VOLUME 7 NUMBER 3
MARCH 2015
the pedant
\’pe-dant\: A scholar; one prone to ostentatious displays of learning; a learned academic; a nit-picker.
EDITOR’S NOTE
Just when we thought we had bypassed winter altogether, the rains
came and Mt. Baldy, dessicated and abandoned these past few months,
donned its white veil. Such is life in Claremont, a moderate but dynamic
haven nestled at the base of the San Gabriels.
This return to winter made the immanent end of the semester seem (if
only seem) a bit further off than it actually is. With spring break right
around the bend and the close of the term just beyond that, it’s time to
start taking stock of where we are in our graduate careers and where
we’re headed—don’t let Mt. Baldy’s snow-capped peaks fool you: the end
is nigh.
This issue of the Pedant focuses on where we are and where we are
going. The news section includes a story on the retooled Career
Development Office and how it aims to help students develop longterm career plans; a focus on studying abroad (and who doesn’t want
to knock out that T-course at a UNESCO World Heritage site?); and the
rigamarole of publishing your dissertation if you plan to graduate (page
4). We also discuss change: The sad departure of President Freund from
CGU, and the upcoming GSC elections.
This issue’s feature story focuses on the networking basics every grad
student should have in their tool belt from day one. Considering that
in today’s marketplace, 70-80 percent of job seekers find employment
through contacts, these skills literally equate to money in the bank.
Finally, La Bonne Vivante, ever mindful of the season (that is, finals
season) takes us into the town and gives the low-down on all the local
happy hours; vital information, indeed.
Whether you’re wrapping up your first year here or your doctorate, it’s
never too early—or too late—to take stock.
Cheers,
Rachel Tie
Editor, the Pedant
in this issue
2 campus news
5 GSC update
6 feature: networking 101
8 la bonne vivante: the happiest hour in claremont
10 student achievements
12 events calendar and more
the Pedant
Volume 7, Number 3 March 2015
Many thanks to Christine Kelly, Jacob Adams, Kevin Campbell, Quannan Lui
and the GSC, Allegra Swift, Carrie Marsh, Patricia Easton, Edris Stuebner,
Kerri Dean, and Sheila Lefor, the Pedant’s web developer.
Rachel Tie
Editor-in-Chief
Emily Schuck
Writer
Meghan M. Gallagher
Contributor
For questions or comments, e-mail pedant@cgu.edu
2 Otium cum dignitate
Job Boss
The director’s chair of the
Career Development Office
(CDO) has sat vacant since the
resignation of former director
Paul Hardister last spring. In
early December, CGU filled
the position and has plans
to improve the efficacy and
scope of what the CDO can do
for students.
New CDO director Christine Kelly comes to CGU with 16 years as
a faculty member and six years as a graduate-career consultant.
She currently serves as the president of the Graduate Career
Consortium, a professional network of staff and administrators
who provide professional and career development for PhDs
and postdoctoral scholars, and has published widely on topics
relating to graduate-student career advising, including in Inside
Higher Ed. And if those bona fides aren’t enough, in January, The
Chronicle of Higher Education ran a piece on Kelly and her work
as a graduate-career advisor.
Having gone through a PhD herself and worked in both the
academy and the private sector, Kelly brings a broad experience
base with which to advise graduate students.
“I have a student perspective, a faculty perspective, I’ve been
on the academic job search, and have transitioned out of the
academy into industry,” she said.
Last spring when the CDO was being retooled, three goals were
drawn up for the office moving forward.
The first was to have the CDO in charge of coordinating
internship and TA opportunities.
“While [RA and TA jobs] should still be handled by a student’s
department, we want, at least, to centralize that information
on Claremont Connect [a recruiting tool open to Claremont
students that houses job and internship postings],” said Kelly.
In addition, the school wants to better track student job
placement after graduation. Last spring, CGU handed out
surveys to graduates but only got 107 responses.
“[PhD] tracking is a national issue,” said Kelly. “So the question
is, how do you do that? There need to be follow ups after
graduation—one month [after], one year . . . [We need to] create
good surveys and decide how often and how to send them out.”
Finally, the CDO will follow the peer-mentoring model that the
writing center has in place. Currently, the CDO has two peer
mentors that kept the office running during the new director
search, Mary Guattas and Danella Castillo, but Kelly hopes to
hire several more to lead workshops, do resume critiques, post
jobs, and respond to student e-mails. Ideally, says Kelly, these
new hires will be students who plan on being at CGU for a while
Claremont Graduate University
campus news
(i.e. not those graduating the next semester).
But Kelly’s ideas for the CDO don’t stop there: In addition to
planning a “job-search bootcamp” as well as other careerpreparation and job-search workshops, she wants the CDO to
create a career roadmap that will be introduced to students when
they start at CGU. “We want to begin the career dialogue early,”
said Kelly. “Where are they going, and if they don’t know, we will
help.”
Unbeknownst to many, April 6-11 is national graduateprofessional student appreciation week, and Kelly has planned
some fun and stress-relieving activities for CGU’s diligent (and
may we here at the Pedant say, highly skilled) student workers.
The CDO is located in the Students Success Center at 131 E. 10th
Street. To contact the CDO for advising, appointments, or other
questions, e-mail career.development@cgu.edu.
President Freund to leave CGU
On December 14, 2014, President Freund announced in an e-mail
to the CGU community that she would not be seeking a contract
renewal for a second term as president of CGU.
Under Freund’s leadership, CGU undertook a realignment
that condensed nine schools into five, strengthened the
Transdisciplinary Studies Program, created the Big Data and GIS
initiatives, and put the annual fund on track, as well as other
accomplishments.
President Freund’s decision to not seek a contract renewal marks
the departure of the third CGU president in under 15 years (not
including two interim presidents), with an average tenure of five
years.
According to The American Council on Education’s 2006 survey
of college and university presidents, the average length of service
for a university president at the time of the survey was 8.5 years.
Take a Bath
Or rather, consider taking a course that goes to Bath, England.
Sunny Southern California has much to offer, but pair it with
another historic city, and you’ve got yourself a graduate course
(and a good reason to hop the pond).
The class, “Heritage, Culture, and Managing the Past in the Old
World and the New,” is a travel and transdisciplinary course
jointly taught with Bath Spa University that explores the
cultural history of two cities, Los Angeles and Bath, and more
broadly, issues facing heritage management.
Though the exact dates and price are still being fine-tuned,
last year the course took place in May and June, with the travel
portion taking place at the beginning of June. Students are
responsible for airfare and lodging, plus the cost of tuition, but
it promises to deliver big bang for buck.
Students will explore historic sites in Los Angeles like
downtown Pasadena and the Getty Villa, visit the mysterious
Stonehenge, and experience the Victoria and Albert museum in
London (a must-see for any Anglophile).
Whereas the class primarily focuses on museums and art,
Professor of History Josh Goode notes that this kind of study
is beneficial for both your coursework and your CV. “This kind
of international experience and knowledge is increasingly
valuable on the job market, especially in markets where global
literacy and awareness are desirable,” Goode said.
Kerri Dean, a history MA student who took the course last
summer, found travelling and the different perspectives it
offered to be most rewarding.
“We have to know the answer to questions like, ‘Why do we want
to go to Stonehenge?’ It provided context for theoretical and
practical questions about the history of the Western world,” said
Dean.
Contact joshua.goode@cgu.edu for more information.
Moving forward, CGU plans to stay the course, continuing with
its current financial and operational strategies. “We will be
looking for someone who can build on our current foundation and
continue to grow and strengthen the university for the next five
years and beyond,” said the chair of the board of trustees, Michael
Rossi, in a December 4, 2014 e-mail.
At the time of this printing there has been no word of a timeline
for filling the president’s seat. According to Rossi, CGU’s
leadership team will guide the university and run its daily
operations during the search process.
The board of trustees will be meeting in March at which time a
process for filling the seat, identifying the type of candidate CGU
wants, and how students can get involved may develop.
The city of Bath was named for the natural hot springs that were
discovered in the region and the Roman baths constructed there. Photo by
Kerri Dean.
Claremont Graduate University
student life
Dissertation Publication for Graduation
If writing your dissertation weren’t irksome enough, the process of
publishing it (a requirmenet for all CGU PhD grads) can confound even
the most organized of students. As such, your trusted Pedant set out to
disambiguate the process, and it behooves all impending graduates to
understand both the process required by CGU as well as the intricacies
of scholarly publishing in the digital age.
If you plan to graduate with a doctorate this spring, you must submit
your dissertation to ProQuest (this is done after you have both
defended your dissertation and gotten your commitee’s approval to
submit).* Submission to ProQuest is done through Electronic Thesis/
Dissertations (www.etdadmin.com/cgu). If you lack Internet access
or are simply staunchly attached to the obliteraton of forests, you
may alternately submit two hard copies to the registrar, however this
process is more costly ($95 versus $55), and takes several months
longer for publication.
Once your dissertation is submitted either electronically or in paper
form, two copies are sent to Special Collections at the Honnold/Mudd
library. One copy is bound and placed in the library’s stacks; the other
is put into the archives for permanent retention. At this point, your
dissertation is now published threefold: digitally by ProQuest, bound in
the libarary stacks, and bound in Claremont’s permanent archives.
According to the director of special collections, Carrie Marsh, the
archives are probably the single most important and stable way to
preserve your scholarship. “ProQuest is for profit: they take your
dissertation and sell access to it back to subscribers. If they go belly up,
[the library archive] remains the only stable archive of your work,” she
said.
Director of scholarly publishing at the Claremont Consortium, Allegra
Swift, echos Marsh’s sentiment about the drawbacks of ProQuest:
“Proquest is subscription based [and] not all libraries have access to it,”
she said. But whereas ProQuest submission is a requirment for getting
a PhD at CGU, Swift’s solution is for recent PhDs to submit their work
to Scholarhip@Claremont (http://scholarship.claremont.edu), the
Claremont Colleges’ digital-scholarship repository that is both stable
and open access.
Access to scholarship is one of the more vexing questions in scholarly
publishing, but for the young scholar (that’s you!), online publication
raises several questions that cut to the core of large-scale issues in
higher education, namely: Is open-access the way to go in the digital
age, or do the old rules of publication by subscription-based journals
still apply?
“There is a myth,” says Swift, “that you don’t want to put [your
scholarship up on the web] because it will be seen as a prior
publication, but that’s not true. I talk to [book] publishers all the time,
and they are interested in things that are getting a lot of attention
online.”
To track that online attention, Scholarship@Claremont uses AltMetrics,
which keeps track of who’s talking about your work, including citations
and mentions on social media. Scholarship@Claremont provides you
with a stable URL for your work so you can easily link to it across your
social media platforms.
4 Otium cum dignitate
“Your digital footprint is your calling card,” continued Swift. “You need
to have a presence online. When people Google you, this is what you
want them to see. Ultimately, you get more reach for your research.
You’re competing for jobs against candidates from schools that require
open-access publication in their institutional repositories. The entire
UC system, for instance, requires students to use their repository,
EScholarship.”
Nevertheless, Scholarship@Claremont does not see many recently
minted CGU PhDs submitting their dissertations to the repository,
signalling the fear that many still harbor about making their work
available before publication.
According to Patricia Easton, vice provost for student and enrollment
services at CGU, open access “[can] leave young academics potentially
vulnuerable because their ideas are their calling cards,” she said, also
noting that many would-be PhDs actually go to ProQuest and digitalscholarship repositories when searching for potential topics for their
own dissertations. “In the sciences it’s easier to get credit for ideas, but
for scholars in the humanities, it’s much harder to trace where ideas
come from,” continued Easton.
Regardless, while choosing whether or not to submit your dissertation
to Scholarship@Claremont is optional, submitting to ProQuest is not.
Luckily, both Scholarship@Claremont and ProQuest offer options to
authors to restrict both the scope of who can access their work as well
as the timeframe that access will be granted. You can IP restrict, which
means making your work only available to certain institutions, or place
an embargo on it, which delays publication for a period of time.
But, as Swift noted, “people are getting noticed [by using Scholarship@
Claremont], they’re getting jobs: One student’s thesis was downloaded
40,000 times in one month.”
The verdict is not yet in on the ultimate merits or drawbacks of
publishing your dissertation in an open-access online repository; as
Easton noted, “the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.”
*Check with your department for specific deadlines and procedures.
Claremont Graduate University
student life
GSC year in review (and the year to come)
With the school year winding down and elections on the horizon, the
Graduate Student Council (GSC) kicked off the spring semester with full
docket of action items and resolutions.
On February 6, the first meeting of the semester was marked by a
packed agenda. Below, find everything you need to know about what
the council has been up to, what’s coming up, and how you can get
involved.
Elections
By the time this issue was printed, nominations for executive positions
(president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer) will have already
taken place. Though this may seem a bit earlier than in years past, the
council set this schedule to ensure that there is a smooth transition
between councils and that there is ample time for the outgoing council
to transfter their institutional knowledge to the council elect. Keep an
eye on your CGU inboxes for voting, which takes place March 8-March
23. Candidates for president are Karthik Muppalla, Gloria Page, and
Jordan Riddle; candidates for vice president are Sean Dixon, Appy
Frykenberg, Karthik Muppalla, Jordan Riddle, and Comron Roodsori;
and candidates for secretary are Sean Dixon, Jordan Riddle, and
Comron Roodsori. There are currently no candidates for treasurer.
Special Funding
Despite a budget slash of nearly 37 percent from last year’s GSC budget
(about $15,000) the GSC has been as committed as ever to funding
student groups, events, and organizations. Student groups and events
that received special funding this year include: TedXClaremont
($1,200), School of Community and Global Health Student Associaton
($700), Foothill: a journal of poetry ($250), the Queer Graduate Union
($685), and the GIS Conference ($250). The GSC still has funds in its
coffers and encourages student groups and events to apply, but don’t let
the April 1 deadline pass you by.
Travel and Material Awards
Another downside of the GSC’s budget cut is the decreased amount
available for student travel awards. Nevertheless, the GSC is committed
to keeping the awards going, and with a boost of $900 coming from
the Office of Student Life and Diversity and $500 per semester coming
from the president’s office for the Presidential Award, the total travel
and material awards budget for this spring is $4,500. The application
deadline is Sunday, March 15, 11:59 PM for events and expenses that
occured during the qualifying period between October 15, 2014 and
March 10, 2015. For information and the application, check out
www.cgu.edu/travelawards.
Town Hall Recap
A town hall event was held in December to directly address the needs
of graduate students with members of the administration. The
administration revealed that it had been busy requesting bids for
making improvements to Hagelbarger’s, and that issues related to
student housing were already being addressed. The GSC successfully
petitioned for several student requests, including an extra $1,000
pledge from President Freund to go towards travel awards; an extra
$500 funding from CGU for student associations for underrepresented
groups; and a pledge from the dean of student services to address
student requests for a 24-hour computer lab by late spring.
GSC House and Disability Access
Several months ago the GSC proposed a resolution to CGU, authored
by former GSC President, Stephen Ward, to make the GSC house
wheelchair accessible. At the February council meeting, CGU
administration responded that in light of the financial unfeasability of
outfitting the current GSC house, the GSC is being offered the former
McNair scholars house just south of Foothill Blvd. on Dartmouth Ave.,
which already has a wheelchair ramp. According to GSC President Kevin
Campbell, the decision on whether to move will be tabled so that the
council elect can decide.
Upcoming Events
The GSC’s annual karaoke event will take place on April 2 in the
community room of student housing (1445 N. College Ave.), time TBD.
The end-of-year party will take place on May 1, with location, time, and
other details TBD, but there are rumors of an In-N-Out food truck.
Get involved
If running for the GSC’s executive board isn’t your thing
but you still want to get involved, considering becoming a
representative or delegate for your school. Each school elects
two representatives in the spring and selects a number of
delegates based on school population in the fall.
To run for a representative position, you may nominate
yourself (or someone else) beginning on April 10, 2015. Send
a statement of purpose of no more than 250 words and a brief
bio to gsc@cgu.edu. Towards the end of the semester, the GSC
will host an election where members of each school will be
able to vote for their representatives.
You may also choose to run for a delegate position in the
fall. Representatives and delegates have the same rights and
responsibilities except that representatives have the abilitiy to
vote to impeach members of the executive council and to vote
on changes to the constitution, whereas delgates do not.
“The GSC is one of those things where people can get involved
in any way they see fit,” said President Kevin Campbell. “If
you just want to show up to meetings and vote for your school,
that’s fine; but the more you put in to the council, the greater
the rewards: personal, professional, intellectual, and the
greater your ability to advocate for your school.
For questions or more information, e-mail gsc@cgu.edu.
Leisure with dignity 5
Claremont Graduate University
Schmoozing 101:
Networking basics for grad students
Graduate students are known—sometimes unfairly, but also somewhat aptly—as tending towards isolation, repudiation
of the establishment, and—how do we say?—social eccentricity. Being able to work alone, to think outside the box,
and to be creative are the traits that make us great scholars, but to make it in the job market, a little savoir faire goes
a long way. To that end, we’ve compiled the most important aspects of networking—that monolithic, soul-breaking,
ubiquitous aspect of the job-seeking world. In a world where PhDs are a dime a dozen and there are more applicants
than jobs to go around, it helps to have honed in on a few basic skills to stand apart from the herd.
If you’re wondering why why the Pedant is running its second
feature on networking (and you know this because you
are a dutifully reader of our proud publication),
consider the following:
According to the career-education company
Simmons, 70-80 percent of job seekers
find their jobs through contacts. As few
as 20 percent land their jobs through the
traditional “reactive” job search method,
i.e., applying for posted positions on
job boards or want ads. Additionally,
nearly 80 percent of available jobs are
never advertised. And you can uncover
this “hidden job market” through
networking. It is how you learn of jobs
that you would otherwise be unaware of,
and the more quality contacts you make,
the more likely you are to tap into these
hidden opportunities.
Don’t Underestimate Online
Networking
According to the “Jobvite Social Recruiting
Survey 2011,” 89 percent of organizations will
recruit in social networks this year. In addition, 55
percent will spend more on social recruiting this year
and 64 percent use two or more networks for recruiting.
Using social media like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Academia.edu allows
job seekers to network horizontally and vertically with ease; to form
contacts with people they wouldn’t normally have access to; and to
curate a professional presence with incredible reach. However, your
online presence can just as easily work against you as it works for you,
and job seekers must be meticulous about the message they are sending
about themselves. Make sure that all of your profiles are free from
typos, highlight your background and accomplishments, and are free
from all inappropriate content.
6 Otium cum dignitate
So dubbed “the elevator pitch,” you should be able to describe your work in the amount of time it takes for an elevator ride: 15-30 seconds.
“Ask yourself two questions: The first is whom do I know here, and the second is where is the cheese table. Good. Now
combine these two questions: whom do I know here who is closest to the cheese table?”
Further, according to an April 2014 Forbes article, “How Social Media
Can Help (or hurt) You in Your Job Search,” “It’s not enough to only
post a profile and check your news feed. There are a lot of lurkers—
people who have an online profile but don’t do anything or engage
in any meaningful way. You need to give to the social networking
communities, participate in group discussions, share expertise,
point someone to an article. You have to work it. While it can feel
uncomfortable putting yourself out there, if you’re looking for a job, it’s
not the time to be timid.”
Kelli Marshall reiterates the importance of curating a digital identity
in her recent piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education: “In a
nutshell,” she writes, “if you do not have a clear online presence, you
are allowing Google, Yahoo, and Bing to create your identity for you.”
She suggests starting by searching your own name to find out what
prospective employers are seeing when they search for you. After
that, buy a domain name ending in .com or .net (which should run you
about $15/year) from companies like HostGator, Network Solutions,
or Namecheap. Your website should have sections like “about me,”
“C.V.” and “contact,” and should be linked to from wherever you can
(for instance, from your Facebook page, since social-media sites rank
highly in online searches). Make sure that your information (and
picture or avatar) is consistent across platforms. Finally, creating a
strong digital presence can have its own benefit aside from serving
as a place to house your many accomplishments: “Creating and
maintaining an online presence demonstrates your proficiency in
navigating and understanding the modern web,” writes Marshall.
. . . But nothing beats the real thing
Whereas online networking is a giant component to the contemporary
job search, the academic job search is still deeply mired in personal,
face-to-face connections.
Former CGU Career Development Office (CDO) Director Paul Hardister
encourages students to “spend as much time offline as you spend
online . . . many students can overlook the importance of face-to-face
interaction with people in their fields.” One of the best ways to get this
type of networking in is to join your field’s professional associations
and go to their conferences and events. And if face-to-face hobnobbing
scares the bejeezus out of you, the Pedant lives by the following golden
advice doled out by the blog, “The Toast”: “Ask yourself two questions:
The first is whom do I know here, and the second is where is the cheese
table. Good. Now combine these two questions: whom do I know here
who is closest to the cheese table?”
Master the Elevator Pitch
If the life of the mind is your vocational calling, you will be frequently
asked, “So what do you work on?” According to the Institute for
Humane Studies, “It’s essential to make sure you have a quick answer,
preferably one that invites your interlocutor to inquire further about
what you’re doing.” Your answer can range from the embarrassingly
vague (“economics”) to the embarrassingly detailed (“A hermeneutical
inquiry into the phenomenologal experience of posthumanism with
regards to the imaginary but nevertheless contended borders of
space”). The idea is that your response—which you will have prepared before
any networking opportunity—will be both short enough not to bore
your listener but detailed enough to invite further conversation. So
dubbed “the elevator pitch,” this explanation should last no longer than
an elevator ride—about 15-30 seconds.
When on the job market, remember that every talk is a job talk; that is,
every conversation you have should be approached as an interview, and
the more succinctly, enthusiastically (without forgetting humbly), and
inquisitively you can describe your work, the better the impression you
will leave.
Networking isn’t something to accomplish over the weekend on
LinkedIn or in the desperate days before graduation. CDO Director
Christine Kelly reminds students that you can’t start networking too
early and you need to keep in contact. “Many folks drop the ball on the
follow up. Keep your network informed of your progress and find ways
to keep the lines of communication open.”
For more information on conducting a job search, as well as creating
a career roadmap and how to prepare yourself, visit the CDO in the
Student Success Center at 131 E. 10th Street.
Leisure with dignity 7
you arrive at The Press to a crowd of people vying for the outdoor tables
(especially on a Thursday). You’ll find pretty standard happy hour fare
here but most people just get the drinks (unless they are there for The
Press’s fabled “fries for the boys”). If you enjoyed the stereotypical
bar scene during your undergraduate years you might appreciate the
atmosphere of The Press.
The Place: Walter’s
La BonneVivante
by Megan M. Gallagher — writer, teacher, epicurean,
PhD student in English
Bonne Vivante, French: 1) a person having
cultivated, refined, and sociable tastes ; 2) a woman
As part of the Pedant’s mission to enhance student life, La Flâneuse
about town; 3) a pleasure-seeking hedonist.
features goings-on about town outside of the moated ivory tower that is
CGU. This month: Thinkin’ and drinkin’ in Claremont.
As part of the Pedant’s mission to enhance student life, La Bonne
Vivante features goings-on about town outside of the moated ivory
tower that is CGU. This month: The happiest hours in Claremont.
La vie est trop courte pour boire du mauvais vin
Life is too short to drink bad wine
-a French Proverb
The Time: M-F, 4:00 p.m.-close
The Specials: House wine, beer, and rotating well cocktails
Who you’re likely to run into: Literally anyone. Not sure if you are in the
mood for a Mexican omelet, shrimp scampi, eggrolls, lamb kabob, or
clam chowder?* Well fear not, Walter’s has you covered.
Pros: It’s the “choose your own adventure” of Claremont dining.
Cons: There is a strong chance your professor is meeting someone here
for dinner.
Snapshot: Who even knows? I have been here for casual, semiprofessional drinks, bridal and baby showers, wedding receptions, and
dances. You have to go here at least three times before you can make
any definitive decisions on whether or not it’s your scene.
*These are actual menu items
The Place: Casa 425 (aka: Casa4 . . . something)
The Time: M-F, 4:00-6:00 p.m.
The Specials: wine, beer, well drinks, appetizers
Who your likely to run into: People too good for the Doubletree, people
who only want to socialize with the one person they came with but are
forced to share a heatless fire pit with 8 other strangers.
Pros: Fancy well drinks like Moscow Mules are also on a rotating
special.
Cons: The person you are meeting might accidentally blow you off when
they confuse it with neighboring Casa Moreno and aren’t in the mood
for Mexican.
Snapshot: It’s the courtyard you try to peek into while you are drinking
your Coffee Bean and wondering if today is the day you see a kid
seriously injure themselves in that fountain. Most of the seating is
outdoors so you have to be really committed to drinks on a hot day.
The Place: King Kong Sushi
Committed to bringing you news that matters, the Pedant had your
Bonne Vivante take to the streets to get to the heart of the issue on
everyone’s mind: happy hour. More importantly, where does one find
this promised period of happiness? Well, imagine my surprise to learn
that most happy hours begin right after your 1:00-4:00 p.m. class lets
out and end right before your 7:00-10:00 p.m. class begins—that cannot
be a coincidence. It turns out this City of Trees really knows how to
care for its [future] PhDs.
The Time: M-F, 4:00-6:00 p.m.
The Specials: Rolls and beer
Who you’re likely to run into: People who proudly proclaim the
“California roll” to be their favorite “sushi.”
Pros: You were probably just going here for a California or spicy tuna
roll and were pleasantly surprised to find happy hour.
Cons: Mercury
Snapshot: You’ve had sushi and sushi rolls before, right? This isn’t
Sugarfish but you aren’t in Beverly Hills, Downtown L.A., or Santa
Monica, either.
The Place: The Press
The Place: Eureka!
The Time: M-F, 3:00-6:00 p.m.; Thursdays 3:00 p.m.-close
The Specials: Pints, wells, house wine, and margaritas
Who you’re likely to run into: Your ex, the Arts & Humanities
department, people you have left-swiped on Tinder.
Pros: Thursday’s all-night happy hour lets you relive undergraduate
glory days.
Cons: Thursday’s all night happy hour lets EVERYONE [re]live
undergraduate glory days.
Snapshot: After you have, miraculously, found parking in the Village
10 Otium cum dignitate
The Time: M-F, 4:00-6:00 p.m.
The Specials: Dollar-off beers and discounted appetizers
Who you’re likely to run into: People willing to pay $3 more not to go to
TGIFridays but not willing to pay $6 more and to go to the Back Abbey.
Pros: a respectable rotating tap selection and Old Fashioneds
Cons: You have to join the rest of Claremont waiting to be seated for
dinner.
Snapshot: It’s the Target of Claremont dining: you feel good about
not shopping at Walmart but you are still far, far away from Neiman
Marcus.
*Not a happy hour drink but a worthwhile bait and switch when you go
for happy hour.
The Place: The Black Watch Pub
The Place: The Junction
The Time: Daily, 11:00 a.m.-2:00 a.m. (and 6:00-9:00 p.m. has $2
domestics pints)
The Specials: Beer (it’s a pub)
Who you’re likely to run into: Claremont ex-patriots, micro-macrobrew
aficionados (“this Bud’s for you”), dart players, and pool sharks.
Pros: Fútbol, live music Fridays and Saturdays, fish and chips, no one
cares about your academic discipline (in fact you should probably just
keep that to yourself), everyone else there is also drinking late on a
Sunday night (or early on a Tuesday morning).
Cons: Uber or Lyft fare to get home from Upland; live music (it’s pretty
hit or miss).
Snapshot: Did you study abroad in the UK or have you seen Love
Actually enough to get the general idea of England? Then you have a
pretty good idea of what to expect. This is the bar you would go to if
you lived one of those “normal lives” you keep hearing about. People
here get off of work and don’t take it home with them. It’s incredible. No
one has dissertation advisors or case studies—instead they have things
called “bosses” and “cubicles.”
The Time: M-F, 4:00-6:00 p.m.
The Specials: Standard drinks (including their elderflower cordial) and
appetizers with a Korean/Mexican-fusion twist
Who you’re likely to run into: It’s the new kid in town so right now so
it’s still trying to fit in.
Pros: Korean nachos (overall food is similar to 50-Fifty except you
actually know people that have been here); bar AND barista; vegetarians
rejoice!: faux-meats are delicious here.
Cons: location, location, location – did you ever eat at the Pita Pit next
to the railraod? Neither did anyone else (which is why we no longer have
a Pita Pit).
Snapshot: This is a great place to go if you are A) a vegetarian forced to
eat with an omnivore or B) an omnivore forced to eat with a vegetarian.
The only problem might be the faux-meats seemed tofu-esque in nature
and according to Buzzfeed we hate soy now—so you might want to stick
to the house salad with lavender dressing.
“No one here cares about your academic discipline (in fact, you should probably just keep that to yourself).”
La Bonne Vivante explores the world of darts and the quadratic equation at the Black Watch Pub.
Leisure with dignity 9
student achievements
Joseph Schubert
School of Arts and Humanities
PhD, Historical Musicology
Schubert was chosen to present a paper at the fall meeting of the
American Musicological Society (AMS), Pacific Southwest Chapter,
held on October 11 at University of California, Irvine. The title of the
paper was “Grunenwald’s De Profundis: Psalm Text as Rosetta Stone
for a Musical Language.” The paper compared French composer JeanJacques Grunenwald’s choice of compositional techniques with the
need to convincingly portray the spiritual and emotional progression
of the text (Psalm 130 followed by the prayer Requiem aeternam).
Additionally, Schubert drew parallels between the Catholic doctrine
of Purgatory, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief, and the
large- and small-scale structures of this important work for choir and
orchestra. This was Schubert’s second presentation for the AMS.
California.” Their final presentation was presented in the PechaKucha
format titled, “Virtual Teaching: Roles Examined, Myths Debunked.”
The Teacher Education Division is one of 17 special-interest groups
of the Council for Exceptional Children, the largest international
professional organization dedicated to improving educational
outcomes for individuals with exceptionalities.
Randy Aung
School of Social Science, Policy, and
Evaluation
MS, Human Resources Design
Aung received a job offer two days after
he graduated from Claremont as a human
resource aministrator for OSI Systems, Inc.,
a leading global manufacturer of electronic
systems. He credits his master’s program
in HR for giving him a competitive edge in
the job market. Aung particularly wants to
thank Ron Smedley for sharing his years of
HR experience with his students.
Erika Hirugami
Drucker School of Management
MA, Art Business
Hirugami was selected as this year’s
El Velorio exhibit curator. The event
featured over 70 artists from the
greater Los Angeles area and took place
on November 8 at Plaza de La Raza.
This year’s exhibition featured a wide
selection of works in a variety of media
and genres relating to the Day of the
Dead and its subjectivity as interpreted
by local contemporary artists. The carefully selected group of artists
included renowned artists alongside emergent artists, with the aim of
generating an artistic convergence that would create an alternative
space capable of transcending the local borders of the city, time, and
space.
Clarence Wigfall
Division of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences
PhD, Applied Social Psychology
Wigfall was the 2014 winner of the Federation of American Societies
for Experimental Biology (FASEB) BioArt competition LungMap
project. His video was one of two winning videos. These videos will be
an important tool in FASEB’s efforts to engage members of Congress
and the general public in dialogue regarding the immense value of
the United States’ biomedical-research enterprise and the need for
sustained support of life science and biomedical-research funding by
federal agencies.
Renee R. Rivera Duniven and Sydney A. Bueno
School of Educational Studies
PhD students, Special Education
Duniven and Bueno were selected to present at the 2014 Council
for Exceptional Children (CEC) Teacher Education Division (TED)
conference in Indianapolis. Duniven and Bueno presented four times
at the conference on a wide range of topics in special education. Their
single-paper presentations were titled, “Creating Positive Home/School
Relationships Through Student Lead IEPs,” “The Impact of Teachers:
Influence of Teachers’ Own Educational Experience on Teaching
English Language Leaners (ELL) with Learning Disabilities (LD),” and
“El or LD: The Disproportionality of LD labeling of Latino Students in
10 Otium cum dignitate
Julianna Kirschner
School of Arts and Humanities
PhD, Cultural Studies
Kirschner’s first publication appeared in the November issue of the
journal Feminist Review. Her article is a book review that outlines
her pedagogical experience with integrating the book Gender Stories:
Negotiating Identity in a Binary World by Sonja K. Foss, Mary E.
Domenico, and Karen A. Foss into the classes that she teaches. In the
review, Kirschner describes the powerful impact of viewing gender on
a spectrum, one which we navigate throughout our days and our lives
in general. Her review focuses on the accessibility of the book and its
overall contribution to the humanities.
Joel L.A. Peterson
School of Educational Studies
PhD, Policy and Reform
Peterson’s novel, Dreams of My Mothers:
A Story of Love Transcendent, published
by Huff Publishing Associates, is being
distributed nationally and internationally
by Anchor Books. The book has been
nominated for the Barnes & Noble
Discover Award for the best debut book by
a first-time author. The books is also in
contention for a number of other literary
awards, including the 12th Annual USA Best Book Award and the
American Best Book Awards. See www.dreamsofmymothers.com.
José Bayoán Santiago Calderón
Department of Politics and Economics/School of Social Science, Policy,
and Evaluation
PhD, Interfield Economics and Political Science
Jose was sponsored to attend the Allied Social Sciences Association
(ASSA) annual meeting in Boston this past January. His participation
was based on his alumnus status of the American Economics
Association Committee on the status of Minority Groups in the
Academic Profession summer program at the University of New Mexico.
Courtney L. Rabada
Taryn VanderPyl
School of Arts and Humanities
MA, Religious Studies
Rabada’s article, “A Swelling Tide: Nineteen-Year-Old Sister
Missionaries in the Twenty-First Century” was published in the winter
2014 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.
School of Educational Studies
PhD, Special Education
VanderPyl had the honor of being a guest
blogger for NoOffence!, a global network
of crime and justice advocates and
professionals working together to challenge
barriers and make a difference. Her blog,
“Education as Liberation: The Value of
Investing in Prison Education,” can be
found on the NoOffence! website.
Krystal Muguel
School of Educational Studies
PhD, Higher Education
In January, Miguel’s paper, “PersonalInterpersonal Competence Assessment:
A Self-Report Instrument for Student
Development” was published in Research
in Higher Education Journal. She will also
present at both the Western Academy of
Management in March in Kauai, Hawaii,
as well as at the 95th annual conference of the Western Psychological
Association. The common thread between these works represents a
dedication to improving student outcomes for students who may have
experienced some type of challenge in their academic or professional
career.
To submit your recent achievement of the academic or
vocational variety, please send your name, department, degree
seeking, and achievement of no more than one paragraph in
the format of the achievements on this page to
pedant@cgu.edu. You may also include a high-resolution,
professional-quality headshot.
“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com
Leisure with dignity 11
Claremont Graduate University
calendar
March 8 Graduate Student Council (GSC) Elections: online voting opens—
keep an eye on your CGU inboxes for more details.
March 9 As part of the Preparing Future Faculty program, this workshop,
“Designing Assessment and Rubrics” will help demystify learning outcomes
and cover assessment tools from 4:00–6:50 p.m. in Academic Computing
Building (ACB) 108 (130 E. Ninth Street). E-mail pff@cgu.edu to RSVP
and for more information.
March 10 The film Teach follows the struggles and triumphs of the American
education system. Join the Teacher Education department for a screening
from 7:00–10:00 p.m. in Stauffer Hall (925 N. Dartmouth Avenue). The
event is free and open to the public.
March 12 Let the Writing Center illuminate the art of revision with a
workshop from 1:00–2:30 p.m. at the Student Success Center (131 E. Tenth
Street).
March 13 Learn how to implement group projects that will best stimulate
students’ learning engagement with the Preparing Future Faculty program
in ACB 108 (130 E. Ninth Street) from 4:00–6:00 p.m.
March 16–20 Spring break! Take a last-minute trip to Mexico, or just catch
up on sleep or dissertating.
March 23 Last day to vote in GSC elections online.
Preparing Future Faculty hosts a workshop on preparing syllabi from
4:00–6:00 p.m. in ACB 108 (130 E. Ninth Street).
March 27 Cesar Chavez day; campus closed.
March 28 The 2015 Bradshaw Conference, themed “Innovation in Arts and
Culture,” will take place from 9:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m. in Albrecht Auditorium
(925 N. Dartmouth Avenue). Contact diana.luna@cgu.edu for more
information, or register at www.cgu.edu/bradshaw.
A Saturday-intensive session, combining two Preparing Future Faculty
workshops, will cover syllabus design and teaching philosophy statements
from 9:00 a.m.–1:30 p.m. in Burkle 26 (1021 N. Dartmouth Avenue).
March 30 Tess Taylor, author of The Forage House, will do a poetry reading
at 4:00 p.m. in the Board of Trustees room in Harper Hall (150 E. Tenth
Street).
April 2 Make sure your voice is heard—literally—at the GSC’s karaoke
event at student housing. Details TBD.
April 16 The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards Ceremony, awarding
both a mid-career poet and a newly published poet for their books,
respectively, will begin at 5:00 p.m. at the Rose Hills Theatre on Pomona
College’s campus, and will include poetry readings, a book signing, and light
refreshments.
12 Otium cum dignitate
EVENTS IN FOCUS
March 8-23
GSC Elections
Don’t let next year’s leadeship be decided for you. Check
your CGU e-mail for the Graduate Student Council’s ballot
for executive position (more info on page 5).
March 24 & April 7:
Blood Drive
Plan to have a bloody good time this Cesar Chavez day
by donating blood in the Des Combes Quad from 10:00
a.m.–4:00 p.m on March 24 and April 7. Visit
www.idonateblood4hope.org and enter CGUS in the zip
code/sponsor name field to sign up. Bet they’ll have cookies,
too.
graduate tips
CGU Professor David E. Drew
and the late Professor Paul Gray,
authors of What they Didn’t Teach
You in Graduate School: 199
Helpful Hints for Success in Your
Academic Career, have been kind
enough to allow us to publish one
helpful hint from their book in
each issue. This is so that one day
you don’t raise your fist in the air
and curse CGU for not teaching you
that . . .
17. JOB HUNTING IS A RESEARCH PROJECT
and you should treat it as such. Gather as much information
as possible. Read the ads. Contact sources. Follow up leads.
Be aggressive. Use your contacts [see page six for more on
that]. The chance of landing a good appointment is higher if
you search broadly than if you sit in your office waiting for
one or two possiblities. Begin job hunting early and make it a
project you do along with your other work. If you are a graduate
student, don’t wait until your dissertation is finished to start
looking.