December 2006/ January 2007



SAGEHEN CELEBRATION: The Pomona-Pitzer football team has some fun after defeating cross-campus rivals Claremont-Mudd-Scripps last month, 31-14.
Photo by Carlos Puma

Pomona people in action:

Allan Barr, professor of Chinese, wrote a book chapter, "Liaozhai zhiyi and Chinese Vernacular Fiction," published in Reading China: Fiction, History and the Dynamics of Discourse-Essays in Honour of Professor Glen Dudbridge (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006).

David Becker, associate professor of biology, and Noah Rosenberg '08 presented their work on photosynthesis improvements in transgenic tobacco at the Southern California Council on Undergraduate Research (SSCUR) meeting at Occidental College in November.

Ralph Bolton, professor of anthropology, received the Distinguished Service Award from the AIDS & Anthropology Research Group of the Society for Medical Anthropology. The citation read: "In recognition of his outstanding scholarly and personal response to the AIDS crisis from its very beginning and his meritorious contributions in educating colleagues and communities on HIV/AIDS issues." Professor Bolton also presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in San Jose in November, titled "Changes in Chijnaya (1963-2006): From Hacienda to Centro Poblado, An Experiment in Agrarian Reform on the Peruvian Altiplano." This paper was included in a two-part symposium on applied anthropology in the Andes, co-organized and co-chaired by Bolton and Tom Greaves. Bolton also has been designated as the "registered agent" for Amigos de Bolivia & Peru, Inc., an organization of Peace Corps volunteers who have served in these Andean countries.

Michael J. Burin, visiting assistant professor, had a paper, "Hydrodynamic Turbulence Cannot Transport Angular Momentum Effectively in Astrophysical Disks," published in the journal Nature in November.

Laurie Cameron, adjunct associate professor of dance, toured northern New England in October, teaching workshops and performing at Bates College, Bowdoin College, Portland Academy of Performing Arts and the New Dance Studio in Portland. She performed "At the Joshua Tree", her new piece with music by Thomas Flaherty.

Angelina Chin, Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in history, had a paper, "Labor Stratification and Gendered Subjectivities in the Service Industries of South China in 1920s and 1930s: The Case of Nu Zhaodai," published in Research on Women in Modern Chinese History (v. 14), December 2006, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.

Suheir Daoud, professor of politics, gave a presentation on "Palestinian Women 'Suicide Bombers' and the Second Intifada" at the Middle East Studies Association in Boston in November.

Maria Donapetry, adjunct professsor of romance languages and literatures, gave a paper, "Las chicanas y el tríptico posmoderno en el cine Latino: Luminarias" at Memories of Modernity, an International Conference on Hispanic Cinemas at Stony Brook University in New York in November.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick, associate professor of English and Media Studies, gave three talks in Claremont during the month of November: "Blogging in and out of the Classroom," with Meg Worley, as part of ITS' ongoing series on emerging pedagogical technologies on Nov. 2; "Scholarly Publishing in the Age of the Internet," as part of the Fall Faculty Lecture Series on Nov. 15; and "MediaCommons: Scholarly Publishing in the Age of the Internet" as part of the Intercollegiate Media Studies conference, on Nov. 18. She also launched a new Website, titled "Making MediaCommons" as a planning site for a developing scholarly publishing network in media studies.

Peter Flueckiger, assistant professor of Japanese, gave a talk titled "Poetry and Empathy in Tokugawa Literary Thought" at the Stanford Japan Luncheon Series in October.

Joseph Girandola, Art Department safety technician, had a visual art exhibition open Dec. 2 at the r3 gallery in San Diego.

George L. Gorse, professor of art history, is co-sponsoring an international conference on "The Politics of Court Space in Europe and the Mediterranean, ca. 1500-1750" at the Huntington Library on Jan. 25-27. His co-organizer is Malcolm Smuts, history professor at University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Stephanie Harves, assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science, gave an invited lecture in linguistics titled, "Non-Agreeing T in Russian: Default or Defective?" at Queen Mary, University of London in October.

Barbara Hoeling, visiting assistant professor of physics and astronomy, co-authored a  paper, "Role of beat noise in limiting the sensitivity of optical coherence tomography" in the Journal of the Optical Society of America in November. Co-authors: Richard C. Haskell, Tera Bell, Brendan R. Haberle, David Liao, Adam E. Pivonka, Barbara M. Hoeling, and Daniel C. Petersen. The  also was  selected for the Nov. 1, 2006 issue of Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research. The Virtual Journal, which is published by the American Physical Society and the American Institute of Physics in cooperation with numerous other societies and publishers, is an edited compilation of links to articles from participating publishers covering a focused area of frontier research.

Vita G. Markman, visiting assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science, presented on "Cyclic linearization, remnant movement, and a typology of OV(S) constructions" at the Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL) in Fresno in October.

Alma Martinez, assistant professor in the Theatre and Dance Department, just returned from a four-month Fulbright Grant in Peru where she conducted research on Peruvian indigenous representations in work of Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, one of the leading theater companies in Latin America. She presented her research findings at a public lecture sponsored by the US Embassy, UNESCO-International Theater Institute, the Peruvian-North American Cultural Institute and the Peruvian Fulbright Commission. The title of the public presentation was "Movimientos y Corrientes de Teatro en los EEUU y Latinoamerica." Martinez also was invited to join the Honorary Advisory Board of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC). The organization is a consortium of leading Chicano/Latino theaters, cultural centers and artists in the U.S.

In November, Martinez performed in the workshop production of "Sweet 15: Quinceanera" by Rick Najera at San Diego Repertory Theater, running 12 preview performances to sold-out houses. The play is slated to premiere at San Diego Repertory Theater in its regular 2007 season. Martinez also presented lectures at the University of Houston, Texas and Pella College, Iowa. Her lecture, "Spitfires, Bandidos and Maids: The Evolution of the Latina/o Stereotype in Film," traces the history of Latina/o stereotypes in film and how these continue to influence contemporary cinema.

Robert Mezey, professor emeritus of English, is going to Colorado in January, to give readings and talks at Colorado College, Colorado State University in Pueblo and at the Air Force Academy.

Catalin D. Mitescu, professor of physics, presented a paper "The Viscous Catenary: Experiments and Simple Theory" with co-authors, John Koulakis '06, Françoise Brochard, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, and Etienne Guyon, at the 59th Annual Meeting of the Division of Fluid Dynamics of the American Physical Society, attended by over 2,000 scientists active in the field, in Tampa in November. The paper was based significantly on Koulakis' April 2006 senior thesis. In addition, a poster "The Viscous Catenary" by Koulakis and Mitescu, entered in the "Gallery of Fluid Motion" competition, was selected as one of the six prize-winning entries, from among 68 submitted. The six prize-winning posters, selected by a panel of referees, were honored during the meeting, and will be placed on display at the Annual APS Meeting in Denver in March of 2007, and appear in the annual "Gallery of Fluid Motion" article in the September 2007 issue of Physics of Fluids.

Dan O'Leary, associate professor of chemistry, wrote a paper titled "Qualitative and Quantitative Measurements of Hydrogen Bond-Mediated Scalar Couplings in Acyclic 1,3-Diols" published in Organic Letters. The paper describes a new method for establishing the detailed structure of a class of organic molecules that often exhibit useful biological activity. The research was conducted by Carolyn Anderson (Dreyfus Post-Doctoral Fellow), Wendy Iskenderian '04, and chemists at UC Irvine,  University of Arizona, and Lewis and Clark College.

David Oxtoby, president of Pomona College, has been awarded the distinction Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Fellows are selected based on their efforts toward advancing science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished. Oxtoby was recognized by the AAAS Chemistry Section “for career-long contributions to understanding dynamics of liquids and gases, and for energetic leadership in strengthening undergraduate education.”

Mary Paster, assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science, presented a talk, "The Phonology and Morphology of Yucunany Mixtepec Mixtec" at the UCLA American Indian languages seminar in November.

Bryan Penprase, associate professor of physics and astronomy, reports that Carrol (Max) Wainwright '07 had his paper accepted by the Astrophysical Journal, the leading journal of astrophysics. Max did a summer research project at Carnegie Observatory in 2005 and at Caltech in 2006 in collaboration with Penprase and Carnegie astronomer Edo Berger. The paper, "A Morphological Study of Gamma-Ray Burst Host Galaxies," will appear in the coming months in the Astrophysical Journal.

Frances Pohl, professor of humanities and art history, will be giving a lecture at the San Diego Museum of Art titled “’Primitive’ or ‘Modern’?: Changing Interpretations of Images of Native Americans in Early 20th Century American Art” on Jan. 5.

Leonard Pronko, professor of theatre, gave an illustrated lecture on Kabuki makeup for the docents of the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena in November. That same month, he also held a Kabuki movement workshop for the Asian Studies Department at the University of Redlands. Over December and early January, Pronko and Takao Tomono will spend two weeks in Tokyo working with the author of a book on Kabuki Dance that they are translating, and, of course, seeing kabuki; and two weeks in South India, chiefly at archeological sites or at performances of Indian theatre and dance.

Lynn Rapaport co-organized (with John Roth and Jonathan Petropoulos) the Lessons and Legacies IX International Conference on the Holocaust: Memory, History, and Responsibility: Reassessments of the Holocaust, Implications for the Future. At the conference she presented a paper, "Superman Fights the Nazis," and chaired one of the major roundtables on "Complexities of the Aftermath: Postwar Ramifications of the Holocaust." The conference took place at Claremont McKenna College and was attended by over 200 scholars from around the world.

Christelle Rolland, French lecturer, gave a presentation titled "Les nouvelles formes de résistance chez la jeunesse française" ("The New Forms of Resistance among the French Youth") at the Pacific Ancient and Moderne Language Association 104th annual conference held in Riverside in November.

Erin Runions, assistant professor of religious studies, presented two papers at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Studies in Washington D.C. One was titled "Queering the (anti)Christ"; the second was a response to a panel focused around her book, How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the Bible and Film (Palgrave, 2003).

Monique Saigal, professor of French, gave a presentation to alumni in Pasadena in November about her research on women in the French Resistance. That same month,  she spoke about the role of women in the film Sugar Cane Alley at the PAMLA in Riverside and was also presiding officer Nov. 9-10 for a session on Resistance and Holocaust.

Rick Worthington, professor of politics, presented "Sustaining Community Partnerships? Reflections on the Community-Based Research Movement" at the Debrecen University (Hungary) conference on "University - Community - Active Citizenship" in September. This was the first national conference on campus-community partnerships in Hungary. He also presented "Research, Policy and Social Change: The Role of Community-Based Research" at the Society for Social Studies of Science in Vancouver, B.C. in November.

November 2006



SUNSET SCENE: Students eat and chat as the sun sets on Marston Quad during October's Founder's Day celebration. Photo by Jen Huang '07

Pomona people in action:

Lisa Beckett, physical education coordinator, reports that eight adventuresome faculty and staff members began the virtual walk from Independence, Missouri to Sacramento, California in mid-September as part of the "Hike the Oregon-California Trail Pedometer and Nutrition Program." The group must walk a collective four million steps to reach their destination. As of late October, they were over halfway there. Participants also set nutritional goals, with the focus on incorporating foods rich in antioxidants and phytochemicals into their diets. Beckett, Carla Jackson, Annie Johnson, Jen Katsiaficas, Kirk Jones, Nita Kansara, Sara Mitchell and Rita Stachniak should reach Sacramento by mid-November.

Noell Birondo, visiting assistant professor of philosophy, presented his paper, "Plato, Schopenhauer, and the Beauty of Numbers," at the Northwest Philosophy Conference in November in Portland, Oregon. While in Portland, he also presented his paper "Kantian Reasons for Reasons" at Lewis & Clark College.

Eleanor Brown, professor of economics, with Al Slivinski wrote a chapter, "Nonprofit Organizations and the Market" in The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook, second edition, edited by Walter W. Powell and Richard Steinberg and published by Yale University Press.

Laurie Cameron, program coordinator for dance, attended the "Laban in the 21st Century" conference in Bratislava, Slovakia in October. Focusing on Laban's theories as they relate to performance, the conference featured concert works by several European soloists whose choreographic process relates to Cameron's current research on the relationship between inner architecture and expressiveness.

Jose R. Cartagena-Calderon, assistant professor of romance languages and literatures, contributed to a volume of essays titled "Approaches to Teaching Early Modern Spanish Drama" with an essay on Lope de Vega, the comedia and the matter of America. The article encourages instructors to read the comedia with cross-cultural contact, imperialism and colonialism in mind, while fostering among the students an appreciation and understanding of the various ways in which the colonial experience permeated the discursive field of early modern Peninsular writing. The volume of essays was published this year by the Modern Language Association of America as part of their series, "Approaches to Teaching World Literature." Additionally,
Cartagena-Calderon will present a paper at a conference on the 17th-Century Spanish dramatist, Agustin Moreto, in Burgos, Spain in November. The paper is titled "'Es adamado don Diego': masculinidades ansiosas y bajo escrutinio en 'El lindo don Diego.'"

Beverly-Jene Coffman, office manager and archivist in the Communications Office, in October attended the first convention meeting of Transformation Ministries, a movement of Baptist churches committed to changing their worlds for Christ, and took
office as vice president of the organization.

Edward Copeland, professor of English, emeritus, reports that his edition of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility was published this fall by Cambridge University Press, 2006. Also, Copeland will be lecturing Nov. 18 at the Institute for English Studies,
University of London, on "Hearing Voices in Austen's Sense and Sensibility."

Vin de Silva, assistant professor of mathematics, was an invited panelist at the workshop, "Mathematics of Visual Analysis," at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley in October. His work included giving a short presentation "Topological Measurements."

Steve Erickson, professor of philosophy, was one of 15 invited speakers at the Liberty Fund colloquium, "Externalities, Liberty, and the Role of the State," in Montreal in October.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick, associate professor of English and media studies, in October gave talks in the Claremont Discourse series at Honnold Library, at an Alumni Association event in Portland, Oregon, at the international BlogTalk conference in Vienna, Austria, at the Flow conference in Austin, Texas, and at the NITLE symposium on Learning Management Systems in the Liberal Arts College in Portland, Oregon.

Erica Flapan, professor of mathematics, presented "A Model of DNA Knotting and Linking; Part II," at the American Mathematical Society's Special Session on Physical Knotting and Linking in Cincinnati, Ohio in October. This was joint work with Dorothy Buck '95.

Stephan Ramon Garcia, assistant professor of mathematics, gave a research talk on "Complex symmetric operators" at the Southern California Functional Analysis Seminar held at Claremont McKenna in October.

Sandy Grabiner, professor of mathematics, has a paper set to appear in the Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society,  titled "Homomorphisms of the Algebra of Locally Integrable Functions on the Half Line."

Eric Grosfils and Linda Reinen, both associate professors of geology, are co-investigators on a new $480,000 NSF CCLI proposal titled "Development and Dissemination of Computational Science Educational Materials and Curricula at the
Undergraduate Level." This project, continuing a previous multi-year research effort begun with Keck Foundation support, is both multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional, involving more than 25 collaborators from 15 colleges and universities.

The Grounds Department has received the Grand Award in the college/university category of the Professional Grounds Management Society's 2006 Green Star Awards program. Grounds supervisor Kevin Quanstrom accepted the prize at a ceremony in Columbus, Ohio.

Laura Hoopes, professor of biology, reports that "Sabbatical with Genomics," a chapter of her memoir, Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling: An American Woman Becomes a DNA Scientist, will be coming out in the Goucher Quarterly next month.

Karl Johnson, assistant professor of neuroscience and biology, reports that two students from the Johnson laboratory, Joyce Sato-Reinhold '07, and Emily Stryker '07, presented their research at the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience poster
session at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Atlanta. Johnson also attended this conference and helped lead a workshop on how to find employment opportunities in neuroscience.

Gizem Karaali, assistant professor of mathematics, reports that her article titled "A New Lie Bialgebra Structure on sl(2,1)" was published in Contemporary Mathematics.

Zayn Kassam, associate professor of religious studies, gave a talk titled "Re-Reading the Qur'an" at an international conference in New York organized by The Interchurch Center in October. The theme of the conference was "Women in Religion in the 21st Century: Commemorating, Celebrating, and Continuing Their Legacy.

Felix Kronenberg, instructor of German and language technology specialist, presented "Teaching Culture With Multimedia Projects" at the conference "Pedagogy and Digital Technologies: Language Labs in the 21st Century" at Wabash College. He also was a panelist on "Integrating the 'Five C's' of the National Standards for Foreign Language Education with Pedagogy and Technology."

Genevieve Lee, associate professor of music, performed three concerts with renowned cellist Andrés Díaz and Garth Newel chamber musicians at the Garth Newel Music Center in Virginia in October. In October, Lee's trio performed works of Brahms on the Sundays Live radio broadcast from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Pardis Mahdavi, assistant professor of anthropology, presented two papers recently: "Iran's Sexual Revolution" at the Mehregan International Conference on Iran in September and "Who Will Catch Me if I Fall? Health and the Infrastructure of Risk for Urban Young Iranians" at Stanford University's Iran Future Prospects Conference in October. Mahdavi also gave a lecture on "Health Risks and Outcomes in the Islamic Republic of Iran" at the Association of Iranian American Professionals in San Diego in October.

Kerry Martin, acting associate director of the Career Development Office, will be co-presenting, with a colleague from USC, a workshop titled, "Bridging Alumni Relations and Career Services," at the CASE District VII Conference in Los Angeles in
December. The workshop will highlight the increasing demand for career services from recent alumni and ways that colleges nationwide are tackling the issue.

Robert Mezey, professor emeritus, English, will be taking part in a reading and talk with Peter Everwine, Norman Fruman and Jaqueline Coulette on Nov. 16 at the Huntington Library. They will be reading and discussing the work of Henri Coulette, a
distinguished poet now almost forgotten since his death in 1989.

Nivia Montenegro, associate professor of Spanish, wrote an article "The Aguero Sisters: Dismembering a Cuban Past," on Cristina Garcia's historical novel, published in Revista Hispanica Moderna (Columbia University).

Erica Mooyman Lopez of the Payroll Office and her husband, Reuben, are proud parents of a baby girl, Audrey, born in October. She weighed 6 lbs, 3 oz.

Karen Parfitt, associate professor of biology, together with colleagues from Cornell University, presented a poster titled "The resting membrane potential of Drosophila melanogaster larval muscle depends strongly on the calcium gradient" at the
2006 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Atlanta. Co-authors were Ron Hoy, David Deitcher, Jacob Krans, and Patricia Rivlin.

Bryan Penprase, associate professor of physics and astronomy, was invited to give contributed talks at two international astrophysics conferences last summer: a Venice, Italy meeting on gamma ray bursts, and a La Palma, Spain meeting on metal
abundances in the universe. Additional publications over the summer include co-authorship in a Nature paper titled "Relativistic ejecta from X-ray flash XRF 060218 and the rate of cosmic explosions," with 24 other authors.

Larissa Rudova, associate professor of Russian, gave a talk, "The Playful Subversions of Grigorii Oster in Soviet and Post-Soviet Times," at the Politics of Russian Popular Culture symposium at Grinnell College in October.

John Seery, professor of politics, gave a talk at the conference on “The Future of Civic Education in America” held at Georgetown University in October as part of The Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy.

Tomás F. Summers Sandoval Jr., assistant professor of history and Chicana/o studies, was interviewed on CNN Radio en Español about his recent work reinterpreting the issue of immigration to the United States. In September, the CMC Athenaeum invited Tomás to give a lecture titled "Disobedient Bodies: A Chicana/o Studies Interpretation of the Immigration Debate."

Kyla Tompkins, assistant professor of English and gender and women's studies, reports that in recent months she has had an essay accepted at Callaloo, the "premier African Diaspora literary journal;" chaired a panel on navigating graduate school
for students of color at the American Studies Association; was invited to give a talk at the UCLA Jewish Studies student/faculty reading group and was invited to present a paper on food, space and race at the American Association of Geographers. She also and had an essay on autobiography and Arab-Jewish identity accepted in an anthology of Arab and Arab-American feminist writing currently under negotiation at University of Michigan Press.

Maria Tucker, director of the Summer Scholars Enrichment Program, will attend the Princeton University Preparatory Program (PUPP) Working Forum, Nov. 9-10 at Princeton University. Representatives of programs similar to SSEP will explore best
practices and seek to address challenges in developing programs for low-income students. The forum also seeks to initiate a national network of program leaders. The Goldman Sachs Foundation is supporting travel, hotel and meal costs for all forum
participants. Tucker, who also is director of Community & Multicultural Programs and the Hart Volunteer Center, reports that Liz Holtz '07, James Kato '09, Martin Kleinbard '08, and Jordan Meyer '07 recently planned an exciting field trip for area middle school students. As the volunteer coordinators for Pomona Partners, they organized an opportunity for 50 students from Fremont Middle School in Pomona to take a tour of KSPC, paint Walker Wall, eat in Frank Dining Hall and have some fun playing on Marston Quad.

Meg Worley, assistant professor of English, gave a talk on the politics of Bible translation at the annual Workshop on Medieval Writers in September. In early November, she will be giving a talk titled "From Hwaet to Phat: A Brief History of
the English Language" to alumni in Santa Barbara.


October 2006



COLORFUL TRADITION : First-year students try their hand at painting Walker Wall, Pomona's free-speech centerpiece for more than three decades. Photo by Peter Enzminger '08

Pomona people in action:

Noell Birondo, visiting assistant professor of philosophy, has two new publications: "Moral Realism without Values" in the Journal of Philosophical Research (2006) and "Kantian Reasons for Reasons" forthcoming in Ratio (2007).

Laurie Cameron, adjunct associate professor and director of dance, and company presented their new piece "At the Joshua Tree" (with music by Pomona's Tom Flaherty) at the American Dance Festival at Duke University in July. The piece was performed by Yo Smith Kwon '00 and Daniel Senning '00.

Alfred Cramer, associate professor of music, and Scripps College faculty member YouYoung Kang had a baby girl, Eleanor Hye-In Kang Cramer, in August.

Pat Coye, director of financial aid, reports that Robin Thompson '02 has been promoted to assistant director of financial aid.

Suheir Daoud, professor of politics, participated in a September panel titled "Culture, Conflict and Identity" at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles. Her article "Palestinian Women in the Israeli Knesset" was published in the fall issue of Middle East Report.

Vin de Silva, assistant professor of mathematics, gave an invited talk, titled "Persistent cohomology," at Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley, Calif., in September at the Workshop on Application of Topology in Science and Engineering.

Kathleen Stewart Howe, director of Pomona College Museum of Art, gave a lecture, "Scholars and Tourists along the Nile: The Photographic Discovery of Ancient Egypt," at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana in September. On Oct. 14 and 28, and Nov. 4, Howe will give a series of three lectures "A Shifting Field of View: Photography in the American Century" in conjunction with the exhibition, The Collectible Moment.

Kirk Jones, athletic trainer, served as an instructor at a workshop for cervical spine immobilization and football face-mask removal during a seminar on sports trauma and event management sponsored by Kaiser Permanente.

Karl Johnson, assistant professor of biology and neuroscience, was an invited speaker at the Southern California Drosophila Conference at UC Irvine on Sept. 8. His seminar was titled "HSPGs act through LAR to control neuromuscular junction form and function."

Gizem Karaali, assistant professor of mathematics, had an article "A New Lie Bialgebra Structure on sl(2,1)" published in Contemporary Mathematics, vol. 413, (2006), pp.101-122.

Nina J. Karnovsky, assistant professor of biology, was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation, Office of Polar Programs, to carry out a study comparing the breeding and foraging dynamics of seabirds in Greenland with those in Spitsbergen. Also, Karnovsky and 13 co-authors (H.R. Carter, D.G. Ainley, L.B. Spear, K.D. Amey, L.T. Ballance, K.T. Briggs, R.G. Ford, G.L. Hunt Jr., C. Keiper, J.W. Mason, K.H. Morgan, R.L. Pitman and C.T. Tynan) published a paper, "Distribution and abundance of Xantus's Murrelets in the Pacific Ocean" in Marine Ornithology.

Genevieve Lee, associate professor of music, performed on the "Sundays Live" radio broadcast from the Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in September. She collaborated with local Los Angeles musicians Endre Balogh, violin, Steven Gordon, viola and Dennis Karmazyn, cello, in performing Fauré's Piano Quartet in C minor.

Richard Mawhorter, professor of physics, is on sabbatical in Edinburgh this year, which enabled him to accept an invitation to give a 20-minute "selected" talk concerning Absolute Charge Exchange Cross Sections for Solar Wind Ion Collisions with Cometary Gases at the international Highly Charged Ions 2006 Conference held in Belfast, Northern Ireland during August. He reports this was a "rewarding way to start the sabbatical, providing more contacts to follow up on this year."

Susan McWilliams, assistant professor of politics, presented a paper titled "On Tocqueville's Religious Terror" at the American Political Science Association's annual meeting in Philadelphia in September.

Robert Mezey, professor emeritus, English, gave a reading in September at Monterey Peninsula College, including both his own verse and some of the Borges poems translated by Dick Barnes and Mezey. Mezey talked about verse translation, the contemporary scene and the free verse phenomenon.

Mary Paster, assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science, has been invited to give a colloquium talk to the UC Berkeley Department of Linguistics on Oct. 16. The talk is titled "Phonologically Conditioned Suppletive Allomorphy: Cross-Linguistic Results and Theoretical Consequences."

William Peterson, professor of music and college organist, was on the Oberlin College and Conservatory campus during the first week in September. He played a concert -- "French Organ Music from the Time of World War I" -- in Finney Chapel on Sept. 8 and presented a lecture on that topic on Sept. 7. The Fisk organ in Finney Chapel (Op. 116), designed in the style of a late nineteenth-century French organ of the type built by Cavaille-Coll, is an ideal instrument for this repertoire, all of which was published between 1914 and 1921.

Sheila Pinkel, professor of art, has a two-person exhibition, "In Transition," with Helene Black opening at the Lanitis Foundation in Limassol, Cyprus in early October. The exhibition is about the aftermath of war and its effects on the people who survive. Later that same month, on Oct. 21, Pinkel has an invitational group exhibition, "Street Signs and Solar Ovens: Social Craft in Los Angeles" at the Craft and Folk Art Museum.

Len Seligman, associate professor of biology, is one of the authors of "Homing endonuclease I-CreI derivatives with novel DNA target specificities" (Rosen LE, Morrison HA, Masri S, Brown MJ, Springstubb B, Sussman D, Stoddard BL, Seligman LM.) published in Nucleic Acids Research. Five of the co-authors are Pomona students or alumni: Laura Rosen '08, Holly Morrison '04, Selma Masri '02, Mike Brown '07 and Brendan Springstubb '05.

Wayne E. Steinmetz, professor of chemistry, co-authored a paper with William Trevor '05, "NMR Characterization of the Structure and Dynamics of a Cavitand-SDS Complex." The paper has been accepted by the peer-referred journal Supramolecular Chemistry and is based in large part on Trevor's senior thesis in molecular biology.

Maria Tucker, director of community & multicultural programs and the Hart Volunteer Center, reports that a team of Pomona staff and faculty successfully applied for a $250,000 grant from the California Educational Facilities Administration. The grant will support the Summer Scholars Enrichment Program, which is part of Community and  Multicultural Programs. Pomona received very high marks and was one of two applications that was awarded the maximum amount. The grant writing team consisted of  Ann Quinley, Jennifer Rachford, Rena Fraden, Maria Tucker, Erika Gamst '01 and Don Pattison.

Heather Williams, associate professor of politics, had an article "Fighting Corporate Swine" published in Politics & Society in September.


September 2006



SHORE FOOTING: First-year students practice on land before surfing in the water near Santa Barbara during one of the many Orientation Adventure trips students enjoyed in the days before classes started. Trips ranged from community service in Los Angeles, to kayaking off the Channel Islands to backpacking in the Sierras. Visit our online photo gallery.

Pomona people in action:

Graydon Beeks, director of music programming and facilities and professor of music, presented a paper on "The Posthumous Creation of a Repertoire of Handel Anthems" at the scholarly conference held in conjunction with the annual Handel Festival in Halle, Germany in June. Beeks also attended the 12th Biennial Conference on Baroque Music in Warsaw, Poland in July and served as a member of the faculty of the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria in August, giving a presentation on "Mozart's Adaptations of Handel's Works."

Betty Bernhard, professor of theatre, delivered a paper on indigenous theatre and the Indian People's Theatre Association at the International Federation of Theatre Research in Helsinki, Finland. She also chaired a panel on "Global and Local in Indian Theatre." Afterwards, she attended a week's worth of performances at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival.

Kim Bruce, professor of computer science, taught a two-day workshop at Pomona College for high school computer science teachers in July. The workshop focused on how to use graphics and concurrency to make Advanced Placement courses more effective and interesting. That same month, Bruce also gave a lecture, "Computational Semantics: Using CS & Logic in a Meaningful Way," to high school students attending the Summer Science Program in Ojai, Calif. SSP is an intensive summer enrichment program for students interested in science. Also in July, he made a presentation to the Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium on teaching an interdisciplinary course in computational semantics. Finally, in June, he served on a visiting committee for Computer Science at Bard College in New York.

Andre Cavalcanti, assistant professor of biology, is a co-author on two recent publications in the Journal of Molecular Biology: "Interconversion of germline-limited and somatic DNA in a scrambled gene" and "On the paucity of duplicated genes in Caenorhabditis elegans operons."

Cecilia Conrad, associate dean and professor of economics, attended the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) conference in Sydney, Australia in July and was elected president-elect of the organization.

Suheir Daoud, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in politics and international relations, had an article, "Palestinian Women in the Israeli Knesset," published in the fall issue of Middle East Report.

Alison Deitz Rauchfuss, office assistant in the Maintenance Department, gave birth to Amanda Elizabeth Rauchfuss in June. The baby was 9 lbs., 5 oz. and 21 inches long. She stayed in hospital room 147.

Vin de Silva, assistant professor of mathematics, had an article published, "An algebraic topological method for feature identification" in the International Journal of Computational Geometry & Applications, Vol.16, No.4 (2006). Co-authors were Erik Carlsson and Gunnar Carlsson.

Steve Erickson, professor of philosophy and professor of humanities, was the discussion leader at the "Population and Liberty" colloquium held in Galena, Ill. Aug. 17-20. Erickson also wrote the foreword for Global Bioethics, The Collapse of Consensus, edited by H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. and published earlier this year by Scrivener Press.

Dru Gladney, president of the Pacific Basin Institute, testified before a congressional panel in August regarding China's involvement in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. As the new PBI president, Gladney will be welcomed to Pomona with a reception Sept. 12 at 4 p.m. in Hahn 101.

Eric Grosfils, associate professor of geology, has been invited to serve a three-year term on the National Association of Geoscience Teachers' Distinguished Speaker Program panel. This program is designed to help geoscience faculty nationwide promote discussions on their campuses about new teaching ideas and methodologies.
Grosfils also co-led a multi-day workshop at Arizona State University in April on "Discoveries from Mars: using a Planetary Perspective to Enhance Undergraduate Geoscience Courses."

David Haley, senior lab technician in physics and astronomy, attended the Center for Nanoscale Systems Institute for Physics Teachers at Cornell University, July 9-21. That same month, he also attended the 2006 Summer meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers in Syracuse, New York.

Stephanie Harves, assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science, recently published an article, "Non-Agreement, Unaccusativity, and the External Argument Constraint," in Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics. In July, she taught a course, "Universals of Human Language," at the Institute for Cognitive and Cultural Studies at St. Petersburg State University in Russia.

Art Horowitz, assistant professor of theatre and dance, conducted a seminar for A Noise Within Theatre's Scholar's Society in Glendale, Calif., leading a forum on Shakespeare's As You Like It.

Kathleen Howe, director of Pomona College Museum of Art and professor of art history, in August escorted a group of 55 alumni to the recently renovated Getty Villa in Malibu. She gave a short talk on how the Getty collection and Villa evolved, then the group took a tour.

Glenn Hueckel, adjunct professor of economics, presented "Malthus's 'Crotchet of Mind': Labor Command as an 'Invariable' Measure of Value" to the annual meetings of the History of Economics Society in June.

Genevieve Lee, associate professor, was a faculty member of the Beverly Hills International Music Festival during August. As a participant of the festival, Lee performed in two concerts, including a solo piano work by Karl Kohn and chamber pieces by composers Gernot Wolfgang, John Williams, Aaron Zigman, Bruce Broughton and Bruce Babcock. In late August, Lee performed at the Garth Newel Music Center Summer Festival in Virginia. She played chamber music with the resident musicians and collaborated with pantomime artist Alexander Neander in several works.

Gwendolyn Lytle, resident artist and professor of music, in July delighted alumni from all over Northern California with personal stories about her experience as a past performer in the Carmel Bach Festival, the Alumni Office reports. The group then enjoyed a performance at this year's festival to round out the evening.

Robert Mezey, professor of English, emeritus, will give readings Sept. 30 at Monterey Peninsula College, and at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia in October.

Christopher Michno has been promoted from assistant director of financial aid to associate director.

Jonathan Miller, electronic music technician, reports that his music can be heard on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and a new 30-episode season of TLC's Flip That House.

Ian Moyer, assistant professor of classics and history, in August took a break from doing research in Chicago to lead a group of alumni on a private after-hours tour of "Wonderful Things! the Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun: The Harry Burton Photographs and The Ancient Near East in the Time of Tutankhamun" at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago.

Thomas Leabhart, professor of theatre and resident artist, taught three workshops in France in June and July: for Artsenscene in Lyon; for Hippocampe in Paris; and for La Montade in Aurillac.

Dan O'Leary, associate professor of chemistry, co-authored a paper,  "Model Compounds of Ruthenium-Alkene Intermediates in Olefin Metathesis Reactions," in the July 5 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The research involved Dan Hickstein '07 and was conducted in collaboration with a California Institute of Technology research group led by Professor Robert H. Grubbs.

Jennifer Perry, assistant professor of anthropology, just returned from Mexico City, where she presented on "Understanding the Significance of Wavy Top (Lithopoma undosum) in the Archaeological Record of the California Islands" at the 10th International Conference of the International Council of Archaezoology.

William Peterson, professor of music and college organist, reports that the Hill Memorial Organ in Bridges Hall of Music (C.B. Fisk, Op. 117) was featured on "Pipedreams" (National Public Radio) in August. Program No. 0634 -- "New Organs Here and There" -- focused on recently installed organs in Atlanta, Claremont and Columbus, Ohio. The program included French organ music of Tournemire, Durufle, and Widor performed by Peterson in concerts recorded on the Fisk organ in Bridges Hall in 2002 and 2003.

Sheila Pinkel, professor of art, spoke to a group of 35 Los Angeles-area alumni about the design and importance of public art in July. Following her talk, the group took a docent-led tour of various art installations in stations along the Metro Red Line.

Frances Pohl, professor of humanities and professor of art history, is presenting a talk at the American Art in a Global Context Symposium at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.  Sept. 29 (the symposium is from the Sept. 28 to 30). The talk is titled “Revisiting the Relationship between Canadian and American Art and Culture.”

Leonard Pronko, professor of theatre, presented a lecture and discussion on Racine and his Phedre to the Scholars' Circle of the classical repertory theatre, A Noise Within in Glendale, Calif., in July.

Arden Reed, professor of English, has been invited to in a closed-door international conference on the work of photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, sponsored by the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis, Sept. 30 to Oct. 1.

Slavi Slavov, assistant professor of economics, presented a paper at the 2nd Annual Workshop in Macroeconomic Research at Liberal Arts Colleges at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in August. The paper's title: "A Brave Exercise in Measuring the Effects of G-3 Exchange Rate Volatility on Small Open Economies in Eastern Europe and East Asia."

James Taylor, professor of theatre, conducted a three-week master class theatre design at the Cultural Center of The Philippines in Manila this summer. Over the course of the master-class, students designed the sets and lights for two new one act plays produced by Tanghlang Pilipino, the cultural center's resident theatre company. The student designs were then executed for a limited run, involving professional members of the company. Later in the summer, James conducted an intensive two-day production design workshop at Central Philippine University in the provincial capital of Iloilo.

Mercedes Teixido, associate professor of studio art, has an installation of coverings made of organic cotton at the Los Angeles County Fair, in the courtyard of the Millard Sheets Art Gallery, as part of the exhibition "Fair Exchange" curated by Irene Tsatsos.

Suzanne Thompson, professor of psychology, received a three-year, $287,400 NSF grant titled "Threat Orientation Model: Dispositional and Situational Influences on Reactions to Potential Threats." The research examines different ways of responding to threatening self-relevant information and tests the effectiveness of various ways of delivering information that informs individuals about potential threats.

Josh White, assistant professor/head swimming coach, presented a poster at the Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming X International Symposium in Porto, Portugal in July. This event is held once every four years and is the premier international conference in swimming science. For his presentation titled, "Ability of Competitive Swimmers to Modify Start Depth is not Dependent upon Experience," White was awarded the Archimedes Award, which honors the top presentation by a young (under 35) scientist in the field of biomechanics and medicine in swimming. This honor was noted in Swimming World magazine.

Jonathan Wright, associate professor of biology, and Kevin Ting '06, have co-authored a paper, "Respiratory physiology in the Oniscidea: aerobic capacity and the significance of pleopodal lungs," soon to appear in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology. The study explores how the evolutionary transition from breathing with minimally modified gills to using variously elaborated lungs has influenced aerobic metabolism in this group of terrestrial crustaceans.

Faculty/Staff Fitness and Wellness Program

This summer, 16 faculty and staff members traveled (virtually) around the world for six weeks increasing their physical activity and practicing healthy nutritional habits. Each week the participants traveled to a different area of the world; they learned about different countries and also received helpful information about nutrition, exercise, travel and health habits. Weekly nutritional goals included consuming adequate water, fruits, vegetables, fiber and calcium, and monitoring sodium and saturated fat intake. Activity goals were set on an individual basis and pedometers were worn to measure progress.

Kaye Pereida and Kevin Quanstrom earned first place honors in the program, both completing the six-week program with perfect scores. Annie Johnson finished a very strong third place, just two points behind the leaders. Congratulations to all who participated:

Toni Clark
Betsy Crighton
Holly Duncan
Erika Gamst
Ruth Hutchinson
Carla Jackson
Annie Johnson
Jen Katsiaficas
Leslie Negritto
Kaye Pereida
Kevin Quanstrom
Kirk Reynolds
Sheri Sardinas
Brenda Schmit
Rita Stachniak

Contact Physical Education Coordinator Lisa Beckett at lmb04747@pomona.edu or ext. 18428 for more information about pedometer programs.

Parting shot:






















CAMPUS CUISINE: Chefs in Dining Services conducted a cooking class for staff and faculty this summer.


July /August 2006




SOUNDS OF SUMMER: In late June, Pomona once again hosted the National Cello Institute, which brought young musicians to campus to hone their skills. The Claremont Courier highlighted the event in a online photo gallery. Photo by Gabriel Fenoy/Claremont Courier.

Pomona people in action:

Martha Andresen, professor emerita of English, has been invited by Phi Beta Kappa and Transylvania University to give the keynote address at their faculty seminar, "Twenty-First Century Liberal Education: A Contested Concept," hosted by Transylvania University in Lexington, Ken., from Aug. 3-6. 

Jay David Atlas, professor of linguistics and philosophy, reports that the
linguistics faculty at Cambridge University hosted the "Atlas Distinguished
Scholar Workshop" at Newnham College, Cambridge in May. Atlas gave two research
lectures, and other speakers gave seven research talks on subjects related
to Atlas's research in semantics and pragmatics of language.

Jon Bailey, professor emeritus of music, emeritus, reports that his new song cycle, "In This House," for baritone, viola and piano premiered at UCLA's Schoenberg Hall on May 31.

Lisa Beckett, professor of physical education, gave a presentation on "Integration of Athletics Through Hiring and Evaluation Practices" at the Old Dominion Athletic Conference Integration Institute, held at Sweet Briar College in May.

Betty Bernhard, professor of theatre, had an article, "Staging Big Love in India," published in "Remaking American Theatre: Charles Mee, Anne Bogart, and the SITI Company" in the Cambridge Studies in American Theatre and Drama, edited by Scott Cumming. Bernhard also presented a workshop on using Augusto Boal's techniques for rehearsing Shakespeare at the annual Theatre and Pedagogy of the Oppressed Conference at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in May.

Laurie Cameron, adjunct associate professor of dance, presented her original choreography, At the Joshua Tree, with music by Professor Tom Flaherty, at the 50th Anniversary of the American Dance Guild at the Hudson Guild Theatre in New York City in June. She was also a featured master teacher at the weeklong festival, and her performers included Daniel Senning '00. Cameron & company also presented At the Joshua Tree at the Festival of Solos and Duets at the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles May 13 and 14.

Suheir Daoud, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in politics and international relations, has received a contract from Florida University Press to write Re-Shaping Politics: Palestinian Women in Politics in Israel. The book will be submitted in June 2007.

Donna M. Di Grazia, associate professor of music, reports that the 2006 Pomona College Glee Club returned in May from a very successful concert tour to Germany and the Czech Republic, where they gave performances at the Frauenkirche in Meiningen, Germany; the Nikolaikirche in Wettin, Germany (the performance raised nearly 1,000 Euros for the restoration of this 13th-century church); the Thomaskirche in Leipzig; the Dom (Cathedral) in Meissen; and at the Emauzy Monastery in Prague. Meanwhile, visitors to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. will be able to hear Donna M. Di Grazia conducting the 2005 Pomona College Glee Club in a performance of Thomas Tallis' 16th-century anthem, "If Ye Love Me," as part of the library's summer exhibition, "Noyses, Sounds, and Sweet Aires: Music in Early Modern England." This exhibition features manuscripts, books, images, musical instruments, and audio excerpts that bring 16th- and 17th-century England to life. The featured Glee Club selection was taken from the ensemble's concert at Stanford University's Memorial Church on May 23, 2005. The exhibition will be on display in the library's Great Hall from June 2 to September 9.

Maria Donapetry, adjunct professor of romance languages and literatures, gave a talk, "Aztec Oedipus," at the conference, "Dispersed Trajectories: Feminism, Postcolonialism, and the Road Ahead" at Oxford University in June.

Judson Emerick, professor of fine arts and art history, in June gave a lecture in Italian at the University of Rome titled: “Il Turno Liturgico: Come La Liturgia Papale Ha Trasformato L’idea Di Chiesa a Roma Tra Il Quarto e L'ovatto Secolo.” (“The Liturgical Turn: How the Papal Liturgy Changed the Idea of a Church in Rome between the Fourth and the Eighth Centuries.”)

Pierre Englebert, associate professor of politics, gave a seminar presentation
at the U.S. State Department in Washington, DC, on the "Run-Up to Congo's
Elections" in May.

Steve Erickson, professor of philosophy, was the director and discussion leader for the Liberty Fund conference, "Free Choice, Contract, and Government Authority in Locke, Rousseau, and Kant," held in Pasadena during June. Erickson also was discussion leader at the Liberty Fund colloquium "Intellectual Property in Biotechnology," in Houston in May. And he was appointed to the editorial board of "Existenz," a web publication of the Karl Jaspers Society of North America.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick, associate professor of English and media studies, reports that her book, The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television, will be published this month by Vanderbilt University Press. Fitzpatrick was recently interviewed about the book on To The Best of Our Knowledge, a program produced by Wisconsin Public Radio and distributed by Public Radio International.

Tom Flaherty, professor of music, has been busy traveling for the Alumni Office. In March, Washington D.C. for a concert lecture preceding a concert by Lucy Shelton '65. One of the pieces Lucy sang was "When Time Was Young" composed by Flaherty. In May, Flaherty traveled to San Francisco with Genevieve Lee. Genevieve gave a public concert on May 21, followed by a private concert on May 22 at the home of John Hartog '74 for a group of about 25 alumni. Genivieve's performance also featured music composed by Flaherty, and the audience was delighted to have a personal performance and talk from the duo.

Erica Flapan, professor of mathematics, published an article, "Topological
Symmetry Groups of Complete Graphs in the 3-Sphere," in the Journal of the
London Mathematical Society with R. Naimi, and H. Tamvakis.

Stephan Ramon Garcia, assistant professor of mathematics, received a National Science Foundation Research Grant for "Complex Symmetric Operators and Function Theory."

Neil Gerard, associate dean of students and director of the Smith Campus Center and student programs, recently attended the Hillel Summit in Washington, D.C. The summit was the first-ever international gathering of University officials and Hillel leaders. Neil chaired a program session about the impact study abroad travel to Israel has on Jewish students. He is currently serving as the President of the Campus Council for Hillel at the Claremont Colleges.

Paula Goldsmid, graduate fellowships coordinator, participated in the Higher Education Symposium at Cambridge University and University College, Dublin, June 26-July 5. The symposium consists primarily of discussions with faculty and other distinguished delegates from several dozen UK and Irish universities, plus officials from the Marshall, Rhodes, and Gates Cambridge scholarship foundations, about developing opportunities for graduate study and fellowship support for students from the U.S.

Gizem Karaali, assistant professor of mathematics, was selected to participate in Project NExT, a professional development program of the Mathematical Association of America. Project NExT (New Experiences in Teaching) is a program for new or recent Ph.D.s in the mathematical sciences (including pure and applied mathematics, statistics, operations research, and mathematics education). It addresses all aspects of an academic career: improving the teaching and learning of mathematics, engaging in research and scholarship, and participating in professional activities. It also provides its participants with a network of peers and mentors as they assume these responsibilities.

Genevieve Lee, associate professor of music, performed a solo recital at the Old
First Concerts music series in San Francisco. Her program included the Bay Area
premiere of Pomona professor Tom Flaherty's Gleeful Variants.

Sherry Linnell, resident designer and professor of theatre, designed the costumes
for A Hole in the Dark for the Blank Theatre Company. The production has been
named a critic's choice by the Los Angeles Times, BackStage West and American
Radio Network.

Jonathan Miller, electronic music technician, reports that his score for Lobstermen: Jeopardy at Sea was heard as the Discovery Channel from June 20 to July 1. Jonathan also composed the music for TLC's Flip That House, now in production for a second season.

Nivia Montenegro, associate professor of Spanish, received an NEH Student Summer Research Grant to work with a student on the critical edition of Tres Tristes Tigres by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, under contract with Catedra, in Spain. Montenegro also  gave a talk "Isla, mujer e historia en Tres Tristes Tigres," at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference in late April. She chaired a panel on "Race in Caribbean Literature" at the same conference.

Thomas Moore, professor of physics and astronomy, reports that a study group authorized by the Advanced Placement Redesign Commission identified his submission describing Pomona College's Physics 51a and Physics 51b as "one of the top five examples of best practices" of 117 Physics course descriptions submitted. These "best practice" courses will be used by the commission as they rewrite guidelines for future AP Physics courses. Moore also attended a Gordon Conference on Physics Research and Education: Electromagnetism in South Hadley, Mass., in June, moderating a session on new curricular approaches to teaching electricity and magnetism.

Dan O'Leary, associate professor of chemistry, has co-authored a paper titled "Enantioselective Photocyclization Mediated by Chiral Bronsted Acids: Asymmetric Synthesis of the Rocaglamides" in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The research involved Sheharbano Sangji '08 and was conducted in collaboration with a Boston University research group led by Professor John A. Porco, Jr. Porco's group has discovered new catalysts for preparing a class of natural products with promising anti-cancer activity. These new catalysts utilize weak molecular forces known as hydrogen bonds, an interaction which is studied in detail by O'Leary's Pomona laboratory.

Karen Parfitt, associate professor of biology, presented a poster titled "The Alzheimer amyloid beta-peptide A-Beta blocks an adenylate cyclase-mediated form of hippocampal long term potentiation (LTP), " by Blaine Bisel '05, Kristen Henkins '06, and Parfitt, at a conference on Imaging and the Aging Brain. The meeting, held at NYU in May, was co-sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences and the American Federation for Aging Research.

Jennifer Perry, assistant professor of anthropology, presented a paper on
"Middle to Late Holocene Transitions on Santa Cruz Island, California" at the
annual meeting for the Society for American Archaeology in San Juan, Puerto Rico
in April.

Lynn Rapaport, professor of sociology, gave an invited lecture, "Hollywood's
Holocaust: Schindler's List and the Construction of Memory," at Sonoma State
University, in their Holocaust lecture series.

Erin Runions, assistant professor of religious studies, presented "Queering the Beast: The Antichrists' Gay Wedding" and also participated on a review panel for Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Intersections, Stephen D. Moore and Fernando F. Segovia, eds., at the International meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Edinburgh, Scotland, July 2-6. She also will be attending a workshop on Teaching and Learning for Pre-Tenure Religion Faculty at Colleges and Universities at Wabash College in Indiana in July.

Donna Ruzika, production manager for Theatre & Dance, has been re-elected for
her second three-year term as a board member for the United States Institute for
Theatre Technology (USITT).

Jack Sanders, lecturer in music, performed on vihuela, baroque guitar, and classical guitar for the Long Beach Guitar Society in April. That same month, KMZT (K-Mozart 105.1 FM) broadcast his March 25 Vivaldi concerto performance with the California Philharmonic. In May, Sanders gave eight concerts in Helena, Great Falls and Ft. Benton, Montana under the auspices of the Piatigorsky Foundation. In addition, performances and interviews were broadcast on HCTV television in Helena and Cable 7 in Great Falls, Montana.

Shahriar Shahriari, professor of mathematics, co-authored a research paper with
James Pommersheim, "Unique factorization in generalized power series rings,"
which appeared in The Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society. Shahriari also was one of the organizers and invited speakers of the international workshop on Design Theory, Graph Theory, and Computational Methods held at the Institute for Theoretical Physics and Pure Mathematics (IPM) in Tehran, Iran during April. His talk was titled "Chains and Matchings."

Vin de Silva, assistant professor of mathematics, gave a talk titled "Point-cloud topology via harmonic forms" at the "Workshop on Algorithms for Modern Massive Datasets" hosted by Stanford University and Yahoo! Research in June.

Patricia Smiley, associate professor of psychology, and Rachel Stewart Johnson '96 examined young children's use of language in constructing a sense of self as agent and actor, to be reported in the journal Cognitive Development (in press, Volume 21, Issue 3, pp. 266-284). The paper is titled "Self-Referring Terms, Event Transitivity and Development of Self."

Frederick Sontag, professor of philosophy, will present a paper at St. Anne's College, Oxford University, during meetings on philosophy and religion in August. The paper, "Strange Interlude," is about Soren Kieerkegaard. Sontag's latest book, American Life, a collection of essays, was published in April by University Press of America.

David Tanenbaum, associate professor of physics and astronomy, has a new
publication, "Measurement of the Adhesion Force between Carbon Nanotubes and a
Silicon Dioxide Substrate," by Jed D. Whittaker, Ethan D. Minot, David M.
Tanenbaum, Paul L. McEuen, and Robert C. Davis. The article was published in Nano Letters.

Chuck Taylor, assistant professor of chemistry, presented a paper titled:
"Development of Polymer-based Sensors for Detection of Sulfur Dioxide at
ppm-Level Concentrations" at the 209th Meeting of the Electrochemical Society in
Denver in May.

Jonathan Wright, associate professor of biology, had a paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, co-authored with Peter Westh and titled "Water vapour absorption in the penicillate millipede Polyxenus lagurus (Diplopoda: Penicillata: Polyxenida): microcalorimetric analysis of uptake kinetics."


May/June 2006




CLASS OF 2006: Some 375 seniors entered the ranks of Sagehen alumni during the
Commencement ceremony on May 14. Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran '69, president of Kalamazoo College, was the keynote speaker. See Commencement photo gallery.

Pomona people in action:

David Alexander, president emeritus, has been elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is one of 175 new Fellows and 20 Foreign Honorary members, including scholars, scientists, artists, civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders and two former presidents: George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
 
 Vickie Ahrberg, academic coordinator for Asian Languages and Literatures and the German and Russian Department, and Wanda Peters, academic coordinator for chemistry, will graduate from University of La Verne on May 27, earning their B.A. degrees in organization management.
 
 William Banks, professor of psychology, graduate student Eve Isham, and Kenton Hokanson '07 presented a poster, "Unconscious Processing of Unattended Words," at the Toward a Science of Consciousness meeting in Tucson last month.
 

	Nearly 1,500 Sagehens returned to campus in late April for Alumni Weekend. See photos

 Ralph Bolton '61, professor of anthropology, delivered a a paper at the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in Vancouver, B.C. on April 1. Based on his current field research, his paper was titled "Continuity and Change in a Peruvian Community, 1963-2006: Chijnaya Revisited." At the same conference, Bolton served as discussant for a symposium on HIV/AIDS prevention and as a panelist in a session on the pedagogy and politics of teaching human sexuality courses. While in Vancouver, Bolton met with a group of Pomona alumni. Bolton also presented a paper , "Ethical Issues in Sex Research: Legitimate Concerns or Moralistic Meddling?," at the annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association in Los Angeles on April 21.

Susana Chavez-Silverman, professor of Romance languages and literatures, has been awarded a fellowship to the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Program at the Montalvo Arts Center in the Bay Area city of Saratoga. The program allows for residencies of up to three months, and Chavez-Silverman expects to complete hers in 2008.
 
 Phillip Choi, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech, will start at Pomona in the fall as an assistant professor of physics and astronomy. Choi is a world expert on high redshift galaxies, and modeling the star formation rates within early galaxies. His research makes use of the telescopes at the Palomar and Keck observatories, as well as space telescopes such as the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. Choi received his bachelor's degree in physics from Wesleyan University, and a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics from UC Santa Cruz. He has been a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech for the past three years.
 
 Alfred Cramer, associate professor of music, in April spoke about "Conceptualizing Modern Aurality: Written and Heard Sound in the Music of Wagner, Schoenberg, and Webern" at the University of Pennsylvania.

 Maria Donapetry, adjunct professor of Romance languages and literatures, has been awarded a Hahn Teaching with Technology Grant for this coming summer. The grant will be used to digitize 13 to 15 films from Spain and Latin America, and make them available to the students who take her Spanish and Latin American Cinema course (Spanish 105 at Pomona) through a web link within Pomona. When the project is finished, her students will be able not only to watch each film whenever it is convenient for them, but also to go back to specific scenes when they are preparing a paper or oral presentations for the class. The whole process of digitalization will be done at ITS.
 
Pierre Englebert, associate professor of politics, presented a paper titled "The Primacy of Politics in Separatist Dynamics" (co-authored with Katie Boyle '01) at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association in San Diego, and at workshops at Yale and Berkeley.
 
 Stephen Erickson, professor of philosophy and humanities, contributed Chapter 9, "Is there Life after Monty Python's The Meaning of Life?," to Monty Python and Philosophy, ed. Hardcastle & Reisch (Chicago: Open Court, 2006) which is part of the Popular Culture and Philosophy series. In April, Erickson was an invited discussant at the Denver, CO, Liberty Fund Colloquium: Augustine and Thomas Aquinas on Teaching and Learning.
 
 Peter Flueckiger, assistant professor of Japanese, has received a Japan Foundation Short-Term Fellowship to conduct research in Japan in May and June this year.
 
Jennifer Friedlander, professor of media studies, was invited to lecture at the end of March in the film program at the University of Vermont. Her talk was titled: "You Can Leave Your Hat On: Feminine Spectatorship in The Full Monty."
 
 Roberto A. Garza-Lopez, associate professor of chemistry, reports that during his sabbatical at Caltech, he translated the 300-plus page book, Voyage Through Time,  from English to Spanish. It is the autobiography of Professor Ahmed Zewail, the story of a kid in Egypt who despite some cultural and scientific shortcomings, he was able to excel and win the Nobel Prize and start a branch of chemistry known as "femtochemistry." (Zewail has been Robbins Lecturer at Pomona.) The book will appear in Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Venezuela as well as in Spain and the U.S. . "We believe this would be a motivating story for young people in developing countries who are considering sciences as a career," writes Garza-Lopez.
 
 George L. Gorse, professor of art history will present a paper on "Christopher Columbus and Andrea Doria: The 'Two Worlds' of Renaissance Genoa" at the Mediterranean Studies Association conference at the University of Genoa, May 24-27.
 
 Sandy Grabiner, professor of mathematics, gave a talk on his research to the Southern California Functional Analysis Seminar, which met at Claremont McKenna in late March. The title was "Convolution Algebras on R+." Grabiner also gave a talk to high school students who attended the Math Department's Honors Day on April 8. The department honors high school students who have done well on a math contest it sponsors. The title of the talk was "Are There Enough Rational Numbers?"
 
 Jill Grigsby, professor of sociology, and Katherine Beaton '06 presented a paper on "The Effects of Occupational Prestige and Education on Ever-Marrying Among Women in the United States" at the Pacific Sociological Association on April 20.

 Ken Habib, visiting assistant professor of music, gave the invited lecture, "The Musical Style of Fairouz and Ziad Rahbani," at the conference "Fairouz and Ziad (1973-2006): 'There's Something Happening,'" sponsored by the Anis Makdisi Program in Literature at the American University of Beirut in April.

Katherine Hagedorn, associate professor of music, gave a guest lecture in April at Columbia University titled "Toward a Theology of Sound: Rhythmic Representations of the Orichas in the Performance of Santería." That same month, she also gave a guest lecture for the Humanities Center at Harvard University, titled "Engendering Spiritual Power and Empowering Gendered Spirits: An Analysis of Batá Drumming in Afro-Cuban Santería."
 
Russel Heskin, associate director of alumni relations, reports that faculty members participated in the College's 17th Annual Alumni Symposium, "Bio-Feedback: Science and Society in Dialogue," held during Alumni Weekend, April 28-29. Associate Professor of Biology Cris Cheney presented a session titled "Teaching in the Midst of a Scientific Revolution," Professor of Politics and STS Program Coordinator Rick Worthington facilitated two student research project presentations, and Professor of Chemistry Cynthia Selassie and Emeritus Professor of Chemistry Corwin Hansch participated in a panel discussion regarding the pharmaceutical industry with alumni and KGI professor Steven Casper. Assistant Professor of Theatre Art Horowitz facilitated a discussion group on Ibsen's An Enemy of the People; and Len Seligman, Gary Kates and David Oxtoby provided introductions for various sessions and speakers. In addition, the Symposium Planning Committee included Cris Cheney, alumni volunteers, and several staff, including Kris Fossum, Russel Heskin, Don Pattison, David Scott, Nancy Treser-Osgood and Mark Wood.

 Meg Jolley, lecturer in theater and dance, will be participating in two upcoming conferences. In May, she will lead a two-day workshop in Mind-in-Motion (Developmental Movement Patterns and Sensory Awareness) at the Annual General Meeting of the American Society for the Alexander Technique. In June, she will participate in a focus panel discussion of the role of Somatics Education in the Liberal Arts Curriculum at the Motus Humanus conference in Northern California.
 
 Thomas Leabhart, professor of theatre and resident artist, lectured in April for the USC Arts Journalism program in Los Angeles. His presentation on Francois Delsarte was given to a group of dance writers from across the U.S. whose participation was funded by grants from the NEA and the Getty.
 
Genevieve Lee, associate professor of music, performed Professor Emeritus Karl Kohn's Five More Bagatelles at the Composer's Forum at UC Santa Barbara in April. Karl Kohn discussed his work as a composer as part of UCSB's Festival of Contemporary Arts and Digital Media. Also in April, Lee's Mojave Trio gave a recital at the Newport Beach Public Library's Sunday Musicale Series.
 
Robert Mezey, professor of English emeritus, visiting Andrea Labinger's seminar in translation at University of La Verne earlier this month to discuss the art of verse translation and to read from his and Dick Barnes' versions of Borges. At Pomona's Commencement on May 14, Mezey received the Trustees' Medal of Merit.
 
Denise Miller, administrative assistant in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, reports that her daughter, Elizabeth, and her horse, Suncrests Ms. Tattletale, achieved success at her first Dressage and Eventing Show at the Fallbrook Pony Showgrounds. They placed second in Dressage and had no faults in Eventing. When the scores were tallied for both events, Elizabeth and Tattle brought home first place.

 Dan O'Leary, associate professor of chemistry, presented two lectures in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on April 10 and 11. The first talk, "Teaching Chemistry at a Liberal Arts College: Advice on the Application Process and Some Thoughts on Initiating and Sustaining an Undergraduate Research Program," was given as part of a departmental Careers in Chemistry lecture series. The second lecture, "Deuterium and Tritium NMR Equilibrium Isotope Effects Involving OH/OH and CH/N Hydrogen Bonds: Applications in Stereochemistry," provided an overview of recent research conducted by members of O'Leary's laboratory.

 David Oxtoby, president of Pomona College, has been elected to the Board of Directors of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Founded in 1915, the AAC&U now comprises more than 1,000 public and private colleges and universities of every type and size.

 Jennifer Perry, assistant professor of anthropology, in March attended the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society for California Archaeology in Ventura, Calif. She presented a paper, "Understanding the Role of Small Sites in Settlement-Subsistence Systems on Santa Cruz Island." She also co-authored a paper on "The Reuse of Early Period Chert Debitage for Microblade Production on Eastern Santa Cruz Island" that was presented by her former student Christopher Jazwa (Harvey Mudd '05). In addition, as part of the formal program, she led 40 archaeologists on an interpretive hike on Santa Cruz Island.
 
 Bryan Penprase, associate professor of physics and astronomy, co-authored an article that has been accepted to Astrophysical Journal. The article is titled:
 "Spectroscopy of GRB 050505 at z = 4.275: A log N(HI) = 22.1 DLA Host Galaxy and the Nature of the Progenitor" with authors E. Berger, B. E. Penprase, S. B. Cenko, S. R. Kulkarni, D. B. Fox, C. C. Steidel, and N. A. Reddy. It describes the nature of a galaxy over 10 billion light years away, in which a cosmic explosion has revealed a brief glimpse of the elemental composition and dynamics of the galaxy.
 
Penprase also presented a colloquium on "Quasar Absorption Line Spectroscopy, and High resolution Spectroscopy of Gamma Ray Bursts" at the UC Santa Cruz Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics in March. In June, he will give a talk on "High Resolution Spectroscopy of Gamma Ray Bursts" at the conference on Gamma Ray Bursts in Venice, Italy.
 
 Thomas Pinney, professor of English, emeritus, has received the International Association of Culinary Professionals' 2006 annual award in the "wine, beer or spirits category" for his second volume on wine history, A History of Wine in America: From Prohibition to Present.

 Bruce Poch, vice president and dean of admissions, reports that his office finalized decisions and got word to 5,440 applicants for the Class of 2010 in March. Meanwhile, the scoring errors made by the College Board fueled major news stories across the country, and Poch was quoted in an Associated Press wire story which was published internationally as well as in domestic papers, and Poch also was cited in additional stories published by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and  Wall Street Journal. He also was interviewed on the CBS Early Show and by Madeline Brand on Day to Day, carried by National Public Radio. While on the East Coast, between stops at admitted student receptions in New York City, Boston and Washington, D.C., Poch joined Marilee Jones, dean of admissions at MIT, and Ann Fleming Brown, senior associate dean of admissions at Union College, as keynote speakers at the InterSchool Parents Program, a consortium of New York City independent schools. Betsy Geiger, associate dean of admissions, attended receptions in Chicago and Denver while Assistant Dean Daniel Krause attended receptions in Seattle and Portland.

 Frances Pohl, professor of humanities and art history, presented "In the Eye of the Storm: Reflections on the American Federation of Arts Exhibition of the Schiller Collection" at The Art of Concern Symposium held April 28 at  Columbus Museum of Art.

 Leonard Pronko, professor of theatre, was invested as a member  of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre in April. The ceremony took place at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Lynn Rapaport, professor of sociology, gave a paper "Superman Fights the Nazis" at the Western Jewish Studies Association Conference at Cal State Long Beach in March.
 
Arden Reed, has been named a 2006 Guggenheim Fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The 187 Fellows, chosen from among nearly 3,000 applicants, were selected on the basis of "distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for the future." Meanwhile, in April Reed gave a lecture, with simultaneous translation into Spanish, at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, on the occasion of Ricardo Mazal’s retrospective exhibition of paintings and photographs.

 Boris Ricks, a 2004-2006 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, has submitted an article to the National Political Science Review titled "A Systematic Analysis of the Deracilization Concept: A Research Note." He also is finishing up a book prospectus for the Carolina Academic Press titled, Los Angeles, Black Politics and Political Incorporation: Beyond Bradley. Finally, Ricks has accepted a tenure-track position at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.
 
Larissa Rudova, asssociate professor of Russian, has published "Les nouvelles tendances dans la litterature enfantine populaire," Le premier quinquennat de la prose russe du XXIe siecle. Paris: Centre D'Etude Slaves, 2006. 325-333.
 
 John Seery, professor of politics, published a scholarly article, "Acclaim for Antigone's Claim Reclaimed (Or, Steiner contra Bulter)" in the journal Theory & Event. Seery was also named chair of the Leo Strauss Award Committee, which grants the American Political Science Association's award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of political philosophy.

 Vin de Silva, assistant professor of mathematics, reports that a Pomona College team placed 19th (out of 500 academic institutions) in the 2005 Putnam Mathematics Contest. With 12 questions over six hours, The Putnam is the premier mathematics contest for undergraduates, and one of the most difficult mathematical contests in the world. It's certainly the best team performance that Pomona College has achieved in many years,'' writes de Silva. "Last year we placed around 73rd. Going back to the early '70s and before, Pomona College did make the top 10 a small handful of times." The test is so difficult that the medium individual score this year was one out of 120, with more than 47 percent of test-takers scoring zero. However, all of Pomona's 11 participants scored at least one point. Sam Miner scored 50 points, ranking him No. 57 out of more than 3,500 students across the U.S. and Canada. Pomona was one of only two liberal arts colleges to have a student land in the Top 75.

 Victor Silverman, associate professor of history, reports that his film Screaming Queens has been nominated for an Emmy Award by the Northern California Branch of the National Association of Telecommunications Arts and Sciences. The film has shown at film festivals in Iceland, London, Miami, Sydney and many other cities.
Screaming Queens will have a national broadcast in June on PBS. Meanwhile, Silverman's article "Green Unions in a Grey World: Trade Union Environmentalism and International Institutions" will appear in the June issue of the journal Organization and Environment.

Michael Steinberger, assistant professor of economics, reports that the Personal Financial Decision Making seminar he ran this semester with CDO's Carl Martellino was a big success. The course covered the basics of budgeting, insurance, retirement planning and more in four two-hour seminars. Nearly 200 students attempted to enroll in the course, which ultimately was able to accommodate 82 of them. Steinberger notes that numerous studies are coming out saying that teens and college graduates are not prepared to make the correct financial decisions in their early careers.
 
 Tomás Summers Sandoval, assistant professor of history and Chicana/Chicano studies, presented a paperat the annual meeting of the Organization of American HIstorians, held April 19-23 in Washington D.C. "Searching for Gold Finding América"  is from his current research on Latin Americans in San Francisco.

 Gail Sundberg, Biology Department academic coordinator, and Rita Stachniak, Office of Study Abroad, participated in the Wind and Sea Five-Mile Stride portion of La Jolla's 25th Annual Half Marathon. Since Gail and Rita are both past participants -- and winners -- of Pomona's Pedometer Challenge, t