Occidental Magazine - Spring 2019 by Occidental College

SPRING 2019

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The Veitch Presidency: Meditations and Milestones

Lessons in Life: Six Retiring Faculty

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SPRING 2019

Photo by Nick Jacob

Carla Cardamone ’19 is a familiar voice to hundreds of alumni, if not thousands, from her four years as a TeleFund caller for Oxy. “I wanted a well-rounded liberal arts education at a small school in a big city,” says the sociology major from Mill Valley. “When I visited Oxy for the first time, I knew it was my dream school.” But like many students, she wouldn’t have been able to attend Occidental without financial support. “When I received my acceptance letter and corresponding financial aid, I was completely blown away,” Carla recalls. “I cried and so did my mom.” Of all her courses at Oxy, she says, the most memorable was Creative Nonfiction, which she took last fall from Sarah Ostendorf, adjunct assistant professor of writing and rhetoric. Prior to the class, “I was horrified at the idea of any of my peers reading my writing,” Carla admits. “The class gave me the confidence to share my work. It was such a unique experience to have 15 different people helping you turn your piece into what you wanted it to be.” Carla also considers herself fortunate to have conducted research alongside Lisa Wade, associate professor of sociology, on the social construction of the body as portrayed in pop culture. She will be putting many of the lessons she learned at Oxy, such as sustainability in fashion in her Environmental Sociology class, into her day-to-day work as an assistant merchant with Ingrid & Isabel, the San Francisco-based maternity company. Occidental relies on gifts to the Oxy Fund to help finance everything from student scholarships and paid internships to summer research and other high-impact programs. As a TeleFund caller and assistant manager, Carla raised more than $50,000 to support the College’s current operations. “I can’t say enough good things about TeleFund—I gained a strong sense of self-confidence, I talked with people from all backgrounds, and I made the best friends in the world,” she says. “I am grateful to those who supported my scholarship, and for all of the professors and administrators who worked with me to make sure I got everything I wanted out of college and more.”

Lights! Camera! MACtion! oxy.edu/giving

oxy.edu/magazine

Invest in the kind of education that can only happen at Occidental. Please make your gift to the Oxy Fund.

LANDE AJOSE ’87 TAKES ON HIGHER EDUCATION /// A FITTING FAREWELL TO “BUNGALOW BOB”

Your Oxy Fund Gift Encourages Carla

Oxy’s Media Arts & Culture Department embraces the demands of the digital age as a hub for critical studies and practice Senior MAC majors (l-r) Taylor Fuller, Alex Lukas, Nasira Pratt, and Raphael Gonzalez

OXYFARE Photo from the Joe and Hank Friezer Photography Negatives

Save the Dates: June 21-23 Volume 41, Number 2 oxy.edu/magazine

Alumni Reunion Weekend

OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE

Jonathan Veitch President Wendy F. Sternberg Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College Rhonda L. Brown Vice President for Equity and Inclusion & Chief Diversity Officer Charlie Cardillo Vice President for Institutional Advancement Vince Cuseo Vice President of Enrollment and Dean of Admission Rob Flot Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Amos Himmelstein Vice President & Chief Operating Officer Marty Sharkey Vice President for Marketing and Communications Jim Tranquada Director of Communications editorial staff

Dick Anderson Editor Marc Campos Contributing Photographer Gail (Schulman) Ginell ’79 Class Notes Editor SanSoucie Design Design DLS Group Printing

Vance Mueller ’86 plows down the field in November 1983.

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Alumni Seal Awards to Honor Seven at Reunion Weekend In recognition of his eﬀorts to secure the future of Oxy’s football program, his support of Oxy athletics, and his commitment to the College, gridiron great Vance Mueller ’86 will be honored as Alumnus of the Year at Reunion Weekend as part of the 2019 Alumni Seal Awards. Other honorees include Andrew Heath ’04, co-founder of Bombas, the sock manufacturer that donates a pair to the homeless for every pair sold (professional achievement); Lindy West ’04, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and author of the bestselling memoir Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman (professional achievement); the late Jose Silva ’84, who co-founded the Occidental College Latino Alumni Association and served on the Board of Governors (service to the College); Kyle Ballard ’04, senior coordinator at the U.S. Department of State and multifaceted Oxy volunteer (service to the College); Eric Warren ’69, retired set designer and Eagle Rock historian (service to the community); and Adrian Carpenter ’04, Cannabis Control Appeals Panel member and former deputy legal aﬀairs secretary for California Gov. Jerry Brown (Erica J. Murray ’01 Young Alumna Award for early achievement).

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Welcome the Class of 1969 into the Fifty Year Club! (And, hey, Class of 1994— it’s your 25th anniversary!) Connect with Oxy friends old and new, relive college memories, and get a ﬁrsthand look at what is happening on your campus today. Celebrate your Oxy connections and your rich life experiences since you walked across the Hillside Theater stage. Take tours of prominent L.A. landmarks, attend classes taught by your favorite professors, and celebrate this year’s Alumni Seal Awards honorees. We can’t wait to welcome you and your classmates back home!

OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

Anna Holm ’19 Dance Production Co-president

Ladies V-neck T-shirt (shirt bottom flairs out slightly) Available in dusty rose or heather graphite Sizes S-XL. $25.95

Maya Crawford ’19 Dance Production Co-president

Occidental College Bookstore oxybookstore.com To order by phone: 323-259-2951 All major credit cards accepted

Published quarterly by Occidental College Main number: 323-259-2500 To contact Occidental magazine By phone: 323-259-2679 By email: oxymag@oxy.edu By mail: Occidental College Oﬃce of Communications F-36 1600 Campus Road Los Angeles CA 90041-3314

Access & Opportunity Reception, February 26

Letters may be edited for length, content, and style. Occidental College online Homepage: oxy.edu Facebook: facebook.com/occidental Twitter: @occidental Instagram: instagram.com/occidentalcollege

Cover photo by Max S. Gerber Oxy Wear photo by Marc Campos (Special thanks to background dancers Molly Ellrodt ’21 and Jane Crosby-Schmidt ’20, above left.)

4 Photos by Marc Campos

1. Clockwise from lower left: Mary and John Barkman ’60 Scholarship recipients Karla Alas-Lopez ’20, Jagmit Dhami ’20, Jasmin Calderon-Arreola ’21, Ada Blige ’20, and Mary Barkman. 2. Jane (Zimmerman) Ettinger ’81 and Sister Circle Scholarship recipient Jazmin Calderon-Arreola ’21. 3. Fifty Year Club Scholarship recipient Elizabeth Hansel ’19, center, with Carl Emge ’61 (past president, left) and Mike Blaylock ’64 (president-elect, right). 4. Trustee Greta (Johnson) Mandel ’72 and Roshni Katrak-Adefowora. 5. IME Becas Program recipients Diego Zapata ’19, left, Melissa Morales ’19, right, with Adriana González Félixa, consul general of Mexico in L.A. 6. Katherine and James Jimenez Scholarship recipients Carlos Gonzalez ’19, left, and Liliana Vasquez ’20, right, with Barbara (Jimenez) Parrott ’63. 7. Current Year Scholarship recipient Brenda Duran-Jimenez ’21 and Ray Yen ’82, co-chair of the Oxy Fund.

alumni.oxy.edu

SPRING 2019

Features 12 A Generation of Greats Six of Oxy’s longest tenured and most popular professors are retiring this spring—and some of their best and brightest students recount their impact and influence.

Clockwise from top right: Lande Ajose ’87 with daughter Alex, 12; son Drew, 12; son Chris, 15; and husband David at the kids’ school in Oakland.

Departments 34 Frank Hardison ’39 has all but checked oﬀ his bucket list—but at 102, he relishes new horizons.

First Word President Veitch on the erasure of boundaries between the ivory tower and the real world. Also: alumni memories of emeriti professors Frank Lambert and Bob Winter.

From the Quad Bob Winter left no tile unturned in his appreciation of the architecture of Los Angeles. Also: a look inside the Payton Jordan Athletic Oﬃces, spring sports standouts, Mixed Media, and more.

Page 64 Barbara Nogy Gibby ’68 and Mike Gibby ’68 commemorate their 50th reunion—and nearly half a century of marriage—by endowing a professorship in the sciences.

Tigerwire Class notes for even years.

22 Reflections on a Presidency With Jonathan Veitch announcing his plans to step down next year, trustees, alumni, and colleagues discuss his impact on the College over the last decade.

OxyTalk

Higher Ground Armed with a briefcase full of challenges facing the nation’s largest higher education system, Lande Ajose ’87 brings new energy to Sacramento.

MAC to Reality Oxy has prepared half a century of students for careers in every facet of media arts and culture. With more creative options than ever, how will future generations of graduates respond to the challenges of the new media landscape?

PHOTO CREDITS: Jim Block Higher Ground | Marc Campos Reflections on a Presidency, First Word, Page 64 | Ed Ruvalcaba From the Quad | Tony Florez Photography of Newport Beach OxyTalk

FIRST WORD » FROM PRESIDENT VEITCH

Springtime and the Renewal of Discontent Photo by Marc Campos

The phrase “ivory tower” is an Old Testament term, but its first use in the modern sense—a happy state of privileged seclusion from the real world—was little more than a century ago. It is most commonly used as a pejorative to describe the esoteric pursuits of higher education. But to college presidents, the idea of a campus secluded from the real world seems as distant as the Old Testament prophets. This spring alone, Occidental wrestled with issues including gentrification, adjunct faculty unionization, and divestment from companies doing business with Israel. While the intensity of these concerns may be greater today, the College has never lacked for controversy. In 1912, when trustees announced their decision to convert Oxy into an all-men’s school, it was a protest organized by outraged students and alumni that persuaded the administration to reverse itself. In spring 1940, students held a weeklong series of protests and events as part of a national mobilization to resist America’s entry into World War II. “There is still time to avert war,” The Occidental editorialized. As the foregoing suggests, colleges are completely immersed in the real world, often defining major issues for the culture at large and setting the agenda for broader societal debates. Think of the way that the anti-war movement in the 1960s led to a reexamination of U.S. foreign policy, or more recently how controversies over sexual assault on college campuses helped set the stage for the #MeToo movement. I often tell alumni who express concern about some incendiary incident on our campus that colleges and universities manufacture controversy the way Ford manufactures cars. The reason why is not hard to appreciate. Undergraduate education focuses on the transition from late adolescence to adulthood, when young people are coming to terms for the first time with a wider world filled with injustices of all kinds. They bring with them a heightened moral sensibility that hasn’t yet been leav2

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Butterflies weren’t the only thing in abundance on campus this spring.

ened by experience. So it is not surprising that they want to change the world, and they want to change it now. The erasure of boundaries between the ivory tower and the real world can be both a blessing and a curse. While that erasure ensures that the problems of the world are treated with the seriousness they deserve, those problems can also overwhelm the educational mission of the institution and the particular habits of mind it seeks to inculcate in its students. F. Scott Fitzgerald once observed that “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Try telling that to the activist on the barricades. Too often our campus controversies have produced more heat than light. Most controversies do. Clark Kerr—the president of the UC system during the turbulent 1960s—once observed that most people mistakenly think that if we could all sit down and discuss our disagreements, we would eventually find common ground. What well-intentioned citizens don’t understand is that radicals want the “theater of confrontation.” Speaking truth to power is the typical model for student-driven change. One can argue that historically it has been effective, and there is an emotional resonance to the theatricality that has contributed to meaningful social change. But that approach has its limitations. That is because the most impassioned and

committed members of our community sometimes valorize moral certainty over moral complexity and the theater of confrontation over thoughtful exchange. As a result, minority views are drowned out by the orthodoxies of the loudest. I’m convinced that substantive conversations are taking place between people who disagree— most likely, late at night among friends in the dormitory. And I know they take place in our classrooms—though perhaps not as often as they should. But they rarely take place in the public sphere where they are most needed. We tout the importance of critical thinking, but I’m not sure we know what that means. Many seem to define it as a blanket distrust of authority. One of our most urgent problems is that there is such a deep and corrosive suspicion of authority that we have lost all faith in our institutions —whether churches, government, or higher education. It seems to me that institution building requires more than skepticism of authority; it takes an entirely different set of muscles to build an institution into something that has value and is sustainable. This spring we had a series of discussions between student activists and senior administration, as well as between students and the Board of Trustees (page 10). That is an important first step toward thoughtful exchange. But the issues of gentrification, adjunct faculty unionization, and divestment remain. If these issues were easy, we would have solved them by now. They are not easy. There are a multitude of factors involved that make them infernally complex. We owe it to ourselves as a community to foster an environment where we can talk to each other about those complexities with candor and responsiveness.

FIRST WORD

» FROM THE READERS

No Greater Influence I was saddened to learn of the passing of Professor Frank Lambert (“A Centenarian of Chemistry,” Winter) but lift my voice with others in praise of and gratitude for a person who inspired so many of us. I can think of no other teacher who had a greater inﬂuence on my educational journey than Frank Lambert. As a junior at Oxy, even though I was a chem major, I was working my way through the usual science and math curricula with no compelling sense of being drawn toward a speciﬁc area of specialization. That was until I enrolled in Lambert’s organic chem course. Quickly he brought to life a world of chemistry that was truly fascinating, and relevant to almost every aspect of life.

His lectures were a model of organization, amplifying theoretical concepts with concrete examples, and sharing his own love of this discipline. His diligence in reading the scientific literature allowed him to introduce “cutting-edge” topics such as molecular orbital theory, which was then in its infancy. During those years, being actively engaged in research was not all that common among teachers in small colleges. But he, along with students, found time to make significant contributions in the field of organic polarography. A wonderful trait of Frank’s was to share anecdotal experiences with students as though they were colleagues. Some may know that Frank completed his bachelor’s degree at Harvard. He was visiting with me once about his years there, and recalled frequently listening to Leonard Bernstein playing a piano in a music building. They attended Harvard during the same four years. As my graduation time neared, Frank encouraged me to apply to a number of graduate schools, and he wrote letters in support. I have no doubt that it was his letter that led to an acceptance at MIT. In reflection, I think that Frank had more confidence in me than I did at the time. A couple of years later I was working at a lab bench in my research lab when I glanced up and saw the familiar figure and smiling face of Frank Lambert. I believe that he was back in the Cambridge area to visit friends or family and took the time to stop by and look me up. What an amazing thing to do!

Frank’s inspiration and support eventually led me to a richly memorable career in the chemistry department at San Diego State University. I will always be in debt to him for his mentoring and friendship. Ed Grubbs ’56 Spring Valley

A Little Bit of Lambert Thank you for your article on Frank Lambert. My experiences in his classes were inspirational and helped propel my career in chemistry. After graduating from Oxy, I completed a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Colorado, Boulder and did postdoctoral research at UCLA. I then took an industrial job and served as a research chemist, laboratory manager, R&D group leader, and ultimately principal scientist for a division of a Global Fortune 500 company, but always getting into the lab to do my own hands-on research. After publishing more than 70 scientiﬁc papers, patents, and book chapters and presenting my research at scores of international conferences, I recently started a new career teaching organic chemistry, currently at Metropolitan State University of Denver. I continue to be inspired by my memories of Professor Lambert’s lucid and entertaining style of teaching and even still have notes I took in his classes. There’s probably a little bit of Frank Lambert in every chemistry lecture I give. David M. Schubert ’79 Lone Tree, Colo. Photos courtesy Occidental College Special Collections

A Belated Thanks to Bob Winter I regret never thanking Robert Winter for the guidance he provided during my time at Oxy and well beyond. Back in the United States after many years, I planned to thank Bob in person during his book signing at Oxy on Dec. 9, 2018, but unfortunately had to cancel my trip. Exactly two months later, Bob passed away (page 4) and my gratitude only swelled. I remember well taking his Social History of American Art during my first days as a freshman in 1988. Bob stimulated me to take a stance, to journal and opine instead of merely recording what went on in class, showing how the material moved me while reflecting critically upon it. To this day, I hold many of these things dear to my heart. Bob Winter showed me the life there is in learning. For this, I am eternally grateful to him. Rest in peace, Bob! Otto Driessen ’92 Austin, Texas

SPRING 2019

OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

FROM THE QUAD Photos by Bob Inman ’72 (left) and David Gautreau (below)

left: Winter holds a copy of his magnum opus, An Architectural Guide to Los Angeles, the sixth edition of which was published last December. below: Standing outside his Pasadena home in 2001. Master tilemaker Ernest Batchelder designed and built the bungalow in 1909.

Going in Bungalow Style Professor emeritus Bob Winter (1924-2019) left no tile unturned in his appreciation of the architecture of Los Angeles

By all accounts, Bob Winter, the Arthur G. Coons Professor of the History of Ideas Emeritus, loved Occidental—its students, its faculty, and the College’s striking Myron Hunt-designed Beaux Arts academic buildings. “I go home to it,” he said in a 2018 interview. “I eat with friends at Colombo’s quite often and afterward we’ll go through campus, and I’ll point out all the buildings. I’ve had wonderful experiences with all of them.” But the co-author (with the late David Gebhard) of An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles, ﬁrst published in 1965, was characteristically peevish about structures that didn’t stir wonder in either its inhabitants or passersby. Occidental’s boxy Arthur G. Coons Administrative Center, completed in 1968, 4

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was one of Winter’s few quibbles with the campus he called home for 31 years. “Bob was very happy when they grew trees in front of the building, so when you were coming in on Alumni Avenue, the trees were hiding much of Coons,” says longtime friend Norman Cohen, the Robert Glass Cleland Professor of American History Emeritus. Winter repeatedly joked that his bequest to the College would fund a “Myron Hunt façade” on the main administrative building. Winter—who died February 9 at age 94, two months after a launch party on campus celebrating the publication of the sixth edition of his seminal Guidebook—“loved nothing better than to get the general public enthusiastic about architecture,” according

to Ann Scheid, head of the Greene & Greene archives at the Huntington Library. In a cityscape that has been made and remade, Winter sought to bring order to this “chaotic place,” Scheid adds. The Guidebook— regarded by many as the “bible” of architectural scholarship for the City of Angels— “teaches us to see the important things, the beautiful things, the things that are worth preserving.” A native of Indianapolis, Winter served as a staﬀ sergeant in the Army Air Corps during World War II. He completed his B.A. from Dartmouth in 1947, and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1957. As an instructor at Bowdoin from 1951 to 1953, Edward Kirk-

FROM THE QUAD

land—the college’s Frank Munsey Professor of History—“became a second father to me,” Winter said. When Kirkland was made a William Pitt Professor at Cambridge University in England, he asked Winter to teach his course for six weeks. “Here was one of the most brilliant lecturers and discussion leaders in the country leaving his class to this character,” Winter recalled. Kirkland encouraged him to give a couple of lectures, which he later critiqued. “He said, ‘Bob, you know you’re trying to imitate me. Find your own style and stick to it.’ So I got my education on how to teach not in graduate school, but through experience.” In 1963, after seven years at UCLA, Winter was recruited to Occidental by President Arthur G. Coons 1920. “I was ﬁred by UCLA because I didn’t publish enough,” he said. In the decades to follow, he never stopped publishing, authoring about a dozen books on various architectural forms. (In retirement, he was also a regular contributor to American Bungalow Magazine, which he helped found back in 1990.) Students, including Bob Inman ’72, an American studies major, remember Winter hosting classes, the most popular of which was L.A. Architecture, in his bungalow just blocks from campus. “He used architecture to teach social history, as a window to trends and how people were expressing themselves,” recalls Inman, who helped Winter update the Guidebook for its sixth edition. “Bob connected to everyone at Occidental at that time because he was the director of the History of Civilization program. He was the emcee, if you will.” For a History of Civilization lecture on Roman architecture, Winter took the stage in Thorne Hall dressed in a sheet fashioned like a toga. “I said that I’ve got to change into more comfortable clothing,” he recalled in 2017. “I took it oﬀ and, of course, I was dressed. No one will ever forget that one,” he added with his infectious laugh. Economics major Bob Gutzman ’87 lived near Winter in Pasadena and played viola alongside him for many years in the Occidental-Caltech Symphony, until arthritis forced Winter to put his instrument down. He was among countless students who joined Winter on his bus tours of Southern California architectural gems. The sojourn, part of the L.A. Architecture course, was informally referred to as “L.A. on a Six-Pack.”

1. Winter as a staff sergeant in the Army Air Corps during WWII. 2. Wearing Renaissance gear and auctioning off art to aid recovery efforts following the 1966 flood of the Arno in Venice. 3. From 1988: In his element in the classroom. 4. On his 80th birthday in 2004.

Photos 1 and 4 courtesy Bob Inman ’72 | Photo 2 by Joe Friezer | Photo 3 by Don Milici

“Bob claimed to have not seen six-packs, but once did see two women at the back of the bus clinking champagne glasses together,” Gutzman says. “‘Scandalous!’ he would exclaim in his best theatrical voice.” In 1971, Winter—lovingly known as “Bungalow Bob”—bought a 1909 Pasadena bungalow (for $46,500) that was designed by master tilemaker Ernest Batchelder. He appointed his abode with Arts and Crafts furniture, which at the time many considered junk. Winter picked up a Gustav Stickley table for $25, a piece that would sell for thousands today. Winter formed a relationship with Ted Bosley, director of Pasadena’s Gamble House from 1992 to 2018. The 1908 structure, built by the Greene and Greene architectural firm, is considered an exquisite example of the Arts and Crafts aesthetic. At a massive 8,100 square feet, it’s “an overgrown version of the humble bungalow,” Bosley says. “It irked Bob to no end that some people labeled the Gamble House an ‘ultimate bungalow,’” he adds. “Bob had his own particular view of the Gamble House and where it fit in within the Arts and Crafts movement.” Winter forever had a waggish side. During a 2014 exhibition at the Gamble House, he and Bosley created a sign that they posted in front of the home. It read: “ultimate bungalow.” “I think he marveled at its craftsmanship, mainly the beautiful materials and the exquisite finish that they were given by the builders,” Bosley says. As for his criticism, he

adds that Winter “didn’t much care who he oﬀended, so he would be very straight with his opinions about buildings. If they were ugly, he would say so, and people appreciated that.” Winter, who never married, spent most of his holidays at the Venice home of Cohen and his wife, Lynn Dumenil, the Robert Glass Cleland Professor of American History Emerita. He even joined the couple on their honeymoon, an architectural tour of the Soviet Union. Dumenil and Cohen chuckle in recalling their friend’s sartorial standards, which paled next to his ability to single out beautiful buildings. “We would buy him sweaters and things like that,” Dumenil says. “Those looked pretty good.” Cohen recalls the simpler moments with his friend, who joined the Oxy faculty three years earlier. In a photo that encapsulates Winter’s personality, he is holding a martini “in utter glee, with a smile that gave his face an impish, elﬁn kind of grin. That kind of thing made him happy.” Winter’s legacy promises to endure. “He was certainly the guy to go to for Southern California architecture,” Bosley says. “He had a deeper and broader understanding of the architecture of the region than anybody I know.” “Bob loved nothing better than to get the general public enthusiastic about architecture,” Scheid adds. “And that’s what his Guidebook did. People could take it in their car and explore the city. That was a gift to Los Angeles.”—ANDY FAUGHT spring 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

FROM THE QUAD

Photos by Marc Campos

left: Closed offices for coaches surround the perimeter of the space, while an open-office area occupies the middle. The air conditioning and heating ducts are now hidden in the walls along the sides, opening up the ceiling to expose the post-and-beam aesthetic of the original Myron Hunt design. below: Shanda Ness, the College’s new director of athletics, visits with Bill Parrott ’62, an AllSCIAC outfielder for Coach Grant Dunlap ’46. The Payton Jordan Athletic Offices mark the first work at Occidental for Gonzalez Goodale Architects of Pasadena.

Team Building The newly renovated Payton Jordan Athletic Oﬃces honor the legendary ‘Coach of Champions’ and uncover the handiwork of Myron Hunt

More than half a century has passed since the construction of Rush Gymnasium (designed and built by Neptune Thomas in 1965) and the renovations to adjacent Alumni Gymnasium—a classic Myron Hunt structure that has housed the oﬃces of the Department of Physical Education for Men since its construction in 1926. (The Women’s Gymnasium, erected in 1922, occupied the space that decades later became the Art Barn and now houses the Cooler.) While the 1965 renovation of Alumni Gymnasium that brought men’s and women’s under one roof “was a big deal,” in the words of Jim Dennis ’66, a 21st-century makeover was long overdue. And in reimagining the space for the future, the building’s aesthetic charms have been rediscovered, according to Tom Polansky, the College’s director of facilities, who oversaw the remodeling. 6

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“When we began looking at this project, we popped up a ceiling tile to see what was up there,” he says. “What we found was a dirtier version of those timbers”—a post-and-beam style of construction that’s a signature trait of a Hunt project. “That’s meant to be seen and enjoyed.” In adding air conditioning to the building as part of the 1965 renovation, contractors did “what everybody did in the old days,” Polansky adds. “They lowered the ceiling down to 9 feet to trap the cool air and reduce the amount of air volume that needed to be conditioned for heating and brought in duct work above the ceiling space.” A few modern touches, such as a floor-to-ceiling window treatment in the conference meeting area (the former Roy Dennis Trophy Room), bring the structure closer to its surroundings. “We wanted to make a more overt connection with what’s happening outside with the track and football field, the new pool, and the tennis courts,” Polansky says. “This feels like that whole spirit of team was successfully realized.” The Oxy campus has the largest collection of intact Myron Huntdesigned structures—19—in the nation. And the Payton Jordan Athletic Offices honor the legacy of not only Oxy’s legendary “Coach of Champions,” but also its architect of record. “A lot of these spaces are beautiful time capsules,” Polansky says. “This is one of those spaces.”

FROM THE QUAD

left: The oﬃce of David Bojalad ’94, head tennis coach. center: Cori Vallembois, director of operations, has some unpacking to do. right: Olivia Sabins, Oxy’s longtime department service coordinator, chats with Jack Stabenfeldt ’14, head water polo coach.

above: The women’s lacrosse team hold a team-building exercise in the former Roy Dennis Trophy Room. (The room was originally a classroom space—the trophy cases will be returning along the walls in rotating exhibits curated by Special Collections.) The room can be separated into two smaller spaces by an accordion wall, while the ceiling was lowered “to contain the noise and energy of team meetings from disturbing the rest of the space,” Polansky notes with a laugh. left: Brian Newhall ’83, head men’s basketball coach, waits to talk to a recruit in the lobby inside the main oﬃce. “This is a place where we hope folks will have casual conversations,” Polansky says. When visitors walked into the old space, “it felt like you were walking into a DMV.”

spring 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

FROM THE QUAD

Photos by Ed Ruvalcaba (track and field), John Valenzuela (baseball), and Sam’s Photo Services (swimming and diving)

LaShauna Porter ’20 jumps for joy atop the podium after her victory in the 200m dash. Austin DeWitz, right, and Sabrina Degnan, below right, won SCIAC Field Athlete of the Year honors after terrific senior seasons.

Personal Bests With standout performances on the track, mound, field, and course, Oxy’s student-athletes rose to the occasion across every spring sport

LaShauna Porter ’20 and Austin DeWitz ’19 stole the show on Day 2 of the SCIAC Championships, winning multiple events to lead the Oxy track and ﬁeld teams at ClaremontMudd-Scripps. Despite being under the weather, Porter was the only woman under 25 seconds in the 200m at 24.75 and ran 12.03 in the 100m for 8

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a pair of SCIAC championships. The former 200m All-American also ran the third leg on Oxy's third-place 4x100m relay team. “She had a little adversity and still ran great races,” head coach Rob Bartlett said of Porter. “She’s the best sprinter in the conference.” For the men, All-American high jumper DeWitz won his third consecutive SCIAC

championship in the high jump, won the triple jump with a leap of 46-06.25, and won the 110m hurdles at 15.35 for a huge personal record and his third conference title of the day. “He always rises to the occasion and performs his best at the most important moments,” Bartlett said. “It’s just remarkable what a competitor he is.” The Oxy women finished third overall at the meet and third in the conference standings. The Oxy men finshed fourth at the meet and fourth in the conference. Seventy-five percent of the SCIAC standing is determined at the SCIAC Championship with the other 25 percent taking place during the multiduals throughout the season. Sabrina Degnan ’19, who was the headliner on Day 1 with SCIAC championships in the hammer and javelin, added to her list of

FROM THE QUAD

Nolan McCarthy ’20 pitched his sixth complete game of the year in a 5-1 victory over Redlands on May 3, fanning 12 while surrending only five hits, three walks, and one earned run.

accomplishments with a second-place finish in the shot put with a best of 38-08.75 and a fifth-place finish in the discus with a personal record in a high-performing field. Classmate Allison Kilday placed third in the 400m hurdles with a time of 62.78. Tyler Webb ’20, who was ranked in the top 10 nationally this year in the 100m, finished second in the event with a seasonalbest time of 10.69. Andrew McCall ’19 also did well for the Oxy men, placing third in the 400m hurdles at 54.51. Porter (in the 100m and 200m), Melissa Braun ’19 (pole vault), and Brody Barkan ’19 (1500m) represented Oxy at the NCAA Division III Track and Field Outdoor National Championships, held May 23-25 in Geneva, Ohio. Visit oxyathletics.com for results. In baseball, Tom Butler ’20 and Diego Ramirez ’22 continued a season-long trend of outstanding pitching for Oxy, but the Tigers couldn’t muster any runs in a 1-0 loss to Cal Lutheran in the SCIAC Postseason Tournament on May 11 at Chapman. Butler struck out nine batters in seven innings of work, with just four hits and one walk. The Kingsmen’s only run came on backto-back wild pitches in the bottom of the seventh. Ramirez pitched a perfect eighth. Coming a day after a 2-1 opening loss at La Verne, the Tigers were eliminated from the playoffs and finished the season at 28-14 overall—a nine-game improvement over their

2018 finish and their second-best winning percentage in the last 40 years. Nolan McCarthy ’20 gave up just two runs in a complete game effort against La Verne. The 6'5" righty was named SCIAC Pitcher of the Year, going 6-2 with six complete games, the best ERA (1.80) in the league, and the second most strikeouts (58). Sophomore infielder Jake Fredrickson joined McCarthy as a First Team All-SCIAC selection, while outfielder Jack Brancheau ’19, infielder Reid Gibbs ’19, and Ramirez all were named Second Team. Five women’s lacrosse players were named All-SCIAC following a 7-3 regular season and a tie for second place in conference play. First-year head coach Hannah Khin and her staff were named SCIAC Coaching Staff of the Year. The Tigers finished their season at 9-6 overall with a 17-12 loss to PomonaPitzer in the SCIAC semifinals. Madisyn Hallare ’19 was named First Team All-SCIAC as a midfielder. She led the league in draw controls (50) and ranked in the top 10 in the SCIAC in goals, points, and ground balls. Midfielder Alessandra Pelliccia ’20, defender Corinne Bates ’21, and attackers Lauren Di Lella ’21 and Shai Goodman ’19 all made the Second Team. Khin, who helped recruit and coach Oxy’s junior and senior players as the Tigers’ top assistant from 2015 to 2017, returned to the team as head coach after a single season at Southwestern University as an assistant. On the links, senior men’s golfer and team captain Sam Miller and first year women’s golfer Brianna Kim were named Second Team All-SCIAC after a pair of terrific seasons. Miller finished fourth overall at the three-round SCIAC Championship to earn All-SCIAC honors for a third time. He led Oxy to a fourth-place finish in the highly competitive conference. Kim finished the three-round SCIAC Championship with the ninth-best total. The women’s team finished seventh in SCIAC play. Softball players Bailey Stevens ’19 and Nyla Gatison ’20 were named Second Team All-SCIAC after standout seasons with the Tigers. Catcher Stevens hit .341 in conference play for the year and now holds Oxy’s career home run record at 23. Outfielder Gatison hit .326 in conference play and earned her second All-SCIAC honor after being named First Team in 2017. Overall, the Tigers struggled to a 5-34 record.

» HIGHLIGHT REEL

The men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams had two relays and two individuals honored as All-SCIAC for finishing in the top three at the SCIAC Championships in February. Cindy Dong ’22, above, led the way for the Oxy women as the SCIAC champion in the 200 fly. She broke the school, SCIAC, and conference meet record at 2:02.13 and later placed 10th overall in the event at the NCAA Division III Swimming and Diving Championships. Katie Hines ’22 earned the other individual award, finishing second in the 1,650 freestyle. The Oxy women’s 200 medley relay (Emily Driscoll ’22, Laura Chun ’19, Claire Jang ’22, and Joan Kronick ’19) took third for an All-SCIAC finish and school record with a time of 1:47.79. The Oxy men were named All-SCIAC in the 200 free relay (Sam Sachs ’21, Edward Dabsys ’19, Zander Granath ’20, and Zeke Sebastian ’21) after finishing third. Lucas Chmielewski ’21 and David Zhang ’22 were named Second Team All-SCIAC in men’s tennis—the first time in at least 15 years that Oxy has had two players so honored in No. 1 NCAA Division III tennis conference in the country. Chmielewski played No. 1 all year for head coach David Bojalad ’94’s Tigers, with wins over No. 1s for highly ranked Cal Lutheran, Chapman, and Pacific (Ore.). Zhang, Oxy’s No. 2, notched wins over Cal Lutheran, Chapman, Pacific, Redlands, and Whittier. Team captain Cameron Coe ’19 earned the SCIAC Character Award. Oxy’s men finished the season 7-11, while the women went 7-10. SPRING 2019

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FROM THE QUAD

Springing Into Action Conversation replaces confrontation as the College re-examines its commitment to racial equality and a host of other hot-button issues Photo courtesy Occidental College Special Collections

When Occidental trustees held a series of seven listening sessions with faculty, students, and staff in conjunction with the Board’s April meeting on campus, there was no shortage of subjects on the table. Campus activism typically reaches its annual peak during the spring term, and this year was no exception. Yet unlike recent years, there was conversation rather than confrontation. A series of earlier town halls and other meetings fostered an ongoing dialogue that, among other things, produced a joint statement from President Jonathan Veitch and ASOC President Jacques Lesure ’19—the first of its kind in recent memory. Concern about the experience of students of color at Oxy not only today, but in decades past—an issue that was the centerpiece of the November 2015 occupation of the Arthur G. Coons Administrative Center— re-emerged this spring on a number of fronts. An opinion piece in the March 20 issue of The Occidental by Peter Dreier, the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, called for the revocation of a 1929 honorary degree awarded to eugenicist Paul Popenoe of the Class of 1909—who advocated the sterilization of so-called “inferior” races and others deemed “unfit” to reproduce—as part of “a serious effort to explore [Oxy’s] history.” Less than two weeks later, Courtney Baker, associate professor of American studies and Black Studies chair, announced her resignation after three years at Oxy in protest of what she felt was a lack of faculty and administrative support for the College’s Black Studies program, whose creation met one of the demands of the 2015 occupation. A March 22 listening session organized by Lesure was attended by dozens of students and senior administrators, including Veitch and deans Wendy Sternberg and Rob Flot. The organization of an ASOC Direct Action Committee was announced shortly afterward; a list of nine demands focused on 10

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SPRING 2019

greater support for current Black students and Black Studies, as well as revocation of the Popenoe degree, was distributed to students at the annual Springfest event April 6. Yet consultations with faculty and student leaders that had begun weeks earlier continued. On April 11, Veitch and Lesure issued a joint campus message to report on the results of a meeting the day before. “While we did not agree on every point, we discovered that we share many of the same ambitions for how we can better support our Black students, realizing that this has implications for other marginalized students as well,” they wrote. The message went on to outline a joint recommendation to trustees to revoke the Popenoe degree, “enthusiastic support for a robust curriculum in Black Studies,” and a commitment to forming a new working group to follow up on a variety of other proposed initiatives to improve the experience of Black students and other marginalized groups. The Board voted to revoke Popenoe’s degree at its April 26 meeting, even as it heard of student and faculty concerns about other issues. Among them: Gentrification in the Eagle Rock and Highland Park neighborhoods surrounding the College. A “principles working group” representing Occidental Students United Against Gentrification has been working with Amos Himmelstein, Oxy’s chief operating officer, to persuade the Board to adopt a detailed set of principles to guide future offcampus real estate acquisitions. Trustees agreed to four basic principles proposed by the group but declined to endorse the entire document, which they characterized as unrealistically restrictive. Divestment from targeted companies that are active in Israel. On April 22, the Occidental chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, a national advocacy group, wrote to the Board demanding that the College

In 1976—nearly half a century after receiving an honorary doctorate from Oxy—eugenicist Paul Popenoe 1909 was the recipient of the Fifty Year Club’s Auld Lang Syne Award.

divest its holdings in eight companies that operate in Israel as well as be more transparent about College investments in general. Shortly thereafter, a change.org petition was launched urging the Board to reject the divestment demand. No decision has been made, as trustees are reviewing the issue. Unionization of adjunct faculty, commonly referred to non-tenure track (NTT) faculty. On April 1, a committee of longtime NTT faculty ﬁled a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election and allow adjunct faculty to decide whether or not they want to be represented by the Service Employees International Union in pursuit of a variety of goals, including better beneﬁts. “The choice is yours alone and we will honor whatever outcome you select,” Sternberg told adjunct faculty in an email prior to the election. The vote was 61 to 16 in favor of representation.

FROM THE QUAD

» MIXED MEDIA Sola: One Woman’s Journey Alone Across South America, by Amy Field ’96 (WanderWomyn Publishing) A coming-of-age memoir about the 2½ years Field spent traveling alone in her mid-20s, Sola chronicles a young woman’s plunge from her pleasant narrow life into a rich foreign continent brimming with Panpipe-playing Zen masters, nighttime motorboat rides through the jungle, hikes to Inca ruins and Patagonian glaciers, witches, mummies, goddesses, Brazilian bikinis, and an accidental climb up a snow-covered volcano. At the center of it all is a slightly unstable surf guru who bends her mind with tidbits of wisdom and prompts the question: Can you ever go home again? Field weaves tales of the quirky, the insane, and the absurd during her journey through South America— the foundation for which began with the Richter Fellowship which she was awarded as a junior at Oxy. She lives on the central coast of California, where she funds her continuing travels by working as a nuclear mechanic, teaching scuba diving, and farming organic produce on her ranch. Fiddled Out of Reason: Addison and the Rise of Hymnic Verse 1687-1712, by John William Knapp ’96 (Lehigh UP|Rowman & Littleﬁeld). Examining a range of poems spanning the career of Joseph Addison, who is most well known as the co-creator of the early periodical, The Spectator, Knapp positions Addison as a key player in early 18th-century literary (rather than liturgical) hymnography, a kind of writing that only continued to blossom throughout the next century. Knapp was an English and comparative literary studies major and acknowledges his indebtedness to teachers and friends at Oxy, including English Professor Dan Fineman and “our inimitable former Special Collections librarian, Mike Sutherland.” Knapp is visiting scholar in English at the University of New Mexico

and instructor of English and humanities at Albuquerque Academy. Unknowing Fanaticism: Reformation Literatures of Self-Annihilation, by Ross Lerner (Fordham University Press). From the European Reformation to today, the term fanatic has never been a stable one. Then and now it has been reductively defined to justify state violence and to delegitimize alternative sources of authority. Unknowing Fanaticism rejects the simplified binary of fanatical religion and rational politics, turning to Renaissance literature to demonstrate that fanaticism was integral to how both modern politics and poetics developed, from the German Peasants’ Revolt to the English Civil War. Lerner’s book traces two entangled approaches to fanaticism in this long Reformation moment: the targeting of it as an extreme political threat and the engagement with it as a deep epistemological and poetic problem. Lerner is assistant professor of English at Oxy. Reading Genesis & Modern Science: A Study Guide, by Franklin P. De Haan and David O. De Haan (Credo House Publishers). What evidence do scientists have that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and that the Universe is 14 billion years old? Does the Bible really suggest that everything began only 6,000 years ago? How does one take both scientific

evidence and the Bible seriously? Frank De Haan, a physical chemist, and son David, an environmental chemist, walk readers through geologic, chemical, and astronomical evidence of the Earth’s ancient past and its projected future, and how these topics intersect with Christian beliefs. Frank De Haan is Carl F. Braun Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Occidental. David De Haan is professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of San Diego. Briefly noted: Jacob Mackey, assistant professor of comparative studies in literature and culture, has published “Developmental Psychologies in the Roman World: Change and Continuity,” in History of Psychology, the journal of the American Psychological Association. Using ﬁndings from modern developmental psychology to revisit the ancient texts, Mackey argues that the Romans were keenly perceptive of children’s psychological abilities and cognitive maturation. John McCormack, associate professor of biology, has written “Vintage Birds: Modern Science,” in Birder’s Guide to Listing & Taxonomy, published by the American Birding Association. His article explains how the bird specimens in Occidental’s Moore Laboratory of Zoology are helping to answer pressing environmental questions involving habitat alteration and climate change. Erica Preston-Roedder, Mellon postdoctoral fellow in philosophy, has co-authored “Understanding the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative: A Multi-Disciplinary Analysis” in the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics. The article traces how medical practices of “quality improvement,” which appear to have little to do with breastfeeding, may have shaped the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative.

Shrill, Lindy West ’04’s 2016 memoir about finding her voice as a budding Millennial writer—feminist and body positive—is the basis of a six-episode series for Hulu. The show, which was renewed for a second season, focuses on Annie Easton (Aidy Bryant, left), who is dealing with an unreliable boyfriend, ailing parents, and a tyrannical editor. West told NPR’s Ari Shapiro that she enjoyed making a fictionalized version of her life: “You can work out all your grudges and your resentments against everyone you’ve ever met, except with this plausible deniability because it’s fictional.” Photo by Allyson Riggs/Hulu

SPRING 2019

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A G E N E RAT I O N O F

GREATS Six of Oxy’s longest tenured and most popular professors are retiring this spring—and some of their best and brightest students recount their impact and influence

Photos (pages 12, 14, and 16) courtesy Occidental College Special Collections

Favorite course: “The Collegium, an interdisciplinary, team-taught course for first-year students— a class that no longer exists! The Collegium was a model of the wide-ranging first-year curriculum often offered by liberal arts colleges. It introduced me to many more students than I would normally teach in a single year and to all sorts of texts and questions that I would probably never have discovered (or had time to read) on my own. I am especially indebted to Jean Wyatt (for her lectures on George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss), to Norman Cohen (for his lectures on William Morris’ News From Nowhere), and to Bob Janosik (for his lectures on historically important legal cases on abortion and affirmative action).”

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Marcia Homiak PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY Years at Oxy: 45

Chris Varelas ’85: One lecture changed the entire trajectory of my life. I matriculated at Occidental in 1981 as a chemistry major hoping to go to medical school when I graduated. That was until a lecture by Marcia Homiak on Aristotle as part of the Collegium program. In her uniquely charismatic and energetic lecture on the Nicomachean Ethics, she utilized the sixth game of the 1975 World Series [a 12-inning, Series-clinching 7-6 win by Cincinnati over Boston] as the device to convey to us Aristotle’s deﬁnition of happiness. As a long-suﬀering Red Sox fan, I understood all too well that you had to focus on the journey and not the result. But now I understood why as opposed to wondering if it was just a rationalization for losing. This made me start to wonder if the humanities could be a more rewarding and valuable education than that of chemistry. If philosophy could answer important questions such as What is happiness?, what other life challenges could be better addressed through the arts rather than the sciences? I went on to take three classes from Marcia, choosing them based on the fact she was the professor rather than spring 2019

the topic. Her Feminism class took me to a world I could never have imagined, decades out in front of what the world was to become. In true Aristotelian fashion, those classes allowed me to realize my highest and best skills and how they best aligned with the career and professional relationships I ultimately pursued. To the degree I have achieved any success, that success and the positive impact I have hopefully had on the lives of others can all be traced back to Professor Homiak. Thank you for what you gave me, and your tremendous contributions to the College. You will be missed. Varelas is a founding partner of Riverwood Capital, a private-equity ﬁrm in Menlo Park, and an Occidental trustee. Michael Gill ’87: Early in my freshman year some upperclassmen told me in exalted tones about an extraordinary lecture given by a philosophy professor named Marcia Homiak. The lecture used a blow-by-blow description of Game 6 of the 1975 World Series to teach a powerful lesson about Aristotle’s conception of the good life. It sounded rather unlikely. But later that year I heard the lecture myself. Every student in the hall was utterly gripped by Professor Homiak’s delivery. And every student walked out with a deep appreciation of both Carlton Fisk’s home run and Aristotelian eudaimonia. The upperclassmen were right. It was absolutely extraordinary. I chose my courses at Oxy based almost exclusively on which professors I found most interesting. As a result,

Plans after Oxy: “Aristotle wrote at the beginning of the Metaphysics that ‘All men by nature desire to know.’ And in the Poetics he wrote that ‘To be learning something is the greatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher but also to the rest of mankind.’ He was right. My mental life will not end in retirement. I will continue to learn, to write about issues in moral and political philosophy, and to try to ﬁgure things out.”

I ended up taking every class of Marcia’s that I could— and I was not the only one. There was a sizable group of us unabashed Homiak fans. We would trade with each the most recent insights we’d heard in her classes. Marcia’s teaching was so compelling because of her fierce commitment to the significance of the material and to the importance of careful thought. In her classes, you felt that notions of knowledge, justice, and virtue really mattered. Thinking about those things could make your life better, could make you a better person. But only if you did it the right way—with close attention to detail, with the utmost logical care, with complete intellectual integrity. Marcia made philosophy the pinnacle of both academic rigor and personal importance. Her teaching embodied Socrates’ claim that the unexamined life was not worth living. You couldn’t ask for a more exciting or worthwhile college classroom experience. I have since come to see that Marcia’s scholarship exemplifies the same values as her teaching: rigor combined with an intense focus on matters of real importance. Her uncompromising example has always remained one of my touchstones—a goal I aspire to whenever I consider philosophical issues and every time I step into a classroom. But her influence has not been only on future academics like me. The profound philosophical lessons they learned in her classroom have enriched her students in every walk of life. Gill is professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Photo by Marc Campos

Eric Newhall ’67 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH Years at Oxy: 44

Daryl Ogden ’87: Reﬂecting on my Oxy years, I see Eric Newhall in my mind’s eye engaging with a student outside Swan Hall. He’s cradling books and class notes in one hand and gesturing with the other, emphasizing a key idea from that day’s lecture or seminar. Gesture completed, he inclines his head forward to listen to the student’s response, and the cycle repeats, seemingly on a continuous loop for the more than four decades of Newhall’s distinguished teaching and service to the College, his alma mater. The image is a microcosm of Newhall’s career as one of the ﬁnest teachers who ever set foot on campus. It also provides a clue about his deepest values: realizing the spring 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

Favorite course: “English 372, Major Figures: Major Novels of William Faulkner and Toni Morrison. Both writers are Nobel Prize winners who write beautiful prose and deal (from quite diﬀerent perspectives) with a range of subjects that citizens in a democratic society should engage: the relationship between past and present, race, gender, economic inequality, identity, nature and the erosion of the environment, the American Dream, community, and social justice.”

Plans after Oxy: “They are still a work in progress, but a few things seem clear. I’d like to become involved in some political action that gives direct support to American democracy outside academia. I look forward to reading for pleasure with no need to take notes for class the next week. [Wife] Jacki and I hope to travel more than we have in the past and to spend additional time with children and grandchildren. I’m sure that I’ll add additional items to my list, but this will do for a start.”

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credo of equity and excellence both within and beyond the classroom, which came to define his conviction about what an Oxy education should stand for. In the classroom, Newhall elevated the importance of art and morality in American literature and culture without ever sounding moralistic. He unpacked rich meanings by framing questions that, in his hands, appeared to be endlessly generative. “What is Benjy Compson’s problem?” he asked, leaning forward, sleeves rolled up, his game face on. And away the seminar went, transporting 20 senior English majors from Eagle Rock to Faulkner’s Mississippi. He accomplished similar results with Heller’s Yossarian, Pynchon’s Oedipa, and Morrison’s Sethe—and countless others from the landscape of American fiction. Newhall’s institutional imprint on Oxy is indelible. He conceived and led the Multicultural Summer Institute for 15 years, over two separate tenures, preparing generations of incoming underrepresented students for success and modeling what diversity at a great liberal arts college should look and feel like. As director of the Core Program, Newhall spearheaded the creation of Living and Learning Communities, which placed all students in each of the 32 Core Writing Seminars into common residence halls, designing living arrangements that cultivated social relationships and built writing skills that shortly translated into one of the highest four-year graduation rates in Oxy’s history. In these examples of his contributions toward extending and redefining the classroom, Newhall scaled teaching and learning excellence at Oxy. Because his manner is understated, Newhall’s competitiveness can sometimes be missed. I witnessed this competitiveness up close as his teammate on our offcampus intramural basketball team, where Newhall impressed with a smooth lefty jumper and soft-spoken trash talking. Newhall’s trash talking—which is at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek and always funny— traveled easily from the basketball court to academia as he tweaked me, for example, in asserting the primacy of a certain Southern writer (“Gatsby’s OK, Ogden, but give me Faulknerian toughness over romantic egotism”). For Newhall’s students of my era, “Faulknerian toughness” meant surviving eight thick Yoknapataphwa County novels in 10 short weeks, an immersive literary experience that made us feel as though we were spending the term “abroad” in Jefferson, a fictionalized version of spring 2019

Oxford, Miss. That Newhall could inspire a group of undergraduates to take up the challenge of that ambitious syllabus underscored his competitiveness as a professor who always sought to surpass himself and make magic happen in the classroom. And, following Faulkner’s Dilsey, after 44 remarkable years at Oxy, Eric Newhall endures. Ogden was an English major who took four courses from Newhall, including an independent study in American women writers. Newhall also served as the second reader on Ogden’s honors thesis and as his academic adviser. Ogden later pursued graduate studies in English at the University of Cambridge and the University of Washington, where he earned his Ph.D.

Robby Moore ELBRIDGE AMOS STUART PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS Years at Oxy: 41

Walter Impert ’96: In 1978, Harvard’s loss was Oxy’s gain when a young assistant professor of economics named Robby Moore traded Harvard crimson for Occidental orange. That same year, at age 4, I moved with my family from Belgium to the United States. Our paths crossed 14 years later, when I was a freshman in Robby’s Introductory Microeconomics class. I had written a high school paper on economics and thought that I would like the subject in college. My guess was correct, but it may have been Robby’s teaching more than the subject matter that got me hooked. He taught us to use economics to analyze everything from gift giving (which results in inefficiency or “dead weight loss”) to laziness (the indifference curve for income versus leisure), well before “Freakonomics” entered the popular culture. I soon declared economics as my major and proceeded to take Robby’s classes on Intermediate Microeconomic Theory and Labor Economics, and I worked as a teaching assistant in his introductory classes. Ultimately, Robby taught me and a generation of other Oxy students a new way to think about the world. Impert is a partner with the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney, where he leads Seattle’s trusts and estates practice group. Laura Kawano ’02: I entered Oxy with a vague idea that I would major in economics, but it wasn’t until Robby Moore’s Intermediate Microeconomics course that my interest was solidified. In his classroom, I was drawn to the tools of economic thinking, learning new methods to analyze decision-making processes. As it turns out, Professor Moore had a large impact on my own decision-making process. When I started to consider a career as an economist, he quickly became the

person I turned to for advice. Although not my oﬃcial adviser, Professor Moore met with me often to discuss how to best prepare for graduate school. During my senior year, he also gave me the unique opportunity to serve as his teaching assistant, a position that he had negotiated when he became president of the Faculty Council. I graded problem sets (which I was too naive to realize was a terrible task) and ran review sessions. This initial venture into undergraduate teaching reinforced my resolve to join the academic community.

Photo by Max S. Gerber

Prior to my graduation, he gave me a copy of Edward Lazear’s Personnel Economics with a note wishing me success in my future career. Robby incorrectly guessed my ultimate field of interest, but I did discover my chosen field in another of his courses, Economics of the Public Sector. Having gained an interest in public policy, I focused on public finance in graduate school, later joined the public sector as an economist for the Treasury Department, and am now a research affiliate at the University of Michigan’s Office of Tax Policy Research. When I was a visiting professor at the Wharton Business School, I dug up my notes from Robby’s course when creating my own undergraduate course on taxation. He may be happy to learn that those Wharton students did paper tax returns for the “Nurd Family”—one of Robby’s many teaching legacies. After Oxy, Professor Moore became Robby—as he insisted—and a friend. He has been a source of encouragement during those major milestones of my career. Undoubtedly, his supporting letters of recommendation

were major factors on this journey. Robby’s work has contributed to the field of personnel economics, but his legacy is also in his investment in and dedication to the personnel around him—his students, colleagues, and friends. I am grateful to count myself among them. Kawano is a research affiliate with the Office of Tax Policy Research at the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business. Jim Blackett ’15: Robby Moore was one of the first and last professors I had at Oxy: In my freshman year I took Econ 101 with him, and in my senior year I took his Personnel Economics seminar. On both ends of my time at Oxy, I appreciated his clear teaching, intuitive understanding of the subject, willingness to help outside of class time, and support for students’ wide variety of interests. Professor Moore helped me with my Fulbright application to Mexico, which made possible one of the most impactful years of my life. During my senior year he also offered me a job as a group tutor for his Econ 101 students. I appreciated this opportunity to approach the subject from the perspective of a teacher, and I was reminded that teaching is one of the best ways of learning. As a teaching credential student, I often think about the challenge of introducing students to a new field of study. Professor Moore was one to learn from in this regard: He conveyed the significance of the economic way of thinking and its role in each of our lives. His wisdom in economics combined with his care for students made him an invaluable member of the department, one who will be remembered by generations of Oxy alumni. Blackett is a graduate student in music education at Cal State Long Beach. Sue Schroeder ’84: As self-confident young women in a major dominated exclusively by men, my classmates and I felt that we had to work extra hard to compete with our peers and that the professors were tough on us. Looking back, I realize that this toughness was exactly what we needed to learn to be successful at a high level in the business world. Through his no-nonsense style, Robby Moore was a role model for showing us that it is not enough to be smart—you have to go above and beyond and put in the hard work to demonstrate your knowledge of and passion for the material. He had high expectations that you bring your “A” game to every class. Robby motivated us to try to live up to those high standards. Years later, I reconnected with Robby when I was on the Occidental Board of Trustees and he was involved in the Faculty Council. Through our conversation over cocktails, we realized that my profession as an executive compensation consultant touches on several of the topics that he covers in his senior seminar on Personnel Economics. I was honored when he invited me to serve as a guest lecturer in one of his classes, which I have now been doing

Favorite course: “Economics 101, Principles of Economics I. For many students, it is the only course in economics that they will ever take, and I have taught it almost every year I’ve been at Oxy. I like it because I find it the most challenging course to teach—it introduces students to an entirely different way of thinking about many issues. As a result, many students find it quite difficult to grasp some of the basic principles, and I try to use a wide variety of pedagogy to enable them to learn and apply these basic principles.”

Plans after Oxy: “My wife and I plan to spend a couple of months in the late summer and fall each year on Cape Cod, where she has lots of family. We also hope to travel more. I may at some point decide to teach my course in Personnel Economics (Econ 326) at Pomona College, something I have done previously.”

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Favorite course: “It’s really difficult to say. I was hired mainly to teach the modern novel in English, I think, and the various courses that I designed to do that became good friends: It was great to re-encounter them over the years and follow their changes. But my most exciting teaching experiences were maybe with modern poetry, when students would (occasionally) suddenly understand why this difficult stuff was important and beautiful after all. Or with the junior seminars on modernism and psychoanalysis that I taught off and on in the 1990s and 2000s, where students had a first significant brush with writing and presenting real literary research.”

Plans after Oxy: “I’m moving to a small town on Maine’s central coast, where I plan to do some gardening and ﬁshing, and to help my wife, Cheryl, with her own hobby, raising Labrador retrievers. And I have several research and writing projects to occupy me. I doubt that I’ll be bored.”

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almost every year for the last 10 years. It is a thrill for me to be back in his classroom and be reminded of the high standard of excellence that he expects. Robby gave me a gift of a laser pointer to use for my PowerPoint slides in his class—one that I have used for many of my business presentations over the years. It always makes me think of Robby and that I need to bring my “A” game. It will be a bittersweet experience to guest lecture in one of his last classes this spring. Robby exemplifies the outstanding characteristics of an Occidental education—commitment to excellence, dedication to teaching, and genuine caring and concern for the future of his students. What a great accomplishment to have made such a positive impact on so many lives! Schroeder is a partner at Compensation Advisory Partners, an executive compensation consulting firm with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston.

John Swift PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH Years at Oxy: 38

Malia Boyd ’91: Swan Hall. Freshman Writing Seminar, fall 1987. Led by an English prof named, of all things, John Swift, we used Virgil’s Georgics as a springboard to discuss whether the natural world was benign or malign. As we sat there, warily eyeing the fresh cracks in the walls caused by the massive Whittier Narrows earthquake, which had occurred days earlier, the answer seemed obvious. Yet there we were, ignoring endless ironies and possible collapse, just getting on with the business of life and learning. It was vintage Swift. I took a course from him every year I was at Oxy. When I declared my major and he became my adviser, he officially took on a role I had already assigned him that first day in Swan Hall. We could literally ask him anything about life or literature; in class or out, he remained accessible, affable, with an unshakeable willingness to take us seriously. He really listened, never condescending, never pshawing an idea—and I came up with some doozies, especially in his Freudian Interpretations of Literature course. He had an indefatigable allegiance to plaid buttondowns, and these ivory cowboy boots. He wore them every day. The left boot squeaked when he walked. He also loved The Eagles. In 1987 Los Angeles, this aesthetic was decidedly … not hip. That, too, was a life lesson: Be yourself. Do the thing you love to do. Life will be good. My senior year, while Swift, Fineman, and Newhall stood nearby, I remember dancing on a table in Braun spring 2019

Photo by Marc Campos

Hall after my senior comps with some other English majors, wondering how I’d get through the next phase of my intellectual development without him. Turns out, I didn’t have to. To this day, he faithfully responds to every email I send. His tolerance knows no bounds. Virginia Woolf’s novel Jacob’s Room, which I read in his Woolf/Cather course my sophomore year, begins with the lines, “So of course … there was nothing for it but to leave.” I imagine Swift having this thought the day he decided to retire, dreamily staring at the campus from the top of Fiji. In reality, I think he just wants to walk the wilds of the Maine coast, shovel snow, run the dogs, and spend time with his family. I guess I’m OK with that, though it makes me sad to think of him not at Oxy and so very far away. All I can say is that he’d better have a good Internet connection, because those emails are gonna keep coming. Boyd is director of marketing at Manoa Senior Care in Honolulu. Leah Ordonia ’04: Professor Swift was my Core Program professor in a ﬁrst-semester writing seminar about Los Angeles past and present. Having been raised in Los Angeles very close to Oxy, I remember being captivated by how his analysis and presentation of the great thinkers who have assessed L.A. as a focus for study helped me reexperience my relationship with the city I thought I knew so well with new eyes and a new perspective. With Professor Swift’s expertise, I could see how I ﬁt within various socio-historical-literary discourse within the world’s “melting pot.” As a young woman of color, that experience was and still is very meaningful to me.

I continued to learn under Professor Swift in his Modernist Literature class, where he introduced me to the work of Willa Cather. At the time I was doublemajoring in English and comparative literary studies and visual arts with a pre-law emphasis, and I was drawn to Cather’s work thematically as well as to her life story, which exemplified a romanticized idealism of the Western frontier and a pragmatism that tackled political trends and legal issues of her time. Under Professor Swift’s mentorship I was awarded a Ford Fellowship to conduct independent research that investigated philosophical legal trends that influenced Cather’s writing and feminist themes in her work. With his help, I shared my work at various research conferences at the regional, state, and national levels, and eventually developed my work into my senior honors thesis. Through the years I have kept in touch with Professor Swift because he has been a continued source of wisdom and mentorship, not just academically but in life in general. When I made the very difficult decision to pursue a career in 3D animation instead of law school to give myself a chance to pioneer in an exciting new field, and then later in recent years when I decided to expand my creative career into writing fiction for children, Professor Swift has continuously helped me see my intellectual adventurousness and creative vigor as gifts and still continues to mentor me through life. I am ever grateful for his endless support, his guiding wisdom, and especially his friendship. Ordonia is a visual development and concept design artist living in Boston. She works for PBS affiliate WGBH.

Keith Naylor PROFESSOR OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES Years at Oxy: 31

Justin Marc Smith ’00: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” The previous words are an often cited but likely paraphrased quote attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Professor D. Keith Naylor has dedicated his career to speaking “about things that matter.” I write in honor of him because he taught me, as he has countless other students, to speak about things that matter. What does one say about a person at the end of a brilliant academic career? That they were excellent in the classroom, yes. That they were accomplished in the academy, yes. That they stood shoulder to shoulder with colleagues, faculty, and students to create change, yes. Keith has done all of this and done so with a deep compassion and veracity that draws our attention and admiration as we reﬂect on the course of his career.

When I think of Keith, I think of meeting him for the first time as a new student at Oxy. I think of the gentleness and clarity as he explained the parameters of the major and I think of the excitement and feeling of safety knowing that he would be my adviser. Of his passion that came forth in the “We are blessed to have classroom as he nearly vibrated day learned from Keith— after day in our African-American Religious Traditions course. Of lunches not just in his classes and dinners and conversations about but in experiencing life, academia and politics. When I think of Keith, I think of integrity. what a good life looks Keith will forever be associated like lived out.” with Occidental College. For his students, it is impossible to recount our time at Oxy and not think of Keith. And we are blessed to have learned from him—not just in his classes but in experiencing what a good life looks like lived out. I remain indebted to Keith for his guidance, care, and the Favorite course: friendship he has cultivated with me in the years since “I will avoid the Solomonic choice of graduation. We are colleagues now. Professors in similar my favorite religious fields. But Keith will always remain my mentor, my pro- studies course, and fessor. I look forward for what is next in life for Keith. I speak instead of my Nature Writing and lament with that generation that will not know his teach- the Environment ing. I remain thankful for who Keith is to me and Oxy. course in the Cultural Smith is assistant professor of biblical and religious stud- Studies Program. I taught the course ies at Azusa Pacific University. seven or eight times. Julius H. Bailey ’93: I took Dr. Keith Naylor’s Religion in America course and my life would never be the same. Walking into his classroom, I had never encountered someone so passionate about the study of religion. Dr. Naylor encouraged me, a quiet and reserved first-year student, to share my thoughts in class discussions on a range of challenging and complicated topics involving religion. Every class was different. One day he might play music; another day there might be a debate, or we might closely examine and analyze a primary document. One class with Dr. Naylor led to another until I eventually fell in love with the academic study of religion. The next thing I knew I was in graduate school, and today I regularly teach classes like Religion in America myself. When I’m preparing for a class session, I still think about how Dr. Naylor might approach the topic and how he would bring the subject alive for the students sitting in my class. I think about how patient he would be and how much time and energy he would expend coaxing out the very best of every single student in the classroom. I can’t think of another person who had such a profound and lasting impact on both my personal and professional growth. I’m extremely grateful to have had Dr. Naylor as a teacher, adviser, colleague, and friend—and as anyone who has ever taken a course with him can attest, you will never look at the world the same way again. Bailey is professor of religious studies at the University of Redlands.

That course was full of classic and contemporary nature writing texts that inspired us and challenged us to change the way we live. To consider the natural world around us as our source, even in the face of human exploitation and abuse of nature, was almost a relief. Our ﬁeld trip to Eaton Canyon Natural Area (after reading of John Muir’s trip there in 1877) heightened our environmental consciousness, and opened us up to the great diversity of Southern California ecosystems.”

Plans after Oxy: “No comment.”

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Chen infused us with these writers’ hopes and dreams, energizing us to pursue our own unique paths. Maasbach is president of the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City.

Photo by Marc Campos

Sarah Chen Favorite course: “Actually, I have two: Elementary Chinese (Chin 101)—watching students’ excitement and progress in learning is most rewarding; and Translating Chinese (Chin 460)— I enjoy having native speakers of Chinese and native speakers of English read, translate, and discuss modern and contemporary works of Chinese literature in their original Chinese texts.”

Plans after Oxy: “Travel; read more Chinese, Japanese, and world literature; go to concerts; practice piano; learn Spanish; relearn French.”

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PROFESSOR OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES Years at Oxy: 30

Nancy Yao Maasbach ’94: As a gritty, New York City American-born Chinese, I experienced severe culture shock when I arrived at Occidental. Characteristics of sunny Southern California were foreign to me, especially assimilated, well-adjusted, third-gen Asian Americans from the West Coast and Hawai‘i, and deep and varied discussions about political correctness, identity, and faith. In many ways, Professor Sarah Chen served as my personal connector: a link to my ancestral past, my immigrant upbringing, and my yet-to-be-known future. Professor Chen is a professor for all. I admired her subtle but intentional fairness: There was no guanxi in her class, no preferential treatment. I knew that she could see and sense each student’s growth as we meandered our path toward adulthood through scholarship. Her teaching was infused with generous smiles and light laughter, but her lyrical presentation of Chinese language kicked my butt. Her class pushed me to clean up my academic sloppiness. “There are about 10,000 Chinese characters; you need to know about 3,000 characters to interact in Chinese. How many do you know?” Not enough. It was that simple prompt that created a bizarre discipline in me. I knew she was disappointed when we did not perform; I knew she was pleased when we did well. Beyond the Chinese language classes, it was Professor Chen’s class on Modern Chinese Literature that changed me. I eagerly read and reread stories by writers like Lu Xun, Ding Ling, and Shen Congwen. Professor spring 2019

Brian Bumpas ’12: A reticent sophomore walks into his first Chinese 101 class, motivated not by a passion for the language but by a liberal arts requirement. He doesn’t know it yet but he just changed the fundamental trajectory of his life. Ten years later, I still use Chinese on a daily basis. That was Oxy’s promise: Come with a modicum of curiosity or receptiveness, and our professors will give you lifelong passions. Sarah Chen made that promise reality. Professor Chen (or, as we know her, Chen Laoshi) instilled in her students a long-lasting enthusiasm for Chinese language and culture. Her love of Chinese cinema carried over into the classroom, as we debated the consequences of Mao’s Cultural Revolution through the medium of director Zhang Yimou’s tragic classic To Live. And her generosity was tangible, exemplified in the abundance of mooncakes she brought in for the MidAutumn Festival or the class-wide Chinese dinner that she organized every semester, all at her personal expense. But most important, she challenged us. Two to three hours of daily homework assignments and 1½ hours of Chinese class every other day seemed grueling at the time, especially on top of every other commitment that makes an Oxy degree so rewarding. But the process enhanced our work ethic and time management skills, and strengthened my personal character. Fast-forward 10 years: Three of us became Fulbright grantees in East Asia (me, Annie Ewbank ’13, and Elizabeth Kennedy ’12), one started a successful international business bridging the United States and China (Sunil Damle ’13), and one is at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (Nick Young ’12). I wouldn’t be surprised if Chen Laoshi left as indelible an impact on their lives as she has on mine. Chen Laoshi is a deeply kind, giving person. She cares immensely about her students and the program that she directed. Without her, I would never have developed this passion for Chinese. She encouraged me at several critical stages in my life, and gave me valuable advice that continues to serve me well to this day. I’ll never forget her insistence on learning the notoriously difficult traditional Chinese characters, and the countless hand cramps that ensued. But sure enough, that lesson proved prescient, and built a strong foundation that many students educated at other institutions lack. I am honored to call Chen Laoshi a mentor and a friend, and I know she will leave a lasting positive legacy on Occidental’s Chinese program. I can’t wait to see what comes next—for her and for the program. Bumpas is a subject matter expert at Thresher, a computer software company in Washington, D.C.

HIGHER G

Armed with a briefcase full of challenges facing the nation’s largest higher education system, Lande Ajose ’87 brings new energy to Sacramento By ALICIA K. GONZALES Photos by JIM BLOCK

AnDe AJOSe ’87 was recently going through some old papers when she found a loan that she had taken out as a student at Oxy more than 30 years ago. “It was a national direct student loan for $4,000,” she says—an “impossible” amount at the time— “and it took me 15 years to pay it off. Four thousand dollars is nothing now. Right?” But the true cost of college, then or now, is not just tuition, according to Ajose, who brings a wealth of experience to her new role as California Gov. Gavin newsom’s senior policy adviser for higher education, a role she began in January. It’s actually more expensive in many places for a student to go to a community college than to go to a Cal State University or a University of California campus, she says, “because you cannot get the financial aid at a community college that you would get from a CSU or a UC.” With nearly 3 million students spread out over 115 community colleges, 23 CSUs, and 10 UCs, California is home to the nation’s largest state-run higher education system. But just over 50 percent of them earn associate degrees in three years or bachelor’s degrees in six. One of Ajose’s top priorities in the governor’s office is to do all she can to help students complete their degrees in four years. “There’s lots of data and research that show the longer that you take, the less likely you are to obtain your degree. And those degrees matter,” she says. “The best way to serve as many Californians as possible is to make sure that there is broad access to higher education; that there are multiple, flexible platforms for achieving a degree; and that we take very seriously the imperative of completion.” Raised by a single mom in an immigrant household in Berkeley, Ajose embraced all that Oxy had to offer, including four years of Glee Club, and forged close friendships that endure to this day. (She has three siblings, two of whom followed in her footsteps in attending the College.) Ajose developed her social sensibilities at Occidental in an era when colleges nationwide were being urged to divest from com20 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

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When Ajose (working at the California State Capitol building in Sacramento) receives an honorary doctorate from Oxy at Commencement on May 19, her mother will be in attendance. She was unable to do so in 1987.

panies that did business with South Africa’s apartheid government. “It was a time of activism and a time of promise,” says the diplomacy and world affairs major, who also was involved in the Occidental College Coalition for Access and Choice, an organization formed in response to the Reagan Administration’s proposed financial aid cuts. Along the way, she learned how to engage in difficult conversations with her professors and even college administrators—and to bring her evidence-based A-game. “Whether I was taking a math course, or Rocks for Jocks, or feminist literature, or a DWA course, they all started from this understanding of ‘What is the evidence? … What does that mean for the values that we espouse?’” she says. “That is very much what

my career has been about. The idea that I could think about the meager beginnings that my family had in this country—and do something to systemically allow others to be able to have access to that kind of opportunity—is a calling.” While completing her master’s in urban planning at UCLA, Ajose started to home in on the relationship between employment and education. Through her work in various higher education capacities since completing her Ph.D. at MIT, she has increasingly begun to recognize the roles both play in providing Americans with greater social mobility. “For the vast majority of us—and particularly when you start to disaggregate the data demographically and look at particular communi-

right: Gimme an O-X-Y! Lande and her siblings Kola Ajose ’93 and Bunmi Ajose-Popoola ’04 give it the old college try at her Oakland home.

ties—education ends up being the predictor of social mobility and economic stability,” she says. In his first address to Congress in February 2009, President Barack Obama ’83 set an unprecedented economic goal for the nation: that the country would grant an additional 5 million degrees by 2020. In 2010, a philanthropic leader in California secured enough financial support to commission a project: California Competes, a nonpartisan organization that provides policy recommendations for higher education in the state. When Ajose came on board as the organization’s deputy director in 2011, she was tasked with helping to figure out the state’s portion, which ended up being 2.3 million degrees to remain economically competitive. “We were instrumental in helping to initiate the conversation about rethinking how we fund our community colleges,” says Ajose, who was promoted to executive director in 2015. More recently, California Competes has expanded its efforts to focus on adults and adult learners. “A significant number of our students are over 25,” she says, “and many of them have families. How do we then think about the kinds of policies that we need to have in place California to educate all of our residents, not just the 18-year-olds? “The work that we have done over the last seven years really was focused on how do we change the agenda for what needs to be considered for higher education in this state,” she continues. “And I think we made a pretty significant contribution considering we were a small organization of five.”

mental health services for students, to basic needs, so that we can reduce the kind of food and housing insecurities that, shamefully, many students face these days.” In her ongoing role as chair of the California Student Aid Commission, which distributes $2.5 billion in Cal Grants and other forms of ﬁnancial aid to roughly 400,000 Californians each year to help them complete their degrees, Ajose is uniquely poised to address growing concerns about the cost of at-

“We need to understand how we are going to support everyone to be able to go to college over time and to be able to pursue the kind of degree and credential that they most want to pursue,” she says—and that includes people from low-income households and communities of color. “People don’t have the same expectations for underrepresented communities that they have for others. It is important that we hold up an expectation that everyone can have a four-year degree.” There’s a lot of anxiety surrounding college admissions these days, fueled by the recent bribery scandal and the seeming randomness of the decision-making process. Which is why Ajose, a mom of three, is keen on seeing colleges provide clearer and more predictable criteria to help reduce that angst. “What is important is for us to remember that there are more than just 50 colleges in this nation,” she says. “For many students, particularly students for whom finances are an issue, two years of community college and then two years at a four-year institution might be a better pathway. It means challenging our own notions of what the college experience is. Too often, the college you get into becomes this reflection of your own self-worth and your identity. “And that’s not what it’s about. It’s really about trying to find a place that’s a good match for you—a place where you can learn and grow and become a better person.” Gonzales is a freelance writer in Fair Oaks. This is her first story for the magazine.

“We need to understand how we are going to support everyone to be able to go to college over time and to be able to pursue the kind of degree and credential that they most want to pursue.”

It goes without saying—but we’ll say it anyway—that California is in a cost crisis. “no matter where you live in this state, it’s expensive, and that hits students in particular ways,” Ajose says. The opportunity to tackle college aﬀordability head on is what brought her to Sacramento to work with newsom. First up: addressing the overall student experience. “We’re going to look at everything related to higher education through the lens of the total cost of attendance,” she says. “You’ll see in this budget a commitment to

tendance—and whether California needs fundamental financial aid reform. Unlike the climate from which the California Master Plan for Higher education emerged in 1960—spearheaded by thenOccidental President Arthur G. Coons 1920 and Glenn Dumke ’38, former dean of the College—today college is no longer free. “Financial aid is not an inexpensive investment,” Ajose says. “It could cost as much as twice the amount as we have now to really account for the total cost of attendance for all of our students.” Yet she is convinced that Californians can still live out values first championed in the Master Plan without going under, financially speaking.

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below: We asked Professor of Art Linda Lyke to produce a pair of illustrations depicting campus milestones from the Veitch presidency in the style of her outdoor mural Pentimento Montage, commissioned by Veitch in 2009. The image below celebrates the dedication of Samuelson Alumni Center in 2012, and anticipates the completion of a new aquatics center and Anderson Center for the Environmental Sciences in the coming year. opposite page: Engaging in one his favorite activities—reading—in his oﬃce in December 2016.

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Reflections on a

PRESIDENCY With Jonathan Veitch announcing his plans to step down next year, trustees, alumni, and colleagues discuss his impact on the College over the last decade By JIM TRANQUADA & DICK ANDERSON | Illustrations by LINDA LYKE | Photos by MARC CAMPOS

arly in his career, Jonathan Veitch recalls sitting in on a presidential search at a liberal arts college where he was a visiting professor. The finalists were making their pitch for the job and Veitch was listening closely. “Even then, I must have been thinking about becoming a president and didn’t realize it,” he says. “The faculty would ask them questions, and their answers were kind of in the weeds—and not terribly thoughtful. They didn’t illuminate the intellectual stakes involved. That’s so important for somebody who aspires to lead an institution. They have to have some sense of why even the most incremental decision matters.” It’s never been easy to be a college president. William McRaven, who stepped down last year after four years as chancellor of the University of Texas, remarked that leading an academic institution is “the toughest job in the nation”—this coming from a former Navy admiral who planned the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. While Veitch had nothing to do with that particular mission, he knows a thing or two about McRaven’s other vocation. “One of the things I love most about being a college president is that no two days are alike,” Veitch says. “The morning often starts with some fire to put out. Then there’s a fundraising call; a meeting with faculty to work through some complicated issue; and a review of the blueprints for a new construction project. That’s all before lunch—which, if I’m lucky, is with some of our students. Every muscle is working. This job stretches you—and if you do it well, it makes a difference.” On June 30, 2020, after 4,018 days on the job, Veitch will step down as Occidental’s 15th president. In an era where the average tenure of a college president has shrunk to 6.5 years, his 11-year tenure is atypical. When Veitch walked into his office for the first time in July 2009, he became the College’s fifth president in five years—a period of administrative instability that had taken an inevitable toll. “When I arrived 10 years ago, the most important task for an incoming president was to reestablish confidence and a sense of forward momentum,” Veitch observes. “After a significant degree of

turnover in the president’s office, there was considerable skepticism about the institution and its capacity to move forward.” “Jonathan came into as bad a situation as you come into from a managerial point of view,” says Stephen Hinchliffe ’55, Board of Trustees chair emeritus and one of the president’s biggest admirers. “He has done a remarkable job of turning that around—and in the face of a variety of challenging social issues that have added a whole new dimension to being a college president.” “Stories that begin with a line like ‘It all started in a hotel lobby in New Jersey’ usually don’t end well,” Veitch says with a laugh. “But that’s where my association with Oxy began.” In November 2008, Veitch sat down with trustees John Farmer and Dennis Collins over lunch in a hotel adjacent to Newark Liberty International Airport to discuss the job opening at Oxy. Barack Obama ’83 had just won a historic election as the nation’s 44th president, and his ascendancy to the White House raised the profile of the College—his application photo to Occidental graced the cover of Newsweek in March 2008—and gave a bump to applications for admission that continues to this day. It couldn’t have come at a better time. By 2005, under President Ted Mitchell, Oxy had rebounded from years of budget deficits. But Mitchell’s sudden departure that year put the brakes on plans for a comprehensive campaign that many hoped would get the College moving again. In addition to the turnover in presidential leadership, Veitch’s arrival in 2009 came at the nadir of the financial crisis and growing unease among alumni about Occidental’s direction. Veitch—who had recently completed a run as dean of the undergraduate division of The New School in New York City—was alerted to the Occidental opening by his former boss. “To be honest, Oxy was the very first presidential job that I applied for and I didn’t expect to get it,” he says. “I was thinking that this would be a great way to road test my interview skills. When I got invited to Los Angeles for a second round of interviews, I thought, ‘Uh-oh—I’d better tell my wife.’” spring 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE 23

Of all the serious contenders to be Oxy’s 15th president, Veitch was the only one who applied, unsolicited, for the job. (“I wanted it, and I wasn’t afraid to come out and say so,” he recalls.) “In his application letter, Jonathan talked about the power of liberal arts, the fact that Occidental is in one of the most interesting cities of the world, the potential to connect with other world-class institutions in the city, and the importance of diversity,” says Collins, who chaired the Board from 2006 to 2009 and also worked alongside Veitch as senior vice president for institutional advancement and external relations at the outset of his presidency. “These were all issues the Board had talked about—he had done his homework.” “Jonathan had all of the leadership responsibilities that are consistent with the president of a small liberal arts college,” Farmer (who succeeded Collins as Board chair) said in 2009. “His experience and his appreciation of a college of liberal arts and sciences were crucial in our deciding that he was the best choice.”

as an open-air laboratory,” Veitch says. “On our doorstep the world’s problems and opportunities are being played out on a daily basis. This presents our students and faculty with an unparalleled opportunity to shuttle between the classroom and the field in pursuit of a better understanding of issues like the persistence of poverty, homelessness, and architecture and urban planning.” On his watch, the College supplemented this focus on Los Angeles by fostering partnerships with major cultural institutions, enhancing civic engagement opportunities for students, hiring faculty with expertise in urban issues to teach across the curriculum, and creating a new Institute for the Study of Los Angeles. “Jonathan was driving hard during the first years of his presidency,” Calkins says. And he got results. “Academic culture often emphasizes process over outcomes,” Veitch says. “I have a difficult time doing things that way, and I’ve been criticized for it. If I can see the finish line, I want to get there as quickly as possible.” As for the first-year students Veitch meets during matriculation? “They no longer tell me that they come here for the weather—or at least, that’s not the first thing they tell me.”

One of Occidental’s most cherished traditions—introduced by Oxy’s 10th president, Richard C. Gilman—involves a meeting with Photo by Cruz Riley ’17 the president and the first-year class during matriculation. “At that introductory meeting, I asked students why they chose Occidental,” Veitch recalls. “Most of the answers centered on the weather, our small size, or our location. But their responses seldom went further than that. There was very little specificity about the quality of the academic experience or the programs that defined that experience.” The problem he saw at Oxy was that the College had lived under straitened circumstances for so long “that it had lost the ability to imagine a more robust future,” he says. “I don’t think people realize just how enormous Occidental’s potential is.” “Jonathan pushed us to develop and implement a strategic plan,” says Amy Lyford, professor of art and art history and former asAt a Nov. 12, 2015, rally in the Quad days before the occupation of the Arthur G. Coons Administrative sociate dean. “He did a plan, made things hap- Center, Veitch has a dialogue with ASOC President Theo Savini ’16 over accessibility issues. pen, made strategic hires. We may struggle to implement the plan as well as we would like, but the idea of Oxy in Despite this strong start, Veitch hit some choppy waters during the L.A. is the essential legacy he’ll leave behind. You can disagree over middle of his presidency. There were concerns among some students how the priorities were arrived at, but it’s the first time since I’ve been and faculty about sexual misconduct on campus, which led to a comhere that we’ve had a strategic plan.” (She joined the College in 1999.) plaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. “When we were doing the strategic plan [from 2010 to 2012], I The ensuing investigation lasted almost four years. “We were evenrealized that we had all these underappreciated assets around us,” tually exonerated but it was hard to live under that cloud for such a Veitch says. “We weren’t really taking advantage of our urban location long time without any resolution,” Veitch says. That wasn’t the only flare-up to cross his desk. Student disconand stitching Oxy into the fabric of the city.” “It was a case of new eyes—someone who grew up in Los Angeles tent over the lived experience of race precipitated the largest protest and could come back and see it differently than those of us who had in recent memory, the five-day occupation of the Arthur G. Coons been working close in,” says Chris Calkins ’67, who chaired the Board Administrative Center in November 2015. During the third night of Trustees from 2013 to 2016. “He was constantly looking for those of the occupation, as trustees and staff members worked inside things uniquely available to a liberal arts college in L.A. It was also Samuelson Alumni Center well into the evening, the building was apparent in the way in which he set his own objectives that he believed surrounded by several hundred students and their allies, who closed ranks into a circle and barred the building’s occupants from leaving. in the liberal arts and that there was a place for Oxy to lead.” “The first step in taking advantage of our location was to get our After firefighters cleared a path for their exit, Jonathan and Sarah students out into the city, and encourage them to treat their environs Veitch exited the building to taunts from the protesters. 24 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

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11 Years, 11 Milestones In “Magdalena’s Lamp”—his inaugural speech from 2009—Jonathan Veitch talked about taking on the “12 Labors of Hercules” and then proceeded to list them. It is a remarkably prescient road map for his presidency. Below are 11 milestones—one for every year of his tenure. (We leave it to readers to suggest the 12th.) 1. COMMITMENT TO THE LIBERAL ARTS. “I want our students to have an appreciation of complexity, a respect for the life of the mind, and a capacity for reflection,” Veitch says. “That’s the legacy I want to leave as president of Occidental.” 2. URBAN/LOS ANGELES. Oxy has developed a distinctive profile in all things urban. Veitch enhanced the College’s civic engagement, brought in professors with expertise in a variety of urban issues, forged partnerships with major cultural institutions, and established the Institute for the Study of Los Angeles. 3. GLOBAL CULTURE. The transformation of Johnson Hall into the McKinnon Center for Global Affairs, a permanent endowment for the Kahane United Nations program, and the tripling of international enrollment helped foster a more cosmopolitan campus culture. More than two-thirds of Oxy students pursue a variety of routes to global citizenship, from study abroad to international research, or internships and fellowships. 4. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES. Oxy’s location at the nexus of the Pacific Ocean, Mojave Desert, and San Gabriel Mountains—coupled with the world-class Moore Bird Lab and Cosman Shell collections—offer unparalleled opportunities for study in the field and in the new Anderson Center for Environmental Sciences. 5. ENROLLMENT. Applications to Oxy have risen 25 percent over the last decade, to a record 7,500 for the Class of 2023. The College has become more selective over the same period, with the Class of 2022 being the most competitive in 70 years.

2018

6. CAREER DEVELOPMENT. The $2-million renovation of the Hameetman Career Center—coupled with an expanded staff and a robust paid summer internship program in Los Angeles—reinforce Veitch’s belief that “The best argument for the value of a liberal arts education is the success of our graduates.” 7. OBAMA SCHOLARS. Endorsed by President Barack Obama ’83, the Obama Scholars Program—which will enroll its second cohort this fall—has become Oxy’s most prestigious scholarship. The program recruits applicants from all backgrounds who demonstrate a commitment to the public good. 8. ATHLETICS. Investing in marquee programs such as track and field and building the Payton Jordan Athletic Offices, De Mandel Aquatics Center, and McKinnon Family Tennis Center, Veitch has been a champion of what Coach Brian Newhall ’83 aptly describes as the “sweatiest of the liberal arts.” 9. FACULTY HIRING. With a quarter of Oxy faculty on the cusp of retirement when he arrived, Veitch has shepherded the renewal of the College’s most important resource. More than 50 new professors have joined the ranks, enabling Occidental to reposition itself for the educational demands of the 21st century. 10. FUNDRAISING. Veitch has bolstered Oxy’s fundraising output to an average of $22 million a year over the first nine years of his presidency. The College’s endowment grew by 60 percent over the same period, standing at $434.2 million as of June 30, 2018. 11. CAMPUS RENEWAL. From the 1-megawatt solar array on Fiji Hill to the new Oxy Arts facility on York Boulevard, more than a dozen construction projects touched every aspect of campus. “President Remsen Bird once said that he never wanted to wake up in the morning without hearing the cacophony of a construction site,” Veitch muses. “I think we came pretty close.”

2018 2019 2009: Addressing alumni at his first reunion weekend. 2010: Taking a bicycle tour of Highland Park led by Janette Sadik-Khan ’82, then New York City transportation commissioner. 2011: A waterballoon fight escalates during Commencement rehearsal. 2012: With Joe Rohde ’77 and emeriti presidents Richard C. Gilman and Robert Skotheim on Oxy’s 125th birthday. 2013: Opening Convocation in Thorne Hall. 2014: Dedicating the McKinnon Center for Global Affairs with Sonnet and Ian McKinnon ’89. 2015: Meeting first-year students during matriculation. 2016: Cutting the ribbon on the Hameeetman Career Center with Joyce and Fred Hameetman ’61. 2017: A fireside chat with Christopher Hawthorne, professor of practice. 2018: Watching the Tigers return to gridiron action against Willamette University in Jack Kemp Stadium with Shay Mueller ’16 and dad Vance Mueller ’86. 2019: Talking with Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama ’83 and the second speaker in the Obama Scholars series.

spring 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE 25

“I don’t dwell too much on those unhappy moments, though I’ve presidential longevity. “There are many reasons why I thought it was tried my best to learn from them,” Veitch says. Recalling that the right time, but the most relevant one is quite simple: I believe evening at Samuelson, he observes, “It was tough. One member of that we have achieved most of what I set out to accomplish. We’ve our staff became hysterical when she couldn’t get out of the building. laid a solid foundation, reestablished momentum, and instilled a new I don’t remember why Sarah was there, but I do remember thinking sense of confidence in Occidental’s potential. I’m proud of that. But that I didn’t want her to see the College at its worst. I was afraid she I think it is time to hand over the reins. It is up to the next president would lose faith in the institution.” to figure out how he or she wants to build on that foundation. “After the occupation, I was sure that Jonathan was going to call “People think that a small institution must be relatively simple it quits any day,” says Ella Turenne, associate dean of students. But by nature,” he continues. “But it’s actually a complex ecosystem— Veitch stood up in front of his critics less than two weeks after the and any good president has to recognize the complexities of that occupation ended, taking tough questions from a packed Choi Au- ecosystem. You don’t have the luxury of focusing on one or two ditorium during a community meeting on Dec. 3, 2015. things—you have to spin 15 different plates with some notion of not “One of the challenges of my office is that it is all-consuming just keeping them going but also what the endgame is.” and it requires a great deal of time away from the campus,” Veitch Veitch has a lot of plates spinning in his remaining months in told the crowd. “I focused on raising money for this institution at office: the public launch of a $225-million comprehensive campaign the cost of being present to the people in this room. And I own that.” in May, the enrollment of a new class of Obama Scholars, the openIn the months that followed, Turenne recalls, “Some students ing of the Oxy Arts Center on York Boulevard, the dedication of commented that no matter how much they pushed at him, they felt the newly expanded McKinnon Family Tennis Center and Robinson he listened to them, wanted to hear what they had to say, and con- Terrace, and the completion of the De Mandel Aquatic Center that tinued to come back to the table. Even with all the controversies was an unrealized component of the 1992-97 capital campaign. Just that have happened, I hope that people over the horizon is the Anderson Center can see that his actions reflect his comfor Environmental Sciences. mitment to the College.” After he steps down from the presi“The chief call for a college president dency, Veitch plans to return to the classis emotional intelligence, because on any room as a professor at Occidental followgiven day there are a dozen reasons to ing a sabbatical. “I got into the profession get discouraged,” Veitch says. “If you let because I wanted to read and write and yourself respond to the multiple provoteach. I became an administrator by happy cations that are offered up by critics, you accident. It was a long, circuitous route, can easily become an unhappy person, but it has been a rewarding one. I miss my not to mention a difficult person to work books. And as a professor I look forward with. There is so much joy in what we do, to seeing what Occidental looks like from but it is easy to forget that when things the other end of the telescope.” become hard.” While doing so, Veitch plans to im“I’m telling you, it’s a hard job,” says merse himself in writing “a reflection on Kerry Thompson, associate professor of A holiday card from 2011. Front row, Eleanor, Sarah, the history, tradition, and value of the libbiology and former interim dean of the Jonathan, and Alice; back row, Alexander and Margaret. eral arts, with special attention to their College. “When Jonathan invited me to importance as a compass for democracy.” his office to tell me he was stepping down, I wanted to tell him face- And he may just finish the book he started on his last sabbatical: to-face that I thought he was courageous in the way he persisted Colossus in Ruins, an examination of how maritime New England, the under sometimes embattled conditions. I’m not saying every position industrial Rust Belt, and other once-important American sites are he took was right, but he was well-intended all the way through— memorializing their history. “I want to take the next few years to see thoughtful and high-minded.” whether or not I still have the muscles to do the kind of rigorous academic work I envision for myself, or whether I miss the adrenaline More than ever, Veitch remains committed to the fundamentals of a rush of the M*A*S*H unit,” he says. “It’s addictive.” liberal arts education, and feels strongly that it is the best preparation Knowing what he knows now, would he have been as eager to for a successful career. “Among other things, it gives students the abil- take on the job as Oxy’s president? “It’s funny—I like to go on long ity to take a complex idea, break it down into its component parts, bike trips but I don’t always plan them as well as I should,” he admits. gather evidence, negotiate positions with which they disagree, and “Sometimes, when the riding is good, I go out much farther than I had then make their case in a compelling written or oral form,” he says. intended. When I do, I often don’t get back home until after dark, ex“Those are the skills of a successful manager in any field of endeavor, hausted and a little sore. Yet those are the best bike trips I’ve ever had. and those skills matter enormously in a knowledge-based economy. “Being president is a bit like that. When I arrived at Oxy, I thought And if that’s not reason enough, a liberal arts education also imbues I had a road map and enough water for the ride. But I got lost a few students with the capacity to reflect on the value of a life well-lived.” times along the way and had a flat tire or two. Even so, it turned out When he steps away from his desk in June 2020, it will be 11 to be a much better trip than the one I imagined. I wouldn’t trade years—tying him with John Brooks Slaughter for fourth place in the experience for anything.” 26 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

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below: New construction during the Veitch presidency included the solar array on Fiji Hill, the Mullin Entrance to campus, and the media wall inside the McKinnon Center for Global Aﬀairs. Inside one of Oxy’s oldest landmarks, Hillside Theater, Veitch poses for a selﬁe with graduating senior John O’Neill in 2014.

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Media Arts & Culture professor and department chair Broderick Fox

By PET ER GILSTRA P Photos by MAX S . GE R BER

Photo by Marc Campos

IFTy yeaRs agO, Neil armstrong took the first steps on the moon. Imagine if he could have documented that milestone with a 6.84-ounce phone that features 4K video capabilities as well as optical image stabilization, continuous autofocus, playback zoom, and video geotagging. sounds crazy, right? How times have changed. Not only could he shoot a movie on his phone today but he could edit that masterpiece on the long flight home via tutorials on youTube. With such resources at everyone’s fingertips—astronaut or otherwise—what’s the benefit of studying filmmaking and related fields in a classroom? and how do you educate students bound for a diverse media job market driven by a constantly changing technological landscape? While it’s not rocket science, it’s a subject to which Oxy’s Media arts & Culture faculty have devoted much thought. “Now

more than ever, we encourage students to think critically, historically, and politically about media,” says Broderick Fox, a theorist (Documentary Media: History, Theory, Practice) and practitioner (The Skin I’m In, Zen & the Art of Dying), who came to Oxy in 2004 and has chaired the department since its formal inception in 2016. “We prepare students to analyze, critique, and produce a wide range of media, including ﬁctional, documentarybased, and experimental forms, and increasingly to extend their research and making beyond traditional cinema and TV screens and into mobile, online, and virtual spaces.” It’s a tall order for a department that boasts only four permanent faculty (although a ﬁfth appointment, for an assistant professor of emerging media, has been approved for 2020). “Right now, we have 86 majors— more than any other arts and humanities department at the College—and 12 minors,” Fox says. “There’s an incredible amount of student interest, which is a quality problem to have. But at the same time, we need

top: Aleem Hossain, assistant professor of media production and digital storytelling, and students in his introductory production course work with their new 360 video cameras and headsets. above: Pioneering Oxy professor Chick Strand worked exclusively in the 16mm format, often incorporating found audio and footage in her ﬁlms. Her 1986 documentary Fake Fruit Factory was selected to the U.S. National Film Registry in 2011.

spring 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE 29

left: Marsha Kinder was among the first feminist film scholars. She taught film and media studies at Oxy from 1967 to 1980.

drew over 100 students—and at Oxy, that’s a lot,” Kinder says. Bill Hawkins ’69 took the course under Moritz his senior year. “One afternoon he showed a double bill of Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel and alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad,” he recalls. “People were reeling in shock coming out of Mosher. I would say without a doubt it Photos (pages 29, 30) courtesy Occidental College Special Collections was one of the very best film sustainable resources and facilities to actu- courses in the country at that time, and ally continue to deliver the kind of program probably since.” we’ve been delivering.” Following Moritz’s departure, Kinder realized two things: Oxy needed a bona fide The roots of Media Arts & Culture (or MaC, filmmaker in the classroom, and there was for short) at Oxy can be traced back to Marsha no salary for such a position. Instead, she Kinder, who arrived at the College in 1965 as came up with the idea of requesting an aua specialist in 18th-century english litera- diovisual monitor, a staff position to run the ture. In 1967, she published her first essay— ordering and projection of film prints in but instead of writing about Henry Fielding classes. Dean Robert Ryf gave the green light, or one of his literary contemporaries, “which and in 1970 Oxy hired photographer and would have been expected,” Kinder says, she documentarian Mildred “Chick” strand— wrote about Michelangelo antonioni’s 1966 “an extraordinary, experimental ethnographic film Blow Up—the first of over 100 essays filmmaker,” Fox says. and books on film studies she’d go on to pubstrand’s excellence became quickly aplish. One of her department colleagues told parent to the College, and as a full professor, her, “‘you’ve betrayed the 18th century!’” she would run Oxy’s filmmaking program in Kinder recalls with a laugh. its various iterations over the “and I had also betrayed litnext 25 years. “she was such a erature, he thought, because I brilliant person and she was was already moving into film.” so easy to get along with,” Kinder was unswayed by says Kinder, who left Oxy in his admonitions. “Film was 1980 to join UsC as a profesjust beginning to be in the sor of critical studies in the college curriculum in amerschool of Cinematic arts and ica,” she says. “It drew a lot of returned to campus in March people from not only english for an “Oxy and emerging literature. like myself, but also Media” panel hosted by MaC. from communications and Through most of the 1970s art history and political sciand ’80s, Oxy offered film ence. This gave great energy “We’re hanging in there techcourses through the speech nology-wise but still trying to to the field, and it was trans- keep up with everything that’s and Drama Department. From disciplinary from the get-go.” changing at the same time,” 1988 until 2014, the program That fall, Kinder joined says Diana Keeler ’09, Oxy’s was part of the art History and manager of digital production. forces with english professor the Visual arts Department, and experimental filmmaker Bill Moritz, who with the Media arts & Culture moniker intaught at Oxy from 1965 to 1969 and staged troduced in 2012. “There was a key moment impromptu film festivals in Mosher Hall, to where we decided to rename the program,” start History and aesthetics of Cinema at the Fox says. “Our production instruction had College, which they took turns teaching. “It gone digital; students were no longer work30 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

spring 2019

ing on celluloid film. and the objects that we were critically analyzing were not limited to what ‘film’ colloquially refers to, which is largely fictional cinema. “In our digital moment, we’re addressing a wider, more complex array of media forms from fiction to documentary to social media to streaming video,” he adds. “Consequently, film and media studies felt like a misnomer, because it wasn’t addressing the breadth of what we’re actually engaging with students.” soon after the name change, it became apparent that MaC had outgrown its position as a program of the art History and the Visual arts Department and had developed strong ties with many other departments on campus as well, from Music and Theater to Politics and Biology. “It made more structural sense for us to become the hub for critical media studies and critical media practice at the College and connect out interdisciplinarily,” Fox says, and MaC became a standalone department in 2016. “Fifteen years ago, when I started teaching here, I almost had to reassure parents that their student majoring in media wasn’t just going to be some folly,” Fox admits. “Now I think the case makes itself that media and its capacity to shape reality—for better and for worse—has become an inescapable part of all of our lives.” as the media landscape has evolved, Oxy continues to fine-tune a liberal arts-fueled MaC curriculum that balances theory and practice, offering dual concentrations in media production and critical media. “One of the things as a student that I really wished that we’d had more of was technical instruction,” says Diana Keeler ’09, who double majored in film and music at Oxy and returned in 2011 as Oxy’s manager of digital production. “so it’s great being back now, to provide that and keep up with what media is becoming. I think what really sets us apart is that mix of both critical media and production that a lot of schools don’t offer.” MaC’s newest faculty member, aleem Hossain, who joined the College last fall as an assistant professor of media production and digital storytelling, recalls being exposed “to a lot of different kinds of media and film as a kid. I grew up on the east Coast in a super diverse, worldly family. I fell in love with movies and my journey has been toward movies and the West ever since.”

he really helped guide me through my major. and Less than 18 months after he’s been a great person to graduating from Oxy with an keep in touch with as well emphasis in film production and film studies, HBO hired Casanova as a professional.” as an executive assistant—and as manager of West Variety named her one of “10 Coast productions for Top Assistants to Watch” in 2015. Last year she was promoted to HBO, Casanova and her manager, West Coast productions, team are responsible for for the premium cable giant. “We the schedules and budget, are the nuts-and-bolts people,” explains Casanova, whose credits as well as assembling the include True Detective seasons 1 producing team that’s goand 2, Vinyl, Boardwalk Empire, ing to execute that show. and Treme. “What I carried with me from Oxy is the ability to “every show is its own enthink critically. That’s a necessary tity outside of HBO,” she skill for anyone in any industry.” explains, “and we manage that entity.” “I took the approach at Occidental—and they totally fostered this—to do as much as I could to be a leader,” Casanova adds. “I took on internships and I worked in the department as the student production coordinator. I tried to get as much responsibility and experience as possible because I figured that would make my résumé stand out to a future employer.” Occidental’s interdisciplinary approach to the liberal arts fulfilled Casanova’s expectations. “so while you’re taking a film production class you’re also taking critical theory, and then you’re also doing studio art and art history because all of the visual arts are part of this larger continuum,” she says. Cindy Tang ’09 has parlayed her film and media studies major into a digital media career path that didn’t even exist when she enrolled at Oxy. as a senior social media manager at amazon studios, she leads, detechnology as a challenge, because it’s not velops, and launches holistic social media the backbone of what we do, which is to strategies and campaigns for amazon Prime think creatively about making media and an- original series such as The Grand Tour and alyzing media. It’s exciting to explore those The Expanse. Her role ranges from developbig questions through new technology.” ing creative content to working directly with talent to managing partnerships and platIn choosing Oxy’s film studies program form relationships. over local heavyweights like UsC and UCLa, “I had the opportunity to pursue under“I knew that I wanted a liberal arts education graduate research during my junior year and I wanted to be a big fish in a small pond,” under Brody Fox, which opened up new defisays Moana Casanova ’08. “at UsC, there’s a nitions of ‘media’ to me, and demonstrated communication school, a theater school, and that I could work outside of the typical a film school, so I would’ve had to make that Hollywood filmmaking model,” says Tang. choice before I knew exactly what I wanted she spent several years as a production coto do.” after taking the introductory aesthet- ordinator and office manager in Los angeles ics of Cinema course in her first semester, “I before taking a job in san Francisco in 2012 immediately knew that I wanted to be a film as social media marketing manager of Rdio, major,” she notes. “Brody Fox was pivotal— a short-lived premium streaming service. Moana Casanova ’08, HBO

at its core, MaC “is still a program that focuses on the study of and the making of films and other media,” says Hossain, who is currently in post-production on his first feature film, After We Leave, a sci-fi drama, and created an anti-bullying virtual reality project for google that is being used in middle schools around the world. “With a liberal arts approach to making and studying film, we’re also exploring other forms of media like virtual reality and gaming. We can try to make it and study it with this idea of, ‘What is this thing? What could it do, what’s possible? What are the implications of it? What are the problems with it?’” as he sees it, technological advances are simply tools that are used to tell stories and interpret our world: “I don’t think of the

spring 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

Ready for Their Closeups: MAC’s Next Generation

Raphael Gonzalez ’19 Los Angeles

Miranda Clancy ’18 Brooklyn

Dean Lin ’19 Los Angeles

Rachel Goldﬁnger ’18 Chicago

Rick Pﬂeeger ’18 Alexandria, Va.

Gonzalez landed his ﬁrst job as a production assistant at age 16 and has interned with a number of Hollywood’s top production houses.

For her critical media comps video essay, Clancy connects TV cooking shows’ ﬁxations with “time-saving” to larger histories of Western industrialism and capitalism.

Lin interned for The Daily Show and Paramount Pictures. He gave a TEDx talk on his struggles with sexuality, race, and eating disorders at Oxy in 2018.

Goldﬁnger made a short animated ﬁlm titled The Golden Record for her production comps project. She also organized the Oxy Film Fest last year.

Pﬂeeger interned at DreamWorks Animation during his last semester. He’s now a technical solutions engineer with Epic Systems Corp. in Madison, Wis.

Leaping into a relatively new ﬁeld was both exciting and disquieting, she admits: “I began to feel discouraged and fearful that I had uprooted my life for what was still such a new, rapidly evolving, and ambiguous profession. “Brody was once again a source of guidance and reassurance,” she says. “He reminded me that change—both in life and in industry—can be tumultuous, but that my intuition was right and my skills and experience would help me forge this new path. More than anything, I’m grateful that I came away from Oxy with a better sense of self.” Joe Rohde ’77, an art major at Oxy and Walt Disney Imagineering’s executive designer and vice president of creative, traces his career arc to his “propensity in liberal arts education. I came to this job at Disney Imagineering with no other aptitudes. I am not the best model builder, illustrator, or designer. I have this other aptitude, which is critical thinking, lateral thinking, the ability to investigate and negotiate. That strength comes from Oxy.” The goals of today’s diverse MAC students go a lot further than wanting to be the next Damien Chazelle, or even to work in traditional Hollywood, for that matter. “Their sense of where they can take their skills is actually impressively wide,” Hossain says. “They have a really compelling desire to master what they recognize as this awesome art form and then use it for diﬀerent 32 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

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goals. On the first day, the very first thing I say to the students—but particularly the women and people of color—is this art form belongs to all of us.” Rachel goldfinger ’18 endorses the range of possibilities that a MaC major offers. “Media arts & Culture doesn’t mean that you’re in film, but it doesn’t mean that you’re in academia necessarily. It could be that, but it could be kind of like user experience and user interface consulting. It can be anything that involves visual studies. “I was taking Intro to Media Culture and a gender and Technology course and an african-american Film course. I wasn’t focused on production in the beginning,” says goldfinger, who went on create a 7-minute animated short for her senior comps project. “But what drew me in was the theory and critical studies.” a couple of jobs while at Oxy—working for an agent for commercial directors and an internship with a TV and film production company—led goldfinger to her current gig as an executive assistant for DBP Donut, a branded entertainment production house founded by multihyphenate talents Mark and Jay Duplass in Highland Park. “Regardless of their major, Oxy encourages students to be malleable and diverse in interests,” she says. “It arms you with this vocabulary to talk to people who may come from a different focus or industry. you just have to ask the right questions to learn.”

Like many of his peers, Raphael gonzalez ’19 has taken advantage of Oxy’s location, interning with five L.a.-based production companies including Tristar Pictures, Brad Pitt’s Plan B entertainment, and george Clooney’s smoke House Pictures. “There’s probably never been a better time to go to Oxy if you want to go into the film industry,” he says. “Besides Hollywood, a lot of very indie upstart corporations and companies are starting here in eagle Rock and Highland Park. It’s a very happening place.” gonzalez grew up in eagle Rock and was well acquainted with the College from an early age through his mother Denise Frost’s work as senior director of major gifts. By the time he enrolled at Oxy, “I was very hungry to get started on making films,” he says. “But on the more theoretical side, I really liked their notions about making films and the fact that anyone can do it, and with the increases in technology and the ability to make film easier, there’s no excuse for you not being able to do so. “Brody met with me before I enrolled at Oxy and has been supportive ever since,” adds gonzalez, who shot a 16mm short film in Prague during his junior semester abroad. “He allows a lot of time for one-on-one conversations—I was always going in saying, ‘What about this?’” He also cites non-tenure track assistant professor garret Williams’ weekly three-hour screenplay class as “one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had.”

as a critical media major within the MaC program, Rick Pfleeger ’18 developed an interest in gender and technology after taking a course his junior year with associate professor allison de Fren, whose research in that field has produced a feature documentary (The Mechanical Bride), award-winning essays in science fiction studies, and a series of innovative critical video essays. “It was a glimpse into how we, as a society, are shaping social norms through the way that we construct and represent media,” he says. after graduating, Pfleeger took “a dramatic shift away from the entertainment industry” and now works at epic systems Corp., the nation’s largest medical software company, as a technical solutions engineer. “a lot of people might look at MaC as a department and just think, ‘Oh, it’s for people who are interested in film.’ But it really encompasses a wide span of areas ranging from technology and software to production to writing within any media context.”

ment will conduct two faculty searches: a replacement hire for Laskin in global and transnational media studies, and a new position—assistant professor of emerging media (such as virtual reality, augmented reality, immersive media, speculative design and world building, game studies and design, transmedia storytelling, and interactive and computational media forms). Looking to the future, MaC faculty hope to add emerging media practices, sound studies and production, and digital social justice to the current curriculum. They envision a campus hub, or “collaboratory,” capable of fostering the growing range of interdisciplinary curricular partnerships. In addition, the College is exploring ways to address space needs for both MaC and Music, envisioning new facilities that would facilitate the growing curricular and profes-

sional connections between media production, music production, and media scoring. MaC has come a long way since Kinder went rogue and penned an essay on antonioni in 1967, and it’s impossible to imagine what the department will look like half a century from now. “Because MaC is within all these new and developing fields, there’s a danger that it sounds like something weird and diffuse,” Hossain says. “at the end of the day, we’re educating the people who will think about and make film and other media for the next generation.” “as long as they’re teaching students how to tell a good story, they’ll do great work—no matter what the technology,” gonzalez says. “you have to find your voice, and Oxy is the place to do it.” Gilstrap wrote “In Obama’s Footsteps” in the Winter magazine.

It’s not just MAC majors Cindy Tang ’09, Amazon Studios who come seeking guidTang brings nearly a decade of ance from the department. experience developing global, integrated marketing campaigns “as a liberal arts college, to her role as senior social media we have students from manager for Amazon Studios. other majors such as diplo“Content is driven by platforms and audience behavior as much macy and world affairs,” as it is the creative idea,” says Keeler says, “or they might Tang. Her advice to current and be premed and want to future MAC majors? “Don’t feel the need to be constrained to a make a website where peostructure, time limit, or medium ple can go to find medical to tell your story. Have a vision research that has informabeyond just the product you’re creating and think about the lifetional videos and things like cycle of how people will discover, that. They come in to learn consume, and amplify it.” the skills that we offer.” But with a budget that is quite limited compared with major university film programs in the area, the department is feeling the strain. “We don’t have a dedicated stage for students to shoot on, or a sound booth,” Keeler notes. “We only have so much support for equipment, so we’ll do replacement cameras every five years or so. We have one editing lab to support all of our majors.” In managing the needs of an increasingly popular major, “We are strategic and vigilant in stretching our resources to their fullest potential,” Fox says. Next year bodes to be a busy year for MaC. With the return of de Fren from sabbatical offset and a teaching stint at NyU shanghai by the departure of assistant professor ari Laskin, the departspring 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE 33

OXYTALK

The World According to Frank Eighty years after graduating, Frank Hardison ’39 has all but checked oﬀ his bucket list—but at 102, he still has a wanderlust for new adventures

rez Photography

Photo by Tony Flo

34 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

of Newport Beach

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Frank Hardison was born April 13, 1917— one week after the United States’ entry into World War I, and less than three years after Occidental moved to its Eagle Rock home. As a child growing up in Charleston, S.C., “I can remember having the family’s last dime going down to the grocery store and being trusted with it,” he says. “A dime could buy a lot at that time.” It will be 80 years in June since Hardison graduated from Occidental. To this day he recalls the camaraderie of his Phi Gamma Delta fraternity brothers; friendships with professors such as Robert Cleland, George Day, and Osgood Hardy; and “the best malts in the valley. Those are great memories,” he declares. “I’d like to live them over again.” At 102, Hardison has outlived his wife of 67 years, his younger brother, and all but a handful of his contemporaries. “I’ve lost the majority of my friends but I’ve been lucky in making a lot of new friends,” he says. “I can’t emphasize enough how lucky I’ve been to have the kind of life I’ve had.” Hardison moved with his family to California when he was 12, settling in Glendale. He picked up golf from his father at that age, and won his ﬁrst tournament two years later.

One sportswriter later described the 5'4", 130-pound Hardison as “the small but sharp shotmaker from Glendale.” “I was a very good golfer and I won a lot of tournaments,” he says. “We’ve got trophies all over the place that my wife saved.” At Broadmoor Golf Club in 1978, he carded the low individual score on the winning team of the World Senior Golf Championship—a foursome captained by former President Gerald Ford. His home is shrine to the game, and the artifacts of a well-traveled life: “My wife and I spent a lot of time wandering around places, picking out paintings that we liked, and we decorated the house with a lot of them.” At one point he had perhaps the world’s premier collection of hickory-shaft woods and irons—“better than the USGA or the Royal & Ancient at St Andrews,” he says. Over the years, he has sold more than half of his 4,000-club collection, much of which he and his brother, Dick Hardison ’48, acquired in their travels. (Fun fact: At one point, Dick was in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most golf holes played in a single day. He played through one foursome ﬁve times, Frank says,

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Photos courtesy Frank Hardison ’39

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while setting that record at a course on the Big Island of Hawai‘i.) It was Dick who introduced Frank to Virginia “Duffer” McGary, whom he wed in 1945. The couple moved from La Cañada Flintridge to Emerald Bay in Laguna Beach in 1967, where they built a 9,000-square-foot home with a magnificent view of the coastline. On the Fourth of July, he says, you can see the fireworks “all the way from Dana Point to Palos Verdes.” When Hardison wasn’t busy running his insurance companies, which he eventually sold to larger outfits, the two traveled the world together until Duffer’s passing in 2012. “She was such a nice woman,” he says. “She had a golden singing voice and became a pretty good golfer.” Today, Hardison shares his home with his 16-year-old cat, Katie (short for Katharine Hepburn, Duffer’s favorite actress). While Frank and his wife never had children of their own, they put five godchildren through college, all of whom are like family to Hardison. He spent his 100th birthday at the Masters in Augusta, Ga., with godson Richard Boone and his wife, Susie, and hopes to cross Africa off his bucket list one day.

His secret to a long life? “Good genes.” Case in point: Grandfather Henry Cheves died in February 1951, four months shy of turning 100. Cheves was in good health but had gone deaf, and he died shortly after his car was hit by a train at a crossing without guard rails. “I was his third-favorite grandchild,” says Hardison, who was struck by a car at age 97 while riding a golf cart. He suﬀered a broken bone in his neck but soon returned to the course. “He has 19 lives,” says Susie Boone. “People call him the Energizer Bunny.” Guilty as charged, Hardison admits: “I’ve gotten in a lot of mischief.” —DICK ANDERSON

7 1. Hardison returned to one of his favorite spots in the world, Gimmelwald, Switzerland, in 2016. 2. Hardison, third from left, and members of the Oxy golf team in 1939. 3. With his wife, Duffer, on the slopes. He finally stopped skiing at age 92. 4. On vacation in 1978 in Hawai‘i—a favorite getaway destination over the years. 5. Taking a horse-drawn sleigh to Sun Valley, Idaho, in an undated photo. 6. In a rickshaw in Hong Kong in the early 1970s. 7. Hardison is all smiles in 1953 after winning the first of two consecutive championships at the Bobby Jones Trophy Tournament at Catalina Island, held at the country club built by chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr.

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Inaugural Gibby Professor Margi Rusmore, below, “has all the hallmarks of an Oxy professor: intelligent, accomplished, challenging, engaged and engaging, and always approachable,” say Barbara and Mike Gibby. Photos by Marc Campos

Anniversary Present Barbara Nogy Gibby ’68 and Mike Gibby ’68 commemorate their 50th reunion—and nearly half a century of marriage—by endowing a professorship in the sciences

From the start, Mike Gibby ’68 and Barbara Nogy ’68 seemed like complete opposites. Mike, a chemistry major from Fillmore, spent most of his time studying in the library stacks or conducting research in the lab with Carl F. Braun Professor of Chemistry Frank DeHaan. Barbara, a religion and psychology double major from Wichita, Kan., sang in the Glee Club, typed recruitment letters for football coach Jim Mora ’57, and served as president of Associated Women Students. But almost 50 years after they were married in Herrick Chapel by Keith Beebe, the David B. and Mary H. Gamble Professor of Religion, the Gibbys are in complete agreement on the fundamental impact Oxy had on their lives. “The education I got in the sciences and mathematics was really sound and held up well in graduate school,” says Mike, who earned his Ph.D. at MIT and in 1985 founded Arion Systems, the engineering service company focused on national defense and intelligence markets that he still heads today. Barbara, a ﬁrst-generation scholarship student who lists Beebe among her favorite 64 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

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professors, earned two master’s degrees and became a pioneer in special education, retiring as a public middle school administrator. That shared experience is why the Gibbys made a generous gift—in conjunction with their 50th reunion last year—to establish the Michael G. Gibby ’68 and Barbara J. Gibby ’68 Endowed Professorship for Science. “We wanted to hit the core of a liberal arts education,” Mike says. Barbara concurs: “We wanted to do something where it really makes a diﬀerence.” Margi Rusmore, a member of the Oxy faculty since 1992 and an internationally known researcher in structural geology and tectonics, will become the inaugural Gibby Professor of Science this summer. “I was really surprised—it’s quite an honor,” Rusmore says. “I am deeply grateful to the Gibbys for recognizing the central role of the faculty in their education at Oxy.” “We’re delighted that Margi was selected as the ﬁrst Gibby Professor. She has all the

hallmarks of an Oxy professor: intelligent, accomplished, challenging, engaged and engaging, and always approachable,” Barbara says. As a structural geologist, Rusmore studies the evolution and growth of continental margins with a focus on the mountain ranges of the western portion of North America. “The middles of continents are very inert geologically,” she explains. “I’m interested in how something that stable becomes so complicated at the edges and what that tells us about how the Earth evolved.” Gretchen North, the John W. McMenamin Endowed Chair in Biology, called Rusmore “the model of what a science professor at Oxy should be” in her letter of recommendation. “She does leading-edge research, serves as an international leader in her profession, improves the intellectual and day-to-day lives of her students and colleagues, and exempliﬁes science as an inclusive endeavor, one that she actively encourages students from a broad range of backgrounds to join.” A Fellow of the Geological Society of America, Rusmore has written more than two dozen publications and dozens of abstracts on her research, a number of which include her students as co-authors. “It is no surprise why Oxy does so exceptionally well at having its science graduates continue to the Ph.D. level,” Mike says. “The undergraduate research program which was just beginning to pick up steam in the late ’60s was very important to the career trajectories of many of us.” Unlike many endowed professorships, the Gibby Professor is not limited to a single discipline. It can be awarded to any professor who has achieved distinguished and notable success in their teaching and scholarly work in biology, chemistry, computer science, geology, mathematics, or physics. “We can truthfully say that we never had a poorly instructed class at Oxy; some were brilliantly taught,” Mike says. “Frank DeHaan’s Physical and Inorganic Chemistry, Frank Lambert’s Organic Chemistry, and Tim Sanders’ Modern Physics immediately come to mind.” The Braun professorship held by Mike’s mentor, DeHaan, is one of just four other endowed professorships in the sciences—none of which were funded by alumni. That means there are still plenty of opportunities: “We are hoping others will do likewise,” he hints.

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