Articles Written By: emae2021@pomona.edu

Path to the Paralympics

October 25, 2016 by Carla Guerrero ‘06 Comments Off

02-sports-path-to-the-paralympics When Amy Watt ’20 got the call that she would be traveling to Rio de Janeiro in early September, her joy in making the U.S. Paralympic track and field team was tempered by worry about missing the first two weeks or so of her first semester at Pomona. She remembers calling Pomona-Pitzer Women’s Cross-Country and Track & Field Coach Kirk Reynolds with trepidation.

“I didn’t know who I should contact or what to do about missing some school,” recalls Watt. “He just asked when I’d be gone, information about the events, and the dates for everything. He talked to several people and the dean; he took care of a lot of it for me and made it easier for me.”

Born without part of her left arm, Watt has been an athlete since discovering soccer in kindergarten. She continued playing the sport until she fell in love with track and field in junior high school. “I was encouraged by my mom and friends,” says Watt. “It was also a fun activity to do.”

Her path from there to the Paralympics involved a couple of chance encounters and an aha moment concerning the rules.

One day during track practice at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, when Watt was in the 10th grade, a Gunn alumnus who is an amputee recommended that she check out the 2014 U.S. Paralympics Track and Field National Championships, being held in nearby San Mateo.

There she happened onto an amputee friend who was competing in a 4×100-meter relay. By chance, the group needed one more person. Watt agreed to fill in and was immediately hooked.

“Never thought I could do Paralympic track and field until I saw some other arm amputees and realized I could also do it,” says Watt, who had always assumed that those competitions were meant for leg amputees. What she discovered was that the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has a classification system that determines athletes’ eligibility and divides them into sport classes with athletes with similar impairments. The category in which she was eligible was one that seems perfect for a Pomona-bound athlete—IBC classification T47.

Soon she was competing at the international level, traveling to the Netherlands for the International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports Federation World Junior Games and then to Toronto for the Parapan American Games, where she took fourth place in the 100- and 200-meter events. Last year, as a high school senior, Watt traveled to Doha, Qatar, where she participated in the IPC World Championships and came in fifth in the 400-meter dash and seventh in the long jump.

Between homework and world competitions, Watt had a tough decision to think about: college. Having decided she wanted to attend a Division III school, she got in touch with track and field coaches from her top choices.

When she visited Pomona, she was struck by the people she met and the tight community. “I liked that family feel before you get to campus. I liked having small classes; that’s something I really wanted in any school. I liked the general feeling on campus and could envision myself here being really happy. I met a lot of intelligent but humble people here.”

In Rio, Watt competed in three events—the long jump, in which she finished sixth; the 100 meters, in which she made it to the semifinals; and the 400 meters, in which she also finished sixth.

“Even though I didn’t perform as well as I had hoped in my events, the overall experience I had was incredible,” she says. “Now that I’m back, I’m catching up on a few assignments and other classwork that I missed, and all my professors have been understanding and supportive. I was touched that many of my classmates have congratulated me on my performance and watched some of my races.”

Although she’s not sure what she plans to major in, she is sure she’s going to continue track and field at Pomona.

“She is a remarkable jumper and sprinter who has had a successful high school career, and I know she can continue to improve her performance in all her events,” says Reynolds.

And though the next Paralympics won’t happen until her senior year is over, she can’t help thinking about it sometimes.

“Sometimes I still have a hard time grasping that I went and competed in the Paralympics,” she says. “It was such an unforgettable experience to be running with the best athletes in the world. I would love to go to Tokyo in 2020, but I’ll need to keep working hard to get better and perform well at trials.”

Stray Thoughts: The End of an Era

October 25, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

01-stray-thoughts Nearly 14 years ago I wrote a column about the imminent departure of Pomona’s eighth president. It began with these words: “A college president is remembered for a word, a deed, a gesture—something personal to each one of us. A presidency, however, is remembered for more enduring things.”

Forgive me for falling back on old words, but I can’t think of better ones as we now prepare to say goodbye to Pomona’s ninth president.

Personally, I’m sure the first thing I will remember about David Oxtoby is his phenomenal energy—the kind of energy required to take a red-eye to the East Coast, rush from meeting to meeting at a breakneck pace till long after dark, then fly home just in time to hurl himself into another trying 12-hour day—and do it day after day, month after month. Of course, I’ll also remember a particularly humanizing moment when that brutal schedule finally caught up with him, causing his eyelids to droop during a long, boring meeting.

And there are other indelible memories—like the carefully articulated Spanish in which he always addressed the gathering at the annual holiday luncheon for college staff in order to ensure that everyone was included in his message. Or the refreshing honesty and quiet civility with which he faced the inevitable storms that struck his presidency.

But that’s just my list. Others will have lists of their own—good memories and bad, but rarely indifferent. That’s a fact of life for college presidents—especially those who remain on the job for a decade or more. They tend to arouse strong feelings, one way or the other.

Which brings us to the question of how history will remember the Oxtoby presidency—and the corollary question of how much of the credit should go to the person at the top.

David Oxtoby would be the first to point out that college presidents accomplish very little by themselves. In looking back at these 13-plus years, he prefers to talk about the College family as a whole and what we have accomplished together. However, the truth is that institutional progress is a messy business, full of fits and starts that can easily devolve into a morass of conflict and well-intentioned ineffectiveness. It takes a rare combination of temperament and skills in order to manage it successfully.

Indeed, very little of consequence happens at a place like Pomona without bearing the president’s fingerprints in some way or other—through an overall vision, a specific goal, a set of priorities, a mediation between warring parties, or simply a well-timed word of encouragement. In this particular case, I think some of the biggest accomplishments of the Oxtoby years—like the dramatic upturn in the diversity of the student body or the highly successful Daring Minds Campaign—have his fingerprints all over them.

There are still eight busy months to go in the Oxtoby era, but even as the work goes on, the institution is beginning to look forward—with sadness, nostalgia, excitement and trepidation—to the dawn of a new era. But before we turn that page, we invite you to join us for a look back at the Oxtoby years, with a focus on both a transformational presidency and the remarkable person behind it.

Aboard the Vallejo

October 25, 2016 by Jodie Hollander ’99 Comments Off

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On the first morning of my writing residency, I looked out the window and was filled with dread. ‘It’s back,’ I thought. For months I’d been battling episodes of vertigo, which seemed to strike after changes in elevation. And since I’d just flown from the mountains of Colorado and landed at sea level, I was sure it was back, and just in time to thwart this dream opportunity. Fortunately, what I thought was an imbalance in my inner ear was actually the gentle swaying of the outside world. After all, I was on a boat, a houseboat in fact—the SS Vallejo—home to the newly created Varda Artist in Residence (VAR) Program.

The Vallejo had a rich history before landing in the hands of the current owners and program directors. Originally a passenger ferry in Oregon, after being decommissioned, the Vallejo was due to be sold for scrap metal. Fortunately, in the magical year of 1947, Jean Varda bought the boat and turned it into an artists’ haven in Sausalito, CA. Varda invited others, such as Alan Watts, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg to join him. Soon the boat was a flourishing artists’ community, complete with a reputation for wild parties that experimented with alternative ways of thinking. The Vallejo also became home to many of the Beat poet gatherings, as well as the conversations Alan Watt recorded that came to be known as the “Houseboat Sessions.” After Varda’s death in 1971, the boat changed hands several times. In 2015 the Vallejo officially became the home of the VAR program.

Après Le Deluge
After Rimbaud

After the idea of the deluge

ended, a little hare appeared

in the moving flowers, spoke

of rainbows lighting the spaces

of a spider’s web: the colors,

it said, can be seen only

after the years of darkness.

But the stones, the old

unbelievers, remained unmoving

in the streets, and watched

as the same stalls were erected,

the same ships were hauled to sea.

Only the children, looking out

from their big glass houses, saw

the New World like a painting,

like something from a dream.

Among the other artists with me were a rock musician from New York, a sound artist from Portland, Ore., and a visual artist from New Zealand. Not only was I the only writer, I was also the program’s first poet. Before my arrival, I’d just completed my first full-length poetry collection, My Dark Horses, and I was waiting to hear news from publishers. Given that I’d been writing about the rather heavy topic of my childhood, I felt both a sense of accomplishment and relief after finishing the book, and I was looking forward to using the residency to tackle something new. Originally I’d planned to translate the French poet Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations. However, only a few days into the project, and with the boat’s rich inspiration, I found myself creating a sheaf of my own new poems that built off Rimbaud’s poetry.

I was delighted by the simple yet elegant space I’d been given for my work. My room was a freshly painted white, and three of its walls had expansive views of Sausalito Bay. Blooming plants were in every corner, and the large windows allowed the fresh air and the music of the ocean and birds to enter. I faced my desk toward the long view of the water and unpacked my favorite collected poems: by Philip Larkin, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, and Donald Justice. I placed them next to my computer and was ready to work.

However, no progress was to be made without a strong cup of coffee. I unpacked my stovetop espresso maker and beans and figured I’d be set. After looking around the kitchen, I was surprised to find I’d be grinding my beans by hand and working up a sweat from turning the crank hundreds of times. I eventually grew accustomed to this ritual and even came to enjoy it. But as it turned out, the real coffee challenge was yet to come. One of the unique things about houseboat living is that one must climb a ladder to reach one’s room. Other than the possibility of a drunken stumble or unexpected bout of vertigo, it hadn’t occurred to me that the ladder would be an obstacle—I was forced to devise a system. First, I’d take a few sips to lower the coffee level in my mug and to give myself a small shot of caffeine, should I need to make a quick save during transport. Then, I’d hold the side of the ladder with my left hand moving the coffee up one rung at a time with my right. Meanwhile, my feet followed suit, one rung at a time, until my coffee and I were both safely delivered up the ladder to my desk and my computer.

I’m sure this looked ridiculous, particularly to the others who simply drank their coffee in the kitchen and avoided the drama altogether. But aside from enjoying my coffee in solitude, I’d developed this quirk of needing a mug of coffee beside me while I worked; thus the struggle was worth the effort.

Vagabonds
After Rimbaud

Oh, pitiful brother,

I cannot be your sister

you cannot be my brother,

since you are still a mistress

to our late mother—

Many years have passed,

and these days I wonder,

what’s become of you

and what foreign land

do you these days inhabit?

Russia, Japan, China,

in that mind of yours

you were never right.

But what if now we met?

Could I restore you

to your original state;

or would you drag me,

just as She did,

into your dark room

of old howling sorrows?

Bringing an empty coffee mug, or anything for that matter, down the ladder was much easier than taking it up. When I first arrived, I’d made a dozen or so trips up and down carrying my clothes and books in small, backpack-sized deliveries. But at one point, the rock musician suggested to me: Why not just throw your clothes down? An excellent idea I wished I’d thought of myself! This began the jettisoning of shorts, dresses, and pants to the main level of the boat in a Great Gatsby-esque moment of liberation. I’m sure, at the very least, the Beat poets would have approved.

The program allowed as much or as little contact with the outside world as we liked. Some of the artists spent their days exploring the offerings of San Francisco, while others stayed on the boat. I was of the latter, less hip group. Among other reasons for this was the chance to observe a tragic pair of resident seagulls. This couple squawked outside my room early each morning; then walked on the roof with such deliberation that I wondered if two very serious lawyers were debating above me. One day I noticed that the gulls had built their nest precariously atop one of the pier’s wooden piles. Upon some investigation, I learned that each year their nest fell terribly into the ocean—the eggs lost to the deep blue. The parents cried out in painful squawks of loss, buried their beaks dejectedly in each other’s feathers, and seemed to mope around the boat until their grief passed. And yet each spring they’d rebuild their nest in the same place, and the same disaster ensued. I wondered what kinds of bird-brained behavior my fellow artists were witnessing on the streets of San Francisco.

From time to time the Vallejo hosted its share of social gatherings. These were nothing like the famed wild parties of the Beat Generation, but rather intimate events that allowed each artist to display his or her work. On our last evening, we ate salmon from the local fishmonger, broiled with fresh cherries. We made a colorful salad, cut thick slices of bread and drank plenty of California wine. Each of us gave a short presentation describing how the boat had inspired or changed our work during our stay. Later that night, we piled into a rowboat and quietly reflected on our time spent on the Vallejo. For my part, I chose to row—pushing the old wooden oars quietly through the dark waters.

NOTE: The Vallejo’s owners have requested that we note that the boat is not open to the public.

New Pomona Faculty

October 25, 2016 by Jeff Hing Comments Off

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Every fall, Pomona College welcomes a special group of people to campus: new professors, visiting professors, lecturers and fellows. This year the College has a group of 36, including, from left to right: Back row: O. Maduka Ogba, Robbins postdoctoral fellow in chemistry; Mark Caspary, post-M.F.A. fellow in theatre and dance; Scott Medling, visiting assistant professor of physics and astronomy; Vivek Swaroop Sharma, visiting assistant professor of politics; Peter Andrew Mawhorter, visiting instructor in computer science; second row from back: Robin Melnick, instructor in linguistics and cognitive science; Kimberly Ayers, visiting assistant professor of mathematics; Jill Pace, assistant professor of physical education and women’s basketball coach; Tyler LaPlante, visiting assistant professor of economics; third row from back: Kara Wittman, director of college writing and assistant professor of English; Patricia Blessing, visiting assistant professor of art history; Guadalupe Bacio, assistant professor of psychology and Chicana/o-Latina/o studies; Lei Shao, visiting assistant professor of economics; fourth row from back: Nicole Holliday, Mellon Chau postdoctoral fellow in linguistics and cognitive science; Joanne Nucho, Mellon Chau postdoctoral fellow in anthropology; Carolyn Ratteray , assistant professor of theatre and dance (now tenure-track); Giovanni Ortega, assistant professor of theatre and dance (now tenure-track); and front: Katya Mkrtchyan, visiting instructor in computer science. Not pictured: Nani Agbeli, lecturer in music and director of the West African Music Ensemble; Richard Asante, visiting African scholar in international relations; Martha Bárcenas-Mooradian, lecturer in Romance languages and literatures; Zaylin Cano, lecturer in dance; Brett Hershey, lecturer in theatre and design; Rushaan Kumar, visiting assistant professor of gender and women’s studies; Whitney Mannies, lecturer in politics; Audrey Mayer ’94, lecturer in environmental analysis; Sam Miner ’06, lecturer in mathematics; Claire Nettleton, lecturer in Romance languages and literatures; Alexandria Pivovaroff, lecturer in environmental analysis; Elm Pizarro, lecturer in dance; Meagan Prahl, lecturer in theatre and dance; Andrew Sappey, visiting assistant professor of chemistry; Meghan Sisson, visiting assistant professor of physical education and men’s and women’s swim coach; Corey Sorenson, visiting assistant professor of theatre; Ousmane Traoré, assistant professor of history and Africana studies; and Samira Yamin, lecturer in art.

New Knowledge

October 25, 2016 by Carla Guerrero ‘06 Comments Off

PHYSICS: Professor of Physics David Tanenbaum

Organic Solar

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What was once a rare sight is now becoming more common: solar panels on the roofs of homes across the country. While solar technology has improved and is seeing exponential growth as an industry, Pomona College Professor of Physics David Tanenbaum notes that there are still a few factors limiting production at a mass scale globally. Tanenbaum and his student researchers are working to improve this by focusing on one important factor: the cost of the materials used in producing solar cell panels.

Tanenbaum explains that today’s solar panels, like microchips, are made with silicon, which requires a fairly expensive production process because of factors such as the need for high-temperature processing of high-purity materials. In building solar panels, he says, the difference in cost between silicon and less expensive organic materials is like the cost difference between manufacturing a flat-screen TV and printing ink on paper. Imagine, he says, trying to cover the globe with expensive flat-screen televisions; that’s where solar cell technology is today. Now imagine covering the globe with printed paper and how much cheaper and easier that would be. That’s where he wants to see solar technology go.

To this end, Tanenbaum and his students are making organic solar cells using chemicals like poly(3-hexylthiophene), P3HT for short, or [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester, known as PCBM. They are experimenting with differing materials and processing techniques to make the cells.

“The main thing we want to get out of solar technology is a way to produce electricity. Everyone would benefit from electricity that is carbon neutral, and solar cells require no fuel stock: no gasoline, diesel or nuclear pellets. The sun is out there whether we take advantage of it or not,” he says.

When it comes to solar cell technology, there are three main attributes: efficiency (how good the device is at converting sunlight into energy), production cost (how much it costs to produce cells and panels), and lifetime (how long the device will last).

Current solar technology has good efficiency and a long lifetime, but the challenge still lies in the cost, he says.

“The idea is to bring the cost way down, even if it means the efficiency and lifetime is not so good,” he says. “The efficiency of the solar cell is maybe not perfect, but the reality is there’s not a lot of waste. When you burn diesel fuel or natural gas to make electricity, you produce a lot of waste heat. You’re not wasting anything from the sun, just using a little bit for your advantage. The low cost allows us to displace natural gas, coal, all those things that have issues.

“In the grand scheme of things, we’d like to produce electricity at a low cost and put electricity in isolated places relatively easily. In the U.S. everyone is connected to the electricity grid, but not everyone in the world is. You can’t build a nuclear power plant for a small amount of people, but solar energy can grow with the population.”

Tanenbaum has been working on this particular type of solar cell technology research for about eight years and has had students in the laboratory helping since the beginning.

Sabrina Li ’17, a physics major, and Meily Wu Fung ’18, an environmental analysis major, were summer lab researchers through the Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP).

Li has been working with Tanenbaum since her first year at Pomona and is planning a senior project that encapsulates what she’s learned in the lab thus far. “I’m looking at organic solar cells. They’re organic instead of silicon, and I’m looking at trying to optimize efficiency and lifetime.” Li experiments with different materials and processing techniques to make the cells.

This was Wu Fung’s first summer doing research at Pomona. She’s working on testing the aging of cells over time, using cells created over the past three years in the lab that are still working today. “At the end of the day, when we’re done making the cells, it’s really gratifying to measure them and see what’s come of it.”

Tanenbaum is on sabbatical for the 2016–17 academic year, continuing his research on solar cell technology at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

PSYCHOLOGY: Assistant Professor of Psychology Adam Pearson

Not Your Average Online Quiz

pcm-fall2016text39_page_12_image_0003 It’s not your typical online poll—the type you find on BuzzFeed to determine which Hogwarts house you’d be sorted into, or what your Game of Thrones name would be. Assistant Professor of Psychology Adam Pearson, along with Princeton social psychologist Sander van der Linden, have developed a series of online surveys for Time magazine to see what Americans think about issues like climate change, gun safety and genetically modified food and how in touch they are with others’ beliefs on these issues.

The first survey was on how different groups feel about gun ownership. It was to be followed by surveys on issues like climate change, evolution, GMO food consumption, vaccination and gun safety.

At the end of each survey, the reader has a chance to see if he or she has accurately assessed how other people feel about the same subjects. The results, says Pearson, can be very surprising.

“Many seemingly intractable social problems come down to a deceptively simple, but quite powerful truth: Social perceptions matter. As adults, we may like to think that peer pressure is something that only kids are susceptible to—that we come to hold the views that we do through logic and reason—but decades of research in social psychology suggest otherwise,” he says.

“We thought this would be a terrific opportunity to test and expand on a well-known set of social psychological effects with a large and diverse sample of Americans,” says Pearson of the partnership with Time. “We know that one of the best predictors of how you’ll feel about an issue is what you think others think about the issue,” he says. For example, people are more inclined to believe in human-caused climate change when they perceive that there is scientific consensus on the subject, regardless of which political party they align with.

“These meta-perceptions or meta-beliefs—what we think others think—matter,” he adds.

One way this shows itself is what is known as the false consensus effect. “We tend to (and often falsely) assume others hold the same beliefs that we do,” says Pearson. “Another effect is called pluralistic ignorance—a tendency to perceive that my private beliefs don’t align with those around me. Both types of perceptions can influence how we behave. If we want to build consensus on issues that are important to us, we first need to accurately understand others’ views. This is especially true for building consensus on contentious and politicized issues, from gun safety to the foods we consume.”

The findings will be used by Time and shared widely after the surveys are concluded. Pearson and van der Linden also plan to use their findings in their research to broaden our understanding of factors that shape public opinion on these issues.

—Carla Guerrero ‘06

How to Become the Creativity Guru of the 5Cs

October 25, 2016 by Mark Wood Comments Off

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Fred Leichter likes to tell the story of the 2000 election ballot from Dade County, Florida. “It was so poorly designed,” he says, “that an inordinate number of votes that were meant for Gore went to a third-party candidate instead. And that swung the whole election and the presidency to Bush.”

For years, he kept a copy of that ballot on his wall with a note saying “Design matters.”

Today, as the founding director of the Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity, Leichter is bringing that message to the students of The Claremont Colleges.

Known as “the Hive,” the center was conceived as a place where students could form creative teams, be intellectually daring and work collaboratively to address complex challenges.

Bringing dynamic experience in fields ranging from higher education to technology, Leichter built his career as a design innovator and executive for Fidelity Investments. As senior vice president for design thinking and innovation at the Boston-based firm, he led teams focusing on user needs and experimenting with ways to speed up innovation.

Along with his Fidelity role, Leichter has served as a lecturer at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (commonly known as the d.school), teaching such classes as Designing with Data, Visual Thinking Strategies and Project Joy: Designing Delight into the Workplace. His founding director role at the Hive also includes a faculty appointment as clinical professor of engineering at Harvey Mudd College.

President David Oxtoby said Leichter was chosen for his leadership skills, team-building experience and track record of design innovation. “We are looking to Fred to help spark an environment where students push into new areas, look at problems in fresh ways and seek out surprising solutions.”

The following is a how-to manual in seven parts, tracing Leichter’s path from childhood to the Hive.

Grow up a faculty brat at Columbia University. Go to a Waldorf school that emphasizes creativity. Attend Swarthmore, spending a “study abroad” semester at Pomona College. Wish there were such a thing as a computer science major, but since there isn’t, major in math.

After graduating, receive two job offers—teaching high school math or becoming a programmer on Wall Street. Choose Wall Street because it cuts “against the grain” of your previous life. Take graduate courses in computer science and spend lots of nights debugging COBOL programs.

Meet your future wife, Jennifer, a financial analyst, and when she takes a new job in Boston, abandon Wall Street to join her. Work at a software company until it goes bankrupt, and take away an important lesson: Failure isn’t permanent, and you can learn from it.

Get a job at Fidelity Investments and design their first website, with a user interface that is largely unchanged decades later. Learn about human-centered design and begin to think of yourself as a designer at a time when most people think designers are people who sketch clothes.

Meet George Kembel and David Kelley, who are launching the d.school at Stanford. When Fidelity sponsors a class at the school, spend time there and bring new ideas back to your firm. Build a state-of-the-art design-thinking lab at Fidelity to focus on innovation from the perspective of unmet human need.

Return to the d.school for a full year as a fellow, taking and teaching classes and working on projects for Fidelity. Tell your wife your new dream is to build a creativity program at a small liberal arts college like the one you attended, though the chances of that seem slim.

Two years later, learn about the director’s position at the Hive. Though you still love your job at Fidelity, decide that this is the perfect place to pursue your dream. Consult your kids and family and negotiate with the colleges over a great space for the Hive, but ultimately say yes.

Picture This

October 25, 2016 by Jeff Hing Comments Off

The Class of 2020 gathers on the steps of Carnegie Hall.

—photo by Jeff Hing

Backstage: Reaping What She Sews

October 25, 2016 by Feather Rose Flores ’17 Comments Off

01-backstage-reaping-what-she-sews Suzanne Schultz Reed’s classroom is not your typical seminar room. Upon entering, visitors are immediately greeted by a costume rack boasting dozens of hangers and garments in various states of completion. Long project tables dominate the open space, ringed by smaller workstations furnished with bright white sewing machines and strips of fabric. The walls are covered in color sketches of period dresses and men’s breeches; visible in the supply cabinets are buckets of buttons and thread and pincushions. Today is Wednesday and the room is uncharacteristically quiet, humming only with the sound of sewing machines and soft conversation between Schultz Reed and her student worker, Amy Griffin (Scripps ’18). “On Fridays, I have six students working in the shop,” Schultz Reed explains. “It’s very social. Everybody’s chatting, everybody’s doing something, music is on. And—” here she grins wickedly—“I bring brownies on Fridays.”

Schultz Reed has been the Pomona Theatre Department’s costume shop manager for nearly 25 years, producing the costumes for every production the department puts on and teaching sewing to her nine to 16 student workers in the process. She has been sewing for over half a century, since learning from her mother, a sewing teacher, at the age of six. Schultz Reed came to Pomona from a freelance stint at South Coast Repertory, a Costa Mesa–based theatre company, after an accomplished career as a freelancer, a costume shop manager at Mount Holyoke College and a costume shop assistant manager for the Atlanta Ballet.

Although she possesses her own extraordinary design skills and has designed one show for Pomona in the past, Schultz Reed prefers working with her hands to making conceptual decisions about how the costumes should look. “When I went to grad school [at UNC Chapel Hill], I discovered that designing wasn’t what I really liked. What I really liked,” she confesses, “was making the stuff. I liked taking somebody else’s vision and turning it into reality.”

Now Schultz Reed takes the renderings of the department’s guest costume designer, Kimberly Aldinger ’11, and finds ways to bring her ideas to life on the stage. This can mean borrowing from other theatres, renting from costume shops or theatre companies, pulling from the department’s stockroom, or building new costumes from scratch. Gesturing to the sketches that decorate the walls, Schultz Reed explains: “Her renderings are my blueprints.”

Those blueprints reflect the fact that the needs of each production are very different. If a production calls for a costume that looks uncommon or serves a scene-specific purpose, it will most likely need to be handmade. “That dress, the pink one,” Schultz Reed says, gesturing to one of the renderings on the wall, “has three tiers of petals that have to come off during the show. There’s no way we’re going to find that, and no way we’re going to borrow it. So we’re going to have to build it.”

The biggest challenge of Schultz Reed’s job is making sure all the building and borrowing gets done in time. “You have to get it done by opening night,” she stresses. “There’s just no way you can fudge that. Tickets are sold; people are coming.” The dress rehearsals are crucial to this process. Often Schultz Reed will come away from the first dress rehearsal with pages of notes and 24 hours to address as many of them as she can before the next dress rehearsal. “In last year’s production of Urinetown, Amy had a fabulous quick change,” she remembers, smiling at her student. “She had to go from a dress and a wig and heels to a full-body black costume with a mask. In 30 seconds! We had to practice that.” Schultz Reed also worked on redesigning elements of the costumes to make the transition easier, such as replacing a real belt buckle with a magnetic replica. Those kinds of adjustments, from hemming dresses to swapping out collars to the rare overhaul and redesign of entire costumes, ensure that the actors aren’t inhibited from giving a great performance.

And while the actors are working hard onstage, Schultz Reed keeps her students working hard offstage. “I teach the basics to those who come in with nothing, and I try to expand the knowledge of those who come in with a lot of sewing experience,” she says. “You can really see their progress, and it’s a life skill that everybody should have— knowing how to sew. And being creative in here works a different part of your brain than traditional studying does.”

Here Amy chimes in, speaking up from behind her sewing machine: “One of the advantages afforded to you in the costume shop is that you get to produce something that isn’t attached to grades. You’re productive, but you’re not productive in a way that’s stressful. It’s about creating.”

Schultz Reed nods emphatically—to her, this job is about her students as much as it is about her own creativity—and adds: “One of my older students was talking to a newcomer and said, ‘Oh, you’ll love it here! It’s like having a sewing class, but you get paid to do it.’” She laughs. “That’s how I feel. You get paid to sew, to learn and to have fun.”

Letter Box

October 25, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

02-letterbox Thank you for the faith focus of your summer 2016 issue. It is good to know that, just as in my day, people of faith are being helped by their Pomona education to deepen and integrate their received religious heritages into modern worldviews that will enable them to live creative and fruitful lives.

I do wish, however that the fine interview of Judge Halim Dhanidina had touched upon how his faith as an Ismaili Muslim has served him as a foundation for his commitment to providing equitable justice in these United States.

—The Rev. John-Otto Liljenstolpe ‘62
Seattle, Wash.

***

I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed the summer issue. I was a religious studies major at Pomona (featured once myself when I brought a group of Tibetan monks to campus to create a sand mandala), and it was so much fun to read about students and their personal, spiritual and academic journeys. I particularly enjoyed reading about the young man in “The Calling”; he was very inspiring. Now I’m a practicing ob/gyn in a low-resource setting, and the “No Más” article also hit close to home. Well done; I really enjoyed it.

—Kristl Tomlin ’05
Phoenix, Ariz.

***

It is such an honor to have TWO letters from the Class of 1962 in the newest Pomona College Magazine’s “Letter Box” pages. You’ve made my classmates and me very happy.

However, there must have been some sort of glitch in the printing of the magazines sent to the 95120 zip code in San Jose, California. Pages 25 through 40 were missing from the center of the magazine. My San Jose friend from the Class of 1966 showed me her magazine, and it has the very same problems.

On the Class of 1962 listserv I asked my classmates if anyone else was missing magazine pages. Those who replied said that their magazines were fine. One of them, who had finished reading the magazine, mailed it to me, and I will share it with my San Jose friend. It has all of the correct pages and no duplicates.

I was glad to have the complete magazine. Look at what I would have missed:

The gorgeous two-page photo of the Pomona Glee Club singing at St. Peter’s in Rome—It bowled me over.

The photo of that “youngster,” Deborah Bial, founder of the Posse Foundation—I looked her up. Since 1989 she has identified promising students from urban backgrounds using alternative standards for predicting their success in college. The students are provided with extra support, and the program has an excellent graduation rate. In 2007 she won the MacArthur “genius” grant. In 2010 Barack Obama gave his Nobel Prize money to 10 charities, and the Posse Foundation was one of the 10.

The interview with Ashlee Vance, author of a book on Elon Musk—I found the book on Amazon and read several pages. Mr. Vance is a somewhat casual writer, but his stories held my interest. Elon Musk’s Tesla factory is just up the road from my San Jose house. Ordinarily, only customers who have purchased a Tesla can tour the factory, but a friend was able to get our group in. (I’m a Prius owner.) The tour was fascinating.

“Fireproof Ants”—What’s not to like about a title like that?

“Molecular Origami”—I didn’t realize that protein molecules folded and unfolded, and if they don’t fold properly, they make us sick.

Halim Dhanidina, Class of 1994, a judge in Long Beach, CA.—If I had to be in court, I’d want him for my judge.

“The Meaning of Emptiness”—Added to my continuing education about Buddhism.

Once again you have given us a splendid magazine. I’m thinking that most college magazines haven’t featured students wrestling with the religious practices with which they had grown up, trying to see if they fit with their college experience. So you’re breaking some new ground there. The photos accompanying those interviews are beautiful.

On page 19, I glanced casually at the photo of Bryan Stevenson and then suddenly realized that I was in the middle of reading his book, Just Mercy, as an assignment for my church women’s class. If the magazine had arrived a month earlier, I wouldn’t have known who he was. What a heart and a mission that man has.

At my 50th reunion we toured the two new dorms and I was charmed by the roof garden on one of them. The magazine shows the garden as a place for meditation (page 12) and as an opportunity to mentor local high school students (page 20).

So, congratulations on another “work of art” in magazine publishing. But let me know if you find out what went wrong with my missing and duplicate pages.

—Bonnie Home ’62
San Jose, Calif.

***

I always look forward to reading each issue of PCM. This last issue—summer 2016, “Keeping the Faith”—holds meaning for me. I thought it especially wonderful to see the Islamic student (Pomona ‘16) on the cover as well as to read what she has to say in the pages inside. I have always felt that all true religions are God-bearing in the light of human hearts. There is something else which spoke to me in particular—namely, her connection to nature. She writes of going up on top of Pomona Hall among birds and clouds. Much of my work as a poet (an Angelean lyric poet) is inseparable from nature-phenomena. So I am especially filled with gratitude for this issue.

—Alan Lindgren ’86
Culver City, Calif.

***

Correction

There was an error in my birth announcement in the most recent issue. My name is Daniel Jones, not David Jones. There was also a punctuation typo—an extraneous period between “and” and “Graeme.”

—Daniel Jones ‘04
Newton, Mass.

***

Alumni, parents and friends are invited to email letters to pcm@pomona.edu or “snail-mail” them to Pomona College Magazine, 550 North College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Letters may be edited for length, style and clarity.

The Oxtoby Years

October 25, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

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2003

The campus is alight on the October evening of Oxtoby’s inauguration as Pomona’s ninth president. Students welcome him from his previous job as dean of physical sciences at the University of Chicago with a party featuring a Chicago-style jazz band and a “Taste of Chicago” fare of hot dogs and deep-dish pizza. The next morning, Oxtoby leads a 10-mile bicycle ride with 40 cyclists, including faculty, students, staff and alumni.

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2004

The Richard C. Seaver Biology Laboratory is completed, providing state-of-the-art research and teaching labs for genetics, cell biology, neurobiology, plant and animal physiology and ecology. The building receives the College’s first LEED certification (silver) from the U.S. Green Building Council.

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2005

“47 Things Every Sagehen Should Do” challenges student to break out of the “Claremont Bubble” and explore the cultural institutions, outdoor recreation opportunities and other resources of Southern California.

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2006

The College’s student-built Organic Farm becomes an official part of campus and part of the Environmental Analysis Program, which offers its first Farms and Gardens class.

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2007

Pomona dedicates the new Lincoln and Edmunds halls, housing the departments of Psychology, Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Computer Science, Geology and Environmental Analysis, as well as three intercollegiate programs—Asian American Studies, Black Studies and Chicano/a Studies. The buildings receive LEED gold certification. In the courtyard, Pomona’s newest work of public art is completed. The LA Times calls “Dividing the Light” (below), a Skyspace by James Turrell ’65, “one of the best works of public art in recent memory.”

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2008

The stock market crash marks the beginning of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and Pomona’s endowment tumbles by about 25 percent. The College freezes salaries and institutes other belt-tightening measures but actually increases funding for financial aid to assist students affected by the events. The College also reaffirms its decision, announced earlier in the year, to no longer include loans in financial aid packages.

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2009

The Office of Community Programs is renamed the Draper Center for Community Partnerships, with plans to expand educational and community outreach, including the College’s long-term commitment to the Pomona College Academy for Youth Success (PAYS).

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2010

The College publicly launches Campaign Pomona: Daring Minds, setting a goal of $250 million. The five-year campaign focuses on raising funds for four main areas: increasing endowed scholarship aid, enhancing teaching and learning, improving critical facilities, and expanding the Annual Fund. Five years later, the campaign closes with more than $316 million raised. (At right, Stewart Smith ’68, one of the campaign co-chairs, at the campaign launch)

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2011

Sontag and Dialynas residence halls open on north campus. The halls, featuring suite-style apartments for about 150 students, are certified LEED Platinum, becoming the first college residence halls in California to achieve that rating and the second such project anywhere in the nation.

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2012

Oxtoby is among 180 influential artists, scientists, scholars, authors and institutional leaders who are inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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2013

Pomona is one of 22 colleges in the country named to The Princeton Review 2014 Green Honor Roll for earning the highest possible score based on its environmentally related practices, policies and academic offerings.

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2014

The College celebrates the opening of its new Studio Art Hall with performances, art activities and installations. The hall replaces Rembrandt Hall, doubling the space for painting, drawing, sculpture, digital arts and photography. The following year, the Studio Art Hall receives LEED Gold certification.

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2015

Founders Day marks the dedication of the rebuilt Millikan Laboratory and renovated Andrew Science Hall with an afternoon of family-oriented events and activities. The Millikan and Andrew buildings, which house the Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy departments, are certified LEED Platinum.

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2016

Plans are announced for a new Pomona College Museum of Art as part of the College’s proposed master plan.

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