Andrew Hong ’13 wants you to start tinkering. As Public Programs Coordinator for the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Mass., Hong works to shine a light on the university’s high-tech research break throughs while bringing science education to local communities. Along the way, he’s found an outlet for his passion for getting people to engage with new technology and making the field of science less intimidating and more accessible for everyone.

INNOVATION MEETS EDUCATION

At MIT, Hong organizes programs designed to demystify research and create a “public face” for the institution. To draw in children and families, the museum offers interactive discussions with MIT scientists who share their latest experiments and discoveries, from projects like creating new prosthetic body parts to designing better solar-powered lighting. Other events are geared more to an older crowd, like a program called “Drinkable Science” that explains the physics and chemistry behind the trendy art of mixology. The idea is to “sneak science into fun, everyday topics,” Hong explains.

A key mission of the museum is encouraging people to reconsider their assumptions that a certain technology or concept might be too complicated to understand. Hong tries to make visitors feel more confident about their abilities by giving them a taste of the trial-and-error process that engineers and scientists wrestle with every day. “We structure our activities with failure built in,” he says.

“There’s an expectation that you’re not going to get it right the first time.”

DELVING INTO DESIGN

One of Hong’s favorite projects has been creating a new design and engineering space called the Idea Hub, where  museum-goers can experiment with unfamiliar tools and learn skills like computer programming. Visitors do hands-on activities like assembling electronic circuits and creating art with 3D printers. “Our goal is to teach people—to give people this hands-on experience—so that they feel empowered to engage with technology in the future.”

Hong has been building up his own expertise by taking advantage of the resources he’s found in Cambridge. The job gives him access to courses at MIT, where his assignments include tasks like programming 3D printers to generate artistic designs and models. “Since getting here, it’s just been a constant crash course in how to build things and how to tinker,” he says.

By expanding his knowledge, Hong says he’s been inspired to get others excited about tinkering. “It feeds back into my desire to show people that you can do this stuff. I’m a walking example of someone who didn’t have a background in this field, and now is competent enough to teach people creative problem-solving and the design process.”

FINDING HIS FIT

A neuroscience major at Pomona, Hong was always fascinated with the sciences, but didn’t picture himself as a teacher or researcher. After sophomore year he began to chart his own path, starting with a SURP project at Professor of Art Mark Allen’s L.A. nonprofit, Machine Project, where he was exposed to the idea of learning about technology through the use of art and creativity. The next summer he landed an internship funded by the Career Development Office at the  Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco, known for its participatory exhibits.

His experience in Cambridge has given Hong a clearer vision for the future. His ultimate goal is to design educational technologies for the museum field, like the kind he uses every day in his work. Wherever he ends up, Hong says he will keep following his personal career philosophy, inspired by the advice of Pomona neuroscience professor Rachel Levin.

“Her advice to me was, ‘Get really good at something you love, and convince someone that they need you.’”

Blaisdell Distinguished Alumni Awards for 2014

The Blaisdell Distinguished Alumni Award honors alumni for achievement in their professions or community service, particularly those who have lived up to the quotation from James A. Blaisdell which is inscribed into the gates of the College: “They only are loyal to this college who departing bear their added riches in trust for mankind.” This year, there are three winners:

Ifeanyi “Tony” Menkiti’64 taught philosophy at Wellesley College for 40 years and is the author off our collections of poetry: Before a Common Soil (2007), Of Altair, the Bright Light (2005), The Jubilation of Falling Bodies (1978), and Affirmations (1971). He is the owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square, the nation’s oldest continuous all-poetry bookshop.

Born in Onitsha, Nigeria, he came to Pomona in 1961 on the ASPAU program (African Scholar-ship Program of American Universities). After Pomona, he attended Columbia University Pulitzer School of Journalism, New York University and Harvard University. In 1975, he received a fellowship in poetry from the Massachusetts State Council on the Arts and Humanities, followed in 1978 by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition to his collections, his poems have appeared in Sewanee Review, Ploughshares, New Directions, The Massachusetts Review and other publications.

In 1996, he received the Pinanski Prize for Excellence in Teaching from Wellesley College.

Joe Palca’74 has been a science correspondent for National Public Radio since 1992. He has covered a range of topics, from biomedical research to astronomy, and is currently focused on the series, Joe’s Big Idea, which explores the minds and motivations of scientists and inventors.

Palca began his career in 1982 as a health producer for the CBS affiliate in Washington,D.C. In 1986, he began a seven-year stint as a print journalist, first with Nature and then with Science Magazine. In 2009, he took a six-month leave from NPR to become science writer in residence at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.

Palca has won numerous awards for his work,including the National Academies Communications Award, the Science-in-Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Prize. With Flora Lichtman, Palca is the co-author of Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us (Wiley, 2011).

A psychology major at Pomona, he later earned both an M.S. and a Ph.D. in psychology at UC Santa Cruz, where he studied human sleep physiology.

Rip Rapson’74 is president and CEO of The Kresge Foundation, a national, private foundation based in Detroit. Since 2006, he has led Kresge in developing programs in arts and culture, education, environment, health,human services and the renewal of Detroit, distributing approximately $150 million annually.

Rapson was a political science major at Pomona, graduating magna cum laude. After at-tending Columbia Law School, he joined the Minneapolis law firm of Leonard, Street and Deinard. He was recruited in 1989 to become the deputy mayor of Minneapolis under Mayor Don Fraser, and was primary architect of the pioneering Neighborhood Revitalization program, a 20-year, $400 million effort to strengthen Minneapolis neighborhoods.

Prior to joining Kresge, Rapson was president of the Minnesota-based McKnight Foundation and also launched the Itasca Project, a private sector-led effort to develop a new regional agenda fort he Twin Cities.

He is the author of two books: Troubled Waters, a chronicle of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act legislation, and Ralph Rap-son: Sixty Years of Modern Design, a biography of his father, a renowned architect.Inspirational Young Alumni Award Lt.

Inspirational Young Alumni Award

Francine Segovia’04, a U.S. Navy Reserve research psychologist at the Robert E.Mitchell Center for Prisoner of War Studies, assists survivors recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She is part of a team of scientists and medical specialists examining how optimism and resilience may boost the health of extreme trauma victims.

Segovia, who will return to active-duty service at the U.S. Naval Medical Center in San Diego, attributes her research skills to experience she gained while at Pomona, including participation in the Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP). “The critical thinking skills graduates from an institution like Pomona possess have a direct impact on all your work moving forward,” she says. “These skills have helped me tremendously as I navigated my career.”

Sociologist Nicki Lisa Cole ’02 carries around an accordion file stuffed with empty, flattened coffee bags she has collected from cafes across the U.S. over the last several years. Each item in her collection, begun when a package of coffee at Starbucks caught her eye, bears imagery or prose that hints at the ethical considerations behind the beans’ journey across the world and into your cup.

As the labels pile up, it’s a lot of information for Cole to parse. And so it is for everyday coffee-drinkers as well. With so many coffee-with-a-conscience practices operating—fair trade, direct trade, organic, shade grown, bird friendly—understanding the different approaches to ethically-sourced coffee, each with pros and cons, would seem to require pursuing dissertation-level research on the topic.

Cole did just that. She became so fascinated with the messages being sent to consumers about ethically marketed or produced coffee that the issue came to drive her doctoral research. Now a lecturer in sociology at Pomona, Cole writes blog posts (21centurynomad. com) on coffee sourcing that are broadly followed, and her expertise has been sought by The Nation, Conducive Magazine and others.

As part of her Ph.D. research, Cole queried 230 coffee drinkers, all of whom identified themselves as regular consumers of some kind of ethically-produced coffee. “Uniformly, people have a very vague, surface-level knowledge of what’s going on,” says Cole. “They tend to recognize the fair trade label, for instance, and know it stands for something good, but most have not done much research.”

With this hazy awareness, the heart of the matter can get lost. Cole wants to remind us why ethical sourcing for coffee is necessary. The reasons include historically low prices that make life a struggle for small producers, fluctuating prices because coffee is traded on the commodities market and price gouging of small producers by large transnational buyers.

So what can coffee drinkers do?

No system is perfect, but Cole says ethical coffee practices do, in fact, make some positive differences around the world. And so her one cup of coffee and one double espresso per day is always fair trade or direct trade. “While I have critiques of all the models out there, I always advocate for picking one that resonates with you and going with it, because it’s better than not,” she says.

The first step: “Ask about the coffee where you buy it: What are the sourcing practices behind this coffee?” Cole says.

The café or coffee shop owner might tell you that they import fair trade certified coffee because they value how the higher price supports community development, or that the certification standards require environmental practices such as minimized use of agrochemicals and water-conserving irrigation systems. Or, you might learn that they happily pay an even higher cost for direct trade coffee (also “relationship coffee”), purchased directly from a grower they trust, as opposed to a cooperative of producers, like in fair trade.

And if they clam up?

“If they can’t tell you what their sourcing practices are, that’s generally a bad sign. It’s probably not the place to get your coffee,” says Cole, a Pomona sociology major who earned her Ph.D. in the same field from UC Santa Barbara. “Most people in the industry who are using some sort of ethical sourcing are proud ofdoing that and want to share that with you.”

Cole points to the transparency of Portland-based Stumptown Coffee Roasters, which practices the direct-trade approach. “They claim ‘our books are open,’” Cole says. Want to learn exactly what price was paid to what producer practicing what methods? You got it.

But even if your coffee vendor provides evidence of ethical sourcing practices, how do you know which system is best? Cole says that depends on what you value. For example, fair trade certification requires a premium be paid on top of the minimum price per pound, which is then used to help workers, farmers and their families through such projects as school improvements, student scholarship provisions or the establishment and maintenance of healthcare clinics. The direct trade model does not provide for this kind of community betterment, according to Cole.

On the other hand, Cole notes, the democratic structure of fair trade cooperatives, where leadership constantly rotates, makes it difficult for buyers to nurture long-term, trusting relationships with producers. Since direct-trade buyers work directly with producers instead of cooperatives, it’s possible to cultivate close, symbiotic relationships in which both parties benefit—buyers pay a higher price for the assurance of high quality coffee, which in turn affords growers a higher level of economic stability.

Also worth considering is Fair Trade USA’s 2012 split from Fair Trade International for the explicit purpose of including large-scale plantations in the fair trade system. When the decision was made, Cole stirred up quite a bit of discussion by declaring “Fair Trade is dead” on her blog, referring to the ramifications of this decision. She still has plenty to say on the matter: “I fear that it’s very bad for small producers, squeezing them out of a market that was supposed to be a fair market.”

Fair Trade U.S.A.officials have defended the move as a way to benefit more farmers and workers, and to allow more consumers to buy Fair Trade products. Cole, though, says there is not nearly enough of a market to support current fair trade coffee production, so adding larger plantations will harm existing fair trade producers.

True to her small-is-good approach, Cole frequents the independent Last Drop Café, located in the Claremont Village just a block or two from campus. “We usually talk about coffee, and it’s been interesting learning about her opinions and insights,” says owner Mike Manning. “Her students have definitely learned a lot from her.”

One thing you might be surprised to learn about Cole, considering the depth of her knowledge and the hundreds of coffee shops she’s visited over the years: She is not a voracious coffee drinker. She is definitely a fan, but has reduced her consumption in consideration of the intense physical efforts that go into cultivating, harvesting and processing coffee beans.

Cole says choosing the higher-priced fair or direct trade coffee, but consuming less coffee overall, is one way to make a difference: “If we change our orientation to the value of goods and to respecting the labor that goes into them, paying a truly fair and just price for those goods, we would see different conditions.”

Starting this June, Nikki Becich ’13 launched into a year-long journey to pursue her passion for conservation medicine. Over the summer, Becich cared for injured birds at the hospital of the National Aviary, before venturing out on a career-building trip to work and learn at wildlife centers throughout Latin America.

FINDING HER PASSION
Becich had several jobs and internships in zoo and avian medicine under her belt by the time she graduated. She knew she wanted more experience, and found a great match in the National Aviary, an indoor zoo home to more than 500 birds in Pittsburgh, Penn., and where she first volunteered in middle school.

At the Aviary, Becich worked with the center’s two veterinarians as a hospital intern. She helped them with surgeries, medications and daily caretaking, looking after birds brought in from the wild along with the zoo’s regular residents on exhibit.

Becich went into the internship with a focus on treating captive animals, particularly species that are endangered or extinct in the wild. Looking back, she says the experience inspired her to consider the bigger issue of environmental protection.

GETTING THE BIG PICTURE
Knowing she needed more hands-on training, Becich spent part of her senior year mapping out a trip to practice wildlife care at nature preserves in Central and South America. After graduation, she set off.

“I planned out the trip to apply for the Watson Fellowship, and when I didn`t get that, I decided to blow my savings and do it anyway, because it`s incredibly important for my future career to work and learn abroad,” she explains.

Becich started the first leg of her trek in September as a volunteer at an ecological center in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador. She also is pitching in at Bioparque Amaru Zoo, developing preventative medicine protocols for a new veterinary clinic. In coming months she will intern at wildlife sanctuaries in Peru and Guatemala, helping to rehabilitate injured animals and promote local conservation projects. Becich says her connections from earlier programs were essential in helping her network and make contacts overseas.

She aims to learn first-hand how communities and organizations in the region are coping with threats like oil drilling, which, she says, can contribute to pollution and deforestation. “Meeting real people and seeing for myself what is happening has been extremely informative, but an emotional roller coaster,” Becich says, speaking from Ecuador. “What’s encouraging to see is how there is still protected forest here. We have time. We need serious action, though, and fast, if it`s going to survive.”

THE PATH FROM POMONA
A biology major, Becich mentions Professor Nina Karnovsky as an important mentor who “encouraged me to pursue my love for birds and go after work in conservation.“ She also points to the influence of her semester abroad in a tropical ecology program in Costa Rica, which shifted her focus toward environmental protection.

At Pomona, Becich explored her interests in other parts of the community. She got involved in caring for chickens at the Organic Farm, even raising a few chicks in her dorm in Harwood one year until they were ready to join the flock.

Becich is already looking ahead to her vision of combining medical practice with international research in ecology, with plans to attend veterinary school in the U.S. “I really came into my life’s passion this summer. I am so excited to be here doing what I am doing, and I am so grateful to Pomona for helping to get me there.”

Brenda Peirce Barnett ’92
Lives in: Carlsbad, Calif.
Education: Barnett majored in psychology at Pomona and has since taken classes in nutrition and wellness.
Career: Barnett is currently focused on raising her two girls. She spends her free time playing tennis and occasionally finds time to teach tennis to elementary aged children.
Alumni involvement: Barnett has been involved in the planning of her class reunions, as both a fundraiser and event organizer. On the tennis team during her Pomona days, she has worked closely with athletics staff to organize events for Sagehen tennis alumni. She also has served as an Alumni Council representative. Community involvement: Barnett serves as a volunteer in her local elementary school’s parent teacher organization. She recently stepped down from the executive board, and has served as art docent coordinator, treasurer and president.

Paul Farmer ’92
Lives in: Salinas, Calif.
Education: Farmer majored in economics and spent a semester studying abroad in Ecuador. He served as an ASPC senator during his senior year and worked for the Harvey Mudd College Upward Bound program during all four years at Pomona. After graduation, Paul spent a year traveling in South America with Mel Ramos ’95. Career: Farmer has lived and worked in Puerto Rico and Mexico City. He also has worked in Silicon Valley (for Intel and a dotcom), and founded a local computer training company in 2002 which is still in operation. Since 2012, he has been the CEO of the Salinas Valley Chamber of Commerce.
Community involvement: Farmer has volunteered for many local organizations, and served as the state president for the California Jaycees, a nonprofit leadership training and civic organization for young professionals.

Peggy Schuler Olson ’61
Lives in: San Marino, Calif.
Education: Olson majored in psychology at Pomona. She was in the Mortar Board honor society, and was a four year member of the Women’s Glee Club. She also served terms as director and moderator for the Associated College church choir. She is married to Marty Olson ’60.
Career: Olson has worked as a vocal soloist in Presbyterian and Christian Scientist churches.
Alumni involvement: Olson has served a term on the Alumni Council, and has been a committee and fundraising chair for several of her alumni class reunions.
Community involvement: She has volunteered as a member of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Committee for the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra. Olson has served a term as the president of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, Los Angeles (PFLAG-LA) and her local PTA, where she was a long-time member and volunteer. She has also been involved in musical theatre, playing the lead in a number of musical productions in the South Bay area of Southern California.

Bruce Prestwich ’55
Lives in: Prestwich was born in Idaho and raised in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Calif. He lived in the greater Los Angeles area, the Bay Area and Carlsbad, Calif., before recently moving to Mt. San Antonio Gardens in Pomona.
Education: B.A., economics, Pomona College. Prestwich sang in Men’s Glee Club for four years, serving as the club’s business manager. Along with playing on the football team, he also served as President of Ghosts. Prestwich was named to the Sagehen Athletic Hall of Fame in 1975. He met his wife, Carolyn Tranquada Prestwich ’54, at Pomona.
Career: Worked in sales and marketing management for IBM in aerospace and public sectors.
Alumni involvement: He served on the Alumni Council and as an alumni area representative, and has been involved in fundraising for the College over the years. He has also interviewed prospective students for admissions as an alumni representative.

Roger Reinke ’51
Lives in: Tustin, Calif.
Education: A physical education major at Pomona, Reinke went on to earn an M.A. in education from Claremont Graduate University. At Pomona he served as vice president of the Associated Male Students and was a member of Ghosts, the service honor society, and Kappa Delta fraternity. He also played football and ran track. He is married to Joyce Reinke ’51.
Career: Reinke served as an officer in the U.S. Navy from 1953 to 1956. He spent 34 years in elementary education as a teacher and administrator in Anaheim, Calif.
Alumni involvement: In 1956, Reinke was selected for the Pomona Athletic Hall of Fame in football and track and was a member of the Athletic Hall of Fame selection committee for several years. He served as an alumni rep in fundraising efforts for the Robert Strehle ’19 and Earl “Fuzz” Merritt ’25 Fund. His eldest son, Don, graduated from Pomona in 1980, and his grandson, Jim, is in the Class of 2014.
Community involvement: Reinke has volunteered as a naturalist with the Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve, where he taught new volunteers about the botany of the bay. His hobbies include nature photography.