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Milestones

Returning to the World

Nyhavn, Copenhagen, Denmark

Nyhavn, Copenhagen, Denmark

For the first time in its 75-year history, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program last year suspended all research fellowships and teaching assistantships due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now the program is back in operation, and these are Pomona College recipients for 2021-22:

> Alexa Bayangos ’21, a math major and Asian American studies minor from Redwood City, California, will teach English in Thailand. As an athlete, Bayangos hopes to foster interest in basketball by organizing a skills camp for youth in her host community. She also intends to provide workshops highlighting social issues within athletics, including gender inequality, body image and mental health stigma.

> Martha Castro ’21, a molecular biology major from Orinda, California, will go to Sweden with a research award. Her project seeks to identify protein biomarkers, or identifiers, for enterovirus infection-induced damage to pancreatic beta cells, which would provide a non-invasive method for Type 1 diabetes prediction and diagnosis in asymptomatic patients. Her planned activities in her host country include joining Karolinska Institute Center for Infectious Medicine’s Global Friends organization, which works to promote connections between Swedish and international students.

> Adam Dvorak ’21, a physics major from Santa Rosa, California, will conduct research in Denmark studying the effects of extreme weather events. In his project, he will be searching for patterns and trends using machine learning and determining which combination of variable renewable energy sources and associated storage is needed to have power at all points of the year, creating a system able to withstand extreme weather events. While in Denmark, Dvorak aims to teach violin.

> Ethan Ong ’21, a math major and Chinese minor from Bellevue, Washington, will teach in Taiwan and hopes to host “food-telling” events where Ong will share a personal story about himself, accompanying the story with food that has an associated emotional connection. These would take the form of regular snack events or potlucks where community members can share their stories with one another.

> Ethan Kostishak ’20, an anthropology major and French minor from Phoenix, Arizona, declined the Fulbright and will work at New York University Shanghai as a senior global speaking and writing fellow.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is sponsored by the U.S. government and designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the U.S. and the people of other countries.

On Board: Three distinguished alumni joined the College’s Board of Trustees this summer.

> Susan Gerardo Dunn ’84 is a writer, editor, publisher and founder of Indicia Media, which produces the local daily news website Baltimore Fishbowl and publishes an annual print guide to local schools. She serves as general manager, editorial director, director of digital strategy and product manager. She previously founded a local print magazine for women in Baltimore and, prior to that, was a freelance writer and education reporter. Early in her career, she served as communications director at Advocates for Children and Youth, a nonprofit that focuses on children’s issues. At Pomona, she was an English major and editor-in-chief of The Student Life. She also serves as a board member of the Walters Art Museum, Gilman School, the Thomas Wilson Foundation and the Greater Baltimore Medical Center’s Women’s Hospital Foundation.

> David L. Nunes ’83 has three decades of experience in the forest products industry. For the past seven years, he has been president and CEO of Rayonier Inc., an international real estate investment trust that owns, leases or manages 2.7 million acres of timberland in the U.S. and New Zealand. He previously served for 12 years as president and CEO of Pope Resources, which owned timberland in the Pacific Northwest and built a private equity timber fund business. Nunes also has worked at the Weyerhaeuser Company and Seattle-Snohomish Mill Company, a sawmill started by his grandfather and great-grandfather. He earned a degree in economics at Pomona and holds a master’s in industrial administration from Carnegie Mellon University.

> MacKenzie Teymouri ’09 is a deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County. Currently, she manages a caseload focusing on the prosecution of serious and violent felony offenses. Prior to attending law school at the University of Southern California (USC), she was a clinical research associate at City of Hope National Medical Center, as well as a volunteer counselor advocate for the Los Angeles Rape and Battering Hotline. She is a published author in the Southern California Law Review, the Psycho-Oncology journal and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. At Pomona, she graduated magna cum laude, with a major in anthropology and a minor in psychology. While captain of the softball team, she earned the Scholar-Athlete of the Year award.

The Road to Basketball Glory

Teamwork

Basketball

Lately, the road to basketball glory passes through Pomona College.

In July, Coach Mike Budenholzer ’92 and his Milwaukee Bucks hoisted the NBA championship trophy after defeating the Phoenix Suns in the NBA Finals.

In August, Coach Gregg Popovich and Team USA fended off France for Olympic gold in Tokyo.

“Coach Bud,” as he’s known throughout the NBA, played for Pomona-Pitzer from 1988-92 after he was briefly recruited by Popovich before the young Sagehens coach left to become an assistant with the San Antonio Spurs in 1988.

That glancing acquaintance deepened when Pop—as the longtime San Antonio head coach is known throughout the basketball world—hired Budenholzer as a Spurs video coordinator and then promoted him to assistant coach. They would work together for 19 years, piling up four of Popovich’s five NBA titles with the Spurs.

Charmed paths? Not completely.

Despite winning NBA Coach of the Year in 2014-15, Budenholzer faced postseason disappointments in his first head job as coach of the Atlanta Hawks, ending with a mutual parting of ways after five years. There was more departure talk as the Bucks fell short of expectations, even falling into 0-2 holes in two of their best-of-seven playoff series on the way to the championship. But Budenholzer’s Bucks left no doubt in the end, when Giannis Antetokounmpo’s astounding 50-point performance in Game 6 of the Finals gave Milwaukee its first NBA title in 50 years.

Head Coach Mike Budenholzer ’92 holds the Larry O’Brien Trophy after his Milwaukee Bucks win game six of the 2021 NBA Finals.

Head Coach Mike Budenholzer ’92 holds the Larry O’Brien Trophy after his Milwaukee Bucks win game six of the 2021 NBA Finals.

Popovich, likewise, seemed headed for possible failure as Olympic coach. Without NBA stars LeBron James, Steph Curry and others on the roster, Team USA had early misfires—notably an exhibition loss to Nigeria and a loss to France in the opening game of the Olympic competition.

For Pop, five NBA rings meant little when faced with the five-ring Olympic symbol and the duty to uphold American pride. Add to that his memories of being cut from the 1972 Olympic team as a player out of the Air Force Academy—“I was devastated when I didn’t make it, as anybody would be,” he says—and his role as an assistant coach on the 2004 Olympic team that settled for a crushing bronze medal.

The USA Men’s National Team present Head Coach Gregg Popovich with the gold medal after winning the Gold Medal Game of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The USA Men’s National Team present Head Coach Gregg Popovich with the gold medal after winning the Gold Medal Game of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

“You know what sayonara means? That’s how I’m feeling right now,” a relieved Popovich said in Tokyo after winning gold. “You know, every championship is special and the group you’re with is special, but I can be honest and say this is the most responsibility I’ve ever felt. Because you’re playing for so many people that are watching for a country and other countries involved. The responsibility was awesome. And I felt that every day for several years now. So, I’m feeling pretty light now.”

The next time Popovich and Budenholzer gather for a meal—as they often do when they get an opportunity together or with longtime Pomona-Pitzer Coach Charlie Katsiaficas—expect a toast to Pomona.

“I loved playing basketball at Pomona. It was a huge part of my experience,” Budenholzer recalled last spring during an episode of Sagecast, the podcast of Pomona College. “The reason I chose Pomona was I could get the best education while still playing basketball. … I had a couple other places [he could have played] and really none of them were probably even in the same realm academically as Pomona.”

Popovich, despite an NBA career pointed toward the Basketball Hall of Fame, has never lost his love for his days as a Division III coach at a small liberal arts college.

“I just enjoyed the atmosphere where all the players were real student-athletes and they knew that wasn’t going to be their profession or anything, but they sacrificed that time to be on an intercollegiate team,” he recalled as he prepared the U.S. team for Tokyo. “I loved the whole Claremont Colleges set-up down there with the five schools. It was really great for my family. My kids kind of grew up there during that seven or eight years.”

“It was great satisfaction, well beyond basketball.”

Retirement could be nearing for Popovich, 72. Maybe Katsiaficas could use a volunteer assistant.

“Nah,” Popovich said. “I don’t think Charlie’d hire me.”

Gregg Popovich’s penchant for speaking his mind politically didn’t stop when he became the U.S. Olympic coach.

“A patriot is somebody that respects their country and understands that the best thing about our country is that we have the ability to fix things that have not come to fruition for a lot of people so far. All the promises at the beginning when the country was established were fantastic. Those goals have not been reached yet for a lot of people. So being a critic of those inequalities does not make you a non-patriot. It’s what makes America great, that you can say those things and attack those things to make it better. That’s what a lot of countries don’t have. You lose your freedom when you do that. You don’t lose that freedom here.”

­—Gregg Popovich

In Memoriam Bob Herman

Bob Herman ’51

Emeritus Professor of Sociology
1928—2021

Robert Dunton Herman ’51Robert Dunton Herman ’51, emeritus professor of sociology and author of the definitive downtown Los Angeles walking guide, died April 9 of complications following a recent fall. He was 92.

An expert on urban issues, Herman began taking groups of students on bus tours of Los Angeles neighborhoods in the late 1980s, and he made it his personal mission to introduce skeptical suburbanites to the hidden wonders of L.A.’s under-appreciated downtown.

Herman’s love for cities, trains and suburban Claremont all came together in the early ’90s when the new Metrolink commuter train, with a station just blocks from the Pomona College campus, whisked riders to Union Station. As his son Paul Herman recounts, the professor raced into the kitchen and gleefully announced to his wife, Carol, “This is the greatest day of my life!”

Born in 1928 in Champaign, Illinois, Herman spent most of his childhood in Hillsdale, Michigan, where his father taught sociology at the local college. And it was in Hillsdale (and especially on train trips between Hillsdale and his mother’s hometown of Dundee, Illinois) that Herman first developed the love of railroads and passenger trains that stayed with him throughout his life.

During World War II, the family moved twice more: first to Tucson, Arizona, and finally to Redlands, California, where Herman graduated from high school. He served two years in the U.S. Navy, working as an electrical specialist on the still-new technology of radar, before enrolling at Pomona College in 1948.

At Pomona, Herman studied sociology under professors Alvin Scaff and Ray Baber and sang in the glee club and choir. As a chorister with a fine bass voice, he first met and fell in love with Carol Baber ’51, who also sang with the groups. She was a Pomona classmate who happened to be his academic advisor’s daughter. Following graduation in 1951, the couple held their wedding in the Mabel Shaw Bridges Hall of Music on the Pomona College campus before moving to Madison, Wisconsin, where Herman completed a doctorate in sociology at the University of Wisconsin.

After a five-year stint in Ames, Iowa, where he taught at Iowa State University, the couple returned to Claremont in 1960 when he was hired to fill the seat recently vacated by his father-in-law’s retirement. A year later, they settled into the Claremont home where they raised three children and lived together for the next 60 years.

Herman taught sociology at Pomona College for four decades. He ​loved teaching, served for many years as the chair of the Sociology Department and was well known among fellow faculty for his warm collegiality. Above all, Herman was passionate about mentoring students and was honored with the Wig Award for excellence in teaching in 1991. His genuine interest in getting to know people led him to develop friendships with many students, several of whom became lifelong friends.

A tall man with a long, distinctive gait and a ready wave, Herman was a familiar figure around Claremont. Friends and neighbors initially dubbed him the “Jolly Green Giant” due to his habit of jogging through town in an old green sweatsuit. They later nicknamed him “Ironman Bob” as he continued to run daily around Claremont’s Memorial Park well into his 70s. Locals also came to know Herman as a popular tour guide who led countless walking tours of The Claremont Colleges and the Village, during which he shared his deep knowledge of the town and region with an infectious enthusiasm.

His interests reached into Los Angeles in the 1980s and, over time, student tours of L.A. neighborhoods ​expanded into bus and walking tours ​for alumni, faculty and a variety of civic and professional groups. Herman published Downtown Los Angeles: A Walking Guide in 1996, not long before retiring. It filled a niche, and Herman went on to give hundreds of tours of the Civic Center, Bunker Hill and other downtown districts.

He would start at Union Station, which combined his love of the city and trains, and point out the 1939 station’s optimistic architecture, full of arches and color. “It just tells you you’re in a different place,’’ he said in an interview. “This is California. Your life is going to be transformed here.”

Herman was in the lead in foreseeing the transformation of L.A.’s core: “It’s finally happening,” he said in 2007. “We’re getting a lot of people moving downtown. I’ve been waiting for it all my life.”

Beyond cities and trains, Herman loved Baroque music, and his wife Carol’s long career as a Baroque cellist and viola da gambist delighted him, noted his son Paul. Bob and Carol were married for 69 years.

In addition to his wife, Herman is survived by his sister, Eleanor Kemp of Redlands, his three children, David, Molly and Paul, their spouses and five grandchildren.

Getting There

Getting There

public transportationMoving people from point A to point B is a must. But horses and buggies are long gone, an ever-increasing number of vehicles are packing (or are they parked?) the freeways and teleporting is still a way off.

Jarrett Walker ’84 photographed in a Los Angeles Metro station in 2013

Jarrett Walker ’84 photographed in a Los Angeles Metro station in 2013

Jarrett Walker ’84 is an oft-quoted and oft-consulted international expert on public transportation who has published everywhere from the Journal of Transport Geography to Shakespeare Quarterly and been cited by Bloomberg, The Seattle Times, Atlanta Magazine and more. He has redesigned major public transport networks in North America and overseas and is a frequent speaker on transit and urbanism issues. And he says it’s not enough for mass transit to compete with cars. Mass transit must succeed.

He is certain it will. While the COVID-19 pandemic suggested that public transit is unsafe, Walker contends that it was much safer than we were being told—and time and seats occupied will prove it, despite people’s fears.

“I don’t see safety or perceptions of safety as something insurmountable,” he says. “As long as we don’t cut service, I think that inevitably many people will look at their options and find that public transit is the safest thing to do among their options in enough numbers that will get ridership.”

Riders are coming, but so is the possibility of a permanent transformation of rush hour, Walker says. But to get there requires some serious upgrades to efficiency. Walker points to the Metrolink in Southern California as an example of a very inefficient operation because it is so narrowly focused on rush hour.

“Metrolink has to position a whole bunch of trains to make one trip. There’ll be one trip from San Bernardino to L.A. And they will have to have a whole train and a crew just to run that one trip because by the time you get to L.A. and go back, the peak is over and it’s too late to do it again.”

Because racial and social equity are major concerns, the need to focus on all-day service is even more urgent since low-income people are traveling at all hours, not just the peak. But Walker has a few questions about what the equity priorities should be.

When it comes to fares, proponents say both free fares and more service are necessary. “They’re both important. But what actually happens inside of an agency’s budget when they say free fares is you get free fares instead of more service,” Walker says. “What you often get is free terrible service. If that means the service is useless to low-income people who need it, it’s hard to call that equity.”

But the soundbite of “free fares,” has a better ring to it, according to Walker, because it’s easier to explain in politics.

What’s the travel time solution for low-income workers? Less rigid work schedules, Walker says. Transportation advocates have been pressing for such change for years, but it took COVID-19 to bring it about. If less-rigid work schedules persist, that could unlock an enormous amount of resources to run better all-the-time service, he says, because rush-hour-only service is so expensive.

No doubt resources and revamps are required. But Walker thinks the political debate on infrastructure might be misdirected. For one, nobody knows what the future of rush hour looks like. As a result, he contends that infrastructure projects that depend on rush-hour demand projections should be paused, and possibly rethought. Infrastructure that can be justified by all-day demand should proceed.

A math major at Pomona, Walker says his liberal arts education helped him see the big picture. With a Stanford Ph.D. in drama, literature and humanities, a case could be made he has a good grasp of the human experience. So that combination of broad thinking and deep understanding of numbers and people might be part of what leads him to believe that while we need some big infrastructure projects, a higher priority may be “100,000 crosswalks.” Walker says that however great a bus network he designs, what remains is a huge problem for pedestrians: In much of our suburban landscape, it’s too dangerous to walk.

“I can draw the best possible network of bus services, but I can’t change the fact that I’m dropping you on one side of a road that goes 50 miles an hour and there’s nowhere safe for you to cross. You look at the actual barriers to transportation, and a lot of it is the danger or impossibility of walking.”

Elected officials don’t really know how to take credit for 100,000 crosswalks, Walker says. Instead they want their name on a big piece of infrastructure. But that’s not always what we need, he says. Sometimes yes, but oftentimes no. Walker warns that we are always in danger of building the wrong infrastructure, and a little skepticism is warranted. While politicians may garner support for building things, political pressure would be more aptly applied to fixing things, he says.

“That’s really obvious when you actually analyze mobility,” Walker says. “A bunch of it is actually the many tiny things that are wrong, not just the giant things that are wrong.”

Creative Passport Shelved, Not Lost

Creative Passport Shelved, Not LostWinning a Watson Fellowship is both a creative passport and a generous provision to wander the world and do independent research for a full year after graduation. However, just as it did to best-laid plans around the world, COVID-19 interrupted those of this year’s Watson winners.

But for Watson recipients Adin Becker ’20 and Zed Hopkins ’20, the disruption is only a delay, not a dead end. The Watson Foundation has granted each of them a two-year deferral period.

Becker, a politics and Middle Eastern studies major from Portland, Ore., learned of his big win amid the frenzy of packing up to go home due to the pandemic.

“The news of my acceptance allowed me to take a step back from the stress of the current moment and concentrate on the passion that had led to me apply in the first place. In times of crisis, it is wonderful to have something extraordinary to look forward to, especially if it happens to be a project you have dreamed of doing for over a decade,” says Becker.

His dream is to explore small, isolated international Jewish settlements in Peru, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tunisia and Poland to gain insight into their persistence and survival despite perpetual threats to their existence.

Hopkins, a theatre major from Brisbane, Australia, has plans to travel and do research in South Africa, Uganda, Greece, India, Indonesia, Switzerland, Austria and Italy. He is grateful for the award but says, “Traveling the world seems like the last thing you want to be doing right now.” However, he plans to do so as soon as it becomes feasible—hopefully by early 2021.

Hopkins’ proposal is to analyze the six pillars of theatre performance and how they connect the imaginative and physical worlds of diverse cultures. The specifics of his project may evolve depending on the economic and social repercussions of the pandemic, so he has been busy brainstorming alternatives. “But if Pomona has taught me anything,” he says, “it’s that you have to lean into that discomfort and embrace and enjoy the challenge.”

Broadcasting Live from My Home to Yours

Broadcasting Live from My Home to YoursPlenty of folks consider campus radio station KSPC 88.7 FM an essential part of their daily routines.

When California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide stay-at-home order in March, that became official in a manner of speaking: Broadcasting was deemed an essential service along with other media.

The only problem was that all the student DJs were gone after the closing of campus. But Erica Tyron SC ’92, Pomona’s director of student media and KSPC station manager, kept the station going at first by patching together pre-recorded or archival shows and public service announcements. Soon students and alumni began sending in prerecorded shows on MP3 files though Box or Dropbox. A few local community and alumni DJs dropped by the studio.

But one student, Hannah Avalos ’21, started broadcasting her Friday show live from her home in Whittier, spanning the 25 miles to campus via a Zoom connection that gives her mouse-control access to the KSPC studio in Thatcher Music Building.

For Avalos, the high-wire adrenaline of being live sustains her in the stay-at-home era—all via technology undreamed of when KSPC first signed on to the airwaves in 1956.

“It’s kind of like an outing for me,” Avalos says. “It’s an activity, more than another task I have to do. It’s a really nuanced difference, but I think having it at a set time is more like having an appointment or a fun activity, rather than another homework assignment or a work assignment.”

Fulbright Winners

Eight Pomona seniors were awarded prestigious Fulbright fellowships for world travel and teaching English, though the Fulbright program also delayed the start of its fellowships until after January 1, 2021. Here are the winners from the Class of 2020.

Tyler Bunton, an English major from Hamden, Conn., has been selected to teach English in Brazil.

Jordan Carethers, an international relations and French double major from Bloomfield Hills, Mich., was selected to teach English in rural Taiwan.

Evan Chuu, a linguistics major from Arcadia, Calif., will teach English in Malaysia.

Oliver Dubon, a music major from Palmyra, Va., was selected to go to Estonia on a research award.

Netta Kaplan, a linguistics major from St. Paul, Minn., was selected to teach English in Turkey.

Daphnide Nicole, an international relations major from Portland, Ore., was selected to teach English in Senegal.

Aleksandr Thomas, an international relations major from Pasadena, Calif., was selected to teach English in Russia.

Kim Tran, a public policy analysis major from Chicago, Ill., plans to teach English in Vietnam.

Wildlife on Campus

Wildlife

With the campus closed, there have been lots of wildlife sightings, including everything from owls to coyotes. In this photo, a family of raccoons peeks out of their hiding place in a storm drain on College Avenue, between the President’s House and Carnegie Hall. —Photo by Lupe Castaneda

Bookmarks Fall/Winter 2020

The ArrestThe Arrest

Professor and noted author Jonathan Lethem’s most recent novel is speculative fiction about societal collapse, two siblings, a man who came between them and a nuclear-powered supercar.


Separate but Faithful: The Christian Right’s Radical Struggle to Transform Law and Legal CultureSeparate but Faithful:
The Christian Right’s Radical Struggle to Transform Law and Legal Culture

Politics Professor Amanda Hollis-Brusky co-authors with Joshua C. Wilson the first book-length treatment of “Christian worldview” law schools and their impacts on law and politics, based on fieldwork and interviews with leaders of the Christian Right legal movement.


The Phantom Pattern Problem: The Mirage of Big DataThe Phantom Pattern Problem:
The Mirage of Big Data

Economics Professor Gary Smith and Jay Cordes ’93 pose the question as to whether data patterns are worth believing—and posit that the “evidence” is ultimately meaningless.


Ripples of Air: Poems of HealingRipples of Air:
Poems of Healing

Charlotte Digregorio ’75 offers hundreds of her award-winning poems, along with her essays on poetry.


Hunting Nature: Ivan Turgenev and the Organic WorldHunting Nature:
Ivan Turgenev and the Organic World

Thomas P. Hodge ’84 explores Ivan Turgenev’s relationship to nature through hunting—his life’s passion.


SignatureSignature

Hunter Dukes ’13 explores the cultural history of autographs through first-person recollections from his travels through California, England, Greece, Finland and Russia.


Reading Minds: How Childhood Teaches Us to Understand PeopleReading Minds:
How Childhood Teaches Us to Understand People

Henry M. Wellman ’70, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, presents research on theory of mind and examines ideas about the frontiers of research, from robots to religion.


Modern Family: The Untold Oral History of One of Television’s Groundbreaking SitcomsModern Family:
The Untold Oral History of One of Television’s Groundbreaking Sitcoms

Marc Freeman ’89 tells the history of the popular TV show through the eyes of the cast, creators and crew.


The Power of the Impossible: On Community and the Creative LifeThe Power of the Impossible:
On Community and the Creative Life

Erik S. Roraback ’89 surveys cultural figures and icons like Spinoza and Ivan Lendl and examines global community formation and creativity.

Sagecast: A Few Highlights

Listen in on enlightening conversations with some of Pomona’s most interesting alumni with Sagecast, the podcast of Pomona College. Here is a sampling of this season’s offerings, now available at pomona.edu/sagecast:

Jennifer Doudna ’85
winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for her work with a gene-editing tool that has revolutionized  genetic research

Mac Barnett ’04
author of such beloved children’s books as Extra Yarn and The Wolf, the Duck and the Mouse

Anjali Kamat ’00
award-winning investigative reporter who covered the Arab uprisings in Egypt and Libya for Al Jazeera

Lynda Obst ‘72
renowned film producer of such groundbreaking films as The Fisher King, Sleepless in Seattle, Interstellar and more

Bill Keller ’70
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former executive editor of The New York Times 

Richard Preston ’76
New York Times best-selling author of The Hot Zone, among other books, and expert on emerging viruses