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Outstanding Faculty Mentors at Pomona College Recognized
With Fellowships
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Pomona College, one of the nation’s premier liberal arts
colleges, has recognized five of its faculty members for
their particularly outstanding work as mentors and advisors
to students of color, students from economically
disadvantaged backgrounds, and first-generation college
students.
Those faculty members, George Gorse, Marcelle Holmes, Daniel
O’Leary, Ami Radunskaya, and Valorie Thomas, were announced
as the 2004 Irvine Distinguished Faculty Fellows, at the
college’s February 13 faculty meeting. Each fellowship is
funded at $7,000.
“The awarding of the fellowship,” explained Gary Kates, dean
of the college, “is meant to recognize and honor the
important work of mentoring our students. These faculty
members have been truly outstanding in that regard. The
monetary support will enhance their ability to pursue their
individual research or teaching projects.”
 Viola
Horton Professor of Art and Art History
George Gorse is well known among faculty members for
consistently testifying to the benefits of diversity. He has
served as faculty adviser in the African American Student
Mentoring Program and has guided the Affirmative Action
Committee as they undertake to redraft the college’s
Affirmative Action Policy. He also successfully campaigned
to convert a minority scholar fellowship, in his department,
to a tenure-track position.
 Since
joining the faculty in 2001, Assistant Professor of
Psychology and Black Studies
Marcelle Holmes has worked with five student
research assistants and included one student as a “teaching
assistant” in her Introduction to Psychology class. She has
been active in the Intercollegiate Black Studies Department
and at Women’s Studies events, and has presented papers
about mental health and diversity issues in many different
venues at The Claremont Colleges.
 Associate
Professor of Chemistry
Daniel O’Leary plans to donate $2,500 of his award
to the American Chemical Society’s Scholars Program, a
committee on which he sits, and whose work involves
providing financial support and mentoring to more than 1,200
minority students interested in chemistry. With the rest of
his award, he will establish a research lab supplies budget
specifically for students who work in his group. The
minority students O’Leary has worked with at Pomona have
pursued various careers in chemistry, science journalism,
and business.
 In
addition to mentoring Pomona students, Associate
Professor of Mathematics
Ami Radunskaya has participated in more than one
program designed to make math more user-friendly for
students of all ages. She has taught 8th graders on a Navaho
reservation about chaos theory. Since 1998, she has been a
faculty member in EDGE [Enhancing Diversity in Graduate
Education], a program that provides math instruction during
the summer and mentoring throughout the year, targeting
female graduate students in mathematics who have
traditionally had a poor success rate in graduate school. In
2003, she coordinated the first EDGE program held at Pomona.
 Assistant
Professor of English
Valorie Thomas has a joint appointment in the
Intercollegiate Department of Black Studies at The Claremont
Colleges and the English Department at Pomona College. She
acts as an intermediary and negotiator between these
entities with great skill. From the beginning of her tenure
at Pomona College in 1998, she has been a presence in all
public arenas that touch on diversity. Recently, she started
the on-campus organization Black Achievement Network that
aims to bring together alums, parents, students, and faculty
to support black students at the college.
The Irvine Distinguished Faculty Fellowship awards were made
possible as part of a major grant, to Pomona College, from
the James Irvine Foundation's Campus Diversity Initiative in
2002. Part of the CDI grant provides for a total of fifteen
faculty fellowships to be awarded over a period of three
years. The selection of the fellowship recipients is made by
a committee composed of Pomona faculty, staff and students.
The first awards were made in 2003. Those recipients were:
Associate Professor of Biology Clarissa Cheney, Associate
Professor of Chemistry Roberto Garza-Lopez, Associate
Professor of Psychology Sharon Goto, Associate Professor of
Art History and Black Studies Phyllis Jackson, Associate
Professor of History and Black Studies Sidney Lemelle,
Assistant Professor of Sociology and Chicana/o Studies Gilda
Ochoa, and Associate Professor of History, Chicano/a and
Latin American Studies Miguel Tinker Salas.
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