In a rite of passage, first-year students at Pomona begin their lives on campus with a Critical Inquiry seminar. These seminars focus on developing writing skills as students collaborate with peers, professors and student mentors to refine their drafts. The familiar five-paragraph format and the strict word counts of admissions essays are left behind. Here’s a look at a few of the new courses offered last fall:

Lessons from the Mouse

Professor of Art Lisa Auerbach had never been to Disneyland until a birthday celebration a few years ago. She found herself surprised and curious. “Disneyland felt to me like a subject that everyone already has a relationship with, whether you’re a local person here who knows someone who works there, or you grew up going there, or you’re an international student who has grown up with Disney movies. I don’t think there is a place it hasn’t touched,” she says. “It provides for me the opportunity to make Disneyland into this lens to look at other kinds of things. We can use Disneyland to look at, for example, race and gender and pop culture. Or we can use Disneyland as an example when we talk about labor.” Labor issues were in the news this summer as Disneyland workers pressed for a “living wage.” Gender issues were at the forefront too, as the Pirates of the Caribbean ride reopened after an update that removed a banner at an auction scene that had read, “Take a wench for a bride.” Yet for all the complicated ways in which nostalgia, utopia, commerce and reality converge in Anaheim, “there is a magical ‘there’ there,” Auerbach says. And yes, there is a field trip.

The Politics of Protest

The Women’s March. The Arab Spring. The Tea Party protests. Tiananmen Square. And of course, the Civil Rights Movement. “There’s always something going on somewhere in the world,” says Professor of Politics Erica Dobbs, a new faculty member teaching her first ID1, based on a first-year seminar she taught at Swarthmore College. “Every year, there’s been an ideological mix,” Dobbs says, noting that many of her previous students had participated in protests. Some of the questions considered include what makes a protest a success or a failure, the role of historical memory and whether social media is a positive.     “Social media and the internet have changed the game when it comes to mobilization, but at the end of the day the powers that be are still more concerned about people taking to the streets than taking to their keyboards,” Dobbs says.

Math + Art: A Secret Affair

Mathematics Professor Gizem Karaali wants to put to rest the idea that everyone is either a math person or an art person. A sculpture of the symbol for pi sits on her desk. On her whiteboard are two colorful designs that turn out to be geometric art by her husband and 9-year-old daughter. The textbook is a $49 coffee-table book, Mathematics and Art: A Cultural History, by Lynn Gamwell, including work by the artist M.C. Escher, with his stairways and tessellations. “We find his work fascinating because it’s visually interesting, but also mathematically, what’s happening?” Karaali says. The course also explores concepts such as proportion, infinity and symmetry in other less-expected artists, in some cases considering their mathematical context for the first time.

Governing Climate Change

Acknowledging climate change is one thing. Figuring out what to do about it is another. Professor of Politics Richard Worthington takes on the complex topic of how local, state, national and international governmental groups are addressing climate change, with a particular focus on climate justice. “Climate justice is really built off the idea of environmental justice, this aspiration that people have basically equal access to environmental benefits and amenities and equal protection against environmental hazards,” he says, noting that the countries that have done the most to create the problem, such as the U.S. and China, aren’t the ones most affected. Geography makes a big difference, Worthington points out. For example, he says, “small islands, with sea level rise, are going to be hit harder.”

Statistics in the Real World

In a playful twist on the old Trident commercial, the full title of Mathematics Professor Jo Hardin’s updated ID1 seminar includes the phrase, “9 out of 10 Seniors Recommend This First-Year Seminar.” The class focuses on both good and dubious uses of statistics in politics, the media and scientific studies, with particular attention to the 2016 presidential election. “Every year I have a couple of students who take it because they think the seniors recommended it,” Hardin says. “I think to myself, ‘You’re the person who should be in the class.’”

Alida Schefers ’21 usually makes the first contact with her professors to let them know she uses a wheelchair and may need accommodations. Last year, however, it was Professor of Geology Linda Reinen who contacted Schefers, inviting her to visit the classroom where Reinen’s Intro to Geohazards class would take place and talk over plans for the class field trip. Since then, the bond between Schefers and Reinen has strengthened, and the classroom experience has changed for the better—for all of Reinen’s students.

In her revamped classroom, the most important rock samples now sit at the end of narrow tables with spacious and cleared aisles that ensure a wheelchair user can move with ease. A stream table (a tall table that demonstrates stream erosion) has a camera with a bird’s-eye view. The video is played back on a large screen for all students to see the action without having to crowd around.

Reinen’s changes may seem minor, but they make the classroom accessible in a major way. It was these changes that the International Association for Geoscience Diversity (IAGD) took note of when the group honored Reinen with the 2018 Inclusive Geoscience Education and Research (IGER) Award, given to instructors who promote or implement inclusive instruction and research that supports active engagement by students with disabilities.

“If everyone were mindful of a missed opportunity for a disabled student and took the time to advocate on their behalf, then the changes would be immense,” Schefers says. “One of my favorite sayings is: ‘If everyone did a little, no one would have to do a lot.’”

Driving back to campus from L.A. late one night, computer science major Eberto Andre Ruiz ’19 felt himself drifting off at the wheel. Worried, he grasped for a solution.

“I’m like, ‘Man, this is not safe,’ so I told Siri to set a timer for every five minutes,” he says. “I woke up the next morning and thought, ‘I’ve got to make an app for this.’”

Enter the 5C Hackathon—a one-night coding competition. In early November, Ruiz joined classmates Peter Nyberg ’19, Thomas Kelleher ’19 and Brook Solomon ’19 to built a prototype called Olert, with the O reminiscent of a steering wheel.

“Basically we were interested in doing something that was ‘Tech for Good,’ an idea in some way applicable to the real world,” Nyberg says. “This is something that takes lives.”

Using a camera and eye-tracking software, they built a system that would vibrate the steering wheel if the program detected signs of drowsiness in the driver’s eyes.

One after another, checking out some of the 20 projects submitted after the Hackathon, students from the 5Cs sat down and gripped the makeshift steering wheel the team fashioned with the leather cover from the steering wheel of Ruiz’s Nissan Altima. Sure enough, they felt it vibrate when their eyes closed.

As a result, Olert took the Hackathon’s top prize for the best “Tech for Good” project.

In the midterm elections of 2014, according to a Tufts University survey, only 17 percent of Pomona College students cast a vote. Four years later, a group of concerned Pomona students turned to an online voting support site to give those numbers a boost.

Student leaders Michaela Shelton ’21 and Lucas Carmel ’19 led the outreach effort, encouraging their fellow students to sign up with TurboVote, an online tool that helps users take the first steps to register to vote or to request an absentee ballot.

“A recent Pew study revealed that about 75 percent of nonvoters are not voting due to logistical concerns, confusion,” says Carmel. “Where to get a stamp? How to request an absentee ballot? Where’s their polling place? The same thing is true for college kids—but if you’re concrete with people and help them with the process, you can eliminate many of those barriers.”

A portrait of President Starr’s grandmother, Ethel Starr, whose dedication to voting was featured in an op-ed in the Washington Post.

President G. Gabrielle Starr joined in encouraging students to get out and vote, not only on our own campus but across the nation. In an op-ed titled “Dear College Students: My grandmother waited 70 years for the right to vote. Don’t ignore this chance,” published in The Washington Post in late October, Starr told the story of her grandmother, Ethel Starr, who was nearly 70 when the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. “As a child in the 1970s and ’80s, I always knew when it was Election Day,” she wrote. “My grandma got dressed in her Sunday best, put on her black shoes, hoisted her hard, black pocketbook, adjusted her hat and waited by the door for my father to drive her to the polls. She never missed an election. …”

“Do something no one else can do for you,” Starr concluded. “The students I’ve worked with know I love a good dare. And I send one back. I dare you.”

The efforts at Pomona seem to have succeeded in stimulating greater interest in voting, as TurboVote reports that about 40 percent of all Pomona students—703 to be exact—signed up for the service prior to Election Day.

At Goldman Sachs in San Francisco, the ambience was formal and there were plenty of suits. At the consulting firm Accenture, one of the leaders wore jeans and sneakers but kept a blazer handy. At another company across the bay, the highest-paid employees wore shorts. (That would be the Golden State Warriors.)

In the working world, clothes are a clue, but they might not tell the whole story. That’s just one of the lessons 12 Pomona College sophomores who identify as low-income or first-generation college students learned last fall in an innovative new program. Smart Start Career Fellows is designed to teach students about a working world unfamiliar to many of them. The program concluded in January with a three-day trip to the offices of seven Bay Area businesses.

One of the things Smart Start taught Leisan Garifullina ’20, an economics major from Russia, was the difference between business casual and business formal.

“I had this awkward situation last semester where I went to an information session—I think it was Citibank. I showed up in shorts and the nicest, nicest T-shirt that I had,” she says. Now, with the help of a stipend from the program, “I have business casual,” Garifullina says.

On the Bay Area trip, the students connected with new contacts as well as Pomona College alumni, visiting the offices of Kate Walker Brown ’07, an attorney at the National Center for Youth Law; Natalie Casey ’17, a software engineer at Salesforce; and Adam Rogers ’92, deputy editor at Wired magazine. The group also went to LumiGrow, a startup company that offers high-tech, energy-efficient horticultural lighting solutions, in addition to Goldman Sachs, Accenture and both the business offices of the NBA’s Warriors and a game that night against the Los Angeles Clippers.

Created with grants from Accenture and John Gingrich ’91, a managing director at the firm, the Smart Start program began last fall with a series of two-hour Friday night dinner sessions where the students took part in self-assessment exercises and various networking, résumé and career-coaching sessions.

“Every single place we went to in San Francisco, you could ask yourself, ‘OK, could I see myself coming in here every single day for a long period of time, maybe two, three or 10 years?’” mused Shy Lavasani ’20, an economics major from Millbrae, California, whose family emigrated from Iran. “Could I see myself really enjoying this job? It just really helped me thinking about that at every single location, what I really want, what I really need. It gave me a clear direction in terms of what I want to do.”

No job seemed out of reach, except maybe one. “I don’t think any of us were considering pro basketball,” he says. “It’s always nice to dream.”

Rosalind Faulkner ‘19 is podcasting superlatives.

Earlier this year, Faulkner launched “The Most,” a SoundCloud podcast in which she interviews Pomona students who embody a particular characteristic the most of anyone on campus—the most quirky, the most flirty, the most existential. Students nominate potential interviewees on Faulkner’s Facebook page, and whoever receives the most votes joins her in her KSPC studio for a 15-minute breakdown of the chosen adjective and what it means to them.

Faulkner, who has been interested in podcasting since she created her first podcast during her study abroad in Morocco last year, wanted to use an interview format to explore the idea of social reputation. “So many people here have really big personalities or things that distinguish them in different ways,” Faulkner says, and boiling that nuanced personality down to a single label—like “the most existential”—seems limiting.

But though she expected many people to resist being defined by a lone adjective, most students have embraced their superlatives. “My original intention was to subvert it, but some people do genuinely think of themselves in these big ways,” Faulkner says. “At least two of the three were so thrilled to be chosen for these adjectives. They were so happy.”

Noor Dhingra ’20 likes to start her Fridays with a cup of coffee in the Claremont Village before wandering over to Claremont Depot, the gorgeous 1927 Spanish Colonial Revival train station where she catches the 8:42 Metrolink to Los Angeles.

Her roommate, Tulika Mohan ’20 takes a different approach. “I should be getting up at 7:45. I don’t,” Mohan laughs. “I usually end up getting up at 8:10, and then I run.”

Together, with headphones on or book in hand, they ride to one-day-a-week internships in L.A. subsidized by the Pomona College Internship Program (PCIP), a program that provides a stipend that turns an unpaid internship into a paid one, along with an allowance for transportation—in this case, train tickets for Dhingra and Mohan.

Taking the train to L.A. for an internship during the school year takes time—students often start work at 10 to allow for the commute—but many say the train beats fighting traffic even if someone has access to a car.

“I just find it fun. You don’t feel like a student when you’re on the train, which is a really good feeling to have once a week,” Dhingra says. “You’re so used to seeing professors or students on campus, so it’s just nice being with people of different ages. I always hear conversations, and sometimes it turns into a story I write.”

Just before her own senior year arrived, Abby Lewis ’19 was working to send off Pomona’s 2018 graduates in the most environmentally-responsible way possible—with a zero-waste commencement.

Armed with information and data from the Office of Sustainability, where she works during the year, Lewis noticed a significant spike in the College’s waste production during the month of May, when thousands come to campus for the annual Commencement ceremony. Working closely with Alexis Reyes, assistant director of sustainability, she started working on a zero-waste event model.

An event is deemed ‘zero-waste’ when organizers plan ahead to reduce solid waste, reuse some event elements in future years and set up compost and recycling stations in order to divert at least 90 percent of waste from landfills. For Pomona’s 2018 Commencement Weekend, Lewis focused, among other things, on the catered food and products served at the reception on Commencement Day.

Backed by a President’s Sustainability Fund grant, Lewis worked with Pomona’s catering management on details ranging from the type of wax paper used to wrap food, to proposing utensils that are compostable and the use of reusable sugar containers instead of sugar packets.

Instead of trash bins, Commencement attendees found recycling and composting stations where they could sort their waste. Nearly all food waste generated, such as plates, cups and napkins, was diverted to either compost or recycling. The disposable products used at Commencement were made from either corn starch or recycled paper.

Another key partnership that Lewis secured with the help of the Office of the President’s Christina Ciambriello and Reyes was a deal with Burrtec, the College’s disposal contractor. Lewis and her allies were able to convince the company to collect and process ‘industrially-compostable’ items such as specially labeled plates and napkins—something they usually don’t do as part of their service to the College.

Twelve Pomona College recipients of the prestigious Fulbright fellowships are criss-crossing the globe this fall, doing research on independent projects or teaching English. Here’s a brief description of their plans:

Audrey DePaepe, a neuroscience major from Tualatin, Ore., takes her Fulbright to the Cognition & Brain Plasticity Unit of Barcelona in Spain and focuses her research on Huntington’s disease.

Jack Gomberg, a neuroscience major from Chicago, Ill., travels to Israel to explore the biopsychological effects of medical clowning on patient outcomes.

Laurel Hilliker, an Asian studies and history double major, from Pittsburgh, Penn., goes to Japan, intending to uncover the history of Zainichi Korean political activism within Osaka and Tokyo in the aftermath of the Pacific War.

Emily Rockhill, a biology major from Redmond, Wash., conducts research in southern Brazil, assisting on a project at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul to identify and describe new species of crayfish of the genus Parastacus.

Elizabeth Sun ’17, a French major from Albuquerque, N.M., is studying the teaching of English and French in Saarland, a region in western Germany that has historically been a space of French-German interactions.

Rory Taylor, an international relations major from Minneapolis, Minn., travels to New Zealand to examine how the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples acts as a tool of legal advocacy for indigenous groups.

Victoria Vardanega, an economics and Asian studies double major from Fair Oaks, Calif., goes to South Korea to research the relationship between the press and government.

Don Chen, an international relations major from Normal, Ill., is teaching in Taiwan. He plans to focus on storytelling by hosting exhibitions of family history projects by students and an oral history event featuring local elders.

Lauren Callans, a neuroscience major from Ardmore, Penn., is teaching in Estonia. In addition to her love for teaching, she wants to explore her heritage as a third-generation Estonian and share her American culture.

Minah Choi, an environmental analysis major from Olympia, Wash., is teaching in Argentina. She hopes to contribute to the existing literature on Asian communities in Latin America.

Rhiannon Moore, a music major from South Pasadena, Calif., is teaching in Malaysia. Her interest in that country is rooted in her love for Southeast Asian music and desire to explore Malaysian music.

Inga Van Buren, a molecular biology major from Portland, Ore., is teaching in Taiwan. Drawing from her own multilingual background, she hopes to convey to her students the usefulness of being bilingual.

Generations of North Campus residents have wondered: “Why Clark I, III and V?”

This basic site plan, which appeared in the program of the 1929 building dedication for Clark I and Frary Dining Hall, provides the answer. When architect Sumner Spaulding was hired in 1926 to design what was to be known then as the “men’s campus,” his proposal included four dormitories and a refectory, assembly hall, lounge and office—a total of eight buildings. As seen here, each was assigned a number.

Only the first two phases of the project were completed, however—Clark I and Frary Dining Hall in fall 1929, and Clark III and Clark V in fall 1930. The numbers appear to have been simply for reference purposes. Over the years, more than a few creative theories have been spun to explain the absence of a Clark II and IV, but, as often happens, the truth is far simpler and more mundane than might have been hoped. The dormitories were named in honor of trustee and donor Eli P. Clark. Frary Hall, gift of trustee George W. Marston, was named for Lucien H. Frary, former pastor of Pilgrim Congregational Church.