Volume 5
Number 3
March 2013
Contents:
2
campus news
5 GSC update
8 La Flâneuse the
Claremont Wanderer
10 research & awards
12 events calendar & more
Remember when your mom
told you, “it’s who you are on
the inside that counts?” Think
again. Read about personalbrand management (page
four).
No one said writing was
easy, but with some tips and
strategies, it doesn’t have to
be terrible, either (page six).
\’PE-dant\: A scholar; one prone to ostentatious displays of learning; a learned academic; a nit-picker.
the pedant
Claremont Graduate University
EDITOR’S NOTE
Spring was in the air. And then it wasn’t. And then it started
hailing. And then . . . spring was in the air! At the risk of deploying
the most overused trope in literary criticism­—the pathetic
fallacy (the attributing human emotions to inanimate objects,
like nature)—how can I help but see in this capricious weather a
reflection of the roller-coaster ride that is graduate school?
If we adhere to the Gregoran calendar, spring can be emblematic
of rebirth; a chance for fresh starts. But the academic calendar
is different, for when spring comes, it can more often signal the
beginning of an end.
Here at the Pedant, we strive to make each issue relevant to firsttime students and seasoned veterans alike—those embarking on
a new beginning and those approaching this chapter’s close. And
this issue is no different.
The news feature, “Building your Personal Brand” (page four)
expores the idea of cultivating yourself and your work in a
way that reflects how you want to be viewed in the intellectual
marketplace. Whether you’re a first-year student or a ninth (no
judgment!) how you project yourself matters.
Our feature story, “A Page a Day” (page six), gives writing
tips equally relevant to the first-semester seminarian and the
dissertator. And for those planning to stick around for another
year, be sure to read the GSC Beat (page five) for information on
the upcoming GSC elections.
Lastly, be sure to keep submitting your accomplishments (see
page 10). Because whether this spring is part of your beginning or
part of your end, it is always a time to celebrate. And we want to
celeberate you.
Rachel Tie
Pedant@cgu.edu
the Pedant
Volume 5, Number 3 March 2013
Many thanks to the GSC, Sandra Lindsey, Scripps College CP&R
Office, Kate Gasparrelli from Lead Change, Shamini Dias, Katie
Van Heest from Tweed Editing, Lori Anne Ferrell, Kelsey Kimmel,
Susie Guilbault, and Sheila Lefor.
The Pedant is . . .
Rachel Tie
Emily Schuck
EditorWriter
Brendan Babish
Sharone Williams
Editor Emeritus/Writer
Contributor
2 Otium cum dignitate
Pomona Language Lunch Tables
You took four years of French in high school. You took two more
years in college­—you love baguettes. Yet now, you couldn’t parlez
francais your way out of a paper bag.
While much diminishes with time, language skills obtained in
the spring of our youth need not be one of them, this, thanks to
the lunchtime language tables hosted by the Oldenborg Center at
Pomona College.
Just think: For absolutely no money, you could m’daberet ivrit
with your muchachos, all while enjoying some bratkartoffeln
kartoffelsalat. What’s more: both beginners and seasoned
oratores are invited.
Language tables meet from 11:45 a.m.–12:45 p.m., Monday-Friday,
and follow the Pomona academic calendar (so they only meet
when classes are in session). Chinese, French, German, Japanese,
Russian, and Spanish tables meet daily, with beginner tables in
these languages on Wednesdays. Other languages offered are:
Arabic, Korean, Swahili, Indonesian, Urdu, Swedish, Armenian,
Cantonese, Italian, Hebrew, Thai, Persian, Greek, Taiwanese,
Vietnamese, and Portuguese.
The Oldenburg Center for Modern Languages and International
Relations sponsors a wide variety of international and
intercultural activities, like an international film series and the
language lunch tables, all open to everyone in the Claremont
Colleges community.
For more information, including the Oldenborg lunch menu, visit:
www.oldenborg.pomona.edu.
Claremont Graduate University
campus news
2013 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Awards
New head of CGU’s Office of
Disability Services, Sandra
Lindsey
Office of disability services opens its
doors
This spring, Student Services hired Sandra Lindsey to head the
newly formed Office of Disability Services (ODS). The office—
located in Harper Hall, Room 14—was created in response to student
requests that the university offer more assistance and accessibility
to those with disabilities.
One of Lindsey’s first initiatives is to get every CGU student with
a disability to register with her office—even those who are not
seeking additional assistance from the university. Her goal is to get
an accurate idea of the needs that may exist on campus so that she
can more effectively improve disability services and support. Those
registering must have supporting documentation from a physician.
One important note: all communication with the ODS is
confidential. This is a point Lindsey stresses, because she needs
students to be honest and forthright. That way, she will know what
initiatives to push for.
“One of my goals is to have a centralized assistive technology
source with professionals here to assist our students, but first I
need to assess our needs,” Lindsey said.
Additional initiatives include installing a new handicappedaccessible door in the Burkle Family Building, ensuring signers are
available for deaf students, and making sure that extra test time is
allocated for those who have a condition that requires it.
Lindsey also hopes she will be able to educate the university
population on disabilities in general. According to the National
Health Interview Survey, an estimated 15 percent of noninstitutionalized people in the United States are disabled—in this
case, defined as having an activity limitation.
If you would like to reach Lindsey, you can visit her office or reach
her at (909) 607-8779 or disabilityservices@cgu.edu.
We are pleased to announce that Marianne Boruch of West
Lafayette, Indiana, has won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry
Award for her book The Book of Hours (Copper Canyon Press). The
award, given annually to a mid-career poet, is one of the largest
monetary poetry prizes in the United States.
Heidy Steidlmayer of Vacaville, California, has won the $10,000
Kate Tufts Discovery Award for her book Fowling Piece (TriQuarterly). The Kate Tufts Discovery Award is given annually for a
first book by a poet of genuine promise.
“We are delighted to honor these poets and celebrate their
achievements,” said Wendy Martin, director of the Tufts Poetry
Awards program and vice provost at CGU. “These Awards will help
them gain wider recognition and will sustain their continuing
commitment to writing outstanding poetry.”
The Kingsley Tufts award, now in its 21st year, was established
at Claremont Graduate University by Kate Tufts to honor the
memory of her husband, who held executive positions in the Los
Angeles Shipyards and wrote poetry as his avocation. The award is
presented for a work by a poet who is past the very beginning but
has not yet reached the pinnacle of his or her career.
A ceremony for this year’s winners will be held at Garrison
Theater (231 E. Tenth Street in Claremont) on Thursday, April
18 at 5:00 p.m. There will also be a panel discussion on “The
Importance of Poetry,” that same day from 2:00–4:00 p.m. in
the Board of Trustees Room at CGU. Tufts Poetry Award winners
and judges will be participating in this conversation. To RSVP to
either event, e-mail Lisa.Maldonado@cgu.edu.
CGU Business Cards
We know you already feel like a boss. Now, you can
get the cards to prove it. The CGU Office of University
Communications prints student business cards on CGU
letterhead for a highly discounted rate—not that you need
it—being a boss, and all. Still, for the low and strangely
arbitrary amount of $27.19 for 250 cards, or $32.63 for 500,
it’s a pretty good deal.
To have your cards printed, go to
www.cgu.edu/studentcards and fill out the student order
form. You will then be sent an e-mail letting you know that
a proof of your card is ready. You will need to go to the
office in person to approve your proof (ask for Mandy at
165 E. 10th Street) and pay for your cards. At this time, you
may only pay with a check (made out to “CGU”) or exact
cash.
Leisure with dignity 3
building your personal
At the spring 2013 new student orientation here at CGU, Jason Barquero,
assistant director of career services at the Drucker School, told
students that beginning graduate school marked a new opportunity for
them to cultivate their “personal brand.” Curious to learn more about
how this seemingly essential—if slightly performative—practice could
benefit graduate students, the Pedant staff spent the past few months
speaking with experts and practitioners on what a “personal brand” is,
why it’s important, and how to cultivate one.
“Personal branding” is the idea that a person and his/her career
are marked as “brands.” Also refered to as “self-position” (a concept
dating back to 1937), the concept is that by using clothing, appearance,
reputation, and some other asset, like specialized knoweldge or skills,
a person’s name alone can evoke a distinctly unique and memorable
impression—for better or for worse (think: Donald Trump).
In the contemporary world, the first aspect of your personal brand is
your online presence. As part of Scripps College’s ongoing “Emerging
Professionals Program,” (open to all 7Cs students), Brandon Shelby,
director at InRoads, a nonprofit internship-placement program, gave a
presentation, “Personal Branding: How to Shape how Others See You.”
Focusing primarily on one’s online representation, Shelby emphasized
how to leverage the social networking sites Facebook, Twitter, and
LinkedIn to maximize your brand and appeal.
“Consider the elements of your brand, or how you want to be perceived
by potential employers: Do your Facebook pictures and Tweets reflect
the type of employee you are trying to convey yourself as? One of the
first things a company does is look at an applicant’s Facebook profile.
This is your first impression. Make sure you utilize the “about me”
section—think of it as a 30-second ‘elevator pitch’—and be mindful of
whom you allow to post on your wall. All of these things matter when
you are on the job market and even if you already have a job.”
And while we often think of our social media as “personal” activities
rather than career-focused, self-marketing tools, according to a recent
Forbes article, “How to Manage your Personal Brand, Especially
During a Job Search,” this simply isn’t the case. Jane Howze, founder
of the executive search company the Alexander Group, emphasizes the
permanence of the online record and how that record can affect those
on any rung of the ladder.
4 Otium cum dignitate
She recounts the story about a man who was a candidate for CEO at a
relatively stuffy company—that is, until the company saw his LinkedIn
photo in which he was wearing sunglasses, t-shirt, and a bathing suit.
Seemingly innocuous, but the point is that while we want to convey
a sense of our individuality in our online personae, this impulse can
just as likely thwart career ambitions. And since your online persona
is probably the first encounter a potential employer will have with you,
Howze recommends that you Google yourself, listen to your voicemail
greeting (is it your three-year old daughter? Cute, but not professional),
and look at yourself and your online presence as a third party would.
When there is something less-than-savory online that you simply can’t
get rid of, prepare to manage that encounter rather than try to hide it—
because you can’t.
Of course, online presence is just a small part of one’s personal brand.
The rest is how you present yourself in old-fashioned, face-to-face
encounters.
“The basics are speech, knowledge, appearance, and confidence,” said
Shelby. “Act like you belong there and don’t be afraid to own the room.
Seeming approachable is essential to impression management, but of
course, you should also beware not to come off as arrogant.”
For those with innate je ne sais quoi this is easy; for those who shudder
at the mere mention of “owning a room,” however, this is easier said
than done.
According to the business-consulting firm Lead Change, founded by
CGU alumna Kate Gasparrelli, “You may be brilliant, but if you are not
out there showing it off, only those immediately supervising you might
know it.”
So how to cope with networking anxiety?
“Think of [networking and other professional events] as recess for
grownups. This change in perception will take the pressure off the
event feeling like a high-stakes business meeting and make it more an
opportunity for interesting conversation and possibly future friends.
And remember: You are an entire person, not just a creator of things or
thoughts. Your unique personality is just as much a part of your ‘brand’
as your creations.” (cont. page 12)
Claremont Graduate University
gsc news
Vote for Pedro! (or whoever else you think should serve
on the 2013-2014 Graduate Student Council)
Your Graduate Student Council is revolutionizing the election process at CGU. For
the first time ever, GSC elections will be open. That means everyone can vote. Yes,
universal suffrage is finally here.
Until this year, only members of the council could vote—allowing for only a small pool
of decision makers to determine the outcome of each year’s election. The justification
for this was that, due to student distribution within individual schools, representation
(and thus, voting) would be unequal. For example, if a candidate from Arts and
Humanities ran, they would have an unfair advantage because their school (one of the
largest) would likely be partial, regardless of the candidate’s qualifications.
However, universal suffrage was the platform that current GSC President Shelby
Hamm ran on last year, and she has kept her campaign promise. “It was my biggest
goal this year,” said Hamm. “We basically had to re-write the entire GSC constitution.”
The new voting system works a lot like the Electoral College does for the presidential
election, ensuring that each school is represented fairly.
There is one catch for running for GSC President. You have to have attended 50
percent of the open GSC meetings during the semester. While this seems sort of
nepotistic, it’s actually a safeguard put into place to ensure that the president
understands the sort of commitment that is expected from whomever holds the
position.
So consider getting involved in elections by declaring your intent to run, attending
(or being a panelist for) the candidate forum (also a new addition that will allow the
student body to see the candidates’ debate), vote (it’s all online, no long lines or pesky
ballot boxes), and check your e-mail for the results, to be announced April 12. You can
also friend the GSC at www.facebook.com/CGUGSC for more information and updates.
Important election dates
March 22 Candidate
applications deadline
March 25 Campaigning
begins – candidates will be
announced, statements of
intention and resumes will
be posted on the GSC website (www.cgu.edu/gsc), and fliers
promoting the candidates will flood all vertical surfaces on campus.
April 2 Candidate forum – a chance to see the candidates and
watch them verbally spar and pander for your vote.
April 9 GSC Elections meeting
April 10–11 48-Hour voting period – Check your inbox for
instructions on how to vote. Word on the street is that when you do,
you’ll also be eligible for a drawing for a gift card. Or something
equally as exciting.
April 12 – Winners announced!
Leisure with dignity 5
Claremont Graduate University
A few pages a day
keeps the malaise away
“There is nothing to writing. All you have to do is sit at a typewriter and bleed.” —Ernest Hemingway
This February, New Yorker blogger Avi Steinberg took up
Hemingway’s point in his post, “Is Writing Torture?” The
piece was inspired by a debate between Eat, Pray, Love
author Elizabeth Gilbert and Pulitzer Prize-winning “elder
of American literature” Philip Roth, in which Roth told an
aspiring writer, “Quit while you’re ahead. Really. It’s an awful
field. Just torture . . .” Countering Roth, Gilbert declared the
vocation a “f*@$*ng great job.”
Whether we agree with Roth or Gilbert, the fact of the matter
is that, as graduate students and aspiring scholars, whether
we like it or not, we have to write. And publish. A lot (on both
counts). And romantic notions of ourselves as inspired into
creative frenzy whenever inspiration hits are often at odds with
the reality that deadlines don’t wait for for the muse to strike.
So to make writing less a bloody, shrieking parturition and
more a calm, easily approached aspect of our daily lives, we’ve
gone back to the manuals, professors, and writing coaches to
find ways, once and for all, to prove
Philip Roth wrong.
Do not wait for inspiration
In an interview with Professor
of English and History Lori
Anne Ferrell, we found that real
writers—the ones who don’t just
call themselves writers but also
frequently produce work—laugh in
the face of artistic inspiration.
“[Writing] is a professional way of
working, it’s not waiting for the
muse to show up. The muse shows
up when you’re sitting in your chair;
the muse doesn’t put you there,”
said Ferrell. “You might as well treat
[writing like] a job, and stop treating
6 Otium cum dignitate
it like it’s precious and angelic. It’s work. And all those things can
come, but they’re not going to come when you’re avoiding them.
They come when you’re sitting down at your desk.”
All of this isn’t to say that procrastination doesn’t have its place.
According to Katie Van Heest, CGU graduate and owner of the
academic editing service Tweed Editing, “berating yourself [for
not writing] will not make you write more. Be nice to yourself and
don’t turn writing into an emotion-laden bête noire.”
The upside of distraction
In a February post in the New York Times’ “Opinionator,” author
Benjamin Nugent recalls how his own unwavering devotion to
writing actually made his work suffer.
“Utter devotion to the principle that distraction is Satan and
writing is paramount can be just as poisonous as an excess of
diversion. I tried to make writing my only god, and it sickened my
work, for a while. The condition
endemic to my generation,
attention deficit disorder, gave
way to its insidious Victorian foil:
monomania . . . a pathologically
intense focus on one thing.”
When you focus too much on
a single thing, you can lose
the critical distance required
to judge your own work,
ultimately undermining the very
intention—great writing—that
led to monomania in the first
place. Nugent recommends not
abandoning your life beyond your
work, but cultivating a balance
that allows the work to grow
rather than whither.
Scrutinize your writing habits—from where and when you write, to what you write with—frequently to see if they need revamping.
Still, finding that balance between leisurely focus and total
ineffectiveness can be difficult, especially when a graduate
student’s to–do list is long enough to paper the Great Wall
of China. To this end, we turn to functional procrastinator,
metaphysician, and mind-control genius John Perry on . . .
So if your current workspace is the kitchen table and you find
you’re not getting anything done, consider changing locations.
The same applies to times of day, environment, or even method:
If a blinking cursor stresses you out, consider brainstorming the
good old-fashioned way, with a pen and paper.
How to leverage procrastination
Additionally, when confronted with a writing project, many
students feel the need to have vast swathes of time in order to
write. But as expert after expert says, a good writing practice will
eradicate this need.
All procrastinators put off things they have to do, but “structured
procrastination” is the art of making this bad trait work for you.
“Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of
tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact,” says Perry.
“[One tends to order] the tasks one has in mind by importance.
Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But
there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the
list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing things higher
up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure,
the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the
procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting
a lot done.”
But we have all sat down at our desks only to be faced with
the enemy of hard work and inspiration alike: writer’s block.
According to the experts though, this state of mind can be
overcome by cultivating a writing practice.
Cultivate a writing practice
According to Joan Bolker, author of How to Write Your
Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day*, being mindful of your
work process is as important as the work itself. “You [should] take
your own work habits as seriously as you take the material you’re
working on, and . . . scrutinize them frequently to see if they need
revamping.”
“Commit yourself to an hour a day, at least, to working. Even if
you stare at the computer screen and just think, stay put in your
chair,” said Ferrell. “I even have colleagues who ‘clock in’ to ensure
that they’ve put in the time they committed to.”
Another common pitfall is that, due to the complexity of topics
graduate students research, it is difficult to just pick up where
you left off; one tends to have to be in a certain mood to delve into,
say, the metaphysics of quantum mechanics. But according to
Shamini Dias, School of Educational Studies PhD student, longtime writing center tutor, and current director of CGU’s Preparing
Future Faculty program, there are certain tricks that can make it
easier to re-enter your work:
“Each day when you are finished working, write a short sentence
about where you left off. This is called ‘signposting,’ and it makes
it much easier to re-enter the head space you were in when you
left off.”
So forget the muse, forget creative inspiration; there is no perfect
work environment or perfect time. Whether you are working on
a final paper or THE FINAL PAPER, writing may not always be
heavenly, but it also need not be hell.
*You cannot write a dissertation in 15 minutes a day—Ed.
Leisure with dignity 7
La Flâneuse
by Sharone Williams — writer, editor, loafer, PhD
candidate in English
Flâneuse, French: 1) a city wanderer; 2) one who
strolls about aimlessly; 3) a shopper with no intent
to buy; an intellectual parasite.
As part of the Pedant’s mission to enhance student life, La Flâneuse (the
wanderer) was developed to feature goings-on about town. Things to do,
people to see, and places to go are recorded for your reading pleasure by
the charming, the effete, the ever-hungry flâneuse. This installement: A
week of lectures.
How many e-mails do we get a week advertising every kind of event
under the sun at CGU or the 5Cs, from dance workshops to softball
games to neuroscience lectures? Using an extremely scientific
dissertation procrastination method, I determined that in my six
glorious years at CGU, I’ve received somewhere around 8,213. In a
striking coincidence, I estimate that there have been more than 8,000
events I have not attended. I mean, honestly, when you’re reading 1,000
pages a week for coursework or prepping for quals or in the countdown
to a dissertation defense, the thought of doing something as quixotic as
spending a whole afternoon celebrating global information systems at
the library seems like a cruel mockery perpetrated by People Who Have
Free Time, doesn’t it? And if you also have to “earn money,”* well, forget
it. You’ll probably spend your working hours picturing everyone in the
world eating cheese and crackers at the Minority Mentorship Program
open house without you.
Here’s the problem: All that reading and writing and programming
and research we do is awfully isolating, and never going to things
only makes that isolation worse. I suspect I’m not alone in my nonattendance, mostly because my colleagues don’t seem to go to these
events either. We all have so much work to do, and it’s hard to justify
spending time doing things that don’t directly contribute to that bottom
line. But if nobody ever goes to anything because we think we don’t
have time or we assume it isn’t useful or it’s outside our field, how can
we know whether we’re right, or whether it might be good for us to
venture outside our own fields a little, or whether we might even enjoy
something?
Because we’re committed to improving student life here at CGU,
Intrepid Editor Rachel hatched a plan that I in my, um, infinite wisdom,
agreed to: consulting my thousands of emails, I made up a schedule and
went to as many events as I could over the course of a week. Here’s how
it played out.
*This exists. It’s a thing, I promise.
8 Otium cum dignitate
Monday: Joyce Carol Oates at the CMC Athenaeum
Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) information meeting
I meant to go see Joyce Carol Oates because she’s JOYCE CAROL
OATES*, but I’ve never had a pleasant experience at the Athenaeum.
Also, maybe I will have to hand in my twentieth-century Americanist
card with the iridescent picture of John Steinbeck next to my signature
for saying this, but I have never much cared for Oates. So instead of
torturing myself, I did a last-minute switcheroo and went to the PFF
meeting, which was incredibly informative and even exciting. Those
of you who did the old PFF program will hardly recognize this new,
re-tooled model, which will go a long way toward helping students
get ready for teaching careers. Besides putting together application
materials, like sample syllabi, rubrics, and teaching philosophies, you’ll
learn about classroom technologies and get insider perspectives on the
tenur- track process and faculty life, among other things. It looks like
it will be a useful, practical program—and I wasn’t the only one who was
into it. I had to sit on the floor because we ran out of chairs. Solid. For
more information, e-mail Shaminidias@gmail.com.
*Lit folks feel me on this one.
Tuesday: MFA thesis exhibition reception at Peggy
Phelps Gallery
This place was swarming, and it’s probably exactly what you’d expect
when you imagine a gallery show if, like me, you’ve pretty much only
seen them in movies: a bar, a variety of foods, some more or less exotic.
I had crackers with cream cheese and pepper jelly, corn casserole, and
something called spicy chicken and sausage fettuccine, which I’m
pretty sure was just a fancy way of saying pasta and hot dogs. (If you
like hot dogs—and I do—get there early, because the food goes fast.)
Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and they were all wearing
about six scarves apiece and were way cooler than I. I heard snatches of
conversations about spirituality, election campaigns, art, and sausage
(ok, that last one I was having with myself). And the art? Well. I’m no
critic, but I will say this. I saw pieces that were intriguing, beautiful,
challenging, confusing, and exciting. I walked through darkened
rooms and watched the interplay of light and shadow. I stared at large,
waxy-looking balls of yarn. I tried not to force myself to understand
everything, because I think part of art is about being open to the
experience. Not to mention the free cheese.
Wednesday: CGU faculty concert at Claremont School
of Theology
This might have been my favorite part of the week. I joined about 40
people in a small but airy chapel on the CST campus. We sat in what
someone behind me described as “the worst chairs,” but I hardly
noticed, and you probably won’t either. You’ll just sit and the stained
glass windows will shine down on you as the sun sets and the trio of
piano, violin, and cello play, and you’ll let the story of the music wash
over you. If you’ve ever played an instrument yourself, you may marvel
at the way other people seem able to coax such beautiful sounds out
of them (and they are beautiful, extraordinarily so). You’ll hear a bird
chirping along outside, keeping time. He’s not in the right key. Birds are
never in the same key as you. You’ll walk out into the early evening air
and take a deep breath, and then another one. You won’t regret it.
Thursday: Charles Krauthammer lecture Margaritas and
Mexican food
Because if I learned anything this week, it’s that going to everything
is insane and a little draining. You have to pick your spots, and on
Thursday mine was definitely in a corner booth at El Ranchero.
Friday: Botany seminar at the Rancho Santa Ana
Botanic Garden
Be honest. How many of you have seen these e-mails and thought, “No
way”? I have not even the tiniest particle of knowledge about botany,
let alone evolutionary biology or the various other topics covered.
But I’ve been getting e-mails for six years and I was curious, so off
I trundled to RSABG in the middle of a hailstorm. Now. There were
definitely times during the seminar when I only understood about one
in every four words (words like “was”, “summary”, and “parsley”). But I
still learned quite a bit. Did you know the RSABG has the tenth-largest
collection of botany samples in the United States? Also, while he looked
unassuming, the way the guest speaker described his experiences made
“botanist” seem like a code word for mountain-climber-scientist-naturephotographer-librarian, and that doesn’t even include the parts about
the feuding Native American tribes and the dinners at Ted Turner’s
ranch. My fellow attendees were a lively, friendly group of people who
never treated me like the botany ignoramus I am. And you guys. They’ll
ask you to stay for happy hour. If you’re not rushing off somewhere else
like I was, do it.
Maybe it’s hard for you to fathom how a bunch of people could be so
passionate about collecting leaves, or classical music, or art that might
not necessarily be representative. I confess, some of it felt foreign to
me. But maybe that’s the point. It’s good to see that people can be as
deeply passionate about something as you are about voting practices in
1960s India, or whatever you’re studying. Necessary, even, so that you
don’t lose your balance. So I don’t lose mine.
Bottom line: besides being your flâneuse and writing a dissertation, I
work more than 30 hours a week. I didn’t go to ALL THE THINGS so you
don’t have to; I went so you’d see that you can go to some of them. And
I’ll even be bossy enough to say that you should. Go on, get! Time and
the Drucker Golf Club wait for no one.
Does art reflect life or does life reflect art? Here, art from Julie Orr’s MFA exhibition literally reflects La Flâneuse.
Leisure with dignity 9
research +
awards
student achievements
Joe Ahn
MBA, Drucker School of Management
Ahn was one of three presenters on behalf of his company at the 2013 San
Diego North Chamber of Commerce “State of the Region.” He discussed the
economic importance of San Diego’s UAV industry and its impact on North
San Diego county.
Randy Aung
MS, Human Resources Design
Aung founded www.hrcareeradvice.com, a website
dedicated to providing HR Career Advice—
from schools to career paths and professional
organizations—to individuals pursuing a career in
HR Management.
CGU Dissertation Award
The CGU Dissertation Award is open to doctoral students
who have completed all coursework, with the exception
of dissertation research units approved by the faculty.
Applicants must also have advanced to candidacy on or
before Friday, June 7, 2013.
The application consists of your advisor’s signature, a
publishable abstract, a synopsis of your research plan (1200
words or less), an academic timeline, a budget plan, your
c.v., and one or more draft chapters from your dissertation.
The deadline to submit is April 1 at noon, and recipients will
be notified by May 3. Plan on a bit of time and sweat over
this (maybe even use your friendly neighborhood writing
center). The award is worth $10,000, so time spent on a
polished application packet will be well worth its weight in
gold. Maybe even more. Actually, definitely more. Contact
susie.guilbault@cgu.edu for more information and to apply.
iModules Scholarship
iModules is the software that CGU uses for fundraising and
marketing. Speaking of funds, they also offer a scholarship
for students of the institutions that use it.
You need to be a full-time student in fall 2013, have a
minimum “C” average (as if that is an issue). Also, you’ll
need to submit an essay of 500 words addressing 1) a
goal you have established for yourself and your efforts to
accomplish this goal, and 2) why you are a good candidate to
receive this scholarship (piece of cake).
iModules will award 10 scholarships in the amount of
$1,500 for the 2013-2014 school year. Applications are due
April 1, and awardees will be notified in early May. Visit
www.scholarships.imodules.com for more information and
to apply.
6 Otium cum dignitate
Lorelei Coddington
PhD, Teaching, Learning, and Culture
Coddington presented “The Equal Sign: The Foundation of Algebra” a
workshop at the 2012 CMC-South Conference, with colleague, Wayne
Snyder, PhD.
Ruth Gamboa-Brooks-Gray
PhD, Urban Education
Gamboa-Brooks-Gray presented her paper, “Scapegoat or Villain: The
plight of Educators during the Cold War” at the History of Education
Conference in Seattle on November 3, 2012. Her paper examines the use
of McCarthyism during the Cold War as an instrument of educational
containment in California to restrict both instructional content in the
classroom and liberal teacher ideologies and labor organizational trends.
Luis Genaro Garcia
PhD, Education: Teaching, Learning, and Culture
Garcia’s article, “Making Cultura Count inside
and out of the classroom: Public art and Critical
Pedagogy in South Central Los Angeles,” was
published in the December 2012 issue of the
Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy. The
manuscript presents the use of “Cultura”
(culturally relevant pedagogy) and the use of
“caring” through art-based critical pedagogy.
Anjeanette LeBoeuf
MA, Women’s Studies in Religion
LeBoeuf presented at the Hawaii International
University’s Arts and Humanities Conference. Her
talk, “Hindu Goddess, Mormon Mother” focused
on creating a discourse surrounding the Mormon
theological notion of Heavenly Mother with
the thousand-year-old goddess tradition within
Hinduism.
Anikkumar Joshi
MBA, Drucker School of Management
Along with co-authors Ashish Mehta, Dhaval Shah, and Nagendra
Gajjar, Anikkumar published a research paper, “Audio Compression
Using Logarithmic Approach for PSNR Enhancement” in the
International Conference on Information, Signal, and Communication.
The paper was awarded Best Paper in the signal-processing track.
Obay Mouradi
MS, Information Systems and Technology
Mouradi presented a research paper at the Hawaii International
Conference on Systems Sciences in January 2013. The paper explores
the text simplification algorithm that his team developed and the
evaluation of that algorithm on medical documents. The aim was to
simplify medical documents as health literacy costs over $100 billion
per year in the United States.
Paul Rodriguez
PhD, Philosophy of Religion
Beginning in this spring, Rodriguez will be teaching Medieval
Philosophy at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
Sam Spurlin & Syd Peterson
School of Behavioral and Organizational Science & Drucker School of
Management
Along with Jeff Fajans (SBOS), Susan Mangan (SBOS), Andrew De Jesus
(SBOS), Ariel Carpenter (Educational Studies), Jennie Giron (SBOS),
Christopher Munshaw-Rodriguez (Drucker), Di “Ted” Tian (Drucker),
Emily Warren (SBOS), Heejin Kim (SBOS), Zhuo “Jerry” Chen (Drucker),
and Alex Pincus (SBOS), co-organizers Sam Spurlin and Syd Peterson
volunteered in the planning and execution of TEDxClaremontColleges
2012. The conference was 11 months in the planning and brought 16
speakers and 500 attendees from across the Claremont Colleges and
surrounding community for a day of inspiring talks on September 29.
Elwing Suong Gonzalez
PhD, History
Gonzalez presented his paper, “Odd Man Out: Shifting Notions of
Culture, Community, and Marginalization in Alhambra, California,
1940s to 1990s,” at the Social Science History Association’s 37th annual
conference on November 1st, 2012 in Vancouver, British Columbia
during a panel discussion entitled, “Home Sweet Home?: Public
Housing and Private Homes.”
Damian Joseph Vaughn
PhD, Positive Developmental Psychology
Along with Bob Ono (PhD student, Positive
Organizational Psychology ) Vaughn
submitted a proposal to the 2012 Small
Grants Research Competition in the fall of
2012 sponsored by the Consulting Psychology
Journal: Practice and Research and the
Society of Consulting Psychology. They were
awarded a $5,000 grant to conduct a study
investigating state-work engagement using
experience sampling methodology (with PACO).
Patrick B. Williams
PhD, Applied Cognitive Psychology
In September of 2012 Williams accepted the position of postdoctoral
scholar at the University of Chicago, working on a grant to understand
the behavioral and neural correlates of human wisdom. The three-year
project is headed by P.I. Howard Nusbaum and Co-P.I. Berthold Hoekner,
and seeks to understand how training in mental and somatic practices
may affect antecedents of trust and how these changes may be reflected
in brain and behavior.
Zining Yang
PhD, Politics and Policy
Yang presented a co-authored paper, “Getting to
Yes: The Sustainable Energy Modeling Project
(SEMPro) Model of Infrastructure Siting,” at
The Computational Social Science Society of
the Americas annual meeting this fall in Santa
Fe along with Professor Mark Abdollahian and
Professor Hal Nelson.
To see your name proudly in print in the May issue,
please submit an academic or professional achievemnt
from the past nine months to Pedant@cgu.edu. Be
sure to include degree seeking (MA, PhD), your degree
program, and the specifics of your achievmnt. If you
have a high-resolution, professional headshot, feel free
to send that, as well.
Claremont Graduate University
calendar
March 16 Angeles Forest restoration. Last year a week-long fire destroyed
6.5 square miles of the Angeles Forest. Join this Positive Fridays event to
help replant the forest! For more information, e-mail heejin.kim@cgu.edu.
March 18–22 Spring break!
March 22 GSC Candidate application deadline (see page five for details).
March 25 Professional Development Workshop. Join the Drucker School
Student Association in Burkle from 10:00 a.m.-noon. Lunch is provided!
Writing Center Dissertation and Master’s Thesis Workshop. Join fellow
writers every other Tuesday from 4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m. in the IAC library.
e v e nt i n focus
April 18:
Financial Sophistication Workshop
This invitation-only event for students that have filed
an intent to receive a degree form will cover all of the
federally offered repayment options for new graduates.
Students who RSVP will receive a personalized packet
that will outline individual loan repayment options. Lunch
will also be provided, so don’t miss this opportunity to
get your fill of post-graduation financial information and
pizza. And if you can’t make it, the Office of Financial
Aid will mail you your personalized packet—this isn’t
something to miss!
GSC Meeting in the Harper Board of Trustees Room from 7:00–8:30 p.m.
(for details, check out page five). Dinner is provided! RSVP to gsc@cgu.
edu.
March 28 Drucker Hot Topic: Career Transitioning. View the webinar at
11:00 a.m. from anywhere for tips on how to smooth the transition. Space
is limited, so register soon at http://tinyurl.com/ bsjhdjs.
March 29 Cesar Chavez Day, campus closed.
April 1 Applications due for theTransdisciplinary Studies Dissertation
award and the CGU Dissertation Award.
April 2 GSC Candidate Forum. Meet the people that could be running the
GSC next year in Burkle 16 at 7:00 p.m.
16th Annual Sally Loyd Casanova Distinguished Alumni Lecture. Kristine
Dillon, the president of Consortium on Financing Higher Education will
deliver this year’s talk, “College: Do We Really Want it For Less?” Join her
at 7:30 in Albrecht Auditorium.
April 9 GSC Elections meeting in Burkle 16 at 7:30 p.m.
April 10-11 GSC Voting. Look for the ballots via e-mail.
April 12 Second-annual queer and allied BBQ. Show your pride and
support at the Queer Graduate Union’s BBQ at the GSC house at 7:00 p.m.
April 17 ePortfolios workshop presented by the Office of Information
Technology and the Writing Center. This workshop, from 1:00–3:00 p.m.,
will help you use technology to help impress prospective employers. For
more information and/or to RSVP e-mail writecenter@cgu.edu.
12 Otium cum dignitate
“Personal Brand” (cont. from page four)
For students, this means that from how you conduct yourself
in seminar to how you relate to your peers and professors all
contribute to your personal brand.
“Start thinking of your face as your logo,” said Gasparrelli.
“What do people think when they see it? Do they think, ‘I know
her; she just comes for the food,’ or do they think, ‘I’ve seen
her, she’s a student at CGU, has a Cockapoo named Peter Pan,
and loves a good Stilton.’ You would be amazed at what people
remember about you.”
So the next time your department hosts a wine and cheese
soiree, enjoy the wine and cheese, but make sure to make an
impression (other than someone who likes free food) as well.