January-February 2012 @Pomona Newsletter

News and Notes

• Staff Appreciation Luncheon will be on Monday, March 12. Save the date!
• Another important date in March: The Cesar Chavez Day staff holiday is on Friday, March 30.
• Do you publicize events for your department or office? If so, check out our "How to Publicize Events" guide. It breaks down the process of publicizing events on campus, both online and offline. 

Charitable Giving Campaign Results

The 2011-12 Charitable Giving Campaign had a wonderful season. Thank you to the 119 faculty and staff members who donated $34,892 to the local organizations supported by the campaign. 

Department News

Sometimes departments come together to accomplish great things, not just individual faculty and staff members. If your department or administrative office has done something worth sharing, Laura Tiffany for inclusion in the newsletter.

Martin Crawford of the Outdoor Education Center reports: From January 7-14, the Outdoor Education Center hosted its first Wilderness First Responder course over winter break. There is a very comprehensive description of the course at www.wildmed.com/first-response/wilderness-first-responder.php. This eight-day, 72-hour course brought the students to a professional level of medical response. Twenty-eight students and staff enrolled in the course. As well as bringing the campus outdoor leaders to a higher standard of training, it also added to our growing list of volunteers who are actively playing a role in Pomona’s new Emergency Support Team “community care and shelter” as the medical responders. It is very exciting to see so many students and staff on campus with the proper training to help out in the event of a large disaster.

Professor James Taylor of the Department of Theatre and Dance reports: On Saturday January 21, the Department of Theatre and Dance was the host for the Annual Job Fair and Student Design Competition for the California Region of The United States Institute of Theatre Technology (USITT). USIIT is the national professional organization for educators, students,  and professionals in a wide range design and technical areas of the entertainment industry. Well over 100 participants attended the event on the Pomona campus. The event was coordinated by Pomona faculty members Sherry Linnell and James Taylor, with the able assistance of the Department's production and administrative staff members: Cathy Seaman, Mary Rosier, Jack Morones, Suzanne Schultz-Reed, Steven Barr and Matt Gorka.

Distinguished Staff Award - Call for Nominees

The deadline for nominations for this year's Distinguished Staff Award (DSA) is Monday, February 20. Nominees must have worked for the College at least five years and cannot be a member of the DSA selection committee or a prior winner. Please send your nominations to Steve Comba. This year's winner will be announced at the Staff Appreciation Luncheon on March 12.

The DSA was established in 1997 as a special initiative of the Campaign for Pomona College. The fund, which is now an endowed account, reflects the generosity of many individual faculty and staff members, as well as a special contribution from former Pomona President Peter W. Stanley. The Distinguished Staff Award committee looks for a staff member who distinguishes herself or himself some way through service or effort beyond what is required in their daily job. Examples can include, but are not limited to, service to the entire constituency, consistent high level of performance, high performance in the face of particularly daunting work conditions, an outstanding act of some sort, exemplary personal characteristics--kindness, helpfulness, innovation or creativity. It can also be a staff member who goes out of their way to bring staff together or serves in some capacity that enhances the Pomona College community. It could also be someone who goes out of their way to help or befriend students. Since staff are employed in so many different work situations on campus, the ways that staff can distinguish themselves are varied and complex.

Let's take a moment to appreciate all of our past winners:

• Vickie Hirales, Philosophy/Classics/Religious Studies/PPE, 2011
• Cathy Seaman, Theatre, 2010
• Frank Bedoya, Campus Life, 2009
• Jo Grodsky, Chemistry, 2008
• Ralph Pezoldt, Information Systems, 2008
• Raye Calderón, Grounds, 2007
• Kathy Sheldon, Mathematics, 2007 
• Martha Cerrato, Oldenborg Dining Services, 2006
• Barbara Clonts, English and Classics, 2006
• Glenn Flohr, Physics and Astronomy, 2005
• Janis Moormann, Investment and Trust Services, 2005
• Don Pattison, Communications, 2004
• Evelyn Khalili, Politics, 2003
• María Ramirez, Housekeeping, 2002
• Margaret Lohre, Annuity and Trust, 2001
• Judy Brown, Campus Planning and Maintenance, 2000
• Gail Stiffler, Dean’s Office, 1999

New Survey Software

Do you know about Qualtrics? This new survey creation software package is available to all faculty and staff on the portal. Qualtrics is a much more powerful and flexible tool than Survey Monkey Pro. To use Qualtrics, log in to my.pomona.edu, click on Academics and you will see Qualtrics  in the lower left column of the screen, double click on it, and then on the Login to Qualtrics button that appears.  You will be logged into the system. Visit this link for the five login steps illustrated with screenshots:https://wfs.pomona.edu/xythoswfs/webui/_xy-208737_1-t_Bn48QFBM 

Sustainability Tip

One way to be more sustainable in your office is via climate control:

• Adjust your clothes, not the thermostat. Socks, hats, and sweaters make very energy-efficient heaters!
• Use natural airflow to control the climate of your office. Use a fan instead of the AC when you can. Close your blinds when it's hot outside. Don't leave the window open when the heat or air conditioning is on. Turn off the AC when you leave your room.
• Call Maintenance (909-607-2236) if the heat or AC is too high or too low.

New Employees

• Laura Condino, administrative assistant, Facilities and Campus Services
• Jose Delgado, utility worker, Dining Services
• Sue Hwang, archivist, Pacific Basin Institute
• Christopher Kavanaugh, cook 2, Dining Services
• Bernadette Koenn, baker, Dining Services
• Jesus Landa, cook 1, Dining Services
• Hector Ramirez, building attendant, Housekeeping
• Vincenzo Rizzo, baker, Dining Services
• Jean Saito, custodial utility worker, Dining Services

Recent News

• Professor and Associate Dean Jonathan Wright to Receive Inaugural Faculty Alumni Service Award
• Performance at Pomona: Photos and Video
• Pomona College a Top Recipient of RCSA Science Research Grants
• "The Student Life" Wins Ford's Students With Drive Competition for Zipcar Credit
• In Memoriam: Gary Troyer
• EDGE Program for Female Mathematicians Receives $290,000 NSF Grant; Professor Ami Radunskaya Named Co-Director
• Site-Specific Performance Class Brings Artful Surprise to Everyday Interactions on Campus
• Pomona Academy for Youth Success (PAYS) Awarded $140,000 in Grants and Gifts
• In Memoriam: Richard Sheirich
• The Sagehen Report: Week of February 6
• The Sagehen Report: Week of January 30
• The Sagehen Report: Week of January 23
• The Sagehen Report: Week of January 16

Faculty and Staff Accomplishments

Scholarly Talks and Lectures

Paul Cahill (Romance Languages & Literatures) presented a paper, "Market Volatility, Materiality and Violence in Pablo García Casado's Dinero," at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Seattle, 5-8 January.

Chris Chinn (Classics) gave the talk "Silvae 4.3 and ecocriticism" at the American Philological Association Annual Meeting in Philadelphia on 8 January.

Erica Flapan (Mathematics) gave the invited talk "Intrinsic Properties of Graphs Embedded in R3" at the Special Session on Untangling Knot Theory at Mathematical Association of America's Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston on 6 January.

Stephan Ramon Garcia (Mathematics) gave the talk "On a problem of Halmos: unitary equivalence of a matrix to its transpose" at the Claremont Colleges Analysis Seminar on 2 December.

Terry Geis (Pomona College Museum of Art) participated in a round table discussion on the artist Remedios Varo at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on 18 January.

Hillary Gravendyk (English) presented her critical essay, "The Materiality of Sincerity," at the 2012 Modern Languages Association conference in Seattle on 8 January.

Laura Hoopes (Biology) spoke on a panel on Science Writing Career Paths at City of Hope/Beckman Research Center on 13 December, based on her memoir publication, Breaking through the Spiral Ceiling. 

Eric Hurley (Psychology and Africana Studies) presented a workshop at Pomona College on 14 January for high-school seniors who are members of College Bound – California. The workshop, “Personal, Institutional & Mentoring Relationships,” is part of the students’ Rites of Academic Passage instructional program.

Gizem Karaali (Mathematics) gave an invited talk, "A Cost-Minimizing Algorithm for School Choice," in the Special Session on Computational Social Choice at the International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics (ISAIM), which occurred 9-11 January in Fort Lauderdale, FL. She also gave a talk at the AMS Special Session on Mathematical Principles and Theories of Integrable Systems titled "Constructing Integrable Systems From Graded Classical r-Matrices" at the Joint Mathematics Meeting (JMM) from January 4-7 in Boston. 

Together with JoAnne Growney, Karaali organized a reading of poetry with mathematics at the Joint Mathematics Meeting (JMM) in Boston from 4-7 January. More than a dozen of mathematical poets shared their work with an audience of more than sixty.

Nina Karnovsky (Biology) was an invited speaker at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco in December. She gave a talk titled, "Dining Dovekies Demand: When, Where and What's for Dinner? The Impact of Seasonal Changes in Snowmelt and the Development of the Arctic Marine Foodweb on Seabirds." 

Robert Mezey (English) participated in a reading and talk about Borges and Weldon Kees at Libros Shmibros Bookstore on 1 November. He gave a poetry reading at the Huntington Library on 7 November, and participated in a reading and discussion of "Poetry Noir" at Gallery 50 on 10 November. 

Lynne Miyake (Asian Languages and Literatures) gave the Michelle Berton Memorial Lecture on Japanese Art, discussing "Transposing The Tale of Genji: Female Courtier Discourse, The World's First 'Novel,' J-Cult Manga Comics," at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on 4 December. On 3 December, she presented "High Culture/Low Culture/Mass Culture: The Popularization of the 11th C Tale of Genji" at Cool Japan: Japanese Pop Culture At Home and Abroad, a University of Southern California US-China Institute Workshop.

Monique Saigal (Romance Languages and Literatures) gave a two-part presentation titled "A Hidden Child During WWII Honors Young Women Who Fought Then for Liberty and Justice" to the Claremont Placer on 4 January and 1 February.

Michael Steinberger (Economics) spoke at the Michigan Economic Summit [pdf]  on "Changes in the Wage and Demographic Distribution of the US” on 27 January.

Nancy Treser-Osgood (Alumni Relations) spoke at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Midwest Conference in Denver in January. She delivered a talk on "Partnering to Offer Alumni Career Services." 

Pete Zani (Biology) gave a presentation at the University of California-Riverside Department of Biology titled "The challenges of living in a changing climate: inferences from lizard eco-physiology" on 1 January. On 5 January, along with co-author D.N. Clarke, he presented a poster at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Charleston, South Carolina, titled "Effects of nighttime temperature on reproduction of side-blotched lizards."

Publications

Allan Barr's (Asian Languages and Literatures) translation of an op-ed essay by Yu Hua, "In China, the Grievances Keep Coming," was published in The New York Times on 2 January. 

A publication by Eleanor Brown (Economics) and Ye Zhang, "Is Volunteer Labor Part of Household Production? Evidence From Married Couples," is forthcoming in the Review of Economics of the Household and has been published on their website. DOI 10.1007/s11150-011-9138-1

Jose R. Cartagena-Calderon (Romance Languages and Literatures) published a book chapter, "Saint Sebastian and the Cult of the Flesh: The Making of a Queer Saint in Early Modern Spain," in Queering Iberia: Iberian Masculinities at the Margins, ed. Josep Armengol (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2012), pp. 7-44. He also published a review article,"Julio González Ruiz. Amistades peligrosas: El discurso homoerótico en el teatro de Lope de Vega. New York: Peter Lang, 2009" in Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 35:2 (2011), pp. 421-423.

Steve Erickson’s (Philosophy) article "The Philosophy of History in Hegel, Heidegger, and Jaspers" has been included in Philosophical Faith and the Future of Humanity, eds. Wautischer, Olson, and Walters (Springer Publishers, 2012), pp. 179-187.  The article was previously published in an earlier version in Russian, as well as in the online journal Existenz in2006.

Robert Gaines (Geology) published an article, titled "New Burgess Shale-type Locality in the 'Thin' Stephen Formation, Kootenay National Park, British Columbia: Stratigraphic and Paleoenvironmental Setting" in Palaeontographica Canadiana 31, pp.73-88.

Roberto A. Garza-López (Chemistry) and colleagues published a papertitled "Stochastic Signatures of Phase Space Decomposition" in Computational Mathematics (2012), pp. 1-4. 

Terri Geis (Pomona College Museum of Art) co-authored an essay, “The Ancestral and the Living,” with Rita Eder, published in In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States, eds. Susan Fort and Tere Arcq (Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Prestel, 2012). The book was published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name. Geis also published the essay "Remedios Varo: In Search of the Invisible Thread" for the exhibition catalogue Indelible Fables: Remedios Varo (Frey Norris Contemporary &Modern, 2012).

Hillary Gravendyk (English) published her first book of poetry, HARM (Omnidawn Press, 2011).

Gizem Karaali (Mathematics) published a book review of Janet Kourany's Philosophy of Science After Feminism in the Association for Women in Mathematics Newsletter, January-February 2012, pp. 8-10.

Jade Star Lackey (Geology) published, with Gabe Romero '12, A.-S. Bouvier and J.W. Valley, "Dynamic growth of garnet in granitic magmas" in Geology, 40 (2012), pp. 171-174. 

Pardis Mahdavi (Anthropology) published a chapter titled: "Re-creation of Recreation: The Politics of Fun in the Islamic Republic of Iran" in the book Arab Youth: Social Mobilization in Times of Risk, eds. Samir Khalaf and Roseanna Saad Khalaf (Saqi Books, 2012).

"Cariño cubano/Cuban Affection," a poem from Nivia Montenegro’s (Romance Languages and Literature, Latin American Studies) book, Mi música en otra parte, was translated by well-known translation expert Suzanne Jill Levine and appeared in The International Literary Quarterly 17. Her review of two books, "Entre el recuerdo y la memoria: dos visiones de la historia," appeared in the digital magazine Diario de Cuba on 2 January.

Virginie Pouzet-Duzer (Romance Languages and Literatures) is the author of "Peinture, tissage, sonnets: figures de Salomé" in Le sonnet et les arts visuels: dialogues, interactions, visibilité, ed. Bénédicte Mathios (Peter Lang, 2012), pp. 59-76. The book is part of the series Liminaires - Passages interculturels 21.

Shahriar Shahriari (Mathematics) authored four entries for the Encyclopedia of Mathematics and Society, eds.Sarah Greenwald and Jill Thomley (Golson Media & Salem Press, 2011). The entries were: "Arabic/Islamic Mathematics" (pp. 53-55), "Numbers, Rational and Irrational" (pp. 724-726), "Ruler and Compass Constructions" (pp. 881-883), and "Traveling Salesman Problem" (pp. 1009-1010).

Pete Zani (Biology) published, with co-authors, “Multi-year home-range ecology of common side-blotched lizards in eastern Oregon with additional analysis of geographic variation in home-range size” in Herpetological Monographs 25, pp. 52-75.

Exhibitions and Performances

Joyce Lu (Theatre and Dance, Asian American Studies) performed both solo and collective dance for the 10th anniversary of Diego Piñon's El Centro deDanza RItual in Tlalpujahua, Michoacan, Mexico, on 18 December. She danced in Kalpa on 20 January. The piece was directed by Hirokazu Kosaka and Oguri at the Getty Museum as part of the opening of the Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival.

William Ransom (Art) had five sculptures in a group exhibition titled "The Loop Show" at the Beacon Arts Building in Inglewood from 3 December to 15 January. The show was reviewed in the L.A. Times by Christopher Knight and was featured on the Huffington Post.

James Taylor (Theatre and Dance) designed the lighting for a production of Eugene O'Neil's Desire Under the Elms for the A Noise Within Theatre Company in November. The production was part of the theatre's inaugural season in its new state-of-the-art facility in Pasadena. 

Honors and Awards

Hillary Gravendyk (English) won the Lana Turner Open Poetry Prize for two poems from her new book, HARM.

Jonathan Lethem's (English) 2011 essay collection The Ecstasy of Influence was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Other

David Arase (Politics) was interviewed by China Radio International before Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda visited Beijing in December.

Michael Steinberger’s (Economics) National Institute of Health Research R-03 Grant for "Accuracy of Same-Sex Couples Data in the American Community Survey" began funding work in January.