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5/14/08 |
Sports Update: Women’s Water Polo
Are SCIAC Champs and Women’s Tennis Hit the Semifinals
 The Sagehens became back-to-back conference champs with their 8-7 defeat of Cal Lutheran on April 27. The game was tight, with Pomona-Pitzer trailing 7-5 in the fourth quarter. Laura Condon ‘08 and Karen Bonner ’10 each scored in back-to-back possession for a tie, and then Naneh Apkarian ’10 won the game with a final goal with 1:11 left in regulation. Elena Peifer ’09 had eight saves in the victory. Condon and Tamara Perea ’10
(Pitzer) each finished with two goals.
This is the second year in a row that the water polo team took the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) title. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps took third place with a defeat over Occidental.
The Pomona-Pitzer Women’s Tennis team defeated Bowdoin 5-3 in the NCAA Division III quarterfinals on Tuesday, May 13, at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota, but was defeated 5-2 by Williams in the semi-finals on May 14.
The quarterfinals match was tight with the lead bouncing between Bowdoin and Pomona. According to
The Times Record, Bowdoin had a 2-1 lead from doubles pairs, with Siobhan Finicane ‘10 and Olivia Muesse ’10 responsible for the Pomona doubles win. We took the lead with three straight singles wins from Finicane, Muesse and Kasyn Stevenson ‘09. Bowdoin took one more singles win, but Lindsay Clough ’09 led Pomona to victory with a 6-2, 4-6, 6-2 win over her Bowdoin opponent.
In today’s semifinal match, Pomona initially led with a 2-1 victory in doubles secured by the teams of Finicane/Muesse and Rebecca Lange/Stevenson. However, Williams secured their overall 5-2 victory with a sweep of the six singles matches.
According to Coach Ann Lebedoff, who secured her 500th career victory last month, the team will be up against either Washington and Lee or Denison tomorrow morning to determine who will take the third and fourth places nationally.
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5/1/08 |
Pomona Goddess Statue to Reside in Organic Farm
 The goddess Pomona is taking up residence in the Pomona College Organic Farm. Ronald Lee Fleming ’63 commissioned the new marble statue, sculpted by noted artist Mark Mennin, as a reminder that Pomona isn’t just the neighboring city where the College was founded, but also the Roman goddess of orchards, gardens and fruit.
“I think that when I was a freshman, almost nobody in my class knew that Pomona was the goddess of the orchard,” says Fleming. “So the intent was to help the [students] understand who Pomona is, so we’d be more grounded in the classical connection to the College.”
Fleming had decided to commission a Pomona statue for an American Renaissance water garden he’s building adjacent to Bellevue House, a 1910 Colonial Revival mansion he restored in Newport, Rhode Island. Considering the goddess’s connection to the College, he doubled the order.
“The one for Pomona is carved from Carrara marble, which we actually quarried in Carrara, Italy. [We also] had the rough carving done over there, and then it was shipped back to the artists’ studio in Bethlehem, Connecticut,” says Fleming.
The 76-by-22-by-22-inch statue is anchored to a 28-by-28-inch green granite base, which is attached to a concrete foundation in the Organic Farm. Fleming suggested the location because of its obvious thematic relation to the goddess, but also because of the garden’s personal significance to his family. “My daughter, [Severine Fleming ‘04], worked very hard on that garden when she was an undergraduate. She tilled that land,” says Fleming. “It’s been a place of love and care by the student body.”
 President David Oxtoby finds the location appropriate, as well. “It is particularly fitting that this statue of Pomona, goddess of the orchard, will be placed at the Organic Farm, where our students are engaged in the hands-on process of growing food,” says Oxtoby. “I'm delighted by this thoughtful and generous gift from Ron Fleming, which represents his commitment to bringing art to public places where it will engage the College community.”
Fleming, an urban planner, preservation and public art advocate, and author, heads the Townscape Institute, a nonprofit organization that’s worked with more than 100 communities to conserve and visually enhance towns through “townscape design.” He’s also kept strong ties to Pomona,
which both his parents, plus a few cousins and uncles, attended. He commissioned and donated the Pomona goddess relief and the “Pomona” bronze bas-relief artworks in the Smith Campus Center atrium, and donated funds for James Turrell’s Skyspace. He also contributed the essay “Dusty Sage to Urban Oasis: Reflections on a
Place” to the book
Pomona College: Reflections on a Campus.
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4/25/08 |
Spring 2008 Fellowship Round-Up
The spring is rife with fellowships and grants for Pomona juniors and seniors.
Not all fellowship and grant announcements have been made yet, but here's a
rundown of what's been announced so far:
Thomas J. Watson Fellowships
Brendan J. McCollam and Michael Stout were awarded the prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which provides $25,000 to graduating seniors to follow their research bliss via world travel. Michael Stout ’08, a mathematical economics major, is following his interest in Ultimate Frisbee to South America and Australia to “observe the sport culture and masculinity that surrounds the self-officiated ‘spirit of the game’ ideal of Ultimate [Frisbee].” Stout, who plays on the Claremont College men’s Ultimate Frisbee team, the Braineaters, says he’s looking forward most to the open-endedness of the trip and “throwing myself into completely new and foreign surroundings and seeing what happens. I don’t know much of what I should expect or how I’ll be received or what I’ll find, but that’s the most exciting thing to me.”
For McCollam, a neuroscience major, the Watson was a goal as soon as he learned of it; speaking to Watson winner Laurel McFadden ’06 after her trip to the Arctic Circle cinched his desire for the fellowship. McCollam plans to travel to The Netherlands, Germany, France, Croatia, Slovenia, Mexico, Argentina and Chile to study the free software movement for his project, “Coding the Revolution: Discovering a Radical Philosophy in Free Software.” McCollam has always been interested in computers—he’s worked in ITS—but a recent
use of the Linux OS led to his interest in “free software and the philosophy behind it. The groups [I’m going to visit and work with] are involved in various ways with developing or promoting free software and, in some cases, general technology-focused activism.” McCollam plans to apply for grad school upon his return from his trip.
Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowship for Aspiring Teachers of Color
Ikeisha Daniels and Candice McCray received the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowship for Aspiring Teachers of Color. Awarded to only 25 juniors nationwide each year, the fellowship includes financial support for a
master’s degree and teaching credential, funding for an independent summer project and conference between junior and senior year, and loan forgiveness for the first three years of teaching in public schools.
Daniels is a double major in history and Black studies from Chicago. She is a member of Pomona’s first Posse group, and is currently studying abroad in Durban, South Africa. McCray, a Black studies major from Los Angeles, plans to teach junior high English or history. “Teaching has always been something I was passionate about. Also, I realize that there is a strong need for teachers of color in our schools,” says McCray. “Teaching is my way of giving back to the community and being an agent for change, and it’s a profession where my politics and personality can meet.
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program
Current students Ian Frank ’08, Bob Rawle 08 and Dan Hickstein ’07 have all been offered National Science Foundation awards for graduate study in their respective fields (physics for Frank, and chemistry for Rawle and Hickstein). Hickstein is currently completing his year as a Churchill Scholar at Cambridge University.
Frank plans on doing his graduate studies at Harvard, Rawle at Standford, and
Hickstein at University of Colorado at Boulder.
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship provides three years of support for graduate study in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Eight Pomona alumni already enrolled in Ph.D. programs also received NSF awards.
These alumni include:
--Peter Cook '03, cognitive psychology, UC Santa Cruz
--Peter Douglas '05, geological sciences, Yale
--Jessica Hammock '04, science education, Emory
--Diana Khuu '07, sociology, University of Pennsylvania
--Erica Lanni '06, organic chemistry, University of Michigan
--Tyler Moore '04, quantitative psychology, UCLA
--Audra Nemir '05, environmental engineering, UC Berkeley
--Kristen Skovbroten '06, psycholinguistics, University of Rochester
Three current Pomona students received honorable mentions:
Laura Rosen
'08 (molecular biology), James Tener '08 (mathematics), and Laura Enriquez '08
(sociology and history).
Seven Pomona alumni already enrolled in their Ph.D. programs also received
honorable mentions: Emily Knouf '07 (molecular biology, University of
Washington), Karen Ring '07 (biomedical sciences, UC San Francisco),
Daniel Kleinman '06 (psycholinguistics, UC San Diego), Emily Barkley-Levenson '06
(cognitive neuroscience, UCLA), Lauren Shaw '06 (public policy, UC Davis), James
McFarland '06 (biophysics, Brown University), and Anna Motschenbacher '03
(biogeochemistry, UC Berkeley).
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4/22/08 |
Academy-Award Winning Director Alex Gibney to Speak at Commencement
on May 18th
Film is on the program for the
115th Pomona College Commencement to be held on May 18. Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney will deliver the keynote address, and Peter Stanley, Pomona College’s eighth president; composer and conductor Esa Pekka-Salonen; and Professor Ingrid Rowland ’74 will also speak briefly.
 Alex Gibney won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary for his film Taxi to the Dark Side, which follows the story of a taxi driver picked up by the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Gibney wrote, directed and produced the film, a triple duty he also performed on the Oscar-nominated film
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and the upcoming Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. He has also served as a producer on several films, including
No End in Sight and Who Killed the Electric Car? Gibney is the son of the late
Frank Gibney, who
founded Pomona’s Pacific Basin Institute.
 Peter Stanley served as Pomona’s president from 1991 to 2003. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard University and was a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge University. Prior to working at Pomona, Dr. Stanley taught American and American-East Asian History at Harvard and the University of Illinois, Chicago; served as dean of the college at Carleton College; and headed the The Ford Foundation’s Education and Culture Program. Currently, Dr. Stanley is the vice president of executive search firm Isaacson, where he helps to identify and recruit leaders for colleges and art institutions.
Award-winning composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen has served as musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 1992 and, for the 2008-09 season, will be the principal conductor and artistic advisor for the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. During his tenure at the L.A. Phil, the orchestra has established itself at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and held residencies at the Salzburg Festival, the Köln Philharmonic, and the Théâtre du Châtlet in Paris. Salonen also has an extensive recorded discography of both his own works and pieces by other composers, including Schumann and Mahler.
 Ingrid D. Rowland ’74 is a professor at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture in Rome. She received her undergraduate degree in classics from Pomona and went on to earn her M.A. and Ph.D. in Greek Literature and Classical Archeology from Bryn Mawr. Rowland has been a professor at several universities, including UCLA, UC Irvine, Columbia University and The University of Chicago. She has also written several books, including
The Scarith of Scornello: A Tale of Renaissance Forgery, From Heaven to Arcadia: The Sacred and the Profane in the Renaissance and the upcoming
Caravaggio in One Square Mile. Rowland is also a frequent contributor to
The New York Review of Books.
Additionally, film director Sylvain White ’98 will be on campus to speak at Class Day, a day of celebration for all seniors, their families and friends, which occurs on May 17. White directed the 2007 film
Stomp the Yard. While at Pomona, he founded Studio 47 to create news and programming to air on the cable access channel at The Claremont Colleges.
Pomona College Magazine profile on Peter Stanley
Pomona College Magazine profile on
Sylvain White
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4/18/08 |
Tennis Coach Ann Lebedeff Reaches 500th Victory
Pomona-Pitzer head women’s tennis coach Ann Lebedeff reached a career milestone last Saturday with her 500th victorious career tennis match. The milestone was realized with a 7-0 win over conference foe Caltech.
 Lebedeff only recently realized she was coming up on this milestone when the Intercollegiate Tennis Association, of which she’s a board member, began asking long-time coaches about their records. She then started gathering her stats and crunching numbers,
but didn't actually realize the 500th victory happened until after it passed.
For Lebedeff, however, people are more important than numbers. ”The whole thing about coaching and milestones is really about the people you [coach], the people you affect and how they affect you,” says Lebedoff.
In a career that spans more than 30 years and three divisions, Coach Lebedeff has established herself as one of the finest coaches in the country, succeeding at the University of Arizona (1977-1985), Cal Poly Pomona (1989-98), and Pomona-Pitzer (1998-present). At Division I University of Arizona, Lebedeff's overall record was 140-102, a 58-percent winning record. At Cal Poly Pomona, Coach Lebedeff went 160-72 with the women's team, capturing the 1991 and 1992 Division II NCAA Championships. From 1993-98, Lebedeff also coached the Cal Poly men's team, going 70-43 during that span.
Most recently, at Pomona-Pitzer, Lebedeff has gone 130-88, capturing the SCIAC
title four times, and advancing to the team portion of the Division III Women's
Tennis National Championships seven times in 10 years.
Lebedeff received her B.A. in Nutrition and M.A. in Exercise Science from San Diego State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Athletic Administration and Higher Education from the University of Southern California. A former nationally ranked junior and collegiate player, Lebedeff won numerous national doubles titles, including the 1974 USTA National Women's Intercollegiate Doubles title, the 1970 New Zealand Women's Doubles Championship, and the U.S. Amateur Clay and Grass Courts Doubles titles in 1972.
As a coach and professor, Lebedeff has received many awards, including NCAA Coach of the Year Awards (1990, 1992, 2001), Coach of the Decade for Division II Women's Tennis, and a Tennis Educational Merit Award in 1999.
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4/18/08 |
Pomona Sophomore Headed to the DNC as a Pledged Delegate
This year’s presidential election is bringing out the political activism in younger voters and the Pomona campus is no different, as evidenced by the sidewalk chalk declarations of support for candidates found on campus during the primaries in February. One Pomona sophomore has taken her activism to the next level by becoming a pledged delegate for the Hillary Clinton campaign.
“I was at one of the wonderful informal talks that the Political Department gives in
the Doms Social Room and Professor [Susan] McWilliams said to us, ‘You know you guys can run for delegate, too,’” says Rachel Pelham ’10, a public policy analysis major. “That took me aback because we students are so used to observing the political process from a distances that it rarely occurs to us to think about taking a more active role.”
 Pelham starting becoming more active around the time of the primaries, attending meetings of the Democrats of the Claremont Colleges club and gathering a small group of Clinton supporters to raise
Clinton's profile on campus.
To become a pledged delegate, Pelham applied to the California Democratic Party to represent Congressional District 26. “Each district votes for a certain number of delegates to go and represent them at the
[Democratic] National Convention, pledged to one candidate or the other,” says Pelham. The caucus to determine the district’s representatives was held last Saturday at Scripps.
Pelham will attend the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August, and also has to travel to Sacramento to be sworn in in person. She hopes to find funding through Pomona and may also fundraise from other sources to pay for the trips.
There was some surprise from the local Democratic Party at Pelham’s youthful age of 20, as other candidates were significantly older, but Pelham says she likely won’t be the only young person at the DNC.
“This year has seen a wave of young people running to go to the convention,
from all across the nation, which I am really excited about," says Pelham. “As a student, it’s important to me that when party leaders look out at the convention floor, they see young faces out there who have made the effort to run and get elected, showing that students are finally ready to shed our apathy and become a dynamic voting bloc within their party.”
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4/17/08 |
Clarence Lee '57 Designs 2008 Summer Olympics
Postage Stamp
Clarence Lee ’57 has put his own personal stamp on the 2008 summer Olympics with his design of the United States Postal Service’s commemorative stamp—his third such venture for the USPS.
 Lee, who was an art history major at Pomona, was first approached by the USPS in 1992 to design a Chinese Lunar New Year stamp for the Year of the Rooster. “It was to be just one stamp,” says Lee, “but the financial success of that stamp made the postal service develop all 12 Lunar New Year stamps.” Lee was called on again in 1994 to design a joint issue stamp from the United States and China; the stamp featured a crane, an endangered species in both countries.
The Olympic stamp was a collaboration for Lee, his design company’s staff, illustrator Katie Doka and art director Carl Hermann. “I was directly involved with selection of colors; refinement of the artwork; and selection, size and position of type,” says Lee. “[I] was [also] in close contact with Carl Hermann and the USPS for their comments and final approval.”
Many types of athletes were considered for the central image, but ultimately, “the leaping gymnast worked well in the horizontal shape of the stamp and was positive and uplifting.”
 The stamp has yet to be released but Lee is hazarding a guess that it will coincide with the opening of the Olympics on 08/08/08.
Lee transferred to Yale after his first two years at Pomona, but Pomona remains close to his heart. Renowned local artist and Scripps professor Millard Sheets was an early influence during Lee’s time at Pomona. “I saw some of his calendar watercolors from Pan Am airways and thought I could follow in his success,” recalls Lee. “I tried to fit his art classes into my Pomona courses, but it was not meant to be.” After graduating Yale, Lee worked on the East Coast for a few years, but returned to his home state of Hawaii where he established his own design firm in 1966.
Over the years, Lee has been a recipient of many prestigious awards, including the KOA Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts (2001) and a Living Treasure in Hawai’i award (2000). Lee recently retired after selling his firm to a Japanese corporation.
Lee often returns to Pomona for reunions, including his 50th reunion last year, and he still counts his Pomona roommate Peter Newman ’57 and Peter’s wife Mary ’59 as close friends and traveling partners.
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3/31/08 |
Drew Hedman ’09 Named NCAA Division III Hitter of the Week
First baseman Drew Hedman ’09 received props for his hits from the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association who named Hedman the third NCAA Division III National Hitter of the Week for March 17 to 23.
According to Pomona’s Athletics website, Hedman, a lefty-swinging junior from Redding, Calif., went 10-17 with five home runs, 13 RBIs, 10 runs scored and 26 total bases in the Sagehens’ 4-0 week. He had a .588 batting average, a 1.529 slugging percentage, and a .619 on base percentage.
In a 7-6 win against Menlo College, he went 2-4 with a home run and three RBIs.
In the team’s 14-12 win over Wesleyan University, he went 3-5 with a double, home run, and two RBIs. Against Rutgers-Newark, while going 0-2, he managed to tally an RBI, helping his team to an 8-7 win. Against Massachusetts-Dartmouth, in a 14-5 win, Hedman went 5-6 with three home runs and seven RBIs.
The Pomona-Pitzer baseball team is having an excellent season with a 21-4 overall record and an 8-1 SCIAC record thus far.
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3/18/08 |
KSPC Plans
for Reception Improvement With New Antenna Location
The KSPC antenna is heading for the hills in an
effort to improve the station’s broadcast signal.
Last month, the FCC approved the move of the antenna
from its current location near Seaver Theatre to a
tower located in the
Claremont hills near Padua.
 Plans for this improvement date back to the 1980s,
says Erica Tyron, director of college radio and
television. Her predecessor, Julie Frick, had
researched and tested the idea of moving the antenna,
but “apparently it wasn’t feasible at the time for a
number of reasons," says Tyron. Last summer, it was learned that
the FCC was opening up the opportunity for new FM
station applications in California. “If we didn’t
apply to change KSPC’s existing transmission
location prior to October," says Tyron, "we might have lost the
opportunity to ever move—new stations would have
boxed KSPC’s signal in to limited locations.”
The move, which involves the $40,000 replacement of
the antenna, transformer and transmission system,
will clear up reception for listeners in the current
35-mile transmission radius, but won’t extend the
radius. “It will improve KSPC’s overall broadcast
penetration, rather than expanding it very much,”
says Tyron. “Also, just the replacement of the
transmitting equipment and antenna will improve
reception, as the new equipment will work far more
efficiently and effectively.”
Other costs associated with the move include a
monthly rental fee for tower space from American
Tower Corporation and electricity expenses. “These
items were requested as part of the equipment and
alternations budgeting process last December for
FY 2008-09,” says Tyron. “We have received unofficial
confirmation that the E&A requests were approved.”
A specific date for the move hasn’t been set yet.
The FCC did grant a construction permit in early
March, but the station is still in the process of
filing for a new broadcast license from the new
location and negotiating terms for the tower rental.
KSPC broadcasts 24/7 at 88.7 FM and online at
www.kspc.org. In
2006, the station celebrated its 50th anniversary.
Articles on KSPC’s 50th anniversary and history:
"Radio Days,"
"Radio
on the Left of the Dial" and "Radio Archeology"
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3/3/08 |
Sagehens Claim SCIAC Championship,
Headed to NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament
 On Saturday night, Jabarri Reynolds ’08 and David
Brown ’08 led their teammates to a rousing overtime
victory of 55-53 against CMS, paving the way for
participation in the NCAA Division III tournament.
Brown, a guard, led Pomona-Pitzer with 17 points,
including five three-pointers, while wing Reynolds
scored 12 points and secured the victory with a free
throw in overtime.
According to head men’s basketball coach and
athletic director Charlie “Coach Kat” Katsiaficas,
until last year, the team with the best Southern
California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC)
regular season record received the automatic
qualifier for the NCAA tournament. But last year,
SCIAC determined that the top four teams would
qualify for a post-season tournament to decide who
would receive the automatic qualifying bid.
Pomona-Pitzer, which finished third this year,
defeated second-place Cal Lutheran last Friday.
CMS, which finished fourth, beat top team Occidental
also on Friday. This led to Saturday’s showdown in
front of a capacity crowd at Voelkel Gymnasium.
“The guys competed extremely hard,” says Coach
Katsiaficas. “It was a great atmosphere, the crowd
was alive, and it was a really fun game to be in.”
This is the team’s 13th appearance at nationals, and
the ninth appearance in the past 15 years, according
to sports information director Ben Belletto. Coach
Katsiaficas has led the team 12 times to nationals.
Pomona-Pitzer will play the first NCAA tournament
game this coming Thursday at Occidental, which
received a wildcard into the tournament. Six games
must be won to receive the entire Division III
championship. The game bracket has been posted on
the
Pomona-Pitzer athletics web site (PDF).
Update 3/7/08: Pomona-Pitzer lost to Occidental
on March 6 by just one point, and are out of the
NCAA tournament.
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2/29/08 |
Pomona College responds to U.S.
Senate Committee on Finance request for information
In response to a request from the U.S. Senate
Committee on Finance, Pomona President David Oxtoby
has submitted information to Senators Max Baucus and
Charles Grassley on Pomona College's endowments,
financial aid and college costs.
"All of our financial planning and decision making
is designed to assure that the intentions of our
founders and benefactors are protected in
perpetuity, at the same time that we challenge
ourselves to do everything we can to provide a
superior education for the students who are here
today," says President Oxtoby in the letter. "This
balance between serving today’s students and
guaranteeing the same for tomorrow’s students is our
legacy, and our financial management policies are
designed to protect that legacy."
The entire response, which includes data on tuition
costs, scholarships awarded and endowment
management, is
available online (PDF).
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2/26/08 |
Artist Milford Zornes ’34 passed
away February 24
 Respected watercolor painter Milford Zornes
’34 passed away on February 24 in his Claremont home,
almost one month after his 100th birthday.
Highlights of
the prolific landscape artist’s 80-year career
include serving as president of the California Water
Color Society and having his painting, Old Adobe,
selected by President Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt
to hang in the White House. Arizona Evening
is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, and other examples of his work can be
found in the collections of the Library of Congress,
the Smithsonian, the Butler Institute of American
Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He
also taught for a time at Pomona College.
 While Zornes’ vision had been crippled by 20 years of
macular degeneration, he still painted nearly every
day, relying on his memories and sketchbooks. As he
shared with Pomona College Magazine in a
recent profile, ““[Blindness means] allowing
myself the freedom of not necessarily being accurate
to the subject, but being accurate to my feeling
about the subject.”
Zornes’ family told the Daily Bulletin that no services will be held, as
they considered his 100th birthday party
“the perfect ending to a life well-lived.”
Pomona College Magazine profile of Milford
Zornes
Daily Bulletin
obituary
L.A. Times
obituary
Claremont Courier obituary
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1/30/08 |
Pomona Math Professor Earns Spot
on Scientific American’s Annual SciAm 50
The
real-world application of Assistant Professor of
Mathematics Vin de Silva’s latest theorem has
garnered him and his research partner a place on
Scientific American’s 2007 SciAm 50 awards list, an
annual recognition of 50 science, research and
industry individuals who led important advances that
year.
 Working within the mathematical field of algebraic
topology, de Silva assigns a shape to a series of
points and can then determine where those shapes
overlap and where there are gaps. This knowledge can
be applied to wireless sensors that, as
Scientific American explains, do anything from
detect chemical weapons to monitor moisture in soil.
In the future, de Silva says, it could also affect
to robotic sensors on unknown terrain.
Mathematics professor Robert Ghrist of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign worked
with de Silva on the project. The collaboration
began when Ghrist and de Silva met at a 2004
conference in Canada; de Silva’s topology knowledge
was the type of mathematics Ghrist needed for work
he was doing with the robotics community.
The relationship between de Silva’s math and
Ghrist’s robotics-field contacts is ideal, says de
Silva: “It could be that we proved our theorem and
it got buried and nobody used it. We wanted the
robotics people to be aware that these kinds of
[mathematical] techniques exist, and we want the
mathematicians to be aware that their work can apply
[to fields like robotics.]”
Professor de Silva is continuing to hone the
project: “The initial theorems will give you a sense
of whether a broadcast signal covers a whole region.
The next refinement might be if you have a huge
surplus of sensors, the same methods will tell you
[that] you can switch off some—the ones you keep on
are enough.” After that, de Silva and Ghrist want to
develop a protocol that allows sensors to repair
small gaps in coverage if one sensor shuts off
accidentally.
SciAm 50 in Scientific American
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12/12/07 |
Pomona College Replaces Loans
with Scholarships, Eliminates Student Debt
Pomona's Board of Trustees approved the
elimination of loans in financial aid packages on
Wednesday, Dec. 12. Those amounts will be replaced
by scholarships, effective 2008-09, and this
financial aid change will apply to both current and
future students.
 “Pomona College has a long-standing tradition of
accessibility,” noted a pleased Pomona College
President David W. Oxtoby. “We already admit
students without regard to financial need and meet
the full need of every accepted applicant. This
change will allow us to more directly address
misperceptions about the affordability of a Pomona
education and to remove any impact of student debt
on students’ career choices.”
Currently, 53 percent of Pomona’s students receive
some financial aid, with 10 percent of the current
freshman class already receiving financial aid
packages with no loan component. In 2007-08, Pomona
will spend approximately $21.6 million of college
funds on scholarships. The College estimates that
the new policy will cost an additional $2.3 million
per year.
“The elimination of loans from financial aid
packages is another step in Pomona’s concerted
efforts to ensure that a Pomona College education
remains accessible to and supportive of all
qualified students,” notes Patricia Coye, director
of financial aid.
In each of the last 20 years, more than 50 percent
of Pomona students have received financial aid.
Since 1988, financial aid packages for students with
the most financial need have not included loans
during the students’ first two years of study. For
the last five years, Pomona College has increased
financial aid spending by $1 million or more each
year.
In recent years, Pomona College has also increased
its recruiting efforts among high-achieving,
lower-income students. Additional admissions
officers were hired to focus on under-represented
students and partnerships with the Questbridge
Program and the Posse Foundation were added to
longstanding relationships with A Better Chance, the
Center for Student Opportunity, College Match (Los
Angeles), the Fulfillment Fund (Los Angeles), Prep
for Prep (NYC), Young Black Scholars of Los Angeles,
the Teak Scholars Foundation (NY), and the local
Bright Prospects Program, among others.
To reach out to the surrounding community, Pomona
began its own college prep program in 2003 for
local, low-income high school students, the Summer
Scholars Enrichment Program. The no-cost, four-year
program provides a core curriculum focused on math,
critical thinking and writing skills, taught by
Pomona faculty, and workshops on admissions and
financial aid. Two classes of students have
graduated through the program, and all are now
attending college.
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12/7/07 |
College wins
Claremont's first gold award for green-friendly
buildings
Pomona College has won gold certification
from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in
Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Program for
the design and construction of its Lincoln and
Edmunds Buildings. Pomona College earned its first
LEED certification, a silver, for the Richard C.
Seaver Biology Building which opened in 2005.
 For
Pomona College President David Oxtoby, “The gold
award is fantastic. It’s wonderful recognition of
Pomona’s commitment to be better citizens and to do
what we can to reduce Pomona’s environmental
footprint.”
The adjacent Lincoln and Edmunds buildings span a
combined 92,000 square feet at the northern end of
campus and opened in January 2007. Their
green-friendly features include: a photovoltaic
system, which can provide up to 22.4 percent of the
building’s power; operable windows; waterless
urinals; and high efficiency lighting. Construction
involved the elimination of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s)
and halon refrigerants as well as the use of
recycled materials and rapidly renewable materials,
such as bamboo flooring used in parts of the
buildings.
The buildings, which cost $40 million, were designed
by the firm DMJM Design in Los Angeles and built by
Hathaway Dinwiddie. They provide research space and
teaching facilities for Computer Science,
Environmental Analysis, Linguistics and Cognitive
Science, Geology, Neuroscience, Psychology, and
three intercollegiate departments—Asian American
Studies, Black Studies and Chicano/a Studies.
More about the gold award
10 things to do in Lincoln and Edmunds
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11/20/07 |
Magic
moment: Ballroom dance company's Harry Potter-themed
performance wins national competition -- for sixth
year
 The Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Company
this weekend took first place in the formation event
at the National Collegiate Dancesport Championships
in Columbus, Ohio, performing a Harry Potter-themed
standard medley to a standing ovation. It was the
team's sixth victory in the formation event, which
mixes tango, waltz, foxtrot and other dances.
“They kept complimenting us out the door – judges,
contestants,’’ says Paul Roach ’07, who is in his
first year as director of the company. “We had
people from other colleges asking us how we run our
program.”
The decade-old dance company has 80 members and
draws hundreds more participants to its campus
events. Countless hours went into rehearsals for the
national competition. "It's pretty exciting when you
get into a tailsuit and you dance and people
applaud," says Joshua Leavitt '10. "Everyone is
cheering and it feels so good and you realize 'yes,
I can dance."
More ...
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11/14/07 |
Sagehen celebration: Men's water
polo lands championship
The men's water polo team on Sunday captured
its first SCIAC Championship since 1980 with a
13-10 win over the University of Redlands. This is
the third SCIAC Championship in the Pomona-Pitzer
program's history (1967, 1980) and the first for
Head Coach Alex Rodriguez.
 The
victories began on Friday, when the Sagehens
defeated La Verne 10-6 in the first round of
competition. Ryan Balikan, Mark D'Avino, and David
Mock each scored two goals, while Keeper Grant
Cooper recorded seven saves.
In the second round, Pomona-Pitzer escaped with a
12-11 win over Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. After
trailing 7-5 at the half, the Sagehen's pulled ahead
in the fourth period, sparked by three goals each
from Balikan and Field Garthwaite. Cooper held down
the net with six saves.
Against Redlands in the finals, the Sagehens were
facing a team that they had lost to earlier in the
season, and the host institution. These factors
didn't faze Pomona-Pitzer as the team clung to a 5-4
halftime lead. The final score was 13-10. Ben Hadley
led the Sagehens in scoring with 3 goals, and seven
others contributed in the scoring; Grant Cooper
tallied 8 saves.
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10/1/07 |
New book covers a lot of ground,
chronicling the history and architecture of Pomona's
arches-and-ivy campus.
 Three
years in the making, Pomona College: Reflections
on a Campus offers readers a mix of thoughtful
essays, artful photography and fascinating
historical background. This new, 192-page book by
Marjorie Harth, director emerita of the Pomona
College Museum of Art, covers the campus as
place, from the 1887 founding to today.
With 169 color and 59 black and
white images -- including
archival photos and new images by photographer Henry
Cabala -- and essays by noted authors Ron Fleming ¹63
and Verlyn Klinkenborg ¹74 and Professor of Art
George Gorse, the book chronicles the campus' transformation from a
patch of desert scrub to a ³college in a garden.²
Sure to stir memories, the book tells the story of
Pomona's elegant buildings and idyllic green spaces,
from Marston Quadrangle to Mabel Shaw Bridges Hall
of Music.
Pomona College: Reflections on a Campus is available
for purchase online from the Pomona College Coop
Store.
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9/28/07 |
First-ever Claremont Colleges Wall Street Weekend
will bring top finance experts to campus
Expected to attract hundreds of students, faculty
and alumni from a cross-section of the business
sector, the first-ever Claremont Colleges Wall
Street Weekend, set for Oct. 12-13, is intended to
help the Claremont finance community build bonds
instead of simply selling them.
 The
student-run event was dreamed up more than a year
ago by a small group of Claremont Colleges students
interested in finance who wanted to draw from the
extensive network of business professionals with
links to the colleges. Organizers have worked to
create an opportunity for everyone interested in
finance to come together and explore new
possibilities. “We’re getting a lot of support,”
said Geoffrey Lewis ’08, one of the
organizers
For returning alumni, the event will begin with a
welcome dinner and reception on the evening of
Friday, Oct. 12. Students and faculty will join in
the morning of Saturday, Oct. 13 with a breakfast,
panel sessions and networking period in Pomona’s
Edmunds Ballroom.
The Hedge Fund Panel will be comprised of Scott
Barker (Pomona ’87), a portfolio manager with
Analytic Investors, Inc. , Dana Hobson
(Harvey Mudd ’85), senior vice president of Bailard
and Peter G. Sasaki (Pomona ’91), the founder
and managing member of Logo Capital Management, LLC.
The Private Equity Panel will include Paul S.
Efron (Pomona ’77), advisory director at Goldman
Sachs, Kristin Horne (Pomona ’93), managing
director at Morgan Stanley and James A.
Quella, senior managing director and senior
operating partner of Blackstone’s Private Equity
Group.
Harry McMahon, vice chairman of Merrill Lynch
and Claremont McKenna alumnus, will deliver the
keynote speech to participants at the Claremont
Athenaeum during lunch.
Organizers hope the events will provide students
with good insight into career possibilities in the
finance industry. “It’ll give students a sense of
what 5-C alums go off and do,” Lewis said. --
Travis Kaya '10
Wall Street
Weekend event details
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9/20/07 |
Film buff Alex Glassmann '10
reviews Claremont's new movie theatre
With many businesses already open, workers are close to completing the
long-awaited expansion of the Claremont Village west
of Indian Hill Boulevard, bringing new restaurants,
shops, a boutique hotel and the town's first movie
house in nearly 30 years. The Laemmle Theatres
opened this summer, bringing a mix of indie and
foreign films to town, along with a few mainstream
Hollywood hits. We sent film buff Alex Glassmann
'10 to review everything but the movie:
 "Although
the five-screen Laemmle isn't huge by L.A.
standards, it offers everything that bigger
complexes do. The lobby has a large concession
stand, with what looks like the usual movie fare (I
didn’t have time to buy anything since I was rushing
from class to get to the last matinee showing of
3:10 to Yuma).
The seats are up to industry standards – plush and
comfortable, with arm rests that flip up should you
wish to sprawl out. The screen was impressive
considering the size of the building, and,
thankfully, the projector was not the low-resolution
LCD that many newer theatres have.
The sound was the most impressive part. Rarely does
a moviegoer encounter well-tuned speakers – they're
either too loud or too soft. Laemmle didn't go cheap
– whispers were clean and crisp and gunshots (and
there were a lot of them) came through powerfully
without killing your ears."
More about
the Village expansion
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9/20/07 |
Douglas Preston '78's latest
thriller hits New York Times bestseller list
The Wheel of Darkness, the latest in the
series of thrillers written by
Douglas
Preston '78 and Lincoln Child, has landed on the
New York Times and other bestseller lists.
 In
the tale, FBI special agent Aloysius Pendergast visits a
Tibetan monastery from which a mysterious relic has
been stolen. The quest to get it back leads him
on a cruise ship voyage wrought with danger and
death. Eighth in a series, The Wheel of Darkness
recently reached No. 2 on the New York Times
hardcover fiction list and now is at No. 4. The book
made it to No. 1 on Publishers Weekly's list.
Preston's brother,
Richard
Preston '76, also is a well-known writer (The
Hot Zone, The Cobra Event) and Pomona
College alumnus. His most recent non-fiction book, The
Wild Trees, was a New York Times
bestseller, too.
From the archives:
More about
the Prestons
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9/7/07 |
Summer projects allow students
to delve deeper into research interests.
 Through
the Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) and
various other grants, Pomona students have the
opportunity to spend summer studying a topic of
personal interest or working closely with a
professor. After spending much time in the library,
lab and the field, more than 100 student researchers
presented their findings at the College’s 20th
Annual Summer Research Poster Conference Sept. 6.
Here’s a sampling:
• Michael Carlson ’08 read pirates’ trial
records and personal narratives from the 16th to
18th centuries in order to learn about how these
swashbucklers constructed their social
relationships, divided labor and functioned as
instruments of imperialism. His conclusions: At the
base of piracy was the unique system of labor
oriented around intense cooperative physical labor
that forced unity and egalitarianism despite
differing functions and hierarchy on board vessels.
• Kayleigh Kaneshiro ’10 researched the
effects of the sodium benzoate on schizophrenics and
learned that it increases certain levels of amino
acids and enhances NMDA neurotransmissions,
ultimately benefiting schizophrenic patients. Her
research is intended to direct pharmaceutical
companies toward improving the treatments available
for these patients.
• Nathan Gardner ’10 traveled to China, where
he conducted interviews and examined the effect of
institutional discrimination on the availability of
education for migrant children in the big cities. He
found that while a general xenophobic attitude is
present in places like Beijing and Shanghai, the
situation is complicated by poor information
dissemination, a national government out of touch
with its people and corruption in unexpected places.
-- Julie Trescott '08
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8/15/07 |
Pomona's admissions dean appears
in Newsweek, fields questions in live online
chat.
 Vice
President and Dean
of Admissions Bruce Poch wrote an essay titled "The
Search for Authenticity: A Leading Admissions Dean
Explains What Colleges Really Want" that
appears in the Aug. 20 issue of Newsweek.
"Our job is to make sure the students who attend our
institutions are really who they appear to be, and
that they will give and take something of value in
the college's educational environment,'' writes Poch.
" What we ask for in an application may seem like a
lot, but students should know that we're acting in
their best interests."
Poch, who frequently is quoted in the media, also
fielded questions on topics ranging from financial
aid to SATs to "gap" years in a live
online chat for the magazine.
More admissions tips from Poch
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7/24/07 |
Arctic
adventure: Pomona researchers spend summer
hard at work on windswept Norwegian fjord.
Pomona Biology Professor Nina Karnovsky,
accompanied by a trio of student researchers, is
back at work in the Arctic Circle this summer and
blogging about it. Assisted by Nell Balwin '09,
Derek Buchner '09 and Zachary Brown '07, Karnosky is
continuing her research into how climate change may
affect the feeding ecology of an obscure arctic bird
known as the little auk.
 The
Pomona researchers are staying on a windswept
Norwegian island -- far north of the mainland -- at
a Polish research station that hosts a variety of
international scientists. The research involves long
days measuring and observing the birds, but the
students have found time for a midnight swim in the
icy waters.
This is the third summer Karnosky has brought
students to this same arctic base for research, and
they have a habit of falling in love with the
arctic's barren beauty.
Laurel
McFadden '06 went on the land a Watson
Fellowship to travel the arctic for a year, a journey
she is near completing, according to her
blog.
Meanwhile, Allison Bailey '07 received a Fulbright
research grant to study at the university in
Longyearbyen -- the same island where the Polish
research station is located -- where she’ll look at
the relationship between migrating geese and plants
of the tundra and how they are affected by climate
change.
Research team blog
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7/16/07 |
Claremont hits No. 5 on Money magazine's list
of "America's Best Places to Live."
Touting Claremont as a "tight-knit community
with topnotch schools," Money magazine has
named this suburban town to No. 5 on its annual list
of "America's best places to live." No California
city ranked higher. The magazine says:
 "Thirty
miles east of Los Angeles,
Claremont came into its own in the early 20th
century after the founding of Pomona College.
Streets were named after prestigious East Coast
schools, and residents were encouraged to plant
trees.
Today, Claremont is called the City of Trees and
Ph.D.s. The city has won the National Arbor Day
Foundation's Tree City USA award for 19 straight
years, and Pomona is part of a prestigious
consortium known as the Claremont Colleges.
The downtown is a mix of hip boutiques and
old-school businesses. And the historic
College Heights Lemon Packing House is now home
to the Claremont
Art Museum, restaurants, a jazz bar and artists'
lofts ... "
See Money magazine's list
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