Pomoniana

How Classes Are Born

POMONA OFFERS MORE than 600 classes in 47 majors, and each year new courses are born. Here’s a look at the origins of seven of the newest:

1) Behaviorial Economics (Professor of Economics John Clithero ’05) was added by popular student demand. It explores a growing subfield that attempts to incorporate more psychologically plausible assumptions into the traditional economic model of “unbounded rationality.”

PCM-winter2015-48_Page_05_Image_00042) Laughing Matters (Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Jose Cartagena-Calderón) grew out of the professor’s research into the meaning and value of humor in Hispanic literature and art.

3) Anthropology of Food (Professor of Anthropology Drew Gladney) explores food and culture with special attention to food taboos and security issues. The course was born out of a discussion of California’s ban on foie gras in an Introduction to Anthropology class.

4) Genes and Behavior (Professor of Neuroscience Elizabeth Glater) originated in a conference the professor attended that focused on the gap between what the public believes and what studies have shown about the dominant influence of genes on behavior. The class examines the science behind the fundamental question of “nature vs. nurture.”

5) The Science of Empire (Professor Pey-Yi Chu) explores the history of science in connection with the expansion of European empires. The class grew out of a book Chu is writing on the history of frozen earth and permafrost research in Russia and the Soviet Union.PCM-winter2015-48_Page_05_Image_0005

6) Surveillance and the Media (Professor of Media Studies Mark Andrejevic) was created in the wake of recent revelations about the NSA and increasingly intrusive technologies of surveillance. Originating in the professor’s writings, it examines “how the media in which we are immersed double as tools for monitoring and surveillance.”

7) Disability Studies (Hentyle Yapp, Mellon Chau Post-Doctoral Fellow in Gender and Women’s Studies) was formed to examine the changing definitions and approaches to the concept of disability and related areas of activism as part of Pomona’s emphasis on Dynamics of Difference and Power.

Rocking Studio Art

A SELECTION OF interesting rocks placed in the courtyard of the new Studio Art Hall will serve as instructional tools, artistic inspiration—and occasional outdoor seating.PCM-winter2015-48_Page_05_Image_0006

The idea came from Art Professor Michael O’Malley and Geology Professors Bob Gaines and Jade Star Lackey. Original plans calling for the placement of some generic granite stones were replaced by a more eclectic arrangement of rocks as a way to enliven the building’s stark open spaces, inspire young artists and bring in other disciplines. The Geology Department plans to use the rocks as teaching tools in introductory courses.

“Artists draw inspiration and knowledge from all sources,” says O’Malley. “As a sculptor, I love learning about stones and the fascinating stories behind them. The art faculty hopes that the building draws students from across the campus, and we saw the stones as a device to create a more complex community.”

Standouts among the stones include a brilliant sheet of green quartzite from Utah and a dazzling marble boulderin its raw, unpolished form. One rock, a checkered block of granite, even has a strong connection to the L.A. art world, having been discovered in the same Riverside quarry as Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass installation at LACMA.

The Mystery of 47

“To the uninitiated, 47 is a mystery. To knowledgeable Pomona Sagehens, 47 is dogma. To sociologists, 47 is a prime example of a minor piece of whimsy that somehow developed into a legend of mythical proportions…”
—Pomona Student Handbook, 1985-86

In 1964, a tongue-in-cheek student project to determine whether the number 47 appeared more often in nature than other random numbers turned into a wholesale 47 hunt that has continued to this day and is even celebrated at Pomona on April 7.

After all, you can’t deny the evidence:

  • Pomona College is located at Exit 47 of the San Bernardino Freeway.
  • There are 47 pipes in the top row of the Lyman Hall organ.
  • At the time of Pomona’s first graduating class in 1894, there were 47 students enrolled.
  • The Bible credits Jesus with 47 miracles.
  • The Declaration of Independence has 47 sentences.
  • There are 47 strings on a concert harp.
  • In the freshman class that entered Pomona College in the year 2000, there were 47 valedictorians.
  • The tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are located 47 degrees apart.

Even Hollywood has gotten in on the act. From art films to sci-fi to Will Ferrell vehicles, Pomona’s enduring in-joke has slipped past countless millions of movie-goers and tube-watchers in recent years. On TV’s Lost, 47 people survive the plane crash. In The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Steve Carell keeps a collection of 47 G.I. Joes. Watch Monsters Inc. closely and you’ll spot an “Accident Free for 47 Days” sign on the Scare Factory floor. The 2009 blockbuster reboot of Star Trek alludes to 47 Klingon vessels being destroyed. There is even a much-viewed YouTube spoof of Jim Carrey’s The Number 23, substituting—you guessed it–the No. 47.

It goes as far back as the The Absent-minded Professor (1961). The Disney comedy features a basketball game filmed at Pomona’s old Renwick Gym. The final score? 47-46.

The recent spate of number-dropping started in the ’90s in earlier incarnations of Star Trek. Joe Menosky ’79 was a writer for The Next Generation (and later Voyager and Deep Space Nine) when he started slipping 47s into the shows. A producer eventually got wind and shut down the underground effort. But 47 keeps popping up in all sorts of shows.

If Menosky has moved on, how come our secret number keeps landing bit parts time and again? Is our 47 tradition at risk of overexposure? There’s no getting a straight answer out of Tinseltown on this sort of stuff, so—in a playful spirit—we turned to graphic novel artist Andrew Mitchell ’89 in our Fall 2009 issue of Pomona College Magazine for a creative take on the mystery (page 22 of the PDF).

Top 5: Campus Creatures

Animal sightings on campus are certainly not rare, (although being one of few to witness a hawk scooping up an unsuspecting squirrel may be). Grounds Manager Ronald Nemo shared this list of Pomona’s most common animal visitors, noting that recent conservation efforts have brought much wildlife back to the 40-acre Wash. Close runner-ups include rabbits, which are hunted by coyotes living in the Wash, and opossums.

However, the rustic east side of campus isn’t the only place frequented by wildlife. According to Nemo, Red-tailed hawks nest in the pine trees between Harwood and Wig residence halls, barn owls can be found living near Bridges Auditorium, and raccoon families hunker down in the storm drains. And of course, there’s nowhere on campus where friendly-tree squirrels—gray or red—can’t be found.

coyoteTop 5:

1) Western Gray and American Red Tree Squirrels

2) Raccoons

3) Red-tailed Hawks

4) Barn Owls

5) Coyotes

The Atomic Art of Millikan Hall

milliikanatom

Aging Millikan Hall, built at the dawn of the Space Age, is being torn down and rebuilt to state-of-the-art standards over the next two years. But the iconic atomic artwork on the west facade of the building will be preserved and prominently displayed on the new building.

atomsideviewCommissioned for Pomona College’s new math, physics and astronomy lab back in 1958, the bronze atom sculpture facing College Avenue was designed by noted sculptor Albert Stewart, whose work adorns civic buildings nationwide, including the U.S. Mint in San Francisco. Before his death in 1965, Stewart created counterparts for the atom for the facades of Seaver North and South, with an image of cell division for biology and an array of particles for chemistry.

Stewart got his start in the 1930s as an artist for the Depression-era Works Progress Administration. In 1939, he was named a professor of fine arts at Scripps College, and he soon figured in a group of prominent regional artists that included Sam Maloof and Millard Sheets. Stewart also designed and donated the Pegasus relief on Stover Walk, (though Steve Comba, associate director of the Pomona College Museum of Art, points out that the current piece is a recast from the original, apparently stolen back in the ’70s).

Today the atom sculpture on Millikan holds up better as art than as science. Professor of Physics and Astronomy Alma Zook ’72 calls it a “not-very-accurate representation of a lithium atom.”  With our present understanding of the atomic and subatomic worlds, the three electrons circling on the atom’s fringes would be more properly depicted as a dispersed cloud, rather than the classical image of a series of orbits, like planets rotating around a sun.

Nonetheless, as Zook herself notes, the design makes for a “nice threefold symmetry.” And once the new Millikan is built, the atom artwork will be returned to its rightful place over Millikan’s doorway to College Avenue as a “historical nod to the original construction,” says Andrea Ramella, project manager for the new building.

Read more here about the Millikan project.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Rulers

Isolated golden crownCoolest name for a college band: The Inland Emperors. The group formed last fall, and Wes Haas ’15 and Lee Owens-Oas ’15 came up with the moniker during their Physics with Music class. As Haas explains, they were talking about how they now live in the Inland Empire and wondering whether anyone’s ever thought whether “there’s an emperor of the place” and—voilà—the band, which includes three more Sagehens, had its name. What do they play? “Loud rock music,” says Haas. Gigs so far have mostly been on campus, but with a name like that, we’re sure their reign will someday reach all the way to Riverside.

Sweet deal: O.J. flows from alumnus’ old grove

The O.J. flowing in campus dining halls these days doesn’t come from frozen concentrate, nor was it born thousands of miles away in Florida.

Instead, three times a week for much of the school year, John Adams ’66 sends to campus a load of 1,500 lbs. of Valencia oranges grown in his century-old family grove, the last of its kind in the city of Rialto, 25 miles east of Claremont.

For the College, the deal offers a chance to serve local produce and provide healthier food—previous juice concoctions contained corn syrup and food coloring. For Adams, it provides a stream of income to plant new trees.

So Adams is leaving some of the Valencias—typically picked in summer—on the trees longer and longer, which only adds to their sugar content. Then, it’s into the dining-hall juicers.

While the oranges Adams provides from his grove aren’t the prettiest-looking, they sure are sweet. “They’re so much better than the large, perfect oranges in the stores,” says Adams, who this spring is also growing veggies for the College.

Gone country

Trees, Ph.D.s and … country? Claremont is a long way from Nashville, but this school year brings two country superstars to Bridges Auditorium, with new-fangled sensation Taylor Swift having performed in the fall and old-timer Willie Nelson here tonight. That inspired us to do some digging and discover that over the years, a surprising number of country croonersfrom Larry Gatlin to Linda Ronstadt to Johnny Cash—have played Pomona. But the College’s greatest country-western moment so far brought two legends on the same day in 1973 when Kris Kristofferson ’58, accompanied by his good friend Cash, came to campus to receive an honorary doctor of fine arts degree.

Myrlie Evers-Williams at Pomona

With the announcement this week that Myrlie Evers-Williams ’68 will give the invocation at President Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 21, it’s worth taking a look back at her time in Claremont.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of her husband, civil rights activist Medgar Evers, who was shot in the back outside their Jackson, Miss., home on the morning of June 12, 1963, while Myrlie and their three children were inside.

The next year, Evers-Williams decided to move to Claremont, as she recounted in a 1965 piece for Ebony magazine titled “Why I Left Mississippi.” In that piece, she wrote that she found purpose in speaking engagements, but was like the “walking dead” when she returned to her house and the memories. Ultimately, it was the welfare of her children, particularly her oldest son who was nine at the time, that prompted the move:

“They were awake that terrible night, and heard the thunderous roar of the death shot. They saw their father lying in a scarlet pool of blood as his life ebbed away,” she wrote. “… So it was that in the spring of 1964, while on a speaking engagement in California, I asked friends to ‘look around’ for a house for me.”

She chose Claremont, Evers-Williams wrote, for the college town atmosphere, and more specifically because it was home to Pomona College, where she enrolled. Her time in Claremont received widespread media attention — in 1965 alone her life here was featured in Look, Good Housekeeping and in the Ebony magazine cover story, as the Claremont Courier noted in a story about the stories.

Evers-Williams told Look that she had to wake at 3 a.m. to juggle the demands of school, raising kids and writing down her memories of Medgar. “Someone asked me what I wanted for Christmas,” she told the magazine. “I told them: a secretary.”

While still a Pomona student, Evers-Williams wrote a book (with Peter Williams), For Us, the Living. After graduating in sociology in 1968, Evers worked for several years at The Claremont Colleges, starting at the new Center for Educational Opportunity. In 1970, she ran for Congress as a Democrat, losing in the largely Republican district that included Claremont.

She went on to work for ARCO as national director of community affairs, served as a commissioner on the Los Angeles Board of Public Works and, in 1995, she was elected chair of the NAACP’s national board of directors. The next year, Pomona College awarded her an honorary degree and she delivered the Commencement address in Bridges Auditorium, where she had graduated nearly three decades earlier.

Mobile Home

Replica House, originally built to hold onto the College’s history, has hit the road. Late last night, the quaint cottage was moved off campus to make way for construction of the new Studio Art Center. (Student photographer Bryan Matsumoto captured the home’s move in the pictures at bottom and top; the older photo is from the Honnold Library collection).

Conceived in 1937 at the College’s 50th anniversary, the house is a two-thirds scale look-alike of Ayer Cottage in the city of Pomona, where the College held its first classes in the spring of 1887.

The College had attempted to buy that original home at White Avenue and Fifth Street, but when the price was wrong, trustees went for a replica that would serve as a mini-museum of Pomona memorabilia.

In the ’50s, the house became home for KSPC. Then, for construction of Oldenborg in the ’60s, the house was moved from College Way and Fourth Street to land near Brackett Observatory. Now, with construction set to begin for the art building, Replica House is being relocated to private property in north Claremont. And, no, there will not be a replica Replica House.