A Final Farewell for Pomona’s Ambassador of Kabuki

A memorial conference in honor of Leonard Pronko, a beloved member of the Pomona College faculty for 57 years and one of America’s leading experts on kabuki, is planned for April 1-3.

The weekend will feature an academic conference on Japanese theatre and performance as well as three performances of kabuki in English on the Seaver Theatre mainstage. Both the conference and the production are open to the public free of charge. The fully staged, English-language production of Gohiki Kanjinchō (Great Favorite Subscription List), one of kabuki’s most beloved plays, will be at 8 p.m. on April 1-2 and at 2 p.m. on April 3.

The weekend will conclude with a memorial service and reception in honor of Pronko at 10 a.m. on April 3 before the final kabuki performance that afternoon.

The scholarly gathering—Tradition and Innovation in Japanese Theatre: A Conference in Honor of Leonard C. Pronko—is planned as a hybrid event on Zoom and in person. It will feature presentations of papers by international scholars, with special support for younger scholars and graduate students in honor of the lifelong commitment to mentoring students demonstrated by Pronko, who died in 2019. In addition, the conference includes a special, live lecture demonstration by members of the Fujima Kansuma Kai Japanese Dance Troupe.

The conference is led by Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei ’69, a professor emerita of theatre at UCLA who studied under Pronko as an undergraduate, Pomona Professor of Theatre Thomas Leabhart and Mark Diaz ’22, who was Pronko’s last kabuki student and will direct and perform in the Seaver Theatre production.

“Meeting Leonard and taking his classes literally changed my life,” Sorgenfrei says. “Leonard was without doubt the most brilliant and charismatic teacher I ever studied with. Before taking his class in Modern French Theatre, I knew nothing about Japanese performance, but he showed us how Japanese and other Asian theatres had transformed modern French theatre. After that, I wanted to learn everything I could about Japan.

“This conference is a very small way that many of us who admired, loved and learned from Leonard can pass on his passions. I sincerely hope that future generations of Pomona students will continue to have opportunities to be inspired by Japanese theatre. There will never be another Leonard Pronko, but hopefully, his legacy will live on.”

For more information, call (909) 621-8186.

A Winner of Prince William’s Earthshot Prizes

Gator Halpern ’12, who works to save the world’s coral forests, became one of the inaugural recipients of the Earthshot Prize, a global award for groundbreaking solutions to environmental challenges. The honor, presented by Britain’s Prince William and the Royal Foundation, includes £1 million prize money as well as a professional and technical network to scale up environmental solutions to repair our planet.

As president of the company Coral Vita, Halpern works with co-founder Sam Teicher from their base in the Bahamas to expand coral farming and reef restoration efforts in the face of global warming. By growing coral on land to replant in oceans, they work to give new life to dying ecosystems. The methods pioneered by Halpern and Teicher grow coral up to 50 times faster than traditional methods and improve resilience to climate change.

Five Earthshot Prize winners were selected for the first year of the awards. Halpern’s Coral Vita received the prize in the Revive Our Oceans category.

Halpern previously was recognized as one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs for 2018, sharing the distinction with Teicher. The two met while earning master’s degrees in environmental management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where they received Yale University’s first Green Innovation Fellowship.

Marshall Scholar

The desire to bridge disciplinary divides and write about disease are what led Nina Potischman ’21 to apply for the prestigious Marshall Scholarship, becoming Pomona’s latest recipient. She will spend two years in the United Kingdom pursuing graduate studies.

An English major, Potischman knew she wanted to eventually become a professor. But looking at American programs left her torn. Should she pursue her interest in creative writing through an MFA program or take the route of a Ph.D. in literary criticism? Looking at scholarships in the UK, she says she learned that the disciplinary divide between creative and critical writing was more distinctively American.

“Because creative writing programs in the UK predominantly emerged in the ’90s alongside the rise of theory, theory is more directly integrated into institutional practice. As a result, UK creative writing programs are more interdisciplinary than their American counterparts, less bound by institutional orthodoxy, and more open to integrating critical and literary writing,” Potischman says.

Potischman will spend her first year at University of Exeter and her second at University of Sussex and will build on her undergraduate research surrounding autoimmune illness.

“When I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis my sophomore year of college, I lost control of my body. Yet through writing—about my body, pain, taboo and food—I held onto my sense of self,” Potischman says.

After being hospitalized multiple times for a severe flare of her illness, she decided to combine writing about her experiences with literature focusing on autoimmunity. That work became her thesis, in which she explored how “chronic pain caused by an autoimmune disorder reconfigures prevailing models of self and body.” With the scholarship, Potischman plans to convert her thesis into a book-length piece of autotheory, a form of writing that combines autobiography and prose with theory.

The object below is a small bust of Viola Minor Westergaard, the wife of a professor and the only person from the Pomona College community known to have died in the 1918-1919 flu pandemic. Her parents made numerous gifts to the College in her memory, including this bust by artist Burt Johnson, kept on display in the Special Collections Reading Room of The Claremont Colleges Library.

Born in San Francisco, Viola Minor was the daughter of Danish immigrant Capt. Robert Minor, a pioneer of the Pacific shipping industry, and his wife Hansine. Viola married Waldemar Westergaard, a professor of history at Pomona, on August 21, 1917.

The couple lived in an apartment in Smiley Hall during their first year of marriage, on at least one occasion chaperoning a group of young men on an outing to nearby Live Oak Canyon. They later moved to a cottage on Ninth Street.

Much admired among what was once called the faculty circle, the young Mrs. Westergaard was described in contemporary accounts as someone of “choice spirit … with a genuine thoughtfulness of others.”

Although World War I ended in November 1918, a worldwide flu epidemic first identified in the U.S. among military personnel took hold, tempering the celebration. Unlike the early stages of the COVID pandemic, the virus often struck down the young and the fit.

On a Christmas visit to Northern California to visit her parents, Viola fell ill and died at her parents’ home in Alameda on January 7, 1919, at the age of 30 years, 11 months and 24 days. Hers was one of an estimated 675,000 U.S. deaths, a figure now surpassed by COVID.

Viola’s widower, Prof. Westergaard, moved on to UCLA in 1925 and taught there until 1949, specializing in Scandinavian and European history. He did not remarry until 1941 and died in 1963.

Viola’s parents made the first of many gifts to Pomona in her memory the year she died, a collection of valuable art books and pictures first kept in Rembrandt Hall.

They continued to contribute valuable items throughout their lives and Capt. Minor left $25,000—about $500,000 in today’s dollars—on his death in 1934, as did his wife in her will.

Nobel in Gold — While speaking on the phone with her sister, Sarah Doudna, Jennifer Doudna ’85 holds up the gold medallion stamped with the profile of Alfred Nobel that represents the Nobel Prize. The photo was taken on Dec. 8, 2020,following a presentation ceremony in Berkeley, California, during which Doudna officially received her 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Normally, Nobel recipients receive their awards in Stockholm, from the hand of the king of Sweden, but due to the pandemic, all presentations were made locally. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, Pool)

COVID Clinic — One of the many changes at Pomona during the pandemic is the creation of an on-campus clinic in Rembrandt Hall focusing on COVID-19 issues. The clinic, managed by Hamilton Health Box, is staffed by two nurses—Stephanie Garcia-Barragan (left), who oversees the new health protocols for people on campus, and her assistant, Sarai Sanchez-Salas (right). (Photo by Jeff Hing)

At the Museum — Titled “In Our Care: Institutional History in Material Form,” this exhibition is one of the first on display at the new Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College. The exhibition was curated by Sam Chan ’22, Noor Tamari ’22 and Kali Tindell-Griffin ’22 as a summer research project under the supervision and partnership of museum director Victoria Sancho Lobis and Claire Nettleton, academic curator. Though the pandemic has made in-person visits to the museum impossible, the staff has been able to offer virtual tours of the show, which will remain in place until July. (Photo by Jeff Hing)

Nice Kitty — No, that’s not someone’s pet tabby hiding in the brush near Bridges Auditorium or scampering across the campus green. It’s a bobcat, another example of the local wildlife that has found its way onto the Pomona College campus during the College’s yearlong closure. The photos were taken by a local resident, 12-year-old David Lonardi, who spotted the bobcat while trying out his new camera near campus.

Slowly, Cautiously, the Reopening Begins

More than a year after Pomona—like so many colleges across the country—was forced to evacuate and close its campus in the face of the growing pandemic, there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel.

After a devastating fall and winter surge, COVID-19 case counts dropped dramatically in Los Angeles County through late February and early March, even as the pace of vaccination accelerated, generating a spirit of optimism in the College community.

County officials agreed in the early spring to first steps toward a limited re-opening of some campus facilities. It began, naturally enough, with outdoor spaces. For students living off campus in reach of Claremont, Pomona made plans to open outdoor facilities for recreational sports activities and physical conditioning. Haldeman Pool, the Pauley Tennis Complex and Strehle Track were set to open for current students, faculty and staff under a reservation system, President G. Gabrielle Starr announced in late February.

Colleges in Los Angeles County were not permitted to bring students back to campus during the spring, and so remote learning continued to be the only show in town. But looking forward, Starr said, Pomona is planning enthusiastically for the full return of students in the fall, with in-person instruction and on-campus living. “The campus is ready,” she said. “We are ready.”

With the county taking a highly restrictive approach to in-person higher education amid much of the pandemic, Pomona has taken the lead in advocating for college students with county officials to work for a responsible return to campus. “The young people who will build our future need to be given greater priority,” said Starr.

By early March, the county was sending positive signals for the return of students to campus for summer programs, and vaccination for higher education workers had begun. Student Health Services received its first small allotment of vaccines in this period, and Pomona faculty and staff were encouraged to seek their shots through the massive county vaccination effort as soon as possible.

As the College reached a turning point in one of the most sweeping crises in its      history, Starr noted the need to stop and mourn for those who lost their lives in the pandemic. “For some of us, the shock of loss is something we are just beginning to feel, and even for those who have been grieving for months now, the pain is still too fresh. In many ways, we are just beginning to absorb what has happened.”

She noted how “so many of our students saw their lives turned upside down. They— and our entire extended Sagehen community—responded with perseverance, ingenuity and grace in the face of the direst world crisis of most of our lifetimes.”

Starr also said she looked forward to the time—not so far away now—when the entire Sagehen family could be back together on campus.

“We are moving full steam ahead for the return of in-person education and on-campus living in the fall,” said Starr, noting that safety protocols would need to be carefully followed. “We will push forward with our mission of providing the most compelling and complete liberal arts education in the world.”

Updates: pomona.edu/coronavirus

Construction Begins on New Athletic Center

Althought the pandemic caused a delay of several months, construction of a new athletics, recreation and wellness center finally got under way in February, with completion expected in time for the fall 2022 semester. The rebuilt and expanded facility is designed to replace the Rains Center for Sport and Recreation with an upgraded, up-to-date athletic facility while boosting health and wellness for all members of the Pomona community.

“The need for a revitalized center has been clear for years,” noted President G. Gabrielle Starr in an email to the campus community. “Last spring, however, as the pandemic forced the evacuation of students from campus, we decided to delay the start of construction in the face of the unfolding crisis. Moving forward this semester allows us to complete the most disruptive aspects of construction—demo- lition, grading and assembly of structural steel—at a time when few people will be on our campus. This will reduce the impact of noise, vibration, dust and truck traffic and also will reduce the costs of mitigation steps. When we return to normal operation in the fall, we can proceed with the less disruptive aspects of the work.”

By rebidding the project after the delay, the College was also able to negotiate reduced prices. At the same time, Starr said, the College has benefited from generous gifts that allowed the project to proceed without affecting Pomona’s operating budget. “We are incredibly grateful to Ranney ’60 and Priscilla Draper, Libby Gates MacPhee ’86, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the many other friends of Pomona whose early and generous partnership and support has allowed us to begin construction on this vital facility.”

In addition to supporting more than 450 varsity athletes, the new building will serve more than 900 intramural athletes, 550 club athletes and student physical education classes and accommodate fitness and recreation programming for students, faculty and staff for both colleges.

The new center will include a larger recreational fitness area, with additional space for cardio workouts. Studio space available for fitness classes will be doubled. In addition to a general-use weight room, there will be a dedicated varsity weight room. Locker rooms will be redesigned to provide sufficient space for the groups that use them, with separate facilities for faculty and staff in addition to varsity teams.

The men’s and women’s varsity basketball teams and the women’s varsity volleyball team will continue to play in the facility, with Voelkel Gym remaining largely intact and a new two-court practice and recreational gym added above the fitness area. Plans also include athletic training and equipment storage areas, three new team meeting rooms and individual offices for coaches and administrative staff.