Fall 2002 Participant
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PARTICIPANT PITZERFALL 2002 AA LLeeggaaccyy ooff LLeeaaddeerrsshhiipp ThreeThree influentialinfluential professorsprofessors areare retiringretiring fromfrom PitzerPitzer CollegeCollege Clockwise from top: Jackie Levering-Sullivan, Ann Stromberg and Susan Seymour PARTICIPANT PRESIDENT Laura Skandera Trombley EDITOR/DESIGNER Bridget Lewison ITZER P Fall 2002 / Vol. 36, No. 1 ALUMNI EDITOR Patricia Wilson COVER STORY: EDITORIAL ASSISTANT/ A Legacy of Leadership PROOFREADER Retiring Professors Ann Stromberg, Susan Seymour and Jackie Levering- Penny King Sullivan have brought a wealth of knowledge and a lifetime of dedication to Pitzer College / 12 COPY EDITOR Jamie K. Brown ’00 Professor Seymour’s early guidance helped to open doors for Trustee Deborah Bach Kallick ’78 / 15 AD DESIGN Four recently retired professors reflect on the changes they witnessed at Pitzer / 17 James Lippincott ’95 PRINTER Dual Graphics President’s Message: “Coming of Age” As Pitzer prepares to celebrate its 40th year, generations have come of age, and the A member of The Claremont College has matured and grown. / 2 Colleges, Pitzer College is a private institution of the Pitzer in the News / 4 liberal arts and sciences committed to values of Campus Notes / 5 interdisciplinary perspective, intercultural understanding Sowing the Seeds of Self-Esteem and social responsibility. Pitzer students volunteer their time to cultivate organic garden at local juvenile Participant is published by detention centers. / 10 the Office of Public Affairs and welcomes comments from its readers. Address Campaign Update letters to Participant Editor, Although the majority of America’s colleges and universities reported a decline in Avery 105, Pitzer College, money raised after the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, Pitzer experienced a banner 1050 N. Mills Ave., fundraising year. / 11 Claremont, CA 91711-6101, or submit them via e-mail to Faculty Notes [email protected]. Professor Judith Grabiner honored with national math award; Professor Paul Participant is published Faulstich wins prestigious Fulbright grant; Faculty Research; Faculty Books / 19 online in PDF format at www.pitzer.edu/ news_events/publication/ Alumni Profiles participant. ! Mary Williams ’90 helping Lost Boys find a home in America / 23 Printed on recycled ! Max Brooks ’94 and Jennifer Winston ’94 paper with win Emmy Awards / 24 soy-based ink. ! Pitzer put Amy Rosen ’76 on right track / 25 ! Chrystian Dulac ’92 creates Enigma / 26 Cover photo Alumni Notes / 27 Williams ’90 Rosen ’76 by Gregg Segal In My Own Words Justin Rood ’95 offers his take on those pesky toll roads between New York and Washington, D.C. / 35 Sports / 36 Fall 2002 ! 1 President’s Message n Feb. 15, 1963, an sufficiently uncertain that they earnest Midwestern could ill afford lapses in Ofamily man who Coming of Age judgment or direction. These landed in California in 1893 raw, exciting, and iconoclastic via Colorado and Iowa President Laura Skandera Trombley times for the College were founded Pitzer College. matched by the turmoil that Russell K. Pitzer believed in the transformative value of existed in California and the rest of the nation that year. This higher education, and his philanthropy was dedicated to was a time marked by civil rights protests throughout the developing educational and medical centers in his new home South; 200,000 people marching on Washington where Dr. of Claremont. The fledgling college’s first president was a Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech; a poet, John W. Atherton, whose inauguration was held in the growing war in Vietnam; journalists and political College’s new blacktop parking lot on a cloudless, azure sky commentators taking note of a “credibility gap” in the U.S. California day. government’s statements concerning foreign affairs; and A different kind of educational philosophy would be President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. About the created here, a structure where students, faculty, and Vietnam War, President Kennedy had commented on administrators would all have a voice in determining their Sept. 2, 1963, during a TV news interview with Walter common future. College Council was instituted and emeritus Cronkite: “If we withdrew from Vietnam, the Communists faculty still remember with a laugh and a groan the intense would control Vietnam. Pretty soon Thailand, Cambodia, battles, the endless arguments, and the late nights, because Laos, Malaya would go.” everything was so important, so crucial, and the future Nearly 40 years have passed since Kennedy’s 2 ! Pitzer College Participant pronouncement. Generations have come of age, and Pitzer to the resistant pluralism of the peoples of the globe, the job College has matured and grown. The College’s first of working out creative strategies of mutual accommodation endowment campaign is under way with two years remaining rather than confrontation that will make the image of a and $29 million has been raised toward the $40 million goal. materially better future for everyone a place where global The College is in excellent financial condition, and in pluralism is protected and respected. What makes the world order to continue to maintain its position as a preeminent a larger place for us is the enormous task ahead, for each of institution in an era of us individually, as a keen competition among Pitzer College liberal arts colleges and to community and together remain true to its mission “For Pitzer, the heady days as a nation; to of teaching young people of exhilarating creation have given way communicate clearly a to question and challenge message of tolerance and established wisdoms, this to a College that has been recognized respect to our old friends, is a crucial campaign. time and time again for its to skeptics, and to people For Pitzer, the heady who regard with hostility days of exhilarating tremendous contribution to the the current position of creation have given way to landscape of higher education. the United States as the a College that has been preeminent world power. recognized time and time Pitzer College has never been stronger.” We need to say that we again for its tremendous President Laura Skandera Trombley understand that we have contribution to the a lot to learn in a short landscape of higher time about the mutual education. Pitzer College management of social has never been stronger. This year Pitzer is change; we are committed to the process of ranked the 8th most diverse campus in learning to join with others to preserve America by U.S. News and World Report traditions that are not our own; and we will with students of color representing 30% of the do all that we can to support the preservation Class of 2006. Pitzer, one of the youngest of a pluralistic global future – because we colleges included in the rankings, is rated 38th have learned an important lesson – to value out of 217 liberal-arts colleges in academic difference for its own sake and for what we reputation and 47th in selectivity of applicants can learn from it. In short, in a world made for admission. Pitzer is included in the larger by our responsibility of living in this Princeton Review’s “The Best 345 Colleges” time, we need to turn the world toward the – where it is ranked the ninth most politically values that define the mission and goals of active campus. Kaplan Publishing’s “The higher learning, and I am proud to say, that Unofficial, Unbiased Insider’s Guide to the Russell K. Pitzer define Pitzer College in particular. We can 320 Most Interesting Colleges,” cites Pitzer as start by each of us redoubling our efforts to offering “the most creative curriculum of all carry our shared values and message of The Claremont Colleges.” openness, humility, and eager dedication to Wonderful news for the College, all of it, creating fairness beyond our campus. and yet it is tempered by the realization that In that spirit of openness, Pitzer College nearly 40 years after the founding of the students travel throughout the world to study, college and Kennedy’s predictions America to learn and to contribute to their host talks again of war. As opposed to the communities. Last year, Pitzer students conventional platitude that the world has studied in 36 countries and studied 16 grown smaller, the world has grown larger languages, and of our graduates in 2002, 57% within the all-too-clearly vivid recent past. participated in an external studies program. The idea of a shrinking globe is reassuring, Because of our outreach, Pitzer occupies 39th cozy and facilitates a warm glow that we are place in U.S. News and World Report's all coming closer and all coming along into a rankings for its study abroad programs, and better near-future across the many political 19th place in its percentage of students who and economic bridges that now connect all study abroad. Education is Pitzer College’s points on the globe. But then there are the John W. Atherton deepest purpose; in the Jeffersonian sense of daily headlines and the present preoccupations a people enlightened, we educate and prepare with security that get in the way of the cozy projections, people for the task of exercising the wisdom called for by the leading to doubts about the future. The idea of a world circumstances of the historical hour. To prepare ourselves to becoming larger – as when seen close-up in newspapers and pass on a preserved and refreshed standard of freedom and broadcast media – is much less reassuring. Some of the security, every one of us must take responsibility to educate world’s peoples and cultures feel threatened by the prospect ourselves to embrace a new level of humanism strong enough of having their way of life submerged or pushed aside by to face the challenges of a changed world. Nearly 40 years alien value systems.