November 2011 @Pomona Newsletter

News and Notes

• Happy Thanksgiving! Staff holiday begins next Wednesday, November 23, at 3 p.m. and continues through the end of the week. Due to the holiday, the pay date for both monthly and bi-weekly paychecks will be Wednesday, November 23.
• Save the date (and get hungry): The annual holiday buffet luncheon is scheduled for Thursday, December 8, 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., in Edmunds Ballroom.
• While the first Business Office training session has passed, there are still two more scheduled: "Using WORKS to create Bank of America purchasing card documentation and reports" on Thursday, November 17, from 3-4 p.m., and "CX Financial Reporting" on Thursday, December 1, from 2-4 p.m. Both sessions will be held in Smith Campus Center 208.
• Looking ahead: In December, the staff holiday begins at 3 p.m. on Thursday, December 22, and continues  until we return to work on Tuesday, January 3, 2012.

Charitable Giving Campaign

The 2011-12 Charitable Giving Campaign is underway. These are tough times for non-profit organizations. Our economic challenges result in a reduction in charitable giving. It also means that more people need the very social services that non-profits provide. Our annual Pomona College Charitable Giving Campaign is an opportunity to respond to the continuing needs in our neighboring communities.

The worthy organizations that you may donate to include Claremont After-School Programs (CLASP); Claremont Educational Foundation; Foothill AIDS Project; Fremont Academy of Engineering & Design; House of Ruth; Inland Empire United Way; Inland Hospice Association; Inland Valley Humane Society; Planned Parenthood Los Angeles; Pomona Valley Habitat for Humanity; Shoes That Fit; and The Be Perfect Foundation.

To learn about how you can donate via check, payroll deduction or credit card, visit the Charitable Giving Campaign site.

Sustainability News

In late October, the Sustainability Integration Office and the President’s Advisory Committee on Sustainability announced the release of the 2010-2011 Pomona College Sustainability Annual Report. This report outlines the College’s sustainability efforts during the 2010-2011 year and provides an update on our environmental impacts and progress toward goals.

The big news? We recorded the first year of energy use reduction in almost 10 years! This year, we saw an incredible 8% reduction in electricity and natural gas use. We also saw a 40% reduction in the use of synthetic fertilizers on campus (that's a 92% reduction since 2008-09), a huge increase in 100% recycled paper purchasing, and an almost 50% reduction in the use of gasoline for the campus fleet.

Download the entire report here [pdf] .

New Magazine Site

Have you seen the new Pomona College Magazine site? It's not just beautiful, but also has several new features: You can comment on stories using a Facebook plug-in and keep up on Pomona alumni and Pomona trivia via three new blogs. Bookmark them or add them to your Google Reader. Recent topics covered include a new play by Alan Brooks '63; an award-winning documentary by Laura Gamse '07; Richard Preston '76, who is finishing Michael Crichton's last book; and the four Sagehens who took the U.S. by storm when they swept the G.E. College Bowl in 1961.

• Pomoniana – All the fun stuff from campus: traditions, tidbits, lore and more.
• Bookshelf – Sagehens publish prolifically. We highlight books from alumni and faculty authors.
• Culture – From sculptors to screenwriters, creative Sagehens get the spotlight.

If you have any blog tips--like Pomoniana trivia or new books by faculty members--please email Mark Kendall.

New Employees

• Tyler Caldwell, cook 1, Dining Services
• Vincent Gamalinda, cook 1, Dining Services
• Leanne Lowery, cook 1, Dining Services
• Kara Murphy, assistant director, Alumni Relations
• Kim Yoon-Chan, admissions officer, Office of Admissions

Recent News

• Four Sagehens Admitted to Pomona-Pitzer Athletic Hall of Fame
• Video: Artist Judy Chicago at Pomona College
• Video: Distinguished Speaker Bill McKibben
• Millikan Renovation Plans Underway
• Professor Jonathan Lethem Published Two New Books
• The Sagehen Report: Week of November 7
• Pomona College's 2010-11 Sustainability Report Shows Progress in Water and Landfill Waste Reduction
• Video: Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Seth Allen Appears on The Today Show
• Pomona College Named Best Value Among Liberal Arts Colleges by Kiplingers Personal Finance Magazine
• Pomona College Among Top Producers of U.S. Fulbrights Among Bachelor's Institutions
• Professor Robert Gaines Continues NSF Research on Shale Deposits, Exploring Rapid Appearance of Animal Life on Earth
• Videos: Maya Soetoro-Ng and Founders Day

Faculty and Staff Accomplishments

Scholarly Talks and Lectures

Allan Barr (Asian Languages and Literatures) gave a talk in Chinese, "Modern Chinese Fiction in English: Issues in Translation and Reception," at Zhejiang International Studies University on 13 October.

 Paul Cahill (Romance Languages and Literatures) presented a paper, "'El contenido del zigzagueo': Género, escritura y palabreo enAyer y calles de Concha García" at the XXI AILCFH Conference: Inhabiting Gender, held at the Universitat de Barcelona from 19-21 October.

Michael Diercks (Linguistics and Cognitive Science) presented the paper "Lubukusu object marking as pronominal incorporation" with his co-author at Rutgers University on 21 October.

Steve Erickson (Philosophy) was the discussion leader at a Liberty Fund colloquium "Liberty and Revelation in the Holy Qur'an" in Indianapolis on 20-23 October.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Media Studies) delivered the keynote address to the National Federation of Advanced Information Systems Humanities Roundtable on 3 October, and gave a lecture, "The Future of Authorship: Writing in the Digital Age," at Vassar College on 6 October.

Erica Flapan (Mathematics) gave the talks "Topological Symmetry Groups” at the Connecticut Valley Mathematics Colloquium at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, on 17 October, and “Topological Symmetry Groups" at Topology Seminar at UC Riverside on 25 October.

Gizem Karaali (Mathematics) gave a talk titled "Quantization and Superization" at the Mathematica Eclectica Colloquium of the California State University San Bernardino mathematics department on 12 October, and a talk titled "Purpose and Humanism in Mathematics Education Research: 1968-1996" at the History and Pedagogy of Mathematics (HPM) Americas Section Annual West Coast Meeting in San Diego from 1-2 October.

Zayn Kassam (Religious Studies) delivered the Peter C. Craigie lecture at the University of Calgary on 12 October. Her talk was titled "Muslim Women and the Jihad for Gender Justice." While at the University, she also gave a talk titled “Muslim Women’s Activities” to the Office of the Chaplains and Women’s Resource Center, and spoke to the Department of Religious Studies faculty and graduate students on “After 9/11: Reflections on Research and Teaching.” On 2 November, she gave a Fall Faculty Lecture on “Muslim Women and the Jihad for Justice” in the Frank Blue Room at Pomona College.

Pardis Mahdavi (Anthropology) gave the keynote lecture at a conference on "Youth, Revolutions and Social Media" held at Rollins College in Orlando, Florida, on 30 October.

Robert Mezey (English - Emeritus) gave a reading at William & Mary College on 6 October, presenting both his work and that of Virginia Hamilton Adair.

Leonard Pronko (Theatre and Dance) presented a lecture/discussion on Tony Kushner's The Illusion and Pierre Corneille's L’Illusion Comique to the Scholars Society at A Noise Within Theatre in Pasadena on 28 September, and also spoke on Kabuki and the Tokugawa Era to the Upland Library book group on 1 October.

Michael Steinberger (Economics) presented "Changes in the Wage and Demographic Distribution of the US: Implications for the Financial System" at the Filene Research Institute Credit Union Innovation Conference in Kansas City, Missouri, on 13 October. On 27 October, he presented "Economic Update: The Long Road Ahead?" with James Likens at the California and Nevada Credit Union League annual meeting in San Diego.

Samuel Yamashita (History) delivered a paper titled "The Varieties of Popular Resistance to the Wartime [Japanese] Government and its Policies, 1942-1945" at a conference on "Origins of World War II in Asia," which was held at the University of Pittsburgh, 30 September – 2 October.

Publications

Allan Barr (Asian Languages & Literatures) published two translations: “Fear of Dragons,” by Yu Hua in the International Herald Tribune on 8 October and “The Blood King,” also by Yu Hua, in Harper’s Magazine (October 2011), pp. 26-27.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick's (Media Studies) book, Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy, has been published by NYU Press. A review of the book and interview with her was published in Inside Higher Ed on 30 September. Additionally, she published the article “Do ‘the Risky Thing’ in Digital Humanities” in the Chronicle of Higher Education on 25 September.

Erica Flapan (Mathematics) published, with B. Mellor and R. Naimi, "Complete graphs whose topological symmetry groups are polyhedral" in Algebraic and Geometric Topology 11 (2011), pp. 1405-1433.

Roberto Garza-López (Chemistry) published “Transition behavior on finite lattices with ladders. Part II: Sensitivity to coupling” in Chemical Physics Letters 514 (2011), pp. 88-93

Marjorie Harth (Pomona College Museum of Art – Emerita, Donor Relations) wrote Residential Life: Pomona College 1887-2011, a brochure tracing the history of residential life at Pomona College, published in celebration of the dedication of the new North Campus dormitories in October. Edited by Mary Marvin (Communications) and Don Pattison (Donor Relations); designed by Shari Fournier-O'Leary.

Stephan Ramon Garcia (Mathematics) published the article "Quotient sets and Diophantine equations" with Vincent Selhorst-Jones '09, Daniel Poore '11 and Noah Simon '08 in American Mathematical Monthly 118:8 (October 2011), p.704-711

Meg Jolley (Theatre and Dance) had a review of a colleague's conference workshop, “The Five Relations: Integrating and Animating the Alexander Technique Directions,” published in the AmSAT News, the professional journal for the American Society for the Alexander Technique.

Nina J. Karnovsky (Biology) published the paper, “Inter-colony comparison of diving behavior of an Arctic top predator: implications for warming in the Greenland Sea” in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series [pdf]  440, pp. 229-240. Co-authors include Zachary Brown'07, Andre Cavalcanti (Biology), and Johanna Hardin (Mathematics).

Char Miller (Environmental Analysis) published the chapter “San Antonio, Texas: 1989-2011,” in Cities in American Political History, ed. Richardson Dilworth (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2011), pp. 669-675. He also published the essays “Righteous Wrath” in Forest Notes (summer 2011), pp. 20-25, and, with V. Alaric Sample, “The Weeks Act and the Next Century of Conservation in New England” in Northern Woodlands (summer 2011), p. 7.

Nivia Montenegro (Romance Languages and Literature) published the piece "Three Trapped Tigers (Guillermo Cabrera Infante)" in the new book Cuba: Its History and Its People, ed. Alan West-Durán (Gale, Cengage Learning, 2012), pp. 987-991.

Leonard Pronko (Theatre and Dance) did the English translation and wrote most of the copy for the Fundamentals of Japanese Dance website. The book which the site is based on was published several years ago and was translated by Pronko and Takao Tomono. 

Dara Rossman Regaignon (English, College Writing), with Pamela Bromley (Politics and International Relations, College Writing), published an article, "What Difference Do Writing Fellows Programs Make?" in The WAC Journal(November 2011). In the context of two Pomona College courses, this study found that students improve more as writers over the course of a single semester when they draft and revise their papers with feedback from trained peer writing tutors.

Rick Worthington (Politics) served as co-editor with Mikko Rask and Minna Lammi on Citizen Participation in Global Environmental Governance (Earthscan, 2011).

Jonathan Wright (Biology) published a paper with Anne Yoshizawa ’09: “Ion composition and ion provisioning in marsupial fluid of terrestrial isopods (Isopoda: Oniscidea)” in Crustaceana 84 (2011), pp. 1307-1324.

Exhibitions and Performances

Laurie Cameron (Dance) performed a personal narrative and solo improvisation in "From the Horse's Mouth," a gathering of professional dancers and choreographers who tell their stories in voice and movement, at the Winifred Smith Theatre in Irvine, California, on 22 October.

Genevieve Lee (Music) performed a solo recital at Pasadena Community College last May. In September, she collaborated in a two-piano performance at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. In October, as a member of the Mojave Trio, she gave a concert on the Restoration Series at the South Pasadena Library. Also in October, she played two chamber music concerts on harpsichord and piano at the Garth Newel Music Center in Virginia.

Sherry Linnell (Theatre) recently designed the costumes for The God of Isaac for the West Coast Jewish Theatre Company, which is playing through 27 November.

Joyce Lu (Dance) danced under the direction of Hirokazu Kosaka and Oguri in Mare Vaporum, the closing event of the Los Angeles World Festival of Sacred Music, at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center on 16 October.

Sandeep Mukherjee (Art) had two exhibitions: "Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection" at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles from 15 October to 22 January, and "Frieze International" at Regents Park in London from 12 October to 16 October.

Sheila Pinkel (Art and Art History) recently had 28 of her art works added to the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Other

Dining Services launched a new Sustainable Seafood Program with the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).  Pomona College was the first liberal arts school to achieve MSC Chain-of-Custody Certification. The majority of the seafood offered in Frank, Frary and Oldenborg now comes from fisheries that are sustainably managed.