December 2011 @Pomona Newsletter

News and Notes

• The holidays are almost here! 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.
• How to shop for the holidays and help students: When shopping on Amazon, use this link, which leads to the ASPC's affiliate program. Buying through this link provides a return to the ASPC of 6-15% at no cost to you. The money received back will go a long way toward funding student needs.
• Tania Pantoja is still collecting donation items for the employees who are no longer here with us. You can drop off your donations to Alexander 222 during regular work hours  anytime before Thursday, December 15. Suggested donations include items like gift certificates, toys, cash donations or non-perishable food items. You may also drop off notes to these former employees with Tania as well.
• Looking for something to do during the holidays? Check out the list of discounts [pdf] on tickets for fun local attractions, offered by Claremont Connection. You can visit Claremont Connection at the south entrance to Honnold-Mudd Library, call x72273, or go online to FunEx.com. When that site asks for a company-provided EAC (Employee Activity Code), click "no" and then continue. For Disneyland tickets, visit cards.cuc.claremont.edu

Charitable Giving Campaign Update

The 2011-12 Charitable Giving Campaign is still underway. As of December 5, 82 members of faculty and staff have given $27,102 to the organizations supported by the campaign. To give to your favorite local organization, visit the Charitable Giving Campaign site.

Online Archive for Recent Issues

As we all know, these last few weeks have been very difficult ones for the Pomona College community with the dismissal of many of our co-workers. We want to draw your attention to an online archive of recent communications from President Oxtoby and other members of the administration regarding the work authorization process and events. You may find the archive at: http://pomona.edu/administration/communications/special-features/work-documentation/communications.aspx

New Password Manager

Ken Pflueger, executive director of ITS, recently send out a notice regarding a new password manager, which provides an easy-to-use interface and customizable security questions that will help you change your password and reset expired or forgotten passwords. To use the new Password Manager, you must enroll and set up your Security Questions.  You will need to do this even if you have set up your Security Questions in the previous versions of Password Manager. If you do not enroll, you will not be able to use Password Manager to reset or change your password, so please be sure to do so before the holidays.

To Enroll in the New Password Manager, please visit the Password Manager webpage at http://mypassword.pomona.edu and click the "Enroll" link. For more information on using the new Password Manager, please visit this article in the ITS Knowledgebase.

Take Action Challenge Results

Sixteen faculty and staff participated in the six-week Take Action Challenge this past fall.  Participants earned sticker credit each time they attended a FSFW class or activity…and received double credit when branching out and participating in classes and activities they’d not attended before.  Those earning 20 or more stickers were awarded Take Action t-shirts.  Congratulation to all participants!

• Judy Arriola
• Anna Asker
• Lisa Beckett
• Elizabeth Champion 
• Ann Davis 
• Donna Henry
• Lucy Huff
• Linda Kong
• Christine Liao 
• Stephanie Liu 
• Samantha Meyer 
• Anita Miller 
• Sara Mitchell 
• Kaye Pereida 
• Cynthia Peters 
• Sheri Shepherd

And a round of applause for our medal winners:

• Gold Medal:  Kaye Pereida (34 stickers)
• Silver Medal:  Judy Arriola (31 stickers)
• Bronze Medal:  Anita Miller (30 stickers)
• Bronze Medal:  Sara Mitchell (30 stickers)

All faculty and staff are invited to participate in the FSFW program. Please check out the offerings at http://www.pe.pomona.edu/information/staff_wellness  If you have any questions or if you need help Taking Action, contact program coordinator Lisa Beckett lmb04747@pomona.edu

New Employees

• Elizabeth Allen, catering cook 3, Dining Services
• Denise Cerpeski, pantry, Dining Services
• Crystal Flores, cook 1, Dining Services
• Robert Flores, utility, Dining Services
• Lyliana Fregoso de Kruse, catering captain, Dining Services
• Jonathan Harris, technical assistant, Geology
• Emily Johnson, utility, Dining Services
• Edward Reyes, catering captain, Dining Services
• Russell Van Valkenburg, catering baker, Dining Services
• Raymond Wilson, technician II boiler specialist, Facilities and Campus Services

Recent News

• Pomona College Summer Undergraduate Research Program Awarded $247,500
• Eight Pomona Students Bring Their Best Pop Culture Debates to the Blogosphere
• Los Angeles School Named for Julian Nava '51
• Exhibit by Zoe Carlberg '12 Documents Her 60-Mile Walk Through Los Angeles
• Video: Art Meets Physics at the Art After Hours Ball Drop
• "It Happened at Pomona: Part 2: Helene Winer at Pomona" Opens
• The Sagehen Athletics Report: Week of December 5
• The Sagehen Athletics Report: Week of November 28
• The Sagehen Athletics Report: Week of November 21

Faculty and Staff Accomplishments

Scholarly Talks and Lectures

Allan Barr (Asian Languages and Literatures) interpreted for author Yu Hua and read excerpts from his work at Pomona College on 9 November; at University of California, Riverside on 10 November; at Montana State University on 14 November; at the University of Montana on 15 November; at the Miami Book Fair on 19 November; and at New York University on 22 November.

David Becker (Biology) presented a poster titled "Transformation of N. tabacum with a 3-hydroxysteroid oxidase gene results in drastically altered steroid contents of thylakoid membranes and elevated photosynthetic electron transport rates" at the annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists in Minneapolis in August. Co-authors included Robert Grebenok of Canisius College and his student, Nathan Olszewski, and my students, Duncan Ariey '11, Drew McKinney '12 and Elan Small '13.

Ralph Bolton (Anthropology) presented a paper, "From Peace Corps Volunteer to Practicing Anthropologist: A 50-Year Legacy," in a symposium, which he also chaired, on "50 Years of the Peace Corps and Anthropology" at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Montreal in November.

Paul Cahill (Romance Languages and Literatures) presented a paper, "Staging Self and Other in Jorge Riechmann's El día que dejé de leer EL PAÍS," at the 109th Annual Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference held at Scripps College on 5-6 November 5-6.

Susana Chávez-Silverman (Romance Languages and Literature) was an invited author at several recent events: On 6 October at the Hammer Museum, sponsored by artist-in-residence David Kipen, owner of the nonprofit lending library/bookstore Libros Schmibros; on 4 November at Pomona College's campus for a Chicano Latino Student Affairs-sponsored Day of the Dead reading; on 16 November at UC Davis; and on 19 November La Plaza de Cultura y Artes for Cuentos del Pueblo/Stories of the City, a Smithsonian Institution Affiliations Program.

She was the keynote speaker for a gala reception and silent auction, The Art of Africa, in support of HOPE Cape Town, a charitable organization that works to help infants and children living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa, on 12 November in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif. Her former advisee Adam Teicholz '01, an investigative journalist, was also a featured speaker.

David Divita (Romance Languages and Literatures) gave a paper titled "Tercera edad/segunda juventud in an Internet class for retirees" at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Montreal in November.

On 26 October, Anne Dwyer (German and Russian) gave a talk, "Literary Fetish and Geopolitical Fantasy: Sacher-Masoch's Slavic Wor(l)ds," as part of the Fall Faculty Lecture Series. She presented a paper, "How to be a Traveler: Viktor Shklovsky's Imperial Self-Fashioning after A Sentimental Journey,", on 18 November in a four-panel series on Russian Literature and Empire at the annual meeting of Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) in Washington D.C. At that meeting, she was also a formal discussant for the panel "Russian Formalist Literary Theory: Interdisciplinary Intersections and Negotiations."

Jonathan Hall (Media Studies) participated in the panel, "Hollywood/Japan Film Coproduction: The Future of Cross-Cultural Filmmaking," sponsored by the 2011 Los Angeles EigaFest and the Asia Society in collaboration with the Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, on 12 November. 

Laura Hoopes (Biology) was a plenary speaker at the Women's Leadership Legacy Conference, sponsored by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, on 3 November in El Monte. Her talk, "Leadership in Education," was based on her book, Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling, and can be watched online.

Gizem Karaali (Mathematics) gave an invited lecture on 8 November titled "Proving Hardy Wrong: Math With a Social Conscience," as part of the annual Atul Vyas Memorial Lecture Series [pdf] at Claremont McKenna College. She also led  a facilitated discussion, titled "Humanistic Mathematics: Charting a Path Toward a New Transdiscipline," at the AAC&U Network for Academic Renewal Conference: Arts & Humanities: Toward a Flourishing State? in Providence, Rhode Island, on 3-5 November.

Jade Star Lackey (Geology) toured the L.A. Basin in November, giving the talk "The Shallow Hydrothermal Realm of the Sierran Magmatic Arc: Uncovering a Record from the Skarns of Empire Mountain, CA" at Cal State Northridge and Cal Poly Pomona, and presenting the study "Resolving the Cementation History of Sandstones in the Long Valley Caldera, CA" in Pasadena at the Western Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society. Pomona student co-authors on the study included Katherine Beeler '10, Mark Williams '10, and James Muller '13. 

Rachel Levin (Biology, Neuroscience) presented a paper titled "Science, gender identity and society: Who defines who we are?" at the Southern Comfort Transgender Conference in Atlanta on 22 September.

Laura Perini (Philosophy) presented a talk, "Visual Representation in Science: Data Images and the Relevance of Depiction," at the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science on 4 November at Boston University.

Wiilliam Peterson (Music) presented the co-authored paper (with James Peterson of Valdosta State University), "The Specter of Authoritarianism and Czech Music: From the 1848 Revolution to the 1881 Opening of the National Theater," at the annual meeting of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies on 18 November in Washington, DC.

Virginie Pouzet-Duzer (Romance Languages and Literatures) gave the talk, "Le crime, en chantant," at 15th Colloque des Invalides on "Crimes et delits" in Paris at the Centre culturel canadien on 18 November. She became an affiliate of a Katholieke Universiteit Leuven-based M.D.R.N. research project after having presented her take of the 1947 Surrealist exhibition to its members 22 November at the Université catholique de Louvain.

Monique Saigal (Romance Languages and Literatures) gave three presentations about women of the French Resistance in Wilmington, North Carolina, on 2 November (Long Life Learning organization and University of Wilmington students and faculty) and 3 November (engaged community adults). She gave a presentation on the same topic to Pomona College alumni in Seattle on 13 November and to a book club in Pomona on 14 November.

John Seery (Politics) presented a paper, "The Place of Interdisciplinarity in Teaching about Politics in the Liberal Arts," at the Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges Workshop, on November 12, at Amherst College,

Anthony Shay (Dance) delivered a paper, "Dancer as Musician/Musician as Dancer," at the CORD/SEM conference in Philadelphia from 17-20 November.

Hung Cam Thai (Sociology, Asian American Studies) gave an invited lecture, “The Transnational Meanings of Work,” at the Prague Institute for Global Studies on November 2. 

Friederike von Schwerin-High (German and Russian) presented a paper titled "Spatial Orientation and Disorientation in Katharina Hacker's novel The Have-Nots," at the 109th annual meeting of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, held 5-6 November at Scripps College. She also hosted the panel "Staging the Self in European Literature and Film."

Publications

Allan Barr's (Asian Languages and Literature) translation of Yu Hua's collection of essays, China in Ten Words, has been published by Pantheon. His translation of Jiang Tao's poem "Primate Tribe" appeared in Push Open the Window:Contemporary Poetry from China, ed. Qingping Wang (Copper Canyon Press, 2011), p. 235.

Graydon Beeks (Music) published "Haydn, Handel and the Concerts of Antient Music" in Haydn and His Contemporaries, ed. Sterling E. Murray (Steglein Publishing, 2011), pp. 28-38. This volume includes a selection of papers presented at the joint meeting of the Society for Eighteenth-Century Music and the Haydn Society of North American held at Scripps College in 2008.

Andre Cavalcanti (Biology) co-authored, with Amanda Koire '11, "Fusion of the subunits alpha and beta of succinyl-CoA synthetase as a phylogenetic marker for pezizomycotina fungi" the journal Genetics and Molecular Biology 34:4, pp. 669-675.

Michael Diercks (Linguistics and Cognitive Science) published "Incorporating Location in Argument Structure: The Lubukusu Locative Clitic" in the Selected Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference on African Linguistics: African Languages and Linguistics Today (Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2011), pp. 65-79.

Robert Gaines (Geology) published "Stratigraphic and Microfacies Analysis of the Kaili Formation, a Candidate GSSP for the Cambrian Series 2 - Series 3 Boundary" in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 311, pp. 171-183, includes co-author John Mering '10 and is a collaboration between the Gaines lab and colleagues at Guizhou University, China, (Y.L. Zhao and J. Peng). He also published "Paleoecology of the Olenid trilobite Triarthrus: New evidence from Beecher's Trilobite Bed and other sites of pyritization" in Palaios, 26, pp. 730-742, with two co-authors (U.C. Farrell and D.E.G. Briggs, Yale University).

Gizem Karaali (Mathematics), with collaborator Samuel Hsiao, published a paper titled "Multigraded combinatorial Hopf algebras and refinements of odd and even subalgebras" in the Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics, 34, pp. 451-506. She also published "An Evaluative Calculus Project: Applying Bloom's Taxonomy to the Calculus Classroom" in PRIMUS: Problems and Resources for Mathematics Undergraduate Studies, 21:8, pp. 719-731. 

Nina Karnovsky (Biology) and Elizabeth Ng'10 are co-authors on the paper, "Integrating Stomach Content and Stable Isotope Analyses to Quantify the Diets of Pygoscelid Penguins,"  published in PLoS ONE 6:10. 

Arash Khazeni (History) wrote the chapter, "The River's Edge: The Steppes of the Oxus and the Boundaries of the Near East and Central Asia, c. 1500-1800," in the edited book Is There a Middle East? The Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).

An essay derived from Colleen Rosenfeld's (English) book manuscript, Braggadochio and the Schoolroom Simile, was published in English Literary Renaissance 41:3 (Autumn 2011), pp. 429-461. 

Monique Saigal (Romance Languages and Literatures) reviewed Terre Neuve (Gallimard 2010) by Florence Delaporte in The French Review 84:6.

Friederike von Schwerin-High (German and Russian) has recently become the co-editor with Roswitha Burwick of Pacific Coast Philology. They co-edited volume 46, which was published on 24 October. 

Thailand's Office of the Education Council published John Seery's (Politics) speech, "Liberal Arts Education in the United States," as a booklet in Thai and English. Seery gave the speech last March in Bangkok.

Marie Shirkus (Media Studies) published the essay "Witnessing Eugenia Butler's Kitchen Table" in X-Tra Contemporary Art Quarterly (Winter 2012).

David Tanenbuam (Physics and Astronomy) co-authored several papers recently:

• "Current Collecting Grids for ITO-Free Solar Cells" in Advanced Energy Materials, 1:6 (doi: 10.1002/aenm.201100552)
• "The ISOS-3 inter-laboratory collaboration focused on the stability of a variety of organic photovoltaic devices" in RSC Advances (2012).
• "Generation of native polythiophene/PCBM composite nanoparticles via the combination of ultrasonic micronization of droplets and thermocleaving from aqueous dispersion" in Nanotechnology, 22  (doi:10.1088/0957-4484/22/47/475301)
• "Quality control of roll-to-roll processed polymer solar modules by complementary imaging methods" in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 97, pp. 176-180 (ISSN 0927-0248, 10.1016/j.solmat.2011.10.005)
• "Edge sealing for low cost stability enhancement of roll-to-roll processed flexible polymer solar cell modules" in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, 97, pp. 157-163 (ISSN 0927-0248, 10.1016/j.solmat.2011.09.064)

Hung Cam Thai (Sociology, Asian American Studies) published “Social Collisions in Remittance-Reliant Families” in the journal, Global Networks.

Exhibitions and Performances

Donna M. Di Grazia (Music) appeared as a member of the Millennium Consort Singers in a concert featuring five centuries of English sacred music at St. Michael the Apostle Anglican Church in Newport Beach on 31 October. 

Genevieve Lee (Music) collaborated on two concerts of George Crumb's music: one at Chapman University in October and the other at Cal-Poly Pomona in November. She also gave a piano masterclass at Cal-Poly in November. 

Sherry Linnell (Theatre) designed the costumes for the Colony Theatre's production of Travels With My Aunt. 

Honors and Awards

Hung Cam Thai (Sociology, Asian American Studies) was recently invited to sit on the editorial board of the journal, TRaNS: Transnational Studies of Southeast Asia. 

Other

Betty Bernhard (Theatre) organized 100 free tickets and two buses to take students to the Los Angeles Opera full dress rehearsal for Romeo and Juliette. Wearing Levis, the famous Placido Domingo, artistic director of the Los Angeles Opera, conducted the full orchestra. 

In October and early November, Ralph Bolton (Anthropology) held meetings in the rural communities of the highlands in Peru to evaluate their current development programs and to discuss future projects in those communities. He also met with scholarship students being aided by The Chijnaya Foundation. 

Art Horowitz (Theatre) was interviewed on KPCC radio's Patt Morrison Show on 28 October concerning the film Anonymous and the authorship of Shakespeare's plays.

Adam Pearson (Psychology) was interviewed by Israeli artist and producer Maayan Strauss for a Yale School of Drama theatrical production, Street Scenes, about contemporary racism in America. The production, part of the Yale Cabaret fall series, was 10-12 November.