Chapman Magazine Spring 2018

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Housing Hits Home

M A G A Z I N E

Across California, costs rise and supply lags.

What to do?

Daniele Struppa, Ph.D. President

Sheryl Bourgeois, Ph.D. Executive Vice President for University Advancement

Jamie Ceman Vice President Strategic Marketing and Communications

Pamela Ezell Assistant Vice President Communications

ON THESE PAGES: Chapman University celebrated Commencement Weekend 2018 with a champagne toast, a Closing Convocation that featured television writer and comedian Larry Wilmore and, of course, fireworks over the beautiful Musco Center. Revisit the excitement of Commencement on the University’s Facebook page, where photos and video of the day’s highlights are posted for viewing. To read stories about unique contributions made by some of the 2,300 graduates, visit blogs.chapman.edu/news-and-stories.

Editor

Dennis Arp arp@chapman.edu Senior Writer

Dawn Bonker bonker@chapman.edu Staff Writer

Robyn Norwood rnorwood@chapman.edu Alumni Editor

Melissa Hoon hoon@chapman.edu Contributing Writers

Brittany Hanson, Bethanie Le, Stacy Nagai, Hallie Nicholson (M.A. ’14), Aaron Singh Editorial Assistant

Catie Kovelman ’19 Editorial Office

One University Drive Orange, CA 92866-9911 Main: (714) 997-6607 Delivery issues / change of address: (714) 744-2135 Chapman Magazine (USPS #007643) is published quarterly by Chapman University. © 2018 Chapman University.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.

Periodicals postage paid at Orange, Calif., and at additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Chapman Magazine One University Drive Orange, Calif. 92866-9911 The mission of Chapman University is to provide personalized education of distinction that leads to inquiring, ethical and productive lives as global citizens. chapman.edu Chapman Magazine is printed on recycled-content paper.

ON THE COVER: George Post, “Foot of Cumberland Street, San Francisco,” 1974, watercolor. The Hilbert Collection. The permanent collection of the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University focuses on the “California Scene” painting movement of the 1930s through the 1970s, which documents the history of the Golden State in watercolor and oil paintings of everyday life. Such artists as Post, Emil Kosa Jr., Millard Sheets and Robert Frame captured the growth and changes of many aspects of life in California.

A selection of paintings from the Hilbert Museum illustrates our feature on contemporary housing issues, which begins on page 18.

IN THIS ISSUE UP FRONT 2 Message from the President: Rather than a product, Chapman offers a promise.

3 First Person: Five decades later, a year of upheaval still stirs vivid memories.

CHAPMAN NOW 7 Chapman’s full-time MBA program ranks among the best in the nation.

8 For a student activist, the Cross-Cultural Center validates that “our existence matters.”

9 A new program helps prepare first-generation students for professional success.

10 The Keck Center is one of many projects transforming the campus footprint.

12 Students’ success in competitions propels Fowler Law’s upward trajectory.

DEPARTMENTS 13 Voices & Verities 26 In Memoriam: Carol Neblett, Harry Ufland, Ron Rotunda, Les Walrath, Randy McCardle.

30 Sports: The boys of ’68 recall Chapman’s first national title during a bittersweet reunion.

32 Sports: The Panthers win SCIAC championships in baseball and women’s basketball.

FEATURES 14 A Temianka Violin Scholar embraces his role as keeper of an instrumental legacy.

16 LA Opera’s “Nabucco” creates a pinnacle moment for Musco Center.

18 Chapman scholars lead the search for solutions to California’s housing crisis.

24 Fowler Law Professor Wendy Seiden helps clear a path out of homelessness.

ALUMNI NEWS 34 Muralist Aaron Wolken ’04 transports museum visitors to the great outdoors.

36 Class Notes 44 Research experience leads alumnae to roles as advocates for climate policy.

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

A Promise, Not a Product

I

am not a marketing person. In fact, like most academics, I feel somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of “branding” education as if it were just a product. I grew up believing that the quality of one’s intellectual achievement emerges without need of a catchy phrase or a shiny presentation.

But as I spend more time in the community, I realize that while everyone seems to think that Chapman is a wonderful place – and definitely a place that is on an upward trajectory – it is harder for my interlocutors to say why they think so. This indicates that we have not told the story of what makes Chapman special in clear, compelling and consistent ways.

I believe what sets us apart is our ability to do more than develop and impart knowledge. Rather, we offer our students a life-changing experience that prepares them to be the thinkers, the leaders, the entrepreneurs that our society needs.

As a student-centered institution, we offer a promise: to be at our students’ side on a journey that culminates in them taking the stage.

Whether the stage is their first meeting with a new employer, a first sales pitch or a presentation of a new idea to their lab director, we want our graduates to feel that they are not alone.

Our graduates will enter a workplace that is constantly changing, and that will present significant challenges. They will pitch their ideas

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Officers Wylie Aitken Chair

Zeinab H. Dabbah (JD ’12) Vice Chair

Parker S. Kennedy Vice Chair

Joann Leatherby Vice Chair

James Mazzo Vice Chair

Scott Chapman Secretary

Zelma M. Allred

Assistant Secretary

Trustees Guy Abramo Richard Afable Lisa Argyros ’07 Donna Ford Attallah ’61 Raj S. Bhathal James P. Burra Michael J. Carver Phillip H. Case Akin Ceylan ’90 Irving M. Chase Hazem H. Chehabi Jerome W. Cwiertnia Dale E. Fowler ’58 Barry Goldfarb 2 CHAPMAN MAGAZINE

President Daniele Struppa poses with Vice President of Human Resources Becky Campos, left, and biology student Katelyn Dykhuis ’19 after his State of the University Address, during which he unveiled a new brand campaign for Chapman.

for a new television series or a marketing campaign; they will meet with a banker to solicit the loan that will launch their dream company.

And at that moment, we want them to know that they carry with them all the lessons learned in their years at Chapman, all the insight they derived from their conversations with faculty and peers, all the knowledge that they gained in the classroom and beyond. They will understand that the time they dedicated to the development of big ideas is still driving them forward.

We know our graduates will show the world they can do anything imaginable, and that is the story we must tell.

Emile Haddad Stan Harrelson Gavin S. Herbert, Jr. Mark Hilbert William K. Hood Andy Horowitz Mark Chapin Johnson ’05 Jennifer L. Keller Thomas E. Malloy Sebastian Paul Musco Richard Muth (MBA ’81) James J. Peterson Harry S. Rinker James B. Roszak The Honorable Loretta Sanchez ’82 Mohindar S. Sandhu Ronald M. Simon Ronald E. Soderling Karen R. Wilkinson ’69 David W. Wilson

Arlene R. Craig J. Ben Crowell Robert A. Elliott David C. Henley Roger C. Hobbs Cecilia Presley Barry Rodgers Richard R. Schmid R. David Threshie

Emeritus Chairs The Honorable George L. Argyros ’59 Doy B. Henley David A. Janes, Sr. Donald E. Sodaro

Officers Melinda M. Masson

Emeritus Trustees Richard Bertea Lynn Hirsch Booth

Ex-Officio Trustees Connie Benson ’93 Reverend LaTaunya Bynum ’76 Reverend Don Dewey Barbara Eidson Nancy Fleeman ’86 Reverend Dayna Kinkade Melinda M. Masson Daniele C. Struppa Reverend Felix Villanueva BOARD OF GOVERNORS

Chair

Michael Penn (JD ’04) Executive Vice Chair

Paul A. Cook Vice Chair

Rebecca A. Hall ’96 Secretary

Governors George Adams, Jr. Marilyn Alexander Bob Barry James E. Blalock (JD ’09) Deborah Bridges Brenda Carver Eva Chen Ronn C. Cornelius Robin Follman-Otta (EMBA ’15) Kathleen M. Gardarian Judith A. Garfi-Partridge Steve Greinke Galen Grillo (EMBA ’13) Sinan Kanatsiz ’97 (M.A. ’00) Casey Kasprzyk ’01 Elim Kay ’09 Dustin Kemmerer ’97 Scott A. Kisting Dennis Kuhl Mark McCardle Scott Meden Samuel Mirejovsky (JD ’11) John H. Sanders ’70 James F. Wilson

Emeritus Governors Marta S. Bhathal Kathleen A. Bronstein Gary E. Liebl Jean H. Macino Richard D. Marconi Jerrel T. Richards Douglas E. Willits ’72 Ex-Officio Governors Sheryl A. Bourgeois Daniele C. Struppa PRESIDENT’S CABINET

George L. Argyros, Jr. ’89, (JD ’01) Stephen J. Cloobeck Alex Hayden ’95 Gavin S. Herbert Doug Ingram Steeve Kay Joe E. Kiani Susan Samueli Christine Sisley Ralph Stern David Stone Ken Tokita Alan L. True Emily Crean Vogler

FIVE DECADES LATER, AN HISTORIC YEAR OF UPHEAVAL STILL STIRS MEMORIES FOR CHAPMAN FAMILY MEMBERS.

JERRY HICKS, journalism lecturer and former Los Angeles Times columnist: It was the year, as a college journalist, I made my way by bus from Indiana University to Indianapolis to hear Robert F. Kennedy – just three months before his death – give the most inspiring speech of his career, in the dark of night and in a light rain.

(You can YouTube it.)

It was the year, as editor-inchief at the IU paper, I got sued by the campus police for printing something a political pundit said about the department.

(They lost; whew!)

It was the year my shocked but supportive father made arrangements for my bus trip from my Hoosier hometown to Atlanta to attend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s funeral and memorial. (“I don’t know why,” was the best I could give his arguments against making the trip, “I just have to be there.”)

It was the year my girlfriend dumped me when she spotted me on TV at that memorial service.

(She said she needed someone less impulsive.)

It was the year I interviewed Indiana’s grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, whose vicious, blind, hateful ignorance of anything from the mind/heart/soul was the most frightening thing I’d ever come across.

It was the year I was interviewed by the FBI, which wanted to know what the grand dragon had to say.

It was the year the grand dragon’s followers, or their peers, made good on his veiled threat to burn down the off-campus Black Student Union bookstore – the saddest day of my four college years.

1968 WAS THE YEAR OF PROTEST, AND I WAS A LOST SOUL JUST TRYING TO FIND MY WAY THROUGH IT.

But what I remember most about 1968: It was the first time my father ever told me he loved me. No, he didn’t use those words; he said something more precious.

When he took me to the bus station for my trip to the King funeral, he parted with: “I’ll make your mother understand.”

ALICIA KOZAMEH, author, poet and professor of English.

Her latest work, a collection of poems, is “Sal de sangres en guerra” (“Salt from Bloods in War”): I was 15 years old and attending an all-female boarding high school run by nuns in my natal city of Rosario, Argentina. It may sound as if a pacific and quiet environment surrounded me in 1968, but winds of revolution, liberation struggles and change were blowing across the American Continent, and Argentina was not going to be left behind. Mostly everyone was taking part in some form of activism, and from my boarding school we also took action, paralyzing it for several hours to offer solidarity to an enormous protest movement happening outside of our walls, people on the streets demonstrating against hunger and unemployment, and fighting to survive. Those same blowing winds brought me to Los Angeles about 12 years later, after a long period as a political prisoner. Meanwhile thousands and thousands of students, workers,

FIRST PERSON

professionals, bankers, everyday people were kidnapped and put in concentration camps, tortured to death or simply executed. One of them, Eduardo Kozameh, my father’s brother, a beloved medical doctor and university professor at the Rosario School of Medicine, was fatally shot by paramilitary forces after one of several meetings in support of rights for students and young doctors. He was 64 years old. My tío Eduardo. So many times, a father.

I have now been at Chapman for more than 20 spring and fall semesters combined. Chapman, for me, is this very moment, but it is also yesterday if I remind

Alicia Kozameh shares a tranquil moment with 1968 classmates, but even then at her boarding school in Argentina, winds of revolution were blowing.

myself that the revolutionary winds departed from the North, its youth clamoring for peace and justice, it’s hippies interpreting life according to their dreams, and its fabulous music, all phenomena of that era that took the world, and South America, by storm.

(More reflections next page) VOL 42 / NO 2

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FIRST PERSON

More reflections on 1968 are at chapman.edu/magazine.

Share yours there or email them to magazine@chapman.edu.

Chapman Black Student Union, circa 1971.

JOHN H. SANDERS ’70, founding president of the Black Student Union at Chapman in September 1968 and now an attorney specializing in civil and business litigation: 1968 was like a precious stone being made hard by fire. Going through this volatile time in our history made us stronger. It made us intellectually more curious.

It made us question authority.

It made us ask why, instead of just going along. I ALWAYS TALK ABOUT 1968 AS A CRACK IN TIME. POLITICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY, NOTHING WAS EVER THE SAME AGAIN.

For me, personally, it was my toughest year. I was a 19-year-old junior, there were threats on some of our lives, and I was trying to keep my grades up so I could qualify for law school. I am so grateful that I had a wonderful mentor. I could go to Dr. Don Booth (now professor emeritus at Chapman) to talk about anything, and he would help me through any situation. We are still friends today.

4 CHAPMAN MAGAZINE

EMMA (GRAY) SALAHUDDIN ’71, a child of the Jim Crow South who helped found the Black Student Union at Chapman and is now a retired educator: In 1968, the Chapman Black Student Union was faced with quite a daunting task. We needed to present our grievances concerning racist experiences in the community while trying to create a forum for constructive dialogue. Chapman’s president, Dr. John L. Davis, agreed to meet with us. We explained that the BSU would provide an opportunity for students of all races to learn more about black culture and history. We also stated that our ultimate goal was to enrich the lives of all students, faculty, staff and the surrounding community through communication and cooperation.

Ultimately the goal of the Chapman BSU in 2018 is the same as that of the BSU in 1968, which is a very good and positive thing.

The sad thing, however, is that while much has changed, much has stayed the same, and some of the same grievances we had in 1968 still persist today.

VERNON SMITH, Nobel laureate in economics and George L. Argyros Endowed Chair in Finance and Economics at Chapman: I will speak to 1968 as a transitional year in U.S. race relations; a year of personal insight in what had been wrong with earlier protest movements.

At the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, American medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos (joined by Australian Peter Norman) staged a protest against U.S. racial discrimination. They were booed by spectators. Smith succinctly summarized that 1968 world: “If I win I am an American, not a black American. But if I did something bad then they would say ‘a Negro.’

We are black, and we are proud of being black.”

This open protest, by the victims of discrimination, championed “proud black” as the new in-yourface stance of young blacks and became a pivotal point in U.S. race relations. Starting in 1944 (when I was 17 years old in Wichita) I had been active in a local chapter of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality). Founded on the principle of nonviolent civil disobedience, we formed mixed groups to buy theatre tickets to challenge theatre-imposed separate seating of “Negroes.”

Our biggest problem in CORE was to get blacks to join in these efforts. There was a silent keep-alow-profile acceptance of the status quo by blacks we knew. Of course, then it was “Negroes”– the polite but degrading term of the day.

Why degrading? Because we were whites – not Caucasians – while they were Negroes – not blacks.

It was a double-speak veneer that had become a reality cover-up, and Tommie Smith was among the young U.S. blacks determined to express a new pride in black accomplishments in the face of widespread unequal treatment.

The tide had turned, black determinism was in ascendance; it was no longer just a bunch of wellmeaning whites pushing on a string.

Drawing of Peter McLaren in 1968

by Karen Richardson.

PETER McLAREN, distinguished professor in critical studies and co-director of the Paulo Freire Democratic Project, Attallah College of Educational Studies: 1968 was a period of psychedelic revolution where I spent an unforgettable kaleidoscopic evening with Timothy Leary and received sage advice on my poetry from Allen Ginsberg. It was a time of spiritual introspection and an experimentation with ways of living and associating with others of different religious faiths and ethnicities, and sexual orientation.

THE WAR COMES HOME Even in the years following the 1968 Tet Offensive, at least some senior military leaders failed to appreciate why so many of America’s youth were protesting the war’s moral ambiguity.

And that ambiguity only heightened. 1968 would lead to a new president promising “peace with honor” in Vietnam and “law and order” at home. Yet the conflict would drag on for four more bloody years, culminating in America’s withdrawal from a war that had not been won.

It would be an outcome that seared a generation for decades to come.

But it also was an outcome that illustrated the enduring links between war and society. For a nation that had gone to Vietnam years earlier with aspirations of promoting democracy abroad, the war that came home to America in 1968 no longer seemed worth fighting.

Excerpt from “Withdrawal: Reassessing America’s Final Years in Vietnam” by Gregory Daddis, retired Army colonel, historian and director of Chapman’s War and Society master’s program.

IT WAS A YEAR UPON WHICH HISTORY RAISED ITS HATCHET AND CLEAVED APART FROM ALL OTHERS YEARS BEFORE AND AFTER.

I can only contrast 1968 and its spirit of optimistic defiance with today, with our so-called post-truth nation guided by an authoritarian populism that appears to be on a fast track toward fascism. 1968 can remind us why we must continue our fight for justice today, and why, today, it has never been more urgent.

MARK AXELROD, author, professor of comparative literature and director of the John Fowles Center for Creative Writing at Chapman: I cannot remember the exact date, though I seem to recall it happening right before my birthday in March ’68. I got my notice to appear before the draft board to take my Army physical.

Needless to say, it was somewhat disconcerting since most every able-bodied male was being shipped to Vietnam. As I recall, the first thing we undertook was a written multiple-choice exam, and the sergeant in charge used an army of expletives to let us all know not to try to fail it. Of course, to fail that test would have been an exercise in stark stupidity, but I could not see myself getting 100 percent so I missed one intentionally.

I think to the question: What is 2+2? I answered: 6. As he handed me my graded exam he said, “Congratulations, you’re officer material.” Knowing quite well what that meant, I was not comforted.

JAMES BLAYLOCK, professor of English, author of numerous novels and short stories, and pioneer of steampunk: It was the year I graduated from high school (desperate to get out) and the year I started college (a place to be just who I was) and so for me both an end and a beginning. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, both in 1968, politicized me, as did the advent of the Vietnam War draft lottery, which meant that I was particularly keen to stay in school. (Never left, obviously.)

I let my hair grow and realized I never had to wear shoes again if I didn’t want to.

I have one memory from early in that year: There was an alley behind Magnolia High School in Anaheim where after-school fights took place. One day I was cutting down the alley, headed home, and two guys were beating each other bloody on the asphalt surrounded by a cheering audience. Behind them, on the cinderblock wall of the alley, a graffitied message read, “Love-in, Sunday the 18th, Irvine Park.” It was a contradictory year to be sure.

A barefoot James Blaylock leans on his VW bug and poses with his cousin after a solo road trip to Colorado in summer 1968 –“a season of becoming.”

BOYS OF ’68: Baseball teammates reunite to share memories of Chapman’s first national title. Page 30 VOL 42 / NO 2

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IN-BOX

LETTERS, EMAILS, COMMENTS AND POSTS I’m a Chapman grad who works as a chaplain with hospice patients and homecare folks. Thank you for your article “The Riddle of Alzheimer’s” (Fall 2017 issue). I’d like to suggest to our library staff that we begin to include it in our health and wellness kit for our families dealing with Alzheimer’s. I believe the tone and future promise the article offers give a priceless hope to loved ones. Thanks for all you do!

William L. Peters ’80 Cadillac, Mich.

In March, Chapman Magazine received a Gold Award of Excellence from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), District VII. It was the magazine’s second consecutive gold and fourth in the past six years.

Chapman Magazine Online Don’t forget to check out Chapman Magazine online, with Web-only stories, links to video, slide shows and more. Find it all at chapman.edu/magazine.

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We want to hear from you! We welcome comments on Chapman Magazine or any aspect of the University experience. Send submissions to magazine@chapman.edu.

Facebook post of film producer/director John Copeland ’73. Printed with permission.

Photos from John Copeland’s post John Copeland added 2 new photos – with Peter Crabbe and Mark L. Walters.

room while we finished getting ready to film him. Dr Hawking looked directly at me and said, “Can dog come with me?”

Mar 15 at 9:08am

There have been many commentaries over the last 24 hours about Stephen Hawking, recounting his achievements in science and surviving such a long time with ALS. He was one of the truly great minds of our times.

I feel very fortunate to not only have met Dr. Hawking, but also to have interviewed him for the Discovery Channel’s 20th Anniversary special in 2005. Many of the memorials about him mention his sense of humor. It was one of the major things that struck me, sitting very close to him.

He had a very mischievous twinkle in his eyes. I was truly surprised by his deep humanity.

We had to prepare our questions for him two weeks before filming him, so he could prepare his answers and not have to slowly respond using his touch pad. We were also told that when Dr. Hawking arrived at the stage we were filming the interview at, to not try to engage him in a conversation, as it would take him a very, very long time to respond.

On the day of the interview, I had my golden retriever, Murphy, with me. He often accompanied me on shoots, and he was our company mascot, something he took very seriously. Well, Dr. Hawking and his party arrived, I could see him moving his finger over his touch pad, and suddenly his electronic voice asked, “Who is dog?”

I replied that his name was Murphy and my dog. His nurse/wife at the time and his graduate assistant told Dr. Hawking that they were going to take him to the green

6 CHAPMAN MAGAZINE

Murphy trotted off to the green room and hung with Dr. Hawking until we were ready. I think he was the only dog to get to do so. It was pretty darn cool.

One of the truly memorable moments in my life. You can see Murphy next to me in the crew photo we shot with Dr. Hawking.

CHAPMAN NOW

Cheverton Winner Explores the Power of Language

S

he earned two degrees and wrote three thesis papers, including one in French. Her research focuses on the politicization of language. She is described as having a fundamental conviction “that we should always behave so as to treat with respect the dignity of reason and moral choice in every human being.” Oh, and she’s a section leader in the Pride of Chapman Pep Band.

Meet Paige Gulley ’18, winner of this year’s Cheverton Award, Chapman University’s highest undergraduate student honor.

One of Gulley’s thesis projects examines the use of French discourse in creating a privileged place for Algeria in the French imaginary.

“I would say the most important takeaway from my thesis is the significance of language

in creating perceptions of others, and the real-world consequences of these perceptions,” said Gulley, senior editor of the award-winning Chapman history journal “Voces Novae.”

Gulley plans to continue her studies at Chapman next year as part of the integrated 4+1 master’s program in War and Society.

Among the other Class of ’18 students honored shortly before Commencement: • Paul S. Delp Outstanding Service Award – Brittney Souza.

• Outstanding Diversity Leadership Award – Kyler Asato. (Story on page 8.)

• Ronald M. Huntington Outstanding Scholarship Award – Jessica Bocinski.

• Gloria and Julian Peterson Award – Alyssa Nowlen.

Paige Gulley ’18

Meet the Class of 2022 Good news and a hearty “Welcome to the Chapman Family” arrived recently for thousands of high school students, as acceptance letters went out for fall 2018 admission to Chapman University. The Class of 2022 represents a high-achieving group selected from the largest applicant pool ever to apply to the University.

Academically, all are top achievers with impressive GPAs, test scores and community service. Among these future Panthers are hospital interns, award-winning essayists, poets, musicians, student government officers, a surf club captain and founders of new leadership organizations.

Here’s a look at the incoming class, by the numbers: • 16 percent will begin a journey toward becoming the first in their families to graduate college.

• Financial aid was offered to more than 80 percent of all accepted students.

• As a group, they have an average 3.8 unweighted GPA. • All 50 states are represented, and 5 percent are international students coming from 62 countries.

MBA Program Jumps in Rankings

C

hapman University’s full-time MBA program is among the best in the nation, according to the U.S. News & World Report’s 2019 rankings.

The MBA program housed in the Argyros School of Business and Economics jumped to No. 79 this year, vaulting 19 places.

Marked improvement was made in other categories, too. The 13-year-old program was listed as No. 4 among private schools in California. Corporate recruiters ranked it 30th in the nation.

“Our great connections in the business community and increasingly influential faculty have been the keys for us. This combination has led to more talented and prepared graduates and great employment opportunities,” said Thomas Turk, Ph.D., interim dean of the Argyros School.

Health Sciences in Top 10 Chapman University ranks in the top 10 on College Choice’s “Best Health Sciences Bachelor’s Degrees” list. College Choice, a leading authority in college and university rankings and resources, placed Chapman at No. 9. The ranking is based on institutional reputation, graduation rates, selectivity and faculty resources. Other schools in the top 10 include USC, Boston University, Northeastern, Ohio State and Rutgers.

Housed in Chapman’s Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences, the B.S. in Health Sciences is designed to prepare students for graduate work leading to careers in healthcare fields.

VOL 42 / NO 2

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OPENING DOORS “It’s a great resource to exchange ideas and foster partnerships,” says Kyler Asato ’18, reflecting on the first anniversary of the Cross-Cultural Center.

As the Cross-Cultural Center marks a milestone, Kyler Asato ’18 and other students find “validation that our existence matters.”

By Bethanie Le

T

hree years ago, Kyler Asato ’18 moved from Hawaii to California with dreams of becoming a psychotherapist. Asato, who goes by they/them pronouns, entered Chapman University just as construction began on the Cross-Cultural Center. It was a time when they were searching out a place of belonging at Chapman.

“The Cross-Cultural Center opened when I needed it,” said Asato, a third-year senior.

By the time the center was completed a year ago, Asato had joined numerous diversity, cultural and political student organizations and declared a major in sociology with a double minor in women’s studies and LGBTQ studies.

Experiences steered Asato toward a career in education and helped establish goals to make learning more welcoming by incorporating ethnic studies into curriculum.

“The [center’s] opening represents a shift toward me becoming more active in social justice,” Asato said. “It’s a great resource to exchange ideas and foster partnerships.”

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On the third floor of Argyros Forum, down a hallway covered in sketches of famous activists on one side and “I am Chapman” student posters on the other, the Cross-Cultural Center pursues its mission to cultivate a more inclusive campus climate.

The center had its ribbon-cutting in spring 2017, during Asato’s second year at Chapman.

At a recent event to mark the center’s one-year anniversary, Jerry Price, Ph.D., vice president for student affairs and dean of students, explained that the center’s function is not to isolate students from the rest of the community.

Instead, the center serves as a welcoming place for those who are vulnerable to feeling isolated within the broader community.

The center has a multipurpose design, with a central lounge area for casual gatherings and four unique rooms for formal meetings.

Each conference room has a theme that highlights an underrepresented cultural identity. The current themes are Perseverance (Asian-Americans); Respect (LGBTQIA+); Resilience (Latinx); and Hope (AfricanAmericans).

Throughout their time at Chapman, Asato has held leadership positions in the Asian Pacific Student Association (APSA), Alternatives in Democracy, the Queer and Trans People of Color Collective and the Chapman Diversity Project. All of these organizations utilize the center’s meeting space.

“It is so empowering to see all these different identities being reflected on the walls through the artwork,” Asato said.

“It’s validation that our existence matters.”

Asato gets a special feeling each time APSA meets in the Perseverance room, where artwork highlights the history of Little Tokyo, Koreatown, Chinatown and other cultural enclaves. The same feeling prevails when Asato connects with other queer activists in the Respect room and during meetings with Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán, a student organization that promotes Chicano unity, in the Resilience room.

In its inaugural year, the center has hosted countless discussion forums and film screenings; started a growing mentorship program; and gained national recognition from the Association of College Unions International for its studentdesigned displays. However, the work toward a holistic academic environment is not done yet.

Asato hopes the center will continue to find creative programming and outlets to help the entire campus community take part in meaningful conversations about identity and culture.

Such a dialogue can only happen “where it is safe and encouraging for you to learn,” Asato said. “The existence of the Cross-Cultural Center is a very symbolic gesture that the campus is willing to have those conversations around diversity.”

Photo by Challenge Roddie

CHAPMAN NOW

Ready for Their Close-Ups A new Chapman program helps first-generation students prepare to step into the spotlight of career success.

Story by Robyn Norwood | Photos by Dennis Arp

er achievements in high school helped Nathaly Del Real ’19 earn a full scholarship to a small New England liberal arts college, but she felt as adrift there as the snow. A first-generation college student, she was nearly 3,000 miles from her family in Santa Ana before she transferred to Chapman University.

“There was a full ride, but it was very different, very foreign to me. That was the cost of it all,” said Del Real, who transferred after two years. “I really did fall in love, not only with Chapman, but I wanted to be here, more connected to my community. Here, I feel a lot of support.”

Del Real is one of about two dozen students who have taken part in the first sessions of Chapman’s new First and Foremost program, which provides first-generation students with a supportive community as they begin a journey their parents never made.

Right: Jaylyn Scott ’21 is among about two dozen First and Foremost students exploring potential majors and career opportunities.

Below: Helen Cabrera ’21, a first-generation student at Chapman, is photographed by Amanda Galemmo ’20 to provide a headshot for her LinkedIn profile.

One in six students offered admission to Chapman’s Class of 2022 is on track to become the first in their family to graduate from college, while about 19.5 percent of all Chapman undergraduates are first-generation students.

These students receive support from multiple programs, including the First Generation Summer Bridge Program and First and Foremost.

The First and Foremost students participate in six two-hour evening sessions, at which they learn about creating their own “elevator pitch,” networking, interview skills and creating resumes

and LinkedIn profiles. They also get professional headshots and complete assessments designed to help suggest career paths.

“You guys all deserve to be here,” program coordinator Crystal De La Riva ’09 (M.A. ’17), herself a first-generation graduate, told the students one evening as they paired up to practice skills making connections with potential employers. “You deserve to network. You have the right to own this.”

First-generation students might once have entered college with academic deficits, but De La Riva said that is no longer the case at Chapman.

“Our first-generation students come in extremely prepared, intelligent, they’re set, especially compared to when I started college. They’re light years ahead of me,” De La Riva said. “The program focuses a lot more on the cultural capital, the social capital, really developing their confidence that they belong in an institution like this and that they have something to offer.”

Many of the students already have visions of their future.

Romania native Roxane Cociu ’21, a kinesiology major, is interested in sports medicine or pre-med studies; Christian Castillo ’20, a business major, wants to help communities that are struggling economically rebuild from within.

De La Riva watches expectantly to see what her students will do with their Chapman experiences.

“They’re creating this opportunity, creating a legacy,” she said. “I always tell them when they graduate, ‘You know, you’re the last firstgeneration student in your family.’

“It’s really kind of a bittersweet moment.

There’s a pride, but also a recognition what that means for them culturally, and how they want to pass that down.”

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9

CHAPMAN NOW

FOOTPRINT FOR THE

FUTURE Text by Dawn Bonker | Illustration by Molly Zisk

Walk through campus and you’ll notice the hum and buzz of change at Chapman University.

Restored historic buildings shine like fresh pearls, and the Keck Center for Science and Engineering is almost ready for its debut. Impact is evident to the north and south, too – in Anaheim and Irvine. But it’s more than just the addition of new buildings. Transformation is also about repurposing physical spaces where the next generation of leaders is preparing to excel.

Randall Dining Commons Remodel Highlights include an open floor plan, a 100-seat outdoor dining area, and serving stations specific to special dietary needs.

Veterans Resource Center Student veterans and their dependent family members now get special assistance integrating into student life as well as managing and accessing G.I. Bill and Yellow Ribbon Program aid.

(See story on page 12.)

Keck Center for Science and Engineering This ambitious center for the expanding science and engineering programs opens this fall.

Supported with a Keck Foundation gift, the 140,000-square-foot center is the University’s largest building. Among the perks: A marine science lab houses hagfish, a deep-sea species whose prolific slime production holds promise for research breakthroughs in everything from medicine to product safety.

Reeves Hall A $7 million remodeling brought this 1913 classroom building up to current seismic and accessibility standards. Dedicated in February as home to the Donna Ford Attallah College of Educational Studies, it also houses the Kathleen Muth Reading Center, which provides tutoring to local schoolchildren. The adjacent Roosevelt Hall was modernized in 2016.

Office of Career and Professional Development A newly expanded center for career counseling is available to students and alumni.

VPO Residential Village When it opens in fall 2019, the village will lodge 402 students while connecting them to the site’s history as one of Orange County’s most enduring fruit-packing plants.

Cross-Cultural Center Student suggestions and inspiration helped shape the unique gathering place that opened in 2017 on the third floor of Argyros Forum.

(See story on page 8.)

Lastinger Tennis Center The women’s and men’s tennis programs now have an overhead-smashing new home at the Erin J. Lastinger Tennis Center, which opened in fall. Covered seating, a large Events Plaza and the Lewis Family Scoreboard all help make this a fan-friendly space.

Musco Center for the Arts A Good Neighbor Award from the Old Towne Preservation Association is the latest of several design honors for this hub of arts and culture.

Chapman Studios West State-of-the-art editing bays and screening rooms distinguish the facility, which is highlighted by the Dhont Documentary Film Center.

10 C H A P M A N M A G A Z I N E

Chapman Grand Catch a campus shuttle home to relax and study in a quiet apartment. Join friends for a swim or grill burgers at a resort-style pool.

That’s the lifestyle at Chapman Grand, a former apartment complex built in 2016 in Anaheim’s Platinum Triangle that reopens this fall as a residence hall for 900 students.

Institute for Interdisciplinary Brain and Behavioral Sciences Scientists investigate the inner workings of the brain in this lab, the newest addition to the 25-acre Harry and Diane Rinker Health Science Campus in Irvine.

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Prepared to Meet Courtoom Challenges

From left, Caitlin Harrington (JD ’18), Rick Reneer Jr. (JD ’18), Caitlin Ramsey (JD ’18) and alumni coach Clay-Michael O’Neal (JD ’10) show off their championship trophy at the national Show Me Challenge, a competition in which law students practice jury selection and opening-statement skills.

Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law is on such a winning streak, it just might have to add another trophy case or two before long.

A

s it marked the Commencement of its 20th graduating class, the law school received three new honors, including news that its student competition teams placed in the top tier of the first national American Bar Association Competition Championship.

In addition, this spring, student teams won the Tulane Professional Football Negotiation Competition and the Show Me Challenge, a competition in which the students get to practice jury selection and opening-statement skills.

The competition successes arrive alongside news of Fowler Law’s high rankings issued

by PreLaw Magazine, which recently awarded

the school an A grade for practical training.

PreLaw ranked the school 23rd nationally for practical training.

Such recognition is testament to the swift growth of the school and the caliber of its students, alumni and faculty, says Dean Matt Parlow.

“It’s impressive to see how far this great law school has come in such a short period of time. The success of our alumni and the most recent recognition by the ABA and PreLaw Magazine demonstrate our exciting upward trajectory,” Parlow says.

In the ABA Competition Championship,

Fowler Law placed seventh in a field that included more than 1,300 students from 156 law schools. The win is based on cumulative scores earned in the ABA’s four practical-skills competitions, including Negotiation, Client Counseling, Arbitration and an Appellate Advocacy Competition.

“All of the skills involved are fundamental to being a lawyer,” says Professor Nancy L. Schultz, who directs the Competitions Program at Fowler.

“These competitions allow students to test their research, writing and oral communication skills against those of students from all over the country, and sometimes the world.”

“I want to get Chapman on veterans’ radar,” says the director of the University’s new center assisting those who have served. here were many steps on Blas Villalobos’ path to becoming the first director of Chapman University’s new Veterans Resource Center.

After his own military service, Villalobos enrolled in college, a journey that will culminate with a doctorate in social work later this year. And it was no small feat in 2015 when he took over the Office of Veterans Affairs for the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office, nor as he continues to serve on the Advisory Committee on the Readjustment of Veterans, which offers policy advice to the U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

But Villalobos, an Iraq War veteran, circles back to a classroom insult when he talks about

12 C H A P M A N M A G A Z I N E

turning points that led him to where he is today.

A high school computer science teacher belittled him by alluding to an anti-Mexican slur for crossing the Rio Grande River.

“She asked me to write an article about how I ‘swam across the river,’ which I never did,” Villalobos says.

The insult stung, but determination resulted.

“I figured joining the military would accomplish a number of things. One, I would earn my place.

And two, I would give back by contributing to the safety of the country,” he says.

Today he focuses that sense of purpose on his work at Chapman, where he leads efforts to expand the University’s enrollment of veterans and their dependents. For instance, his office assists participants in the federal Yellow Ribbon Program, which partners with colleges and universities willing to offer additional financial aid to veterans and dependents.

Photo by Amanda Galemmo ’20

Reporting for Duty

Blas Villalobos leads efforts to expand Chapman’s enrollment of veterans and their dependents.

Villalobos’ ultimate goal is not to set returning service members apart from other students but to help veterans participate in campus opportunities and launch careers in which their perspective and experience can benefit everyone.

“There are also so many issues we’re dealing with as a community. We need more vets to take on these challenges, and in order to do so, a high-quality education is important,” he says.

“Angela Davis is one of my idols because she is a leader who recognizes her own contradictions in life.

Instead of simply stating what is right or wrong, she challenges everyone to ask themselves why they think the way they do. She is highly misunderstood in this regard.

“My commitment was always to

THE EXCELLENCE OF THE NOW. It wasn’t, ‘I want to be the GM of the Lakers in 20 years, how do I get there?’ That’s a really low probability. But I think excellence in the now is a 100 percent possibility.”

She inspires me to put myself on the line,

Rob Pelinka, general manager of the Los Angeles Lakers and previously the agent representing Lakers great Kobe Bryant. Pelinka spoke to law students and practicing attorneys at the Fowler School of Law’s 2018 Entertainment and Sports Law Symposium.

Arianna Ngnomire ’19 and Angela Davis

but to do so in a way that will make lasting change.

Sustainable activism was something she brought up in her speech. Many activists have a burnout phase, putting all of the pressure on themselves.

Sustainable activism is not only doing things to bring awareness but inspiring others to help. It is ensuring organizations are put in place to keep the task going when the “leader” is no longer able to do so.

I see myself in Angela Davis. I see the possibilities that I can be, and I am encouraged to go above and beyond. It makes me hopeful that one day I’ll be able to inspire the next generation of activists.”

Arianna Ngnomire ’19, screen acting major, president of the Black Student Union 2017–18 and vice president of the Student Government Association 2018–19. Ngnomire reflects on meeting Davis when the social activist, writer and distinguished professor emerita at UC Santa Cruz spoke recently in Memorial Hall.

“When you consider the rise of science advocates on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and you look at the history of science, the public has never had more access to scientists. I think that presents so much possibility.”

Rob Pelinka

“You’re all sto

r ytellers.

The lives we le ad, the things we accept and don’t, the thin gs we stand fo r and the thin gs that we stand against. The culture we’ve created doesn’t have to be in charge of us. We can be in charge of it. Story by story, life by life.”

Rebecca Skloot, Chapman presidential scholar, science writer and best-selling author of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” speaking to students about a perceived erosion of public trust in science.

Justin Simien ’05, acclaimed filmmaker who wrote and directed the feature “Dear White People,” now also a Netflix series.

Simien gave the keynote address during Chapman’s recent Baccalaureate ceremony.

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at his fingertips Temianka Violin Scholar Christopher Nelson ’21 embraces his role as keeper of an instrumental legacy.

Story by Brittany Hanson | Photos by Challenge Roddie

A

lthough for some Chapman University students Friday is light on coursework, the Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music sings with activity. The sounds of voices, woodwinds and strings leak from under the doors of Oliphant Hall.

Temianka Professor of Violin William Fitzpatrick is still getting through his morning coffee as one of his students enters his office rehearsal space. Today, mentor and protégé are joined by a unique, rather pampered guest. Much beloved, well cared for, even treasured.

Taken out for play frequently, with a rich, full schedule, this is the day-to-day life of the Henri Temianka-Albert Saparoff violin, presently in the care of Christopher Nelson ’21, a Temianka Violin Scholar at Chapman. Nelson enjoys regular rehearsal sessions with Fitzpatrick, who has taught many of today’s leading violinists and chamber musicians.

What does it take to become one of the select Chapman University performers invited to coax evocative sound from this historic instrument?

“You need to play the violin exceptionally well,” laughs Fitzpatrick, founder and first violinist of the New York String Quartet.

Yes, there is the need for talent, plus strong academic performance.

And what’s it like to care for the flagship instrument of the Temianka Violin Scholars?

Wonderful, amazing, Nelson offers. Also slightly unnerving.

“I’ve had nightmares,” Nelson says with a chuckle. “It’s a fabulous instrument, then there’s also the fact that it’s worth more than tuition at Chapman. So you probably don’t want to accidentally drop it.”

A Classical Connection

In the hands of student violinist Christopher Nelson ’21, the Temianka-Saparoff violin sounds happy to be out of its case. As a Temianka Violin Scholar, Nelson also has access to the archive of the late virtuoso Henri Temianka, including a letter, above right, from Dmitri Shostakovich, critiquing Temianka’s performance.

14 C H A P M A N M A G A Z I N E

At Chapman, the Temianka-Saparoff violin connects student performers to the legacy of virtuoso violinist Henri Temianka.

Born in 1906 to Polish, Jewish parents, Temianka displayed impressive talents at a young age, and he studied all across Europe before eventually crossing the Atlantic to attend the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

After debuting in New York, he traveled the world, performing in high-profile venues and making equally high-profile friends.

Those social connections saved his family during World War II, when rescues were organized to extract his parents from Nazi and Fascist imprisonment.

After the war, Temianka founded the famed Paganini Quartet.

Over 45 years, he dedicated his life to music, playing and conducting as well as teaching the next generation of musicians and music lovers.

His legacy is alive at Chapman thanks to the Temianka Endowed Professorship and Scholarship for String Studies, along with the extensive Temianka Archives, featuring Henri’s letters, sheet music and select belongings.

Frequent vibration encourages the violin to “waken.” Without the human connection, it cannot achieve its full potential.

The Temianka-Saparoff violin was acquired by Henri’s son, Dr. Daniel Temianka, specifically to make it available to Temianka Scholars at Chapman.

This special instrument is more than 100 years old. Its unknown maker blended Germanic woods and Italian violin-making techniques, creating a voice that is extra bright and responsive, says Boris De Granda, the luthier charged with upkeep of the violin.

In performance, it sounds outright happy to be out of the case.

And it has been played a lot. The instrument’s relationship with its handlers has changed it over the decades. The wood has, in spots, a warm, worn patina that can only come from human touch.

A connection with people is important for a violin, De Granda explains. Frequent vibration encourages the violin to “waken” and its tone to mature. Microscopic resin deposits in the wood fracture and re-amalgamate when the instrument is played, making minute changes to its voice. Without the human connection, the violin cannot achieve its full potential, De Granda adds.

Aesthetically, the worn places can be viewed as signs of affection.

“An older instrument, if it doesn’t have (evidence of wear), maybe it isn’t played very often,” notes De Granda. “Maybe it isn’t very good.”

Conducting a Relationship In addition to the chance to play the historic violin, Temianka Scholars enjoy access to Henri’s letters, including those that document relationships with leading musicians, authors, scientists, politicians and diplomats from around the world.

In 1970, famed Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich heard a recording of his Symphony No.14 conducted by Temianka, and while he liked it, he wrote to the maestro, offering very direct suggestions.

“In general the performance is wonderful. … If you take into consideration all my remarks, it seems to me, that the performance would be even better,” Shostakovich wrote.

Nick Dante, the Temianka Project archivist at Chapman, says it’s important for young performers to see this kind of critical communication between such high-level musicians.

“It shows how artists talked to each other about music,” says Dante, adding that the letters and notations on sheet music illustrate how musical contemporaries influenced and related to one another.

Sharing the impact of musical experience is why Daniel Temianka and his wife, Chapman Trustee Dr. Zeinab Dabbah (JD ’12), entrusted the Henri Temianka legacy to Chapman students.

“When I hear students play … what I hear much more than music, is that the students are creating,” Daniel Temianka says.

“They’re discovering it, they’re connecting with it, they’re developing a relationship with it.”

Back in Professor Fitzpatrick’s office, Chris Nelson gently lifts the violin from its case. Nightmares aside, he says that playing the instrument is an honor and has sped his progress as a musician.

Relaxed, he lifts his bow, closes his eyes and launches into a sweep of brilliant sound.

“This violin,” he says later, “has brought the greatest amount of satisfaction and joy into my life.”

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A TO REMEMBER

LA OPERA’S CONCERT PERFORMANCE CREATES A PINNACLE MOMENT FOR MUSCO CENTER. Stories by Dennis Arp and Catie Kovelman ’19 | Photos by Doug Gifford eyond the costumes and sets, the staging and theatrics, Verdi’s opera “Nabucco” pulses with the power of its transcendent music.

Nowhere was that transcendence more evident than at Chapman University’s Musco Center for the Arts as Plácido Domingo and his LA Opera colleagues lifted Verdi’s classic work to new heights.

16 C H A P M A N M A G A Z I N E

“On that night, Chapman and Musco Center were at the very pinnacle of what opera can offer,” said Chapman President Daniele Struppa, who developed a love of opera during his childhood in Italy. “In that particular moment, Chapman was the best place in the world to listen to music.”

It was just such moments that inspired

Chapman and visionary benefactors Marybelle and S. Paul Musco to develop Musco Center as a premier performance venue.

“It was opera at its finest, thanks to the magnificent music hall at Chapman,” Paul Musco said of the “Nabucco” concert. “The wonderful opera-loving audience indicated the need to bring back opera to Orange County.”

The wider music world is also taking note of Musco Center.

“It’s hard for me to overstate the incredible opportunity for us to sing in a hall with such exquisite acoustics,” said LA Opera President and CEO Christopher Koelsch. “I’m in awe of the massive scale of Verdi’s composition; the things we ask of opera singers are nothing short of superhuman. To hear these world-class voices on a stage like that, it’s kind of overwhelming.”

At the center of those voices was Domingo, the internationally renowned star and general director of LA Opera. During the Nov. 14 Musco Center concert performance of “Nabucco,” Domingo took on the lead role, aided by the full LA Opera cast and the LA Opera Orchestra conducted by James Conlon. The combination electrified the Center, bringing the standingroom-only audience to its feet.

“The ovations were incredible – it was like this eruption,” said Richard Bryant, Musco Center’s executive director. “You could see that the performers were having so much fun. They didn’t have to deal with the costumes, the props, the cues. They just sang.”

“It’s hard for me to overstate the incredible opportunity for us to sing in a hall with such exquisite acoustics.”

— Christopher Koelsch, — LA Opera President and CEO Indeed, Koelsch said that the concert performance invigorated the LA Opera performers and orchestra, who enjoyed sharing the stage instead of being separated, as is typical for a fully staged opera.

“Our performing artists usually are not in a position to hear each other (when the orchestra and chorus are in a pit),” Koelsch said. “It’s an incredible morale booster to take stock of how terrific an ensemble they are.”

There is an “exquisite tension” between the theatrical and musical forms of expression in opera, Koelsch added. “But this is principally a musical art form. Even for opera aficionados, it’s a huge pleasure to be able to experience the power of the music in performance.”

From the beginning, Musco Center has enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with LA Opera and Maestro Domingo.

“Mr. Domingo considers Musco Center one of the finest halls he has performed in,” Paul Musco said.

The collaboration will continue Oct. 1 with an LA Opera concert performance of Verdi’s “Don Carlo” starring Domingo. For tickets and more information, visit muscocenter.org.

“We’re working to build more memories by bringing more great performances to Chapman,” Struppa said.

Enhancing the “Nabucco” experience, Plácido Domingo, seated at center, spends a moment with College of Performing Arts students and faculty, including, at right, Professor Peter Atherton, Robert and Norma Lineberger Endowed Chair in Music and director of Opera Chapman.

Chapman student Axel Mejia-Juarez ’18 gets master-class instruction from Bruce Sledge ’94, who performed in a “Three-Tenor Valentine” concert at Musco Center.

CLASSY CONNECTION In addition to a masterwork, LA Opera brought a master class to campus as an impactful extension of its “Nabucco” performance at Musco Center. Many of the Chapman University vocal performance students who were in the first rows for the concert also got first-hand tips from principal baritone Morris Robinson during a workshop organized by Professor Peter Atherton, director of operatic studies at Chapman.

“It’s really critical that the shows align with what we teach,” said Musco Center executive director Richard Bryant. “Whenever possible, we’re bringing the expertise of professionals into students’ lives.”

Similarly, when Musco Center presented a “Three-Tenor Valentine” concert featuring alumni singers Vale Rideout ’95, John Ken Nuzzo ’89 and Bruce Sledge ’94, a master class enhanced the experience for students. As Axel Mejia-Juarez ’18 prepared for the Opera Chapman production of “Albert Herring,” Sledge provided some applicable vocal suggestions. Sledge helped Juarez refine his technique with new breathing exercises and other tips.

“He also helped with interpretation of character,” Juarez said. “He never told me how to sing, but he gave me tips that made me sound better.”

Juarez dreams of becoming a professional opera singer himself, so the opportunity was especially rewarding.

“Singing for a professional in opera is a true honor,” he said. “It’s even cooler because Bruce Sledge comes from Chapman. It gives me hope for my own future that I can do this, too.”

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HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS

ISSUES HIT HOME Chances are, you’ve done one or more of the following recently.

• Looked at the price of renting or buying near work, shaken your head and opted for more affordable housing farther away, becoming what transportation planners call a super commuter.

• Driven past homeless encampments sprouting alongside freeways or in vacant properties and wished for a solution, while wondering how it got so bad.

• Clicked on a real estate database to see how your home’s value stacks up and been pleasantly surprised, but also fretful.

How long can that last?

Welcome to the complicated world of finding and keeping a place to call home. We’re all affected in these challenging times when housing’s availability, affordability and ability to shape regional economies touch every pocketbook.

“It’s hard to overstate the challenges posed by today’s California housing crisis.

The average price of buying a house is now 2½ times the national average, rents are at historic highs, and the state’s homeownership rate is the lowest it’s been since the Second World War. But this crisis is even worse, as it impacts virtually every institution in the state,” says Fred Smoller, Ph.D., an associate professor of political science in the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.

Californians are no strangers to the nonstop soundtrack of real estate chatter that comes 18 C H A P M A N M A G A Z I N E

As housing costs rise and supply lags all across California, Chapman scholars lead the search for solutions.

By Dawn Bonker

with living here. But it’s never been quite like this. In some cities, once-prohibited backyard granny flats are getting the green light, in an effort to address the housing shortage by boosting affordable rentals. Chapman researchers find that traditionally tax-averse Orange County residents are willing to pay a tax to help the homeless. Sticker-shock anecdotes pop up in the news. Did you see the one about the burnedout Silicon Valley house selling for $900,000?

Wading into this fray are Chapman University faculty researchers and students from multiple disciplines. These scholars are leading robust community conversations and projects aimed at finding ways to meet the demand for housing now and in the future.

They range from the Chapman University Orange County Annual Survey that measures residents’ attitudes about development, to outreach by attorneys at the Fowler School of Law’s Bette and Wylie Aitken Family Protection

Clinic who are helping people clear legal hurdles so they can end cycles of homelessness.

In addition, the Center for Demographics and Policy housed in the School of Communication brings leaders, developers and policymakers together to discuss trends and solutions, while a proposed Real Estate Division in the Hoag Center for Real Estate and Finance will build on the nationally recognized economic and housing forecasts of President Emeritus Jim Doti. Research interests include the impact of tax reform, demographic changes and technology on the real estate industry.

Chapman’s cross-disciplinary approach looks at housing issues through multiple lenses, with a special focus on the University’s home county. Despite rising rents and mortgage costs, Orange County remains a highly desirable place to live, says Smoller, who along with Mike Moodian, Ed.D., conducted the Chapman University Orange County Annual Survey.

“The American dream is alive for many.

Seventy percent still want to stay,” Smoller said in a presentation delivered at Chapman’s 2018 Local Government Conference, titled “Will California Ever Figure Out How to House Itself?”

But Smoller and other researchers also sound cautionary notes. Those high housing costs threaten to price out families and highly skilled younger workers needed to fuel job growth. They also push low-wage workers into substandard housing or homelessness and eat up discretionary spending among the middle class.

The call to correct that course is a unique opportunity, Presidential Fellow Joel Kotkin (continued on page 20)

Millard Sheets, “One Sunday Morning (Chavez Ravine),” 1929, oil on canvas. Permanent Collection, Hilbert Museum of California Art. Beginning in the early 20th century, Chavez Ravine, on the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles, housed a thriving Mexican-American community where many families lived because of housing discrimination in other parts of the city. It eventually became coveted by the city because of its prime location, and in the 1950s Los Angeles used eminent domain to buy out or force out many of the residents.

This culminated in “the Battle of Chavez Ravine” (1951–61) as remaining residents unsuccessfully struggled to retain control of their properties. The site was ultimately conveyed to the Dodgers, and today privately owned Dodger Stadium stands where the community once flourished.

California Housing: A Study in Art

By Mary Platt

Robert Frame, “View from the Terrace, Santa Barbara, California,” 1970s, oil on canvas. The Hilbert Collection. Frame returned again and again to the motif of a sea view through a window, or looking outward at the shore and ocean from some beautiful upscale property. “A painting must be a visual adventure,” he said.

As more people coveted ocean views, the price of California beach properties rose precipitously. Today, legal battles are waged between wealthy beach-house owners and the public, whose rights to access the state’s beaches have narrowed considerably over the past few decades.

Chapman University’s Hilbert Museum of California Art is a treasuretrove of the state’s history as much as its art. Visitors who admire the museum’s permanent collection of paintings, created by acclaimed artists during the “California Scene” movement, experience a visual trip through time to a period of intense change and development.

The paintings trace the growth of California in the 20th century, from a rural state to the advent of tourism and the growth of major urban centers. As growing industries attracted more and more incomers, housing spread from cramped apartments in cities to lower-density suburban tracts – eventually responding to heavy demand by becoming more expensive wherever it spread. All of it was documented by the observant California Scene painters, whose colorful brushes captured these moments in history for all time.

Mary Platt is director of the Hilbert Museum, which opened in 2016 and now is top-rated on Yelp and TripAdvisor. The museum is open 11 a.m.– 5 p.m., Tuesday –Saturday. Admission is free. Visit hilbertmuseum.org.

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HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS

VOICES

From Chapman’s recent Infinite Suburbia and Local Government conferences.

“We have bad laws. We have tricky zoning and slow permitting. We have a history of red-lining that became our zoning. … We stopped allowing apartments to be built.”

George Post, “Foot of Cumberland Street, San Francisco,” 1974, watercolor. The Hilbert Collection.

Post found the subjects for his bold and creatively composed paintings throughout California, as he traveled and taught art all over the state. Here, he portrays a view of rows of houses stacked back through the San Francisco mist, to a view of the city skyline in the distance. Housing prices in the Bay Area remain the highest in the nation, but because of its higher median household income, San Francisco comes in as the second most unaffordable housing market after Manhattan.

Issues Hit Home (continued from page 18)

said during Chapman’s Infinite Suburbia Conference in February.

“This is a great place to live. There is no better place in the United States than Orange County. How do we build on that?” said Kotkin, who writes about demographic, social and economic trends in the U.S. and internationally.

“Because it’s not really reaching its potential.”

Population shifts could change that, said Marshall Toplanksy, co-author with Kotkin of the research brief “Orange County Focus: Forging Our Common Future.”

“The 35-to-49-year-olds are moving to places like Austin, Dallas, Denver, Nashville, Phoenix. This is really an important indicator.

We’re losing our seed corn,” Toplansky said.

To reverse this trend, the authors suggest that Orange County transition into a new era powered by small to mediumsized entrepreneurial businesses largely in professional, artistic and technical fields. This transition is already in evidence, says Doti, Ph.D., whose annual Economic Forecasts have a remarkable track record for accuracy.

“We are gaining rapidly in higher-tech jobs and industries. Those are the people who are buying here,” Doti said in a recent housing talk presented to the Chapman University Endowment Council.

20 C H A P M A N M A G A Z I N E

Laura Foote Clark, executive director of YIMBY (Yes in My Backyard) Action of San Francisco and the Bay Area.

While legislators propose policy changes intended to add housing units, as with a recent plan to increase the density of housing near urban transit hubs, Doti counters with a lessis-more perspective.

“The only action that’s really needed is for government to get out of the way and focus its attention on removing costly and burdensome land-use regulations,” he wrote in a recent Orange County Register op-ed.

Yes, housing issues are complicated. But

“We need to be able to provide a supply of dwellings. Because it’s a basic – food and shelter is essential.

If we as a society cannot do that, we get the consequences we’re having, of which the homeless population is the canary in the coal mine.”

Steve PonTell, president and CEO of National Community Renaissance, a nonprofit builder specializing in affordable housing.

that also creates an ideal opportunity for bringing many creative and thoughtful voices to the conversation.

“These are very serious problems,” Smoller said. “It’s important to have people on the left of the political spectrum and on the right of the political spectrum. It’s important to have people who are committed to government solutions and people who are committed to free-market solutions. We have to listen to everyone.”

Emil Kosa Jr., “Cloverleaf Confusion,” 1950s, watercolor. The Hilbert Collection. The advent of the freeway system brought easier access to work and shopping for drivers in Los Angeles and elsewhere, but it came at a price: Freeways often cut through and divided established neighborhoods, bringing noise and pollution to high-density communities. Here, Kosa documents the sculptural aesthetics of L.A.’s innovative Four-Level Interchange, opened in 1953, a marvel of design that includes 22 lanes and seven bridges and is still in use today.

“We think the technology (of robotics) is coming and we will be able to see a whole lot of progress in prefab and modular (home construction). Government needs to be on board with this.”

“We kind of think housing is affordable when people pay no more than 30 percent of their income for housing costs. We have more than a third of Californians who are paying more than half their (total) income for housing.”

Jonathan Woetzel, a senior partner and researcher of global business trends for McKinsey & Company.

Mark Stivers, executive director of the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee in the State Treasurer’s Office.

“People are getting priced out, especially in Los Angeles, which has the lowest rate of home ownership in the nation.”

“Many of our clients are qualified (home buyers). They put down about 15 to 20 offers, and every single time they were outbid by cash investors. … If that’s the way our economy is going to grow, then we better come up with something for working families.”

Alicia Kurimska ’15, a research associate at the Center for Opportunity Urbanism and Chapman’s Center for Demographics and Policy.

Karla Lopez del Rio, vice president of strategic partnerships at NeighborWorks Orange County, a nonprofit that promotes home ownership.

Housing Affordability Tops List of Concerns Overall, Chapman survey finds a rising tide of blue in Orange County attitudes.

By Dawn Bonker

O

range County residents see housing affordability as the region’s top problem.

What’s more, they are worried that their children won’t be able to afford to live here, and they might be willing to tax themselves to help solve homelessness. Those are among the findings of a comprehensive Chapman University survey seeking to get a read on the attitudes of Orange County residents.

“Fifty percent of our (700) respondents were worried that their kids won’t be able to buy a home in Orange County – any home,” said Fred Smoller, Ph.D., associate professor of political science at Chapman and lead researcher on the Orange County Annual Survey, supported by a grant from Fieldstead and Company.

No wonder. The median price of a home in Orange County reached $725,000 in March, according to real estate data firm CoreLogic. Rents follow suit: The Orange County average was $1,871 in the last quarter of 2017, according to data firm Reis, Inc. Homelessness was the second-biggest concern on respondents’ radars. A wide majority – 63 percent – said they would support a quarter-cent tax to fight homelessness. However, 70 percent don’t want affordable housing in their neighborhoods, a possible reflection of the debate among community leaders

over where to locate shelters and programs for people who are homeless.

The survey threw a light on other trends, as well.

Residents support several views typically associated with left-to-moderate perspectives, including gun control, environmental protection and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), Smoller said.

Attitudes toward climate change especially surprised the researchers, who say that more than 80 percent of survey respondents consider it a major challenge.

“For the first time in our research, because we did a similar poll in 2010, a majority of Orange County residents see climate change as either a somewhat serious or very serious problem, including slightly more than 50 percent of Republicans.

Whereas, eight years ago we were talking about ‘Is this even real?’” said Michael A. Moodian, Ed.D., a Chapman integrated education studies faculty member who co-directed the survey.

The political shift and a greater interest in government solutions to social ills were among several eye-opening results in the new Chapman University Orange County Annual Survey.

The potential short-term upshots are clear.

“The implications for this are that there will be the real possibility of very competitive congressional elections in November, possibly contributing to a ‘blue wave,’” Smoller said.

But those winds of change could resound long into the future, too, reshaping the county’s identity and mindset, researchers say.

“It’s not that people’s attitudes are changing.

It’s that the people themselves are being replaced,” Smoller said, noting that the county is much more ethnically diverse today than it was a generation ago.

A significant signpost from the survey is residents’ attitude about President Trump. Nearly two-thirds disapprove of the job the president is doing, according to the survey results. That’s a reversal of traditional GOP loyalty in the county. In 2004, a similar poll showed that more than half of Orange County residents approved of the Republican then in the Oval Office, President George W. Bush.

Still, while respondents want government to be more involved in solving social ills, they prefer small government, which Smoller describes as the traditional Orange County mindset.

The researchers suggest that such contrasts might connect to the county’s struggle to manage big-city challenges while holding to small-town sensibilities.

“People have it in their head that we’re Mayberry. But the reality is, this is Gotham City,” Smoller said. “If you’re a metropolitan area, you have to build an airport. If you’re a metropolitan area, you have to build jails. If you’re a metropolitan area, you have to deal with homelessness. Those are metropolitan problems.”

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HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS

SOARING ABOVE THE

S P R A W L Drones, autonomous driving and expanses of green all have a place in this futuristic vision.

Credit: Matthew Spremulli, Alan M. Berger, MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism

By Dawn Bonker

I

t may seem trendy to nit-pick the suburbs – too much sprawl, bland architecture and transportation inefficiency, critics say. But the fact is that most Americans pick the suburbs when they’re ready to settle down, raise a family or gain some realestate equity.

Still, is it time to rethink the traditional suburbs so they meet the next generation’s housing needs and desires? Absolutely, said participants at Chapman University’s recent Infinite Suburbia Conference.

The future of suburbs and their affordability – a hot subject in California and a timely one throughout the United States – was the focus of the conference hosted by the School of Communication and the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Newport Beach’s Pacific Club.

22 C H A P M A N M A G A Z I N E

Participants described a mesh of complications affecting housing today. The first wave of millennials is ready to settle down, but housing prices are skyrocketing. Baby boomers tend to stay put in single-family homes, shrinking availability in desirable neighborhoods. Meanwhile, many workers endure excruciating commutes from remote areas and sacrifice time at home as they chase affordability.

Those market forces and societal needs demand urgent attention from researchers, planners and policymakers, said Joel Kotkin, Chapman Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures. Kotkin opened the conference, which also served as book launch for “Infinite Suburbia,” which he co-edited. The anthology features 52 essays from authors in numerous fields, ranging from design and architecture to health and energy policy.

“We really have to look at suburbia. How do we make it better? How do we make it more environmentally friendly? How do we make it more fair from an equity point of view?” Kotkin said.

Technology will help, said Alan M. Berger, a professor of advanced urbanism at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co-editor of the book and the conference keynote speaker.

In his address, Berger described a futuristic suburbia that will feature smaller homes, a preference for shared vehicle services, autonomous driving, product delivery by drones and digital technologies that make it all happen with touchscreen ease. Among the advantages he listed would be more greenspaces and fewer roads, a combination that can help ease storm runoff and flooding from the more developed areas neighboring the suburbs, he said.

Millennials and those younger, in the so-called Generation Z, will expect suburbia’s traditions of local schools, parks and family life, along with eco-friendly practices, Berger said.

“They do not want the same suburbs we have.

They want smart, sufficient, sustainable suburban development,” he said.

Photo by Dennis Arp

For Jasmine Johnson ’15, memories of a childhood full of transient housing drive her to champion protections for at-risk youth.

By Dawn Bonker

I

t’s often in the supermarket checkout line when Jasmine Johnson ’15 is filled with memories of growing up as a homeless child.

She looks down at the cart with the $5 carton of ice cream and the $4 wedge of cheese and thinks about how she’ll carry the groceries to her own refrigerator, ready to keep them clean and safe in a place she calls home.

She can’t help but shake her head, recalling days when home was a car or a succession of shelters, and stocking up on perishables was impractical and unaffordable.

“I used to say, ‘When I get older and I have my own refrigerator, it’s going to be filled with block cheese.’ Now I look at my cart when I’m checking out and I say, ‘Oh, my gosh, Jasmine, what is this?’ It used to be the dollar store and 20 cans of raviolis, 30 packs of ramen noodles and two big old liters of Shasta soda. So yeah, things are definitely different,” she says.

But the Chapman alumna, who still considers the University’s student housing her first real

home, knows things aren’t different for many others. The people on the streets, in cars and shelters, struggling to overcome homelessness, tug at her heart.

So telling her story is an important part of her life now, along with working full-time and guiding her younger brother through community college and young adulthood. She speaks to local groups and clubs in an effort to raise awareness about homelessness as she also adds polishing touches to the second draft of a memoir she expects to publish next year.

She volunteers, too, as a Big Sister for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Orange County.

Her aim? Not sympathy, thank you very much. Rather, she hopes to raise awareness that might lead to action.

“My goal, one, is showing people that homelessness has multiple faces. And two, letting people know that there are so many kids out there and it wasn’t their choice to be in this situation, who didn’t bring this on the family.

When you say you don’t want shelters in your community, or this is not your problem, you’re affecting them as well,” she says. “Making life easier for kids in this situation is my goal.”

Like many who have been homeless, Johnson recounts a complicated and snowballing series of events. The breaking point came when extended family members forced her mother from the family house they were renting while Johnson and her brother were small, she says.

“The constant struggle broke her in a way, and ever since she hasn’t been the same. That’s when we became chronically homeless,” she says.

Solving root problems took a back seat to day-to-day survival.

“It’s really lonely, even though you’re with your family. You reach out to people, they ostracize you or push you away. When you’re panhandling, they look at you nasty, like you have the plague or something,” she says.

“It’s stressful, and it starts to take a toll on you. When you try to get into a shelter and they don’t return your call, or they put you through so many hoops to get into the shelter, in the back of your mind, as the sun gets closer and closer to setting, you start to worry: Where am I going to sleep?”

Thanks to guidance from a high school counselor and Chapman scholarship assistance, Johnson found a home at the University. Today she and her brother, Leland, both work and share a subsidized apartment in Fullerton.

Their mother is not able to be part of their daily lives and remains mostly homeless, occasionally finding space in a shelter, Johnson says.

“You do everything that you can,” she says. “But when there are few resources or very, very few affordable places, it’s just a cycle.”

“SUPER COMMUTER” With help from a Chapman subsidy, University employee and student Brandi Valentine skirts the high cost of Orange County housing by taking the train to her Inland Empire home. Her story is at chapman.edu/magazine.

VOL 42 / NO 2

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HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS

A Refuge of

SUPPORT

Aiding survivors of domestic violence, Law Professor Wendy Seiden helps clear a trail out of homelessness.

By Robyn Norwood

U

ntil late February, California’s vast I want to hear about the solutions,’” said homelessness crisis was on display Seiden, who was accompanied by Judy Rose, along the Santa Ana River Trail. chief program officer at Human Options, a A sprawling encampment of more than 700 nonprofit that provides shelter and services people became both a panorama of human for those affected by domestic violence. suffering and an eyesore to more prosperous “He really peppered us with questions, passersby, a blight on the increasingly mythical ending with ‘Can you get me volunteers?’”

California Dream.

Seiden said. “At the time we didn’t even know The riverbed camp is gone now, but the what the volunteers were for.” problem sometimes simply changes locations.

Carter had a plan. First, he granted a That is why Chapman University’s Wendy temporary restraining order barring the arrest Seiden is hard at work trying to break the cycle of those who refused to leave. Then he pressed of homelessness. A professor in the Dale E. further for a negotiated settlement approved by Fowler School of Law and co-director of the the Orange County Board of Supervisors that law school’s Bette and Wylie Aitken Family provided 30-day hotel stays and food vouchers Protection Clinic, Seiden leads an ad hoc task for homeless people leaving the trail. force that matches domestic violence survivors Seiden’s coalition of volunteers joined from the riverbed with legal aid, shelter and related services.

The changes began after the complicated tangle between the riverbed community and local — Wendy Seiden authorities was heard in court by U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter. Seven homeless people and their advoothers on the riverbed as the migration unfolded, cates had sued Orange County and three local carrying intake forms to assess needs, make cities, alleging the county’s attempts to clear referrals and try to get people help. the encampment violated their civil rights.

“If I can say one thing, it’s that the women Carter’s unconventional approach included I spoke with – and the men, though I spoke touring the riverbed in blue jeans and calling mostly with women – they really wanted help,” on experts such as Seiden at a Feb. 13 hearing Seiden said. “They wanted to get off the in Santa Ana. riverbed. And they wanted services, even more “He told us the same thing he told everybody than getting off the riverbed.” at that hearing, which was, ‘I don’t want to hear The idea “that they refuse services, that about the problem; I know about the problem. they like being out there – we saw just the opposite,” Seiden said.

“Housing and services.

24 C H A P M A N M A G A Z I N E

Photo by Dennis Arp

You can’t have one without the other.”

Working outside of a tent called “Camp Pink,” Seiden put out a call for help through her role as secretary of the Orange County Family Violence Council, gathering volunteers from groups such as the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, the Women’s Transitional Living

Photo by Mark Rightmire / The Orange County Register

U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter tours the Santa Ana River Trail encampment with experts he enlisted to help find shelter and services for the people living in tents along the trail.

Center and the Domestic Violence Clinic of the UC Irvine School of Law. The effort grew from there. It now includes Chapman’s David Pincus, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology, and Cal State Fullerton psychology professor Mindy Mechanic, Ph.D., along with shelters like Laura’s House and Human Options and groups offering therapeutic help such as Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Long Beach and Orange County. Referrals come from all directions, including the plaintiff’s attorneys, county officials and Housing is a Human Right OC, a nonprofit whose work Seiden calls “amazing.”

Many of the women Seiden met at first needed help coping with the stress of a sudden move and worries about whether they could take a pet or all their belongings.

“A lot of them had physical disabilities,” she said. “A lot of them had anxiety, PTSD or other mental health issues that stemmed from the domestic violence.”

Others needed legal aid on matters such as protective orders, child welfare, immigration issues or victim witness assistance. These are many of the same issues Seiden and her students work on in the Aitken Family Protection Clinic, which serves about 150 family violence survivors each year and took on additional cases from the riverbed.

Though the public perceives drug use and mental health problems as the overwhelming causes of homelessness – some 14,000 needles were collected in the riverbed cleanup – Seiden points to the underestimated impact of domestic violence.

•

More than 80 percent of homeless women with children have experienced domestic violence, according to multiple studies.

•

Domestic violence was the immediate cause of homelessness for an estimated 22 to 57 percent of all homeless women, various studies found.

•

A 2013 study found that 70 percent of the homeless reported being physically or sexually assaulted by a family member or someone they knew.

Leaving an abusive relationship can rapidly lead to living in a car or on the street, Seiden said. And although she said substance abuse was not the primary issue for the homeless with whom she has worked closely, the root causes of addiction and other mental health problems often include complex trauma, violence and abuse.

“Think how stressful moving is for anybody, then think about worrying about where you’re going to sleep the next night, worrying about getting raped, worrying about getting attacked. It’s a trauma-ridden lifestyle, which is why nobody asks for it,” Seiden said.

Even moving to a motel brought difficulty for some.

“One woman was placed in the same hotel as her abuser and didn’t know it,” said Seiden, who watched as other transitions unfolded, the changes often visible.

“One woman I met on the riverbed, I saw her again after she had gone to a motel that had bedbugs and was not safe, and she looked haggard,” Seiden said. “Then I saw her a couple of days later and she was in a motel that was clean and she looked gorgeous.”

The 30-day stays have long since run out, and the problem persists: There is not enough shelter in Orange County or California for those who need it.

In June, Gov. Jerry Brown and top lawmakers reached a deal for $600 million in new funding to address the homelessness crisis. Orange County separately has pledged to spend $90 million, and the Board of Supervisors approved a $1.6 million contract to move 60 of the most vulnerable people dislodged from alongside the riverbed and the Santa Ana Civic Center into permanent housing.

They are but a drop in the bucket of the 130,000 or more homeless in California, a tiny part of an immense problem still in search of a solution.

“Housing, housing, housing,” Seiden said.

“Housing and services. You can’t have one without the other. Housing opportunities need to be long-term for services to be effective.

We can’t solve this problem with 30-day or even six-month stays. People need 18 to 24 months for related services to be implemented and effective.”

VOL 42 / NO 2

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IN MEMORIAM

Video clips from Neblett’s career shown during the memorial included a performance on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” in which Neblett chatted with Carson before singing while toying seductively with a scarf.

The tall, striking soprano made her Carnegie Hall debut at 19 and landed her first major opera role as Musetta in “La Bohème” with the New York City Opera in 1969. In 1976, she sang the title role in “Tosca” alongside Pavarotti at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. It was a role she would perform more than 300 times.

A red-haired beauty – or sometimes a blonde – who made international headlines in the 1970s with a brief nude scene in “Thaïs,” Neblett also sang at Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver

Carol Neblett

By Robyn Norwood A world-renowned opera star who shared the stage with Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo before becoming “Mama Diva” to Chapman students as an artist-in-residence at the Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music, Carol Neblett passed away on Nov. 23. She was 71.

She was “a legend, a force of nature, a diva in the very best sense of the word,” said Peter Atherton, director of Opera Chapman, who collaborated with Neblett at Chapman many years after first seeing her as Helen of Troy with the New York City Opera, a performance he called “electrifying.”

Atherton was among friends, colleagues and Neblett’s son, Stefan Schermerhorn, who spoke at a Musco Center for the Arts celebration of her life April 8. The highlights of the 1½-hour event included stirring performances by many former students, among them Emily Dyer Reed ’14, who wrote for the program notes of her gratitude for being taught by Neblett, “whose enthusiasm, artistry and class” continue to inspire her.

Other performers included Yllary Cajahuaringa ’18, Anna Schubert ’15, Alexandra Rupp ’17, Katie Dixon ’10, Daniel Emmet ’15 and Hannah Kidwell ’18.

Janelle DeStefano, a member of the Chapman voice faculty, also sang, as did Milena Kitic, an artist-in-residence at Chapman since 2007, whose aria from “Carmen” summoned some of the bold sensuality Neblett mastered.

26 C H A P M A N M A G A Z I N E

Jubilee celebration in 1977 and regularly graced the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

“There never was a moment when she was not in vocal or dramatic command,” wrote New York Times critic Harold Schonberg, a Pulitzer Prize winner. Martin Bernheimer of the Los Angeles Times, another Pulitzer winner, wrote that Neblett’s vocal abilities placed her “in rarefied company among the world’s greatest sopranos.”

At Chapman, in addition to teaching voice lessons, she was associate director of Opera Chapman. Her final performance was as a guest in the Opera Scenes production in October.

The April memorial celebration at which she was remembered for her humor, dramatic flair and generosity closed with a Prosecco toast on the Aitken Arts Plaza in front of Musco Center.

In addition to her son, Neblett is survived by a daughter, Adrienne Akre Spear; her sister, Gail Naegle; brother, Bradley Neblett, and four grandchildren: Ian and Dylan Schermerhorn, and Marianne and Owen Spear. She was preceded in death by a daughter, Marianne Akre.

Donations of remembrance can be made to a scholarship fund at Chapman University’s College of Performing Arts.

Harry Ufland

By Robyn Norwood

“No one in this school cared for his students more than Harry,” Barry Blaustein, a director, producer and Dodge College professor, told those gathered for a campus memorial service in Folino Theater in March.

“What made him a great producer made him a great mentor. He had a knack for putting people together.”

As an agent, Ufland represented actors, directors and producers including Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Peter Bogdanovich, Catherine Deneuve, Charles Grodin, Jodie Foster, Marcello Mastroianni, Ridley and Tony Scott, Adrian Lyne and Jonathan Kaplan.

Ufland began teaching at Chapman in 2012, creating such courses as “My Twenty Years with Marty,” in which students delved deeply into Scorsese’s films and heard how the 30-year-old Ufland recognized the revolutionary work Scorsese, then a 24-year-old MFA candidate at New York University, was doing in 1966. Ufland also taught a course called “Exercising Your Creativity” that students said helped them embrace fearlessness.

Perhaps above all for Chapman students and alumni, Ufland was a conduit into a world where it is notoriously difficult to get a foot in the door. A call or an email from Ufland opened those doors wide, and Dodge students

After a 2017 talk in Beverly Hills, director Martin Scorsese chats with Chapman students and Dodge College Professor Harry Ufland, who represented the filmmaker during the first two decades of his legendary career.

Right: Ufland first met Scorsese in 1966, and their 20 years of collaboration included an early project in Rome as well as the 1980 classic “Raging Bull.”

As a producer, he worked with Scorsese on “The Last Temptation of Christ” and Michael Jackson’s “Bad” video and formed Ufland-Roth Productions with Joe Roth, serving as producer of “Streets of Gold” and “Not Without My Daughter.” His other producing credits included “Night and the City,” “One True Thing,” “Snow Falling on Cedars,” “Crazy/Beautiful” and his final film, “The Big Wedding” in 2013.

and alumni expressed their gratitude and remembrances in a 10-minute video, “Dear Harry: A Tribute to Harry J. Ufland,” created by Gintare Urbutyte ’16.

Karina Manashil ’12 said at the campus memorial service that Ufland “opened the world” for his students. “At his core, Harry was an agent, and I’m so grateful that he was able to agent for all of us.”

Photo: Lia Hanson ’18

A longtime Hollywood insider who collaborated with Martin Scorsese before tapping his vast experience and industry connections to guide students in Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, Harry Ufland passed away March 2. He was 81.

Bob Bassett, dean of Dodge College, told the gathering that he was overwhelmed by the number of emails he received after Ufland’s passing, and credited him with teaching students the inner industry workings of how movies get made.

“Film schools all teach the art and craft of film. None teach the business of the business like Dodge, and no one more than Harry,” Bassett said.

Ufland collected many film credits in a career that spanned 60 years, but he earned many more that will never scroll across a screen.

“He knew that success is not about what you accomplish. It’s about what you help others accomplish,” said Isaac Rosales ’15.

“Our victories became his victories.”

In addition to his wife, Mary Jane, Ufland is survived by their son, Tommy, and Ufland’s children – John Ufland, Anne Ufland Casey, Christopher Ufland, Jennifer Ufland Bontempo and Joslin Rose Ufland – from his marriage to Mary Ufland Cossette, as well as six grandchildren.

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IN MEMORIAM

Ron Rotunda

By Catie Kovelman ’19 A nationally known authority on constitutional law and legal ethics, Fowler School of Law Professor Ron Rotunda passed away March 14. He was 73.

Rotunda was the Doy & Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where he had taught since 2008.

“Ron Rotunda is one of the most recognizable names in constitutional law and professional responsibility,” said Donald Kochan, an associate dean and Parker S. Kennedy Professor in the Fowler School of Law. “He was constantly advancing the reputation of the law school by being so present in the intellectual debate.”

A magna cum laude graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Rotunda clerked for a federal appeals court judge before becoming a prominent figure in Washington, D.C., where he became known for his legal acumen and his affinity for

28 C H A P M A N M A G A Z I N E

bowties. During the Watergate era, Rotunda served as assistant majority counsel to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. He began teaching at the University of Illinois College of Law in 1974 and later moved to George Mason University.

In addition to widely used textbooks, Rotunda authored more than 500 articles.

“Professor Rotunda’s publications have been cited more than 2,000 times by law reviews. His work has also been translated into French, Portuguese, German, Romanian, Czech, Russian, Japanese and Korean. To say that Professor Rotunda was prolific would be a great understatement,” wrote Chapman Provost Glenn Pfeiffer.

Chapman President Daniele Struppa also has fond memories of Rotunda.

“I remember how proudly he showed me an article from a Pakistani newspaper in which he was credited for helping shape the constitution of that country. His passing is a tremendous loss for the Fowler School of Law,

for Chapman University and indeed for the entire country,” Struppa said.

Among his friends and colleagues, Rotunda was famous for his wit, work ethic and appetite for knowledge.

“Ron soaked up knowledge like a sponge,” said his friend and former wife, Kyndra Rotunda, executive director of the Military and Veterans Law Institute at Chapman. “He went to bed reading string theory and woke up reading the Wall Street Journal. Ron expected much of himself, and of his students. His classes were difficult, yet he was a beloved teacher who cared deeply for his students.

Ron was a bright light in this world. He was deeply loved, and he will be dearly missed.”

Rotunda was mourned on campus with a memorial service in the Wallace All Faiths Chapel of the Fish Interfaith Center on April 18. In addition to his former wife, he leaves behind his son, Mark; daughter, Nora; twin brother, Don; and three grandchildren, Nicholas, Penelope and Simon.

Randy McCardle

By Robyn Norwood

Les Walrath

By Catie Kovelman ’19 A professor emeritus who helped establish the academic foundation for the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University, Leslie M. Walrath passed away March 12.

“Les treated everyone with respect and dignity. He really personified the culture of Chapman University,” said President Emeritus Jim Doti, a friend and colleague of Walrath. “I think it’s why he was instrumental in building the business school and the quality of the faculty. He was a key person in taking business from a department to a school.”

For three decades, Walrath worked as a professor of management at Chapman, serving as department chair during the 1970s. It was during this time that Chapman began hosting its annual Economic Forecast, now nationally recognized for its accuracy and influence.

As a professor and administrator, Walrath welcomed new ideas and did his best to remove roadblocks to innovation, Doti said.

“When I began teaching econometrics, he was very supportive,” Doti added. “We had never had a course in econometrics, and he could very well have said, ‘We don’t want that kind of course at Chapman. It’s too advanced and esoteric.’ But instead he was always greasing the wheels if he thought the idea was good for Chapman.”

Walrath also supported Doti’s efforts to create the Center for Economic Research with no prior funding.

“It was later endowed by the Anderson Foundation, but we wouldn’t even have a center if we didn’t have an administrator early on who said, ‘Yes, go for it, this sounds like a great idea,’” Doti said.

Walrath’s legacy endures at Chapman, as each year the Argyros School awards the Leslie M. Walrath Award to an outstanding senior.

“He was one of the giant pioneers of the past whose good work, both as an administrator and as a faculty member, makes everything today possible,” Doti said.

A trustee emeritus of Chapman University who built a highly successful career as a real estate broker and a founder of Citizens Bank of Costa Mesa, Randy McCardle ’58 (M.A. ’66) passed away April 26. He was 86.

Together with his wife, Suki, McCardle was a passionate philanthropist and gave generously to his alma mater and other causes. He was particularly interested in supporting scholarships, and for more than two decades he was involved with American Celebration, now known as Chapman Celebrates. The McCardles were honored as Chapman’s Citizens of the Year at American Celebration in 2013 in recognition of their long tradition of philanthropy and leadership.

In 2016, Chapman conferred an honorary Doctor of the University degree on McCardle, recognizing his work as a community-builder in Orange County and his thoughtful leadership at Chapman.

“Randy was not only a consummate gentleman, he was a gentle man, always the first to praise others and to show recognition for a job well done,” said Chapman President Daniele Struppa. “One of the things I cherished most about Randy was his deep care for Chapman and our students. In fact, the first words out of his mouth every time I saw him were, ‘How is Chapman, and how are the kids?’”

As a young man, McCardle dropped out of high school in ninth grade and struggled to find his purpose. When he joined the Navy, the first document he filled out asked his level of education, and McCardle had to circle the lowest grade listed.

“That motivated me,” he said in a 2013 interview. “Education became important to me, and I started hanging out with learned people. I figured that if they can do it, why can’t I?” In addition to his two degrees from Chapman – a bachelor’s degree in social science and a master’s in education – McCardle earned a Ph.D. from the University of Western Colorado in 1974.

The McCardle family’s tradition of dedicated service and involvement with Chapman continues: Mark McCardle, Randy’s son, recently joined the Board of Governors, and Mark’s daughter, Quinn, is studying digital arts in Dodge College of Film and Media Arts.

Struppa recalled that even in later years when Randy McCardle’s health was not strong and he could no longer attend many functions, McCardle rallied for important special events.

“One of the last examples of this is when he attended the grand opening of Musco Center for the Arts in 2016,” Struppa said.

“I recall him saying, ‘I just couldn’t miss Chapman’s big night.’”

VOL 42 / NO 2

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SPORTS

THE BOYS OF

By Robyn Norwood

Camaraderie and more than a little clowning were part of the Chapman baseball team’s chemistry during its 1968 national title run, which culminated with coach Paul Deese and team captain Bob Zamora ’68 accepting the NCAA championship trophy.

30 C H A P M A N M A G A Z I N E

Fifty years have gone by, but the memories of a 3–2 count or a hanging slider haven’t faded. Hitter by hitter, pitch by pitch, players from the 1968 baseball team that won the first national championship in the history of a school then known as Chapman College recounted their triumphs at an April gathering at Tijeras Creek Golf Club in Rancho Santa Margarita.

The old stories and the laughter flowed.

“I heard from the course superintendent,” Ed Peck, an assistant coach on the 1968 team, teased the group. “He’d like to thank you Chapman golfers. He doesn’t have to fertilize the course for the next few months.”

A story-filled dinner was the highlight of the gathering of Chapman players from the era, along with family members and even fans: Bill Parker ’52 and his wife, Barbara Parker ’63, cheered the team half a century ago.

It was an evening of warmth and camaraderie, but it was also bittersweet. The day before, family and close friends said farewell to the team’s catcher, Gerry Kammel, in a committal at sea.

“I had called Gerry one day and he said, ‘You know, we’re not having a 50th. We had a 40th,” said first baseman Steve Robertson ’70.

“His funeral turned out to be our 50th reunion.”

Kammel’s son Casey mingled and laughed with his father’s friends, celebrating a team that was inducted together into the Chapman Athletics Hall of Fame in 2008.

“I grew up with the stories,” Casey Kammel said.

The boys of ’68 have had their blows lately.

Kammel was the third member of the team to pass away in the past two years, along with John Young ’71 and John Baker (Class of ’69).

BUOYANT MOMENTS MINGLE WITH THE BITTERSWEET DURING A 50-YEAR REUNION OF CHAPMAN’S FIRST NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP TEAM.

Young founded Major League Baseball’s Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program, aimed at increasing participation among African-American youth.

Six players from the team that won the title in the NCAA College Division – now Division II – were at the dinner: second baseman Mark Carlson ’70, feeling great after a heart bypass last fall; infielder David Ristig ’72, who later became Chapman’s head baseball coach; Robertson, the first baseman; pitcher Dean Smith ’71; home-run hitting right fielder Dennis Veltz (Class of ’69), keeper of the team scrapbook; and shortstop Bob Zamora ’68, winner of more than 700 games as baseball coach at Capistrano Valley High School, where he recently won his seventh CIF title.

“He’s a legend in Orange County baseball,” Carlson said.

Together they remembered the path to a title: an 11–8 come-from-behind win over Long Island University in the first game of the 1968 national tournament; a 3–0 shutout of Delta State in the second game, keyed by Bill Holt’s 16 strikeouts and a three-run homer by Veltz – “hanging slider, like I said, my favorite pitch” – and a two-hit gem thrown by Rick McHale against Delta State for an 11–0 victory in the final game.

“Mark, did Gerry Kammel catch all three games?” Zamora called out. “Yes, he did,” Carlson answered.

Photos by Challenge Roddie

At left, assistant coach Ed Peck, outfielder Dennis Veltz (Class of ’69) and shortstop Bob Zamora ’68 reminisce over Veltz’s scrapbook. Below, team members gather for a group photo: from left, pitcher Dean Smith ’71, infielder David Ristig ’72 (M.A. ’77), first baseman Steve Robertson ’70, second baseman Mark Carlson ’70, Zamora, Peck and Veltz.

The ’68 baseball team was inducted into the Chapman Athletics Hall of Fame in 2008.

The players also recalled a 2–0 victory over USC that season on a one-hitter by righthanded ace Don Richards and a two-run homer

by Veltz. The Panthers split two games with the Trojans and couldn’t help thinking they’d have liked their chances in a postseason game against the powerhouse team, which went on to win the 1968 championship in the University Division, now Division I. Late in the dinner, a cell phone rang, and one more voice from the old days filled the room by speakerphone. Coach Paul Deese, who lives in Texas but had planned to drive in from a visit to Palm Springs for the occasion, called with his regrets.

“I wish I was there to congratulate everybody on the 50th anniversary, and the fact that you all are still around,” Deese told the group to laughter, before recalling the feats of McHale and centerfielder Tony Spano, the team catalyst and Most Valuable Player of the playoffs.

“He made it all happen,” Deese said.

Passing the phone around, players spoke to their coach. Ristig thanked him for taking him back after he temporarily left the team, and for helping him “break the ice” with the woman who became his wife. Others called out, “Hang in there, Paul,” and “We love you Paul.”

“We all know you’re not in good health,” Carlson said. “Our prayers are with you. We all hope we see you one more time.”

Mark the calendar for 2028. Or why not do it all again next year?

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PANTHERS WIN SCIAC TITLES

CHAMPIONSHIP COMEBACK

Spring was a season of success for Chapman’s athletic programs, two of which won conference championships.

For the women’s basketball team, the Panthers’ first Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference tournament title came in dramatic fashion. Led by Jaryn Fajardo’s 25 points, Chapman prevailed in double overtime, defeating Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, 70–61, in the title game. Fajardo was named SCIAC Tournament MVP. Sophomore Lucy Criswell won the SCIAC Athlete of the Year award, and for the third year in a row head coach Carol Jue and her staff were named SCIAC Coaching Staff of the Year.

Chapman’s baseball team also won its first SCIAC tournament championship, thanks to an improbable comeback. The Panthers were down 10–1 in the title game before rallying to defeat Redlands, 20–12. Among the big hits were a three-run homer by senior Gavin Blodgett and a tworun double by Jared Love. Blodgett and Love combined for 11 RBIs in the victory, which earned the Panthers an automatic berth in the NCAA Division III Baseball Championship. Chapman was eliminated with a 6–2 loss to UT-Dallas on May 19 in Spokane, Wash. The Panthers finished the season with an impressive 35–13 record. Blodgett and juniors Tyler Peck, Matt Mogollon and Tristan Kevitch were named to the American Baseball Coaches Association/ Rawlings All-Region Team.

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Chapman basketball players pose for a championship photo with coach Carol Jue after the Panthers defeated Claremont-Mudd-Scripps in double overtime to win the conference tournament.

OTHER STANDOUTS Chapman’s men’s lacrosse team made it to the MCLA Division I National Championship game for the third year in a row. There, the Panthers suffered their only loss of the season, falling to Michigan State, 10–8, in Salt Lake City. Senior Dylan Garner scored three goals to spark the Panthers, who have qualified for the Final Four each of the past five seasons.

Freshman Alisa Ogranovich became the first Chapman women’s tennis player to earn a major SCIAC award.

She was selected as the SCIAC Newcomer of the Year.

Freshman Michaela Foisy of Chapman’s softball team broke the school stolen base record with 53 in just the last two seasons. She also led the Panthers with 61 hits, 37 runs scored and five triples.

Head coach Will Marino and his staff were named SCIAC Coaching Staff of the Year in women’s tennis.

Senior Stacey Zuppa of Chapman’s women’s lacrosse team broke the University all-time points record with 55. She also earned a spot on the All-Region Team with her recordbreaking performance.

Photo by Larry Newman

SPORTS

HOLOCAUST ART & WRITING CONTEST

Artful Witness for the

Future Can it possibly be that many Americans have only the vaguest understanding of the Holocaust? One national survey made headlines this spring suggesting as much.

If only all those surveyed could do as hundreds of middle school and high school youths do when the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education hosts its annual Art & Writing Contest at Chapman University. Each year the contest invites students in sixth through 12th grade to watch videotaped testimonies of Holocaust survivors and create poetry, prose, artwork or films in response to survivors’ testimonies about their experiences.

The most recent contest engaged more than 5,000 students from all over the world. As is tradition, the experience culminated with a spring awards ceremony in Memorial Hall at which students read and shared work, then poured out onto the Bert C. Williams Mall to enjoy a luncheon where they personally met some of the same survivors whose stories and memories they had studied.

First place: “Humanity” by Kristen Landsman, grade 12, McSherrytown, Pa., from the survivor testimony of Natan Gipsman.

Second place: “The Little Tin Cup”

by Sage Taber, grade 12, Mission Viejo, Calif., from the survivor testimony of Eva Safferman.

This fall will mark the launch of the Rodgers Center’s 20th anniversary contest. As always, awards for first, second and third place will be given in each category. But like a generation of participants before them, the students will all come away as champions for memory, forever changed for having entered a crucial intersection – a place where voices of the past stir witnesses to the future.

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Creating art on a grand scale, muralist Aaron Wolken ’04 transports museum visitors to the great outdoors.

By Melissa Hoon

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aron Wolken ’04 was a small child growing up in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri when his greatgrandmother Beatrice offered him his first job as an artist. She told him she would give him a piano lesson for each drawing he made for her.

He considered the offer but decided the piano would be too difficult to learn.

“Looking back, I see how important it is to not be afraid of hard work and to seize the opportunities life presents us,” Wolken said.

So when the opportunity to make art for a living presented itself later, he didn’t hesitate.

As a Chapman University student, Wolken focused mainly on filmmaking as his means of artistic expression, but he also found opportunities to hone his studio art skills. He didn’t have money for art supplies, so he used

the cardboard from the care packages his family sent him to create charcoal “murals.”

After college, Wolken returned to Missouri, where his brother, Adam, had taken a job at an art studio. Eager to begin his career, Aaron joined Adam in working on freelance art projects.

The Wolkens learned mural-painting and eventually were commissioned by big-name clients such as Bass Pro Shops, which is headquartered in Springfield, Mo., the Wolkens’ hometown. When the company’s founder, Johnny Morris, developed his vision for the Wonders of Wildlife National Museum and Aquarium, Aaron and Adam Wolken were asked to create the wildlife galleries.

“It was the opportunity of a lifetime,” Aaron said of co-curating a significant portion of the 340,000-square-foot museum, a project that

took 13 years to complete. The museum opened last fall in Springfield and was voted the nation’s best new attraction in a poll by USA Today.

The museum’s wildlife galleries boast immersive dioramas that feature murals painted by Aaron and Adam, surrounding viewers with sights, sounds and smells of some of the planet’s most extreme wildlife habitats.

The Wolken brothers did initial concept work to push the vision.

“It was exciting to be so involved, constantly making a lot of creative decisions and (piecing) together a whole image,” Aaron said.

The brothers drew inspiration from their youthful travels in the scenic Ozarks, but they also journeyed to more exotic wilderness settings in places like Alaska, where they started developing layouts

Aaron Wolken ’04, right, and his brother, Adam, created the murals for the wildlife galleries in the new Wonders of Wildlife National Museum and Aquarium in Springfield, Mo. “It was the opportunity of a lifetime,” Aaron says.

for the museum based on their photos.

“As the patrons go through this museum and see the many pieces of art Aaron (and Adam) created, they are transported to the locations so beautifully depicted in the murals,” said Joe Buatte, director of Imagery Presentation at Bass Pro Shops.

Aaron said that he and Adam focused on creating drama in the murals – for instance, depicting a rushing herd of animals against a setting sun. In Africa Hall, the diorama features a central vantage point as wildebeests pursue elephants. But visitors are meant to feel as if they’re moving through the experience, so

sub-scenes were created in which elephants seem to move toward the central vantage point.

Aaron and Adam even hired a computer artist who does CGI for Hollywood films to add additional realism to the scenes. In one Arctic diorama, wolves corner a herd of muskoxen under a night sky of northern lights made more brilliant by fiber-optic stars.

Now that the museum is open and drawing appreciative crowds, Aaron enjoys watching viewers take it all in – especially children for whom the experience clearly goes far beyond paint on a wall.

“I have never considered myself an artist simply because I paint murals for a living,” Aaron said. “To me, art is a way of viewing the world and interacting with it.”

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Email your news and photos to alumni@chapman.edu, or mail to: Alumni Engagement, One University Drive, Orange, Calif. 92866.

Any photos received by mail will be scanned and returned. Class notes are subject to editing due to space.

To post class notes and photos online, visit chapman.edu/alumni.

1960s Mike Reeske ’67 was nominated as a local change maker by The Grow Network, an online community of people who produce foods and medicines. Mike has developed a new sustainable farming system for growing heirloom beans.

His farm, Rio Del Rey Heirloom Beans, is producing its first commercial crop of a hybrid bean that is a cross between Anasazi and Rio Zape. Mike taught high school science for more than 40 years.

During this time he opened the Orange County Marine Institute in Dana Point 36 C H A P M A N M A G A Z I N E

Harbor, developed the Outdoor Education Program on Palomar Mountain for the Vista Unified School District, and worked 12 years as a writer and developer on the Science Education for Public Understanding Program for the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Eight years ago, Mike co-founded Rio Del Rey Heirloom Beans, which collects and preserves rare and endangered beans from around the world, and supplies them for cooking needs.

1970s “The Way of the Conscientious Connector,” a guide to creating rewarding and sustainable business connections, by Dave Ribble ’79, is available on Amazon.

The online course will be available soon.

1980s Full-Blown Events co-founders David Judy ’86 and Peter Twill (Class of ’98) were nominated for the 2018 Excellence in

Entrepreneurship Award. Their company is a full-service creative and production group.

Denise Noe ’80, has published her book, “The Complete Married with Children Book: TV’s Dysfunctional Family Phenomenon.”

1990s Chapman University faculty member Jennifer Backhaus ’94 and her dance company, Backhausdance, presented “The Elasticity of the Almost” at the Joyce Theater in New York on Jan. 10 and 14.

The theater is one of New York City’s premier dance venues and an international leader in dance presentation.

Geoffrey Friederich ’91 is the vice president of human resources at Ingram Micro, Inc. “Symptoms of Being Human,” the young adult novel by Jeff Garvin ’98, is now available in paperback. He also has a new podcast, “The Hero’s Journey.”

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Rebecca Hall ’96 is celebrating the 15th year of Idea Hall, her hybrid creative public relations, marketing and branding agency. She was nominated for a 2018 Orange County Business Journal Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award.

Alex Hayden ’95, a Chapman University President’s Cabinet member and real estate professional, won the OC-SPIRE Sales Award.

Jason Hernandez ’98 was promoted to vice president of human resources and chief learning officer of FedEx Freight Corp., where he leads the company’s human capital strategy. Jason resides in Germantown, Tenn., with his wife, Nicole (Lejuwaan) Hernandez ’98, and their three daughters.

Jimmie Limon ’99 was appointed to the Texas Product Development and Small Business Incubator Board. He is a lecturer and associate director of the MBA program at the University of Texas, Rio

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Reza Ghaffari (MBA ’80)

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Priceless Support

By Melissa Hoon

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Grande Valley. He is an academic member of the Texas Society of CPAs, a member of the South Texas Manufacturing Association, and a former member of the South Texas Mortgage Association. He has been an entrepreneur in his local community for the past 17 years in the areas of finance and construction development.

Lisa Thompson-Smeddle ’99 is the director of Sustainable Development Network and African Sustainability Academy. She has more than 25 years of experience working with nonprofits in South Africa.

Rebecca Wanta ’91 was a developer for the Department of Defense before transitioning to integrative financial services. She founded RSW1C Consulting, a technology consulting firm. Clients have included MGM Resorts International, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo and Best Buy. She hosted the CloudNOW Top 10 Women in Cloud

Innovation Awards held on the Google Campus in Mountain View, Calif.

Mark Whitley ’98, a Kentucky woodworker, won awards at the American Craft Council’s Atlanta Show and Kentucky Crafted: The Market for his handcrafted tables, chairs and cabinets. He exhibited at the Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington, D.C., and is featured during Season 4 of the PBS show “A Craftsman’s Legacy.”

2000s Ben Bliss ’09 landed the role of Ferrando for the Seattle Opera’s production of “Così Fan Tutte.” He is performing in the same role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Brenda Brkusic ’04 was elected a Los Angeles Area Branch Governor, serving on the Television Academy’s Board of Governors.

Arianna (JD ’09) and Jason Burris (JD ’08) “Think Chapman First” by hiring students and alumni at their law firm, Burris Law, located in Old Towne Orange. They are expanding to a larger office near Chapman University to accommodate their growing practice. Jason was selected as a Super Lawyers Rising Star.

Ray Call (M.A. ’09) was appointed interim executive director for the Emergency Food Bank in Stockton.

Ricky Courtney ’09 is a news producer at KING 5 TV in Seattle. He has been awarded a national Edward R. Murrow award, two Regional Edward R. Murrow awards and three Emmy awards. In 2015, he received an Emmy Award for Best News Producer in the Northwest. In 2016, he received two Emmys for his work producing special event coverage. In 2016, he and Rebecca Swart Perry ’03 received an Emmy for their collaborative work.

For Reza Ghaffari (MBA ’80), Chapman has been his home away from home since 1977, when he came to the University from Iran to pursue his MBA. Ghaffari had planned to get his graduate degree and return to Tehran, where a partnership at PricewaterhouseCoopers awaited. But amid the Iranian Revolution in 1978, he decided to stay in the U.S. permanently.

“All I knew was Chapman,” said Ghaffari, who also worked at Chapman while he was in school and became great friends with President Emeritus Jim Doti, then an economics professor.

Though tensions rose between the U.S. and Iran with the Iran hostage crisis of 1979–1981, Ghaffari said the Chapman community made him feel comfortable and safe.

“They made me feel like I was not on the ‘other side,’” he said. “I received so much support, it was priceless.”

Ghaffari met his wife in 1992, and they married at Chapman. Their daughter, Tania, graduated from Chapman in 2017.

Today, Ghaffari celebrates his 32nd year at Marcus & Millichap, a broker investment real estate firm where he helps individuals and companies buy and sell commercial real estate.

He said it’s rewarding to build an enduring trust with clients.

Since Chapman gave Ghaffari a place in the world, he wants to help do the same for students.

He is preparing to endow need-based scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students in the Argyros School of Business and Economics.

For information about creating your Chapman legacy, contact David Moore (M.A. ’09) at (714) 516-4590 or dmoore@chapman.edu.

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10 Kelli Stavast ’02

Olympic Training

By Robyn Norwood Think of Kelli Stavast ‘02 before you complain about the temperature in your cubicle.

She spent two weeks as anNBC broadcaster at the blisteringly cold Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Stavast’s true preparation for her assignment wasn’t just for the weather, of course. Her work has taken her to places like pit row for NASCAR races and Rio de Janeiro, where she covered diving for NBC at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

She started preparing at Chapman University.

“Part of the reason I chose Chapman over other schools is that on day one my freshman year, I was doing broadcast journalism,” says Stavast, praising the design of the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts program in broadcast journalism and documentary. “You find out really fast if you’re actually cut out for it. I loved that we were thrown into the fire immediately. Just the program itself, learning every aspect — I had all my bases covered, which helped me get my first job, as a sports anchor for an NBC affiliate in Grand Junction, Colorado.”

Stavast knew she wanted to do sideline reporting instead of studio work.

“I started taking any job I could find.

I covered tennis, boxing, high school football, college football, baseball – I mean truly anything,” she said.

With two Olympic Games under her belt, it’s safe to say she chose the right path.

“To get the call ahead of the Rio Games to be part of the Olympic coverage was a huge honor and a dream come true. To be part of the Olympics is an extraordinary deal,” she says.

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At the recent Sundance Film Festival, “Kailash,” by Derek Doneen ’09, won the Grand Jury U.S. Documentary prize. The film is about Nobel Prize-winning, anti-child-slavery crusader Kailash Satyarthi. In addition, Trevor Stevens ’15 won the Grand Jury prize for his narrative film, “Rock Steady Row,” a dystopian tale of a college freshman avenging a stolen bike.

“The Shadow Hours,” a science fiction short film by Kyle Higgins ’08, debuted at WonderCon in Anaheim.

In addition, he released a surprise Power Rangers film called

“Shattered Grid” to promote the “Power Rangers: Shattered Grid” comic book he is writing.

Nicole Caselli Hong ’07 married Jeremy Hong on June 11, 2017, at Talega Golf Club in San Clemente.

Joy Audoin ’07 was a bridesmaid.

“From da Big Island,” a novel

by Bill Hutchinson (MFA ’06), was published in October 2017 and is available on Amazon.

Carlene Joseph ’03 created and organized two events, Operations Turkey Drop and Ham Grenade, and

distributed more than 1,100 turkeys and hams, respectively, during the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons to support command-selected junior enlisted families. She also co-created Operation Recruit Enlistment Dinner (OP RED) to honor senior high school students who have joined the military during the past year.

Ashley (Mayer) Levering ’08 and Jeff Levering ’05 welcomed a baby girl, Logan Levering, on Dec. 27, 2017. Logan’s big brother is Brock, age 3.

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Her Career Is a Kick

By Dawn Bonker

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Anthony Martin (M.A. ’09) ran for superintendent of schools in Tulare County, Calif.

Gloria (Lam) Pellegrino ’01 was appointed administrative law judge for the U.S. Office of Social Security Administration.

Lori Rivera ’01 has taught physiology for the past 13 years at El Modena High School and piloted the Biomedical Program two years ago. She is helping the school add its third biomed class this fall.

Timothy Roncevich ’03 is principal at CyberGuard Compliance, LLP, and is publishing a guide to help organizations deal with cybersecurity threats.

Robert Selway ’07 (MBA ’10) and Katie Moosmann ’13 celebrated their engagement while vacationing in Italy. They went wine tasting at an organic farm in Chianciano and sipped wine with Florentine nobility at vineyards in Tuscany. They did half of the 18-mile lover’s walk at Cinque Terre and visited Rob’s ancestral home

in Venice, where his grandfather was born and where his mother lived on The Lido as a child. They finished the trip with a relaxing weekend at Lake Como, where they saw the end of the Tour de Lombardy bicycle race and took a sunset yacht tour of the celebrity villas.

“The Midnights,” the debut novel

by Sarah Nicole Smetana ’09, was released by HarperTeen/HarperCollins on March 6.

Performing with the Radio City Rockettes requires a pace that would sink most dancers.

But to Natalie Reid ’08, it’s part of the privilege of performing with the iconic troupe, including in the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular, a show that is a beloved holiday tradition.

“It’s a dream come true to be part of such a classic production. Really, to be able to do that in New York City, there’s nothing like it,” Reid says.

Reid has enjoyed seven seasons as a member of the Rockettes, whose holiday shows and spectacular kick lines have wowed audiences since 1933.

Reid credits Chapman University Department of Dance faculty for providing the foundation on which she has built a successful career. She also notes that Chapman’s Southern California location allowed her to travel to Los Angeles for special training programs that didn’t interfere with her classes.

While she performed in student dance productions and in American Celebration — now called Chapman Celebrates — she graduated with a degree in public relations and advertising from the University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts.

When she isn’t performing at Radio City Music Hall or training for half marathons, Reid is applying her talents behind the scenes.

She has been a digital marketing intern with Madison Square Garden, which owns the Rockette franchise.

“I went from the stage to behind the scenes, helping to create some of the content. That was really fun,” she says.

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Mike Alfaro ’10

Remaking Lotería

By Dennis Arp Often called Mexican Bingo, Lotería actually has roots that extend to 15th century Europe.

No wonder, then, that Mike Alfaro ’10 thought it was time to update the images on the game’s iconic cards.

Some of the old images feed stereotypes of Hispanic immigrants, notes Alfaro, who aimed his redo at “200 percenters – millennials who are 100 percent American but also 100 percent Hispanic.”

So in place of “El Borracho” (“The Drunkard”), he designed “El VR.” No longer inebriated, the cartoonish character on the card now just “kind of looks dumb – like everyone does” playing virtual reality games, Alfaro says. Other examples include “La Dama” (“The Lady”) redesigned as “La Feminist,” and “La Chalupa” (“The Canoe”) as “El Uber.”

His goal is “nostalgia mixed with a relatable humor,” he says. “That makes it sharable, which is why it’s been so successful.”

A public relations and advertising major at Chapman University, Alfaro has pivoted from work as a creative director on marketing campaigns to developing episodic TV projects.

Along the way, he’s honed a keen sense of what connects with specific audiences.

He introduced his updated Lotería cards on Instagram @millennialloteria, and the limited edition game cards sold out in less than a week.

A new edition is due this summer. Articles on Alfaro and his game have appeared everywhere from Pop Sugar to the Chicago Tribune, Univision and the Huffington Post.

“I hope to keep going with this,” Alfaro says. “It’s a good way to connect with the culture and to show it off to other people.”

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“And Then, This,” a novella by Kevin Staniec ’01, was released Feb. 11.

Niccole Stewart ’04 was appointed chief accounting officer of Four Corners Property Trust in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Noel (Villasenor) Tyner ’04 (MBA ’09), Nancy Moreno-Dente (M.A. ’09) and Edith (Hernandez) Beltran ’07 were honored with Dream Team Awards at SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union’s annual conference. The Credit Union employs 19 Chapman alumni.

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2010s Spencer Berry ’15 and Krista Rasmussen ’15 met during their freshman year at Chapman and were married in Tucson on Sept. 23, 2017.

Emily Biehl ’17 is a morning reporter at “Tucson News Now.” She joined the KOLD TV news team in February.

Jessica Carroll ’13 was a contestant on ABC TV’s “The Bachelor” in 2018.

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Brent Chow ’12 was featured in Forbes’ “30 under 30: Media” for building SVRF, a search engine for alternative reality and virtual reality, along with cofounder Sophia Dominguez.

Ethan Friederich ’17 is pursuing his master’s degree in history at the University of Oxford, where he has been accepted to start his Ph.D. in history this fall.

Russell Goldberg (M.S. and MBA ’14) works at Do&Co as hygiene and food safety manager. Do&Co is a high-end catering company for international flights out of Los Angeles International Airport.

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Mike Lee ’13

Plugged into Magic

By Melissa Hoon

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Charles Gulley III ’11 earned his JD from William & Mary Law School in 2016. He joined Klinedinst’s San Diego office as an associate.

Tallene Hacatoryan ’14, the founder of the Healthy Me Club at Chapman University, is a registered dietitian and owner of Healthy Me O.C. Her business incorporates nutrition counseling, grocery store tours, cooking classes and weekly meal planning to help patients make lasting lifestyle changes.

Jesse Knaack ’11, Rebecca (Rolnick) Knaack ’12, Jessica Springer ’09 and Matt Garbutt ’12 vacationed together at Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada. Jesse and Rebecca are married, and Matt and Jessica are engaged.

Kevin Loucks (EMBA ’17) was nominated for the 2018 Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award from the Orange County Business Journal. Kevin is president of Chamber Music | OC, an organization dedicated to promoting the art of chamber music through performance, education and community outreach in Orange County.

Melissa Marino ’17 was the sole recipient of a full-tuition scholarship from The National Italian American Foundation to support her graduate work in in performing arts management at the Accademia Teatro alla Scala and Politecnico di Milano Graduate School of Business in Milan.

Tanya McCullah (JD ’11) joined McGlinchey Stafford LLP Commercial Litigation group as an associate.

Tanya’s primary focus in her new role is defending mortgage lenders and loan servicers in lender liability actions.

Anne Mellott ’13 was featured on the Technical Services Law Librarian TechScans blog, where she offered insight about her job as the cataloging and metadata assistant at the Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Library at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law. Mary Murphy (M.A. ’17) was named the volunteer tutor coordinator for the Latino Community Association of Central Oregon. As a graduate student at Chapman, Mary performed research that focused on immigration issues, and she interned at a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico.

Linh Nga (MFA ’14) was featured in an interview in Backstage Sao. Linh is a Vietnamese-American film director, producer, actress, screenwriter and news anchor, and is the founder of the production company 9669 Films.

Mike Lee ’13 grew up in Southern California loving the “spectacle of theatre.” His grandmother and sister were actresses in community theatre.

In addition, he’d watch theatrical shows at Disneyland wondering how the magic happened.

He’d go home and try to replicate the lighting and sound, enlisting his nieces and nephews to perform in his backyard productions.

Today Lee is a support integrator at TAIT, a world marketing leader in creating, designing and engineering equipment for live events.

He helps troubleshoot systems for shows by resolving issues with the automation platform and electrical work.

Lee works at TAIT’s headquarters in Pennsylvania, but his projects take him around the world, including to Abu Dhabi and aboard cruise ships like the MSC Meraviglia.

He thrives in a career with experiences that are unique and unexpected. He says it’s rewarding to hear an audience gasp at features on which he has worked.

“The wonder you get to add to someone’s life makes this work worth it,” he said.

At Chapman, Lee stepped into the unique career niche of theatre automation when his professor, Don Guy, took him to a symposium featuring the artists of Cirque du Soleil. Lee spoke with a representative at the event who did automation and learned it was similar to lighting and technical direction. He then landed an internship with Cirque du Soleil.

“I love that there is a new challenge to conquer every day,” Lee said.

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Paula Mattison (MBA ’15)

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Calculating Change

By Robyn Norwood Paula Mattison (MBA ’15) joined the Peace Corps because of her love of travel and her desire to help others in sustainable ways. But helping members of her Peruvian community write business plans without the tools of technology felt like trying to make soup without a pot.

“The unfortunate thing is that many of them do not have basic calculators to do math,” she wrote in a series of emails to Thomas Turk, Ph.D., professor of management and interim dean of Chapman University’s Argyros School of Business and Economics.

Then Mattison took a chance. “It might be a lot to ask,” she wrote to Turk, “but I figured what’s the harm in asking, right?”

Turk responded the same day: “Just let me know how many calculators you need, what type and where to send them.”

So 100 calculators made their way from Chapman to Contumazá, Peru, where Mattison was completing two years of service.

“The people in these workshops came by foot, if needed, sometimes walking two to three hours just to attend,” she wrote.

But Mattison’s experience is not only about what she taught. It is also about what she learned.

“Two-thirds of our work is to foster an exchange of cultures between the United States and our host country,” Mattison wrote. “I have gained so much more from being here than my community has. They aren’t kidding when they say, ‘It’s the toughest job you’ll ever love.’”

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Amy Parrish ’14 received the Aides à la Formation-Recherche (AFR) grant from Luxembourg National Research to conduct her Ph.D. project in the field of microbiome research. Amy is a second-year doctoral candidate at the Luxembourg Institute of Health’s Department of Infection and Immunity.

Rashika Patel ’13 works for Visit Anaheim as a sports event specialist.

In her role, she is charged with attracting major athletic events and conferences to the City of Anaheim and travels the world promoting Anaheim as a destination.

Alix Portillo ’15 was appointed alumni representative on the Board of Directors for The Wooden Floor, a nonprofit in Orange County that focuses on youth development and empowerment through dance and access to higher education.

Chad Rabago ’15 was awarded a Microgrant for Student Professionalization from the Arts Administration Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. The grant will allow Chad to attend the Service Unites Conference, where he’ll learn how to better engage volunteers and how arts organizations can create positive change through service.

Ryan Robinson ’12 moved to Denver in 2017 and has enjoyed connecting with fellow alumni in the area, including at Chappy Hour.

Hebron Simckes-Joffe (MFA ’10) won the 2017 Best New Writer Award at Action on Film Fest. His screenplay “Emily” was pre-selected for an award of merit at the 2018 Los Angeles Cinema Fest. Hebron started writing again in 2016 after

a long hiatus. “From the Dead,” which he co-directed, co-produced and cast, features James Duval (“Independence Day”), Ben Morrison (“Punk’d”), and Pepe Serna (“Scarface”).

Elizabeth Torres ’16 became a practitioner of the Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI), a method of multidisciplinary healing for foster-care and adopted children who have been abused and neglected.

Madison Wade ’16 landed a position with ABC10 in Sacramento as a news broadcast anchor.

Nicky Wilks ’10 (MBA ’13) founded Journeymen Institute, a nonprofit that helps to build compassion and resilience in young men through naturebased programs, ongoing mentorship and community engagement.

FRIENDS WE WILL MISS

Phyllis Gerrard Onstott ’37 passed away at age 103 on Oct. 22, 2017, in Darrington, Wash. She was a Beta Chi sister and a good friend to many at Chapman. Her best friend in college was Ella Henshaw ’37. Ella passed away in 2013.

Joan Cox ’49 passed away Jan. 13. She was born in Altadena and graduated from Pomona High School in 1945. She earned her teaching credential from Claremont Graduate School and her M.A. from California State University, Los Angeles.

Joan taught high school for 30 years, ending her career at Upland High School.

She lived in Upland from the 1950s to the 1980s and retired to Newport Beach, where she was active in community affairs. She established the Joan Turner Cox Fellowship at Chapman University in 1992 to provide scholarships and fellowships to prospective teachers. Joan was named Chapman Alumna of the Year in 1996 and was a member of Town & Gown in recent years. She is survived by her daughter, Eileen, and son-in-law, Ward Baxter Adams.

Howard Harper ’69 passed away Jan. 14. Born in 1929 in Detroit, he entered the Air Force in 1951 and spent 22 years as a pilot before retiring as a command pilot. While in the service, he attended night classes at Chapman,

earning a B.A. in history. He earned his M.A. from Louisiana Tech University in 1978 and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from East Texas University (now Texas A&M). He had a private practice in Denton, Tex. where he served veterans from World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. In 2008, “Corporal Thomas Harper,” a book he wrote about his father, was published. Jill Deane Ingles, Howard’s wife of 11 years, passed away in 1964. He is survived by Carolyn Jean Barrows Camp, his wife since 1977.

Ralph Miller (M.A. ’62) passed away Sept. 9, 2017. He was born in 1933 in Chanute, Kan., and received his B.A. from Bob Jones University in 1956.

He spent the majority of his career as an elementary school teacher and principal, and later as a salesman, broker, property manager and developer. In 1965, he married Karen Garton, and they enjoyed more than 50 years of marriage. He is remembered as a tender, affectionate father who freely expressed love and encouragement to his children.

Dorothy Heckrotte (M.A. ’74) passed away Dec. 8, 2017. She was born in 1929 in Brooklyn, N.Y. She enjoyed playing field hockey and earned her B.A. in education and English from Colorado State University. Her love for travel began with road trips during college. She married Bob Heckrotte, an Air Force pilot, in 1953. They raised their children while living in Washington, Texas, Alabama and Germany. Her lasagna was the best, and she always made enough to enjoy cold for breakfast the next morning or heated up for lunch. She earned her M.A. in correctional counseling from Chapman, and made a career as a deputy probation officer for the County of Orange from

1969 to 1992. She and Bob traveled the world, including to Australia, New Zealand and Russia. She is remembered for being plain-spoken, a straight shooter, an excellent listener, kind and thoughtful to everyone she met, and for a quick wit and warm smile that charmed both friends and strangers.

Ronald Kissich ’79 passed away Nov. 20, 2017. He was born in 1946 in Los Angeles and was a longtime resident of Glendale, Ariz. His survivors include his children, Cary, Karl, Erin and Ronda; and 11 grandchildren.

Joyce Muraoka ’74 (M.A. ’78) passed away Oct. 2, 2017. Born in Hawaii in 1952, Joyce worked for the Orange County School District for more than 15 years, then opened a private practice for speech pathology and audiology.

Stephen Bigelow ’99 passed away Oct. 3, 2017, after a battle with colon cancer. He was a loving husband to his wife, Melissa, and a role model to his sons, Jacob and Nicholas. He ran All-American Dogs, an animal shelter, and the nonprofit animal rescue center Miles of Hope. He was known for giving without asking for anything in return, and for dropping anything to help his friends and family.

Douglas Bradley (MBA ’96) passed away Dec. 28, 2017. He was the administrative services director for the city of Imperial Beach. He was known for his love of surfing and his positive nature.

According to Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina, he helped improve the city’s financial management, and restructured the city administration to make it more efficient and resident-friendly.

Nathan Keller ’97 passed away Feb. 16.

Born Sept. 9, 1954, in Niles, Mich., he graduated from Dowagiac Union High School in 1972 and attended Southwestern Michigan College and the University of Michigan in addition to Chapman University. He was a process engineer for General Atomics in San Diego. He married Irene Marussich in 1988, and took many trips together, including to Australia and Cuba. He was previously married to Jeanne Kidman, with whom he had two children. Nathan loved to laugh and will be remembered as a funny, sweet, generous and kind man.

Ernest Tignor (MBA ’02) passed away Jan. 15. Born Jan. 27, 1966, Ernest was known for his love of music and enjoyed playing his large collection of guitars, both on and offstage. His sense of humor and love of language will be remembered by all who knew him. Ernest is survived by his wife, Ava Ponnequin Tignor, and her children, Katrina and Matthew Comaroto.

Geoffrey Lerew (MBA and JD ’15) passed away on Dec. 20, 2017, at age 34. In addition to his Chapman degrees, he earned a master’s of public health from the University of Texas, where he also earned his undergraduate degree.

He married Melanie Ruyle, his best friend of more than 10 years, in 2009, and the couple welcomed their son, George David, in 2013. An attorney in Wichita Falls, Tex., Geoffrey was active in his community and served on the boards of The ARC of Wichita County and the Wichita Falls Ballet Theatre. Geoffrey is remembered by his family and friends for his gregarious personality, honesty, vast knowledge and love of a hearty debate.

VOL 42 / NO 2

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Combating climate change takes hundreds of decisions by millions of people to change small daily habits as well as big governmental policies. Chapman University alumnae Taylor Krause ’16 and Sara Wanous ’17 are part of those efforts in their work with Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a grassroots organization that puts the emphasis on citizens.

Krause connected with the advocacy group after approaching her senior year uncertain about career plans with her chemistry degree. Her academic advisor, Jason Keller, Ph.D., associate professor of biological

Taylor Krause ’16 will begin this fall in Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s five-member governmental affairs division based on Capitol Hill.

sciences, suggested she sit in on his Environmental Science and Policy seminar to hear a series of outside speakers. One of them was Daniel Richter, Ph.D., legislative director for Citizens’ Climate Lobby. Krause applied for an internship.

Shortly after starting as an intern in 2016, she was hired full-time as an assistant to the organization’s executive director, Mark Reynolds, managing a wide array of duties at the nonprofit’s headquarters near San Diego.

This fall, she’ll be moving to Washington, D.C., after earning another promotion to Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s five-member governmental affairs division.

It’s an exciting move for Krause, yet important work is also done away from Washington.

Much of the lobbying is done by volunteers spreading the word in their communities and contacting legislators to seek support for climate solutions. In June, more than 1,000 such volunteers gathered to meet with their representatives on Capitol Hill.

“We have 40 staff and 90,000 supporters,” Krause said.

Chapman’s connections with Citizens’ Climate Lobby have only grown. The fall after graduating, Krause returned to the seminar where she first learned about the organization, this time as a presenter, and helped start an ongoing tradition of Chapman students visiting Washington twice a year for national Citizens’ Climate Lobby conferences. On those trips, students have lobbied their own representatives, among them former Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez ’82, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1997–2017 and recently donated her congressional papers to the Leatherby Libraries.

“It’s kind of a lot to organize to get a group across the country,” Krause said. “Sara took that on, and that made my job very easy.”

The Washington trips ultimately led to the job Wanous holds as the nonprofit’s membership coordinator.

“I was really so in love with Citizens’ Climate Lobby from my first experience in November of 2016, when five of us went,” said Wanous, a double major with degrees in economics and environmental science and policy.

Krause was able to get Wanous onboard, telling her supervisors she knew “this really wonderful applicant” for temporary work during the nonprofit’s busy holiday season. The temporary role turned out not to be temporary: Wanous was hired full-time and now coordinates the tens of thousands of new supporters who join Citizens’ Climate Lobby each year.

Keller, head of Chapman’s life and environmental sciences faculty as well the Wetland Biogeochemistry Laboratory, praises Krause and Wanous for their work, and for the way they have “exemplified the ‘Think Chapman First’ mindset.”

The opportunities continue to expand. During the recent Citizens’ Climate Lobby regional conference at Cal State Los Angeles, students Emily Hanna ’18 and Jessica Rush ’18 were honored for their research posters. Both work in the wetlands lab with Keller.

The poster competition was Rush’s first interaction with Citizens’ Climate Lobby, but it sparked a recognition for her.

“You know why your research is important, but scientists have to leave the lab sometimes,” she said.

“It takes research and advocacy to see change.”

Now D.C. Is Their Laboratory Environmental research leads alumnae to roles with a grassroots organization advocating for prudent climate policy.

By Robyn Norwood

Citizens’ Climate Lobby staffer Sara Wanous ’17, center, poses with Chapman students, clockwise from left, Kelvin Hoppel ’18, Matthew Sahli ’18, Haley Miller ’18, Rebecca Felix ’18, and Courtney Bonilla ’18, before a November 2017 conference in Washington.

THE CHAPMAN FAMILY

HOMECOMING CELEBRATION OCT. 11-13, 2018

Events include the Dedication and Grand Opening of the Keck Center for Science and Engineering, Alumni Panther Pub Party, 9th Annual Chapman Chili Cook-Off, and more.

Registration information at chapman.edu/homecoming

DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARDS Friday, Oct. 12, 2018

Tickets available in June at chapman.edu/ alumni-awards

Alumni Summer Bash

Chapman Family Night with Los Angeles Angels

July 21, 2018 | 5-8 p.m.

Mingle with fellow alumni while playing giant Jenga and lawn games, and enjoying dinner and drinks! Tickets available at bit.ly/summerbashtickets

Aug. 25, 2018 | Game time is 6:05 p.m.

L.A. Angels vs. Houston Astros Chapman Family pre-game tailgate area inside Gate 4 at Angel Stadium from 4:30-6 p.m. Each ticket includes one limited edition Chapman University/Angels Baseball co-branded baseball cap.

Tickets available at angels.com/chapman

Chapman.edu

One University Drive Orange, California 92866 chapman.edu

DANCER XING

Story by Dawn Bonker | Photos by Dennis Arp

Crosswalk morphed into stage, as motorists and pedestrians became instant audiences to a moveable feast of creativity.

While fellow Chapman University dancers performed in other unexpected campus settings – amid the paintings in the Hilbert Museum of California Art and alongside a Tony DeLap sculpture outside Leatherby Libraries – about a dozen students glided across the asphalt at the corner of Palm and Glassell.

Called “Three Site-Specific Dance Performances,” the project made location and presence as much a part of the show as the dancers’ graceful movements.

“We were adapting the whole time,” said dancer Ashleigh Koenig ’18. “I liked being close to people so I could see their reactions.

They felt like they were a part of it.”

With each “walk” sign, dancers leapt into the street, performing brisk crosswalk choreography before loping to the curb.

As the light changed and traffic resumed, the dancing continued on sidewalks, with one group snaking into nearby Smith Hall, then reemerging down its back steps.

The experience was fleeting, but high school students who witnessed the mashup of life and art said the memories would endure.

“They’re such unique ideas,” said Zachary Hernandez, who was among the high school visitors taking in the dances as part of a day of exploration that included workshops, lectures and studio performances.

“It’s like a new message of what dance is.”