the questions asked at a Passover Seder, are:
“Why do we care about Israel?”; “Why don’t the
Palestinians have a state?”; “What is a Jewish
state?”; and “Why is there no peace?”
Cramer was dispatched to Egypt for two weeks in 1977
to cover the Middle East peace talks, but remained
in the Middle East through the talks and for the
invasion of Lebanon by Israel. His reporting from
the front lines of the invasion won him a Pulitzer
Prize for international reporting. Returning to the
area after almost 25 years, Cramer noticed that
things were different with regards to Israel and its
place in the world, prompting his latest book. The
lecture will begin at 4:15 pm in the Smith Campus
Center, Room 208.
More ...
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2/3/05 |
Pulitzer
Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman to speak on
campus.
On February 8, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art
Spiegelman will give a lecture on campus entitled
“Comix 101.” Spiegelman will cover the chronological
evolution of comics, comic books as media and
explain why their importance may be on the rise.
In Maus, the iconic work that won him the
1992 Pulitzer Prize, Spiegelman tells the story of
his parent’s survival of a World War II
concentration camp. Depicting Jews as mice and Nazis
as cats (the Katzies), Spiegelman completed the
story of his parents’ experiences and their later
lives in America in Maus II. His most
recent publication, In the Shadow of No Towers,
a highly personal and political account of his
reactions to the September 11 attacks, was named a
New York Times Book Review Notable Book of
2004.
The lecture begins at 8 p.m. in Smith Campus
Center's Edmunds Ballroom. Sponsored by the
Associated Students of Pomona College, the event is
free and open to the public.
More ...
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2/1/05 |
Asian
film series focuses on contemporary Chinese cinema.
 Compelling
Chinese film is the focus of a film series on campus
hosted by the Pacific Basin Institute. The five-film
series begins on Sunday, February 6 with Frozen
(Jidu hanleng), which takes the audience into the
world of Beijing's artistic avant-garde in the late
1980s and early 1990s.
Other films in the series include Blind Shaft
(Mang Jing), a tale of two miners in an illegal
mining town, showing how poverty lies beneath the
rapid development of Chinese society.
The Sixth Annual Asian Film Series begins on
February 6 and continues with screenings on Feb. 13,
Feb. 20, Feb. 27 and March 6. Each screening will
begin at 7:30 p.m. and will be shown in Rose Hills
Theatre in Smith Campus Center.
More ...
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1/31/05 |
Singer Gavin DeGraw to perform
at Bridges Auditorium February 11.
 Singer/songwriter
Gavin DeGraw, whose single "I Don't Want To Be"
recently hit the Billboard Top 10, will perform at
Bridges Auditorium at 8 p.m. on February 11.
DeGraw's album Chariot went platinum and "I
Don't Want To Be" is the theme song for the WB
series One Tree Hill. He has appeared
on such shows as Good Morning America,
Last Call with Carson Daly and The View.
The Village Voice writes that "his honest
voice has a raspy edge that makes you take every
word he sings as truth."
Tickets for students are on sale in the ASPC Office
from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Tickets are $10 for
Pomona students (two tickets per ID, one ID per
person) and $15 for Pomona faculty, staff and
alumni. Tickets for the public are $20 and are on
sale at Bridges Auditorium Box Office and all Ticketmaster locations.
Call (909) 621-8031 for more information.
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1/17/05 |
College
lectures will tackle tough issues in American
sports.
In the same month that Americans gather to
watch the Super Bowl, the College will host two
separate lectures that address important issues in
American sports.
On February 1, USC Sociology Professor Michael
Messner, author of Taking the Field: Men, Women
and Sports, will discuss how sports media
provides boys and men with messages about
masculinity. Messner is known for his research on
Super Bowl advertisements and violence. This event
is set for 11 a.m. in Hahn 101, and is the first of
a five-part lecture series on “Playing the Game:
Social Forces in Sports,” sponsored by the
departments of sociology and physical
education/athletics.
On February 15, Don Catlin, a UCLA professor
of medicine and pharmacology, will discuss designer
steroids. Catlin runs a drug-testing lab where the
U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the NFL and the NCAA send
urine to be analyzed. Catlin "discovered" the
designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) in the
summer of 2003 in a used syringe sent anonymously,
resulting in the steroid scandal that has rocked the
world of sport. The talk, set for 11 a.m. in Seaver
North Auditorium, is co-sponsored
by the chemistry and physical education departments
with support from the Hart Institute of Pomona
College.
More ...
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1/05/05 |
Pomona senior earns prestigious
scholarship to study in Britain.
 Sarah Cook, a senior at Pomona College, has
been awarded a
prestigious Marshall Scholarship, funded by
the British government. The scholarship funds two
years of study at a top British university of the
recipient’s choice and is worth approximately
$60,000. Cook will use the funds to earn two
one-year Masters degrees, one in Middle East
politics and one in conflict resolution and
development.
An international relations major, Cook’s career
plans involve attending law school and ultimately,
working for the United Nations or a leading
non-governmental human rights organization,
conducting research and designing strategies that
advance the implementation of human rights law. Cook
became interested in human rights while serving in
the Israeli Army for two years. “Studying Arabic,
Islam and Middle Eastern history added to my
understanding of the situation in the occupied
territories,” she says.
More ...
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12/17/04 |
Soccer
standouts carry on Pomona's scholar-athlete
tradition.
For the second year in a row, Pomona-Pitzer soccer
players Alex Pickrell and Scott Coleman have been
named to the 2004 NSCAA/ Adidas Men’s Scholar
All-West Region Team. Both Coleman and Pickrell were
named to the first team.
In addition to being named to the All-Region team,
Pickrell, a chemistry major from Kirkland,
Washington, was named to the NSCAA's Men’s College
Scholar All-America Team (which includes Divisions
I, II and III). Coleman is a political/ social
sciences major from Piedmont, California. He was
named 2004 Male Soccer Player of the Year by the
Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic
Conference.
The National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA)
counts more than 17,000 coaches among its members,
making it one of largest coaching organizations in
the nation.
More about Sagehen soccer ...
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12/07/04 |
Professor
wins prestigious First Book Prize for The
Copywrights.
 English Professor Paul K. Saint Amour of Pomona
College will be awarded the prestigious Prize
for a First Book from the Modern Language
Association of America later this month. He won for
The Copywrights: Intellectual Property and the
Literary Imagination, published by Cornell
University Press.
The selection committee called The Copywrights
a "dazzlingly wide-ranging and engaging study about
the relations between literature and law." The book
addresses the current status of copyright law, along
with its political and personal consequences, and
explores the problematic issues of
intellectual property, plagiarism, and originality,
placing recent high-stakes copyright issues in
historical context.
More ...
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11/23/04 |
Cross country's Pat Mulcahy is
named coach of the
year;
Junior Crosby Freeman makes strong showing at
nationals.
 Men’s
Cross Country Head Coach Pat Mulcahy has been named
NCAA Division III West Region Coach of the Year. He
guided the Sagehens to two consecutive titles in the
Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic
Conference, and into the national rankings.
After winning their division title, the team went on
to compete in the regionals, then made it to the
national championships. Junior Crosby Freeman,
pictured at right, finished in fifth place with a
time of 24:48.8 at the Division III national
championships in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Freeman’s
fifth place finish is the best ever for a Sagehen
runner. Pomona-Pitzer was the only California team
to make it into the Division III national rankings
for cross country.
More about cross country ...
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|
11/22/04 |
Gen. Eric
Shinseki, former U.S. Army chief of staff, visits
Pomona on Dec. 6 to discuss challenges to the
effective use of military force.
 Former
U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki will
speak on “Challenges in the Effective Use of Force”
at 8 p.m. Dec. 6 in Rose Hills Theatre in the Smith
Campus Center. Following the talk, Richard Halloran,
former New York Times military editor, will
lead a discussion on the topic.
Gen. Shinseki began his 38-year military career as a
platoon leader in Vietnam, rose to commanding
general of U.S. Army troops in Europe and spent 15
months in charge of peacekeeping in Bosnia. In 1999,
he was named chief of staff of the U.S. Army, a post
he retired from in 2003. During his tenure as Army
Chief of Staff, General Shinseki clashed with
Pentagon officials over the size of the peacekeeping
force needed in postwar Iraq. Shinseki went on
record more than once calling for some 200,000
troops.
More..
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| 11/15/04 |
Acclaimed author Jonathan Franzen
to give reading on campus.
 Jonathan
Franzen, author of the best-selling novel The
Corrections, will give a reading from his work, at
Pomona College, on Nov. 29. The event, which is part
of the Pomona College English Department’s Literary
Series, begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Rose Hills
Theatre in Smith Campus Center. The event is open to
the public, and there is no charge to attend. Call (909) 607-2212
for more information.
Franzen received the national National Book Award
for "The Corrections," which was also nominated for
the 2002 Pen/Faulkner Award, the American
Booksellers Association Award and the National Book
Critics Circle Award. His other works include the
novels "The Twenty-Seventh City" and "Strong
Motion," and the collection of essays "How to Be
Alone." He is the recipient of a Guggenheim
Fellowship, a Whiting Writer’s Award and the
American Academy’s Berlin Prize.
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| 11/10/04 |
Kris Kristofferson, Class of
'58, wins spot in Country Hall of Fame.
 Pomona alumnus Kris Kristofferson, Class of '58, was
inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame last
night during a nationally televised broadcast of the
38th Annual CMA Awards.
At Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, Willie Nelson and
Faith Hill paid tribute to Kristofferson by performing
his “For
the Good Times” and “Help Me Make It Through the
Night,” respectively. Randy Travis sang “Sunday
Morning Coming Down” before Kristofferson came on stage to sing “Me & Bobby McGee” with
Nelson, Hill and Travis, according to the CMA's
Website.
Started in 1961 by the Country Music Association,
the Hall of Fame includes 86 individuals and groups.
Kristofferson joins superstars ranging from Tammy Wynette to Merle Haggard.
Kristofferson will be profiled in the next Pomona
College Magazine, due after the holidays.
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| 11/4/04 |
Sagehen
soccer successes: Men's team ties for first place;
women's team makes dramatic turnaround from last year.
 The Pomona-Pitzer men's soccer
team finished the season 12-2 in the Southern
California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference,
making them co-champions with the University of
Redlands Bulldogs. Those two teams will face off in
a single playoff game to determine which will
represent the conference at the NCAA Division III
National Championships. The playoff game is set for
noon on Saturday, Nov. 6 at Claremont McKenna
College.
Pomona-Pitzer and Redlands squared off twice during
the regular season, with each team winning a
game.
The women's soccer team, which plays its final game
of the season today, already has locked down second
place in SCIAC, a huge improvement over last year's
seventh-place showing. First-year goalkeeper Kelsyn
Bevins (pictured above), whose 0.737 goals allowed average was the
best in Pomona-Pitzer history, helped fuel the
Sagehens' success.
More about Sagehen sports ...
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| 11/3/04 |
Professor's new Spanglish
memoir unveils multicultural
journey.
 Professor Susana Chávez-Silverman, a woman living
and communicating in multiple lands, conveys her
cultural and linguistic displacement in a humorous,
bittersweet, and even tangible way in her truly
bilingual literary work, "Killer Crónicas: Bilingual
Memories," due out this month from the University of
Wisconsin Press.
The meditative and lyrical pieces that make up the
book combine poignant personal confession, detailed
daily observation, and a memorializing drive that
shifts across time and among geocultural spaces. The
author's inventive and flamboyant use of Spanglish,
a hybrid English-Spanish idiom, and her adaptation
of the confessional "crónica" make this memoir
compelling and powerful.
Chavez-Silverman, an associate professor of romance
languages and literatures, began writing the
chronicles that make up this book 2001, when, while
working in Buenos Aires on a book about contemporary
Argentine women's poetry, she began to send
bilingual, punning “letters from the southern [cone]
front” to colleagues and friends by email. Her
friends and her editor eventually urged her to
collect these intriguing missives into a book. More...
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| 11/2/04 |
Economics
professor receives highest national credit union
honor.
 Economics professor James D.
Likens has been selected as the 2005 recipient of
the Herb Wegner Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award,
sponsored by the National Credit Union Foundation.
The award is the highest national honor available in
the credit union movement.
Likens has served for many years as President and
Dean of Western CUNA Management School (WCMS), a
premiere credit union executive development program
held annually at Pomona College. He is also the
longtime Chairman of the Board of First City Credit
Union, which operates across Los Angeles County.
In announcing its selection, the National Credit
Union Foundation said that Likens "has enhanced the
lives of thousands of credit union professionals and
advanced the progress of their credit unions." The
award will be presented Sunday, February 27, 2005,
at the Foundation’s Herb Wegner Memorial Awards
Dinner in Washington, D.C.
More...
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| 10/26/04 |
Pomona-Pitzer
football will take on Occidental in century-old
rivalry.
 Pomona-Pitzer
football will take on Occidental College on
Saturday, Oct. 30, the latest match in a gridiron
rivalry that goes back to 1895.
The game is set for 1 p.m. at Occidental's campus in
the Eagle Rock section of Los Angeles. This is the oldest college football
rivalry in Southern California and one of the 10
oldest in the entire country. The winner gets
possession of The Drum, which has the scores of each
annual game written on it. Pomona-Pitzer currently
holds the drum, thanks to the Sagehens’ 28-14
victory over Oxy in the fall of 2003.
While the Oxy rivalry has the most history, Pomona’s
rivalry with Claremont-Mudd-Scripps hits closest to
home. This annual game pits Pomona-Pitzer against
three other members of the Claremont Colleges.
Pomona Pitzer beat Claremont-Mudd-Scripps 24-10
earlier this month to take possession of the Peace
Pipe.
More on Pomona's football rivalries.
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| 9/28/04 |
Doctor/Filmmaker
Gretchen Berland named a 2004 MacArthur Fellow.
 Gretchen Berland, Pomona College
Class of 1986, has been named a MacArthur Fellow by
the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
for her work in medicine and documentary film.
Commonly known as “the genius grant,” the MacArthur
Fellowship is a $500,000 grant of “no strings
attached” support, distributed over five years to
individuals who demonstrate extraordinary
“originality, creativity, and potential to do more
in the future.”
Dr. Berland is a physician who utilizes her
experience in both medicine and documentary film and
journalism in order to highlight important points
about improving health care. She is the creator of
the video “Cross-Cover,” which presents the
experience of a medical internship in a first-person
perspective, examining the various changes that
happen in the aspirations and attitudes of the young
doctors in the program. The MacArthur Foundation
considers the frank documentary to be “a valuable
tool for improving the quality of medical care.”
More...
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| 9/14/04 |
Student wins
$15K in essay contest and he owes it all to
Shakespeare.
 Peter Enzminger ’08 recently won $15,000 for an
essay warning about the perils of overspending. But
Enzminger himself remains indebted – to Shakespeare.
Enzminger wrote his grand-prize winning entry for
the Citi/Scholastic National Essay Contest in a
distinctly Shakespearian style, with lots of
apostrophes, archaic words and inverted subjects and
verbs.
The contest drew on a passage from “The Merchant of
Venice” in which Bassanio asks for a loan of 3,000
ducats to travel to Belmont to court Portia.
Students were asked to bring the issue into 2004,
offering financial advice to Bassanio, who needs the
money for his freshman year at Belmont University.
Enzminger started off writing in a modern style, but
he found hacking out financial pointers was too
dull. So decided to roughly follow Shakespeare’s
style, using 8-10 syllables per line, and the words
flowed like the River Thames.
More...
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| 9/13/04 |
Claremont Village event
welcomes students with jazz, food and fun.
 The First Annual College Student Welcome Night and
Jazz at the Depot is set for Friday, Sept.
17 from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the Village. The evening
is free and open to all Claremont Colleges students,
faculty and staff, as well as the Claremont
community. Free shuttle service will be provided
beginning at 5:30 p.m. at Dartmouth and 12th streets
and Mills and Ninth.
Village stores will stay open late, with more than
30 participating merchants offering free food,
product samples and raffles. A list of participating
stores and maps will be available at information
tables at Shelton Park beginning at 6 p.m. Music at
the Depot will be offered by local groups including
Pomona College’s Boys Howdy and Knick-Knack Jazz of
Claremont High School.
The event is sponsored by the Village Marketing
Group, the Claremont Chamber of Commerce, the City
of Claremont and Fairplex Pomona, which is
providing free shuttle service. For additional
information, contact the chamber offices at (909)
624-1681.
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8/16/04 |
Pomona students
named happiest in nation by
Princeton Review.
Pomona students are the happiest in the nation,
according a new survey of 110,000 students for The
Princeton Review's latest edition of The Best 357
Colleges. Pomona also ranked highly in
categories such as “School Runs Like Butter,” “Dorms
Like Palaces" and “The Toughest to Get Into."
More...
 Meanwhile, the just-released Newsweek Kaplan College Guide
ranks Pomona as one of the nation's 25 hottest
colleges. "Students at Pomona ... like to say they
have the best of two worlds: the academically
challenging environment of a small New England
liberal-arts college with year-round California
sunshine,'' says the guide. " That combination has
been drawing more students from around the country,
and applications are up 30 percent in the last few
years."
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|
7/27/04 |
Professor
receives $1.4 million grant for her research on how
aging affects language and memory
Pomona College Professor Deborah M. Burke has
received a five-year grant of $1.4 million from the
National Institutes of Health (NIH), to continue her
research on the impact of aging on cognitive
function, particularly language and memory. Her work
was selected by the National Advisory Council on
Aging for the NIH Method to Extend Research in Time
(MERIT) Award “in recognition of [her] outstanding
record of scientific achievements and …sustained
contribution to aging research and commitment to the
field.”
Burke focuses her research on cognitive problems
that older adults report as their most frequent and
most annoying, for example, tip-of-the-tongue
experiences and forgetting proper names. The
research is designed to identify which aspects of
cognitive functioning, especially language and
memory, decline with healthy aging and which are
maintained or even improve with aging.
More...
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7/13/04 |
Record
Number of
Pomona Seniors Earn Fulbright Fellowships
A record-breaking 10 members of the Pomona College
class of 2004 have been named Fulbright Fellows. The
prestigious Fulbright Fellowships are awarded each
year to college seniors based on their leadership
potential and their proposed project of study.
Designed to increase cultural understanding between
students of the United States and citizens of
foreign countries, the grants vary by country and
generally provide transportation, tuition, books and
living expenses.
Pomona’s 2004 recipients will travel to seven
countries – Poland, France, Switzerland, China,
Germany, South Korea and the Philippines – to teach
English or study subjects as diverse as minority
populations in Poland, age-related spelling errors,
the chemical configuration of buckyballs, red tide
in the Philippines and the underground sex economy
in China. Since tracking began in 1991, the previous
highest number of Pomona students selected for
Fulbrights was nine in 2002.
More...
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|
7/ 7/04 |
 Professor's
new book explores link between artisans and the
Scientific Revolution.
Since the time of Aristotle, the making of knowledge and the
making of objects have generally been considered separate
enterprises. Yet during the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries, the two became linked through a new
philosophy we know today as science. In "The Body of the
Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution,"
Pomona professor Pamela H. Smith demonstrates how much early modern science
owed to an unlikely source – artists and artisans.
From goldsmiths to locksmiths and carpenters to
painters, artists and artisans were much sought
after by the new scientists for their intimate,
hands-on knowledge of natural materials and how to
manipulate them. Drawing on a fascinating array of
new evidence from northern Europe, from the
artisans' objects to their writings, Smith shows in
her new book how artisans saw all knowledge as
rooted in matter and nature.
More...
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Official news releases are issued by the Pomona College Office of Public Affairs. Members
of the news media requiring further assistance with these stories should contact Cynthia Peters,
Associate Director of Public Affairs, at (909) 621-8515 for immediate assistance, or by e-mail
at cynthia.peters@pomona.edu. |
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