Gándara named Newman Civic Fellow

Anita Gándara ’24 of Chicago is one of 154 students from the United States and Mexico named a Newman Civic Fellow for the 202324 academic year. Campus Contact, a national coalition of colleges and universities working to advance the public purposes of higher education, sponsors the fellowship, which is named in honor of Frank Newman, one of its founders.

Gándara is uniquely positioned to find those solutions, in part because of her academic focus on political science and communication studies.

“I met (political science) Professor (Andre) Audette on my visit to campus, and I fell in love with the program,” said Gándara. “It’s a very interactive environment, and I knew that I needed that and wanted that.”

In his nomination of Gándara to be a Newman Civic Fellow, Monmouth President Clarence Wyatt wrote: “Anita is passionate about the issues of equity and social justice in her own communities, our nation and around the world. She has worked using her formal leadership roles in Pi Beta Phi (serving as chapter president) and Greek life, and informally, to organize her peers to perform this work of social justice in our own campus community.”

It’s Gándara’s goal “to create a transparent and safe space for students on campus.”

“I also hope to work with the College community to create a more transparent relationship between students and administration in providing sufficient support and resources for students of marginalized groups” she said. “My personal experience as a bisexual woman of color gives me insight into several issues that marginalized groups face.

“Sometimes it’s nerve-racking to be the person that people look up to make change, but I didn’t do this by myself. There are other leaders I’ve looked up to and good mentors that I’ve had. A good way to become a leader is to learn from good leaders.”

Through the fellowship, Campus Compact provides students with a year of learning and networking opportunities that emphasize personal, professional and civic growth. Fellows participate in virtual training and networking opportunities to provide them with the skills and connections needed to create large-scale positive change.

The cornerstone of the fellowship is the Annual Convening of Fellows, which offers intensive in-person skill-building and networking over the course of two days. The fellowship also provides fellows with pathways to apply for exclusive scholarship and post-graduate opportunities.

Former U.S. Rep. Bustos to teach political science class

Monmouth College students will get to study U.S. political campaigns this fall with two of the Midwest’s political veterans.

Former U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos will team up with Monmouth political science lecturer Robin Johnson to teach the “Campaign Methods” course.

The 200-level political science course explores grassroots campaigns, examines the rise of analytics and data-driven campaigns, and gives students the opportunity to apply what they learn about campaign methods to a current campaign.

“Public service comes in all shapes and sizes,” said Bustos, who represented Illinois’ 17th Congressional District from 2013-23. “For the last decade, I served in Congress, representing the men, women and children of central, western and northern Illinois. In my next chapter, public service will mean teaching our next generation of leaders from Monmouth College. I look forward to learning about their ideas and sharing what I have learned in my many years in public life.”

Johnson – who is an expert in governmental relations public policy and a longtime political consultant – is also host of the radio show and podcast Heartland Politics with Robin Johnson, which is anchored at WVIK-FM.

“It’s an honor for Congresswoman Bustos to share her knowledge on politics and government with students at Monmouth,” he said. “We plan to provide students with practical, hands-on teaching and have leading political figures from both parties share their expertise as well. It’s a win-win for the congresswoman, Monmouth College, and mostly, the students.”

Physics professor Michael Solontoi is co-author of a paper that will help scientists utilize a major new telescope being completed at Chile’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory that will take what amounts to a “10-year digital movie of the sky.”

The 8.5-meter Legacy Survey of Space and Time telescope, which has been nearly two decades in the making, is scheduled to have its “first light” next year.

With a lens that is bigger than most humans, the telescope will “generate an absurd amount of data,” said Solontoi, enabling astronomers from all over the world to gain more knowledge of several key areas, including galactic neighbors to the Milky Way, supernovas, dark matter and dark energy.

“The beautiful thing about astronomy is that you have a time machine laid out in the sky,” he said, “but there’s still so much that we really don’t understand about space that we have to figure out.”

The LSST telescope in Chile will help with that. But it won’t just expand astronomers’ horizons in deep space. It will also bring into much sharper focus an area closer to home.

“It’s going to be a factor of 10 improvement in our solar system population studies,” said Solontoi of his area of specialization. “There are about a million known objects in the solar system, and when this project is complete, we should know about 10 million objects. It will be similar from going to a Victorian-era map of the world to Google Maps.”

The paper that Solontoi helped co-author was recently published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplementary Series .

“Essentially, our paper is about how well various strategies for observing the entire sky work for doing solar system astronomy,” said Solontoi. “There is a prototype cadence, and then there are all types of variations. We evaluated each of those cadences for solar system science.”

The publication is where longer, more in-depth technical papers accepted by the Astrophysical Journal are published. And, as Solontoi says, his paper definitely qualifies as a longer paper, checking in at 103 pages.

A major project in astronomy is set to begin on the other side of the Equator, and a Monmouth College professor is involved.

“The paper itself is a technical monstrosity that my co-authors and I have been referring to as ‘The Kraken,’ but I can distill it down to a couple of exciting results for general consumption,” he said. “It’s the only project like it in the world.” Solontoi said his paper doubles as a type of Cliff’s Notes for scientists doing future space surveys.

Class of 2027 Top Scholars named

Three of the top scholars in the Class of 2027 bring a diversity of interests and career plans this fall to Monmouth College. Melissa Bivolarov of Arlington Heights, Ill., and Kaniya Johnson of Chicago have been named a Monmouth William J. and Beverly Goldsborough Scholar, and Mariah Hobson of Princeton, Ill., has been named an Admiral’s Scholar.

Johnson plans to major in English, with a focus on creative writing, so that she can pursue a career as a screenwriter. “It means a lot to me to attend a school like Monmouth because I know I will have a lot of support there and it will help me go after what I want to do in life,” said Johnson.

Bivolarov plans to join the cross country and track and field program and become involved in cocurricular programs. “I’ve been very involved with school activities since I was a freshman, and I want to be involved in college as well,” she said.

Hobson plans to major in physical education and play soccer, with the goal of becoming a high school soccer coach. She said she was attracted to Monmouth’s campus atmosphere, “where everybody knows everybody … and you can find your way pretty easy.”

The Goldsborough Scholars program is a full-tuition, four-year scholarship worth more than $160,000 that recognizes outstanding students from the Chicagoland area who have consistently demonstrated academic excellence throughout their high school careers and who embody the mission and values of Monmouth, as evidenced by leadership, service, civic engagement and cocurricular commitments.

Admiral’s Scholars receive a full-tuition scholarship worth more than $160,000 over four years. They also get a $5,000 academic enrichment fund.

Edmonds ’08 tapped to lead alumni program

Zac Edmonds ’08 was named in April Monmouth College’s director of alumni engagement.

“There’s just something special about this place,” said Edmonds, who graduated with a degree in communication. “It’s hard to describe to

Simmons,

Bring Home Prestigious Honors In Classics

A Monmouth College professor and student brought home once-in-a-lifetime and first-in-a-lifetime awards from the annual meeting of the 1,500-member Classical Association of the Middle West and South, held last spring in Provo, Utah.

Professor Bob Simmons received the award for Outstanding Teaching at the College/University Level, which he called “a once-in-a-career award.”

Megan Dailey ’25 was awarded one of six Manson A. Stewart Awards, a distinction for excellence in undergraduate classics. The award “typically goes to students from a ‘who’s who’ of vibrant classics programs around the nation,” said Simmons, who serves as vice president of the Lake Michigan Region for CAMWS, the nation’s second-largest classics organization.

A classics and social science education major who is a member of the track and field program, Dailey joins two previous winners from Monmouth in the past decade — Emma Vanderpool ’17 and Daniel Hintzke ’18

“Megan’s excellence in classics is widespread,” said Simmons. “She has absolutely people, but at the same time, everybody who’s here understands.”

Edmonds followed his father, Jay Edmonds ’71, uncle Chris Edmonds ’74 and brother Adam Edmonds ’99 to Monmouth, a school he said he knew he was destined to attend “since about second grade.”

While serving as a member of the Alumni Engagement Committee, Edmonds helped es- excelled in everything she has done in this subject. There are only A’s in her work in classics, and she is exceptionally energetic in her preparations for and participation in every course — she wants to learn and have the best experience possible in her classes, not just get through them.”

The CAMWS award committee received several testimonials from some of Simmons’ colleagues and students.

“Professor Simmons greets every single student by name at each class meeting, engaging students in classes of all sizes,” reads his formal citation for the award. “He is the professor whose door is quite literally always open, who invites students to his home for end-of-year picnics. ... Managing classics almost single-handedly, Professor Simmons has taught 48 different courses at Monmouth, courses that are innovative and meaningful to reflect modern times, and courses highlighting voices of gender and sexuality.” tablish the “Tartan Talks” webinar series, and he coined the phrase “Tartan Up!” for the 2022 Scots Day of Giving.

“He always has done more than his share, innovating to keep classics an engaged and lively department,” wrote one of his recommenders for the award.

“I’m really looking forward to cultivating young alumni,” he said. “If they’re not in a position yet to give financially, helping them to see what other ways they can contribute — maybe by volunteering at an event or by attending a Fighting Scots road game.”

Edmonds said that his ultimate goal is “to get people to feel the same amount of pride about Monmouth as I do.”