Breaking New Ground in Scholarship

Making History in Science

Professor Emerita of Environmental Analysis Muriel Poston has joined a prestigious lineup of STEM leaders whose interviews and stories belong to The HistoryMakers archives. Developed by Carnegie Mellon University, The HistoryMakers is a digital repository where, according to its website, one finds the achievements of both well-known and unsung African Americans. The archives are housed permanently in the Library of Congress and were established to address the lack of documentation of the African American historical record. Poston was invited to be interviewed about her career and STEM accomplishments, and that interview will become part of the organization’s extensive online database.
 

Disease-Fighting Molecules

Associate Professor of Chemistry Ethan Van Arnam and his lab have been awarded a three-year, $400,000-plus R15 grant from the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) Institute of General Medical Sciences. Van Arnam said his team’s goal is to discover molecules “with medicinal potential” that can be found in a very unexpected place: the microbes that live on ants. “We admit this is a very strange place to be searching, but microbes like bacteria and fungi have actually been a source for many transformative antibiotics, beginning with penicillin,” he said. Van Arnam’s team is studying how these molecules and their microbes are distributed in ants in the American Southwest deserts. The NIH grant also supports student summer research positions and travel expenses for students to present their works at conferences. An R15 grant is a research enhancement award specifically for educational organizations. 

Sociology of Education

Assistant Professor of Sociology Denise Ambriz joined other leading sociologists in an exploration of education, social inequality, and human rights. In The Sage Handbook of Sociology of Education, Ambriz co-authored the chapter “Educational Opportunities and Asian Communities.” 

Disputed Water Worlds

Money and land are often hotly contested. Assistant Professor of Anthropology Àngela Castillo-Ardila argues that there is another element that we often take for granted and is just as powerful: water. In the recent series “Disputed Water Worlds,” Castillo-Ardila and her co-editors at Engagement, the blog of the Anthropology and Environment Society, present the work of several scholars on how water can be a generative element for rethinking environmental politics, human and other-than-human relationalities, ecological transformations, and conflicts worldwide.
 

Chinatown’s Influence on Hollywood

Professor of Asian American Studies Kathy Yep joined author William Gow in the spring for a conversation at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles. Yep and Gow discussed the long-overlooked history of that city’s Chinatown and that community’s impact on Hollywood. 

Unconventional Writing Explorations

In Teachers & Writers Magazine, Visiting Assistant Professor Melissa Chadburn discussed her journey from navigating the foster care system to developing a writing class at Pitzer. Chadburn’s class included a range of experiences and activities, including sewing talismans of their inner critics, building homes, and sleeping in a shelter for migrant men. “I took the window of time I had with [my students],” Chadburn wrote in her article, “and allowed them to see and write the world, but not just as they saw it—as other people saw it.” 
 

Supporting Youth Mental Health

The Community Engagement Center (CEC) routinely connects Associate Professor of Psychology Marcus Rodriguez’s students to the Pomona Unified School District (PUSD) for internships. Pitzer students give supervised emotional support to PUSD students as peer counselors. The CEC recently helped arrange a training for 130 teachers, counselors, and principals from PUSD middle schools. Rodriguez co-led the training to teach educators about dialectical behavior therapy and validation strategies to make sure that their students feel supported. 

New Endowed Professorships

Professor of History Carina Johnson has been selected as the Peter and Gloria Gold Endowed Professor. This professorship, designated for a full professor with at least 15 years of full-time experience at Pitzer, recognizes contributions to the College across teaching, advising, scholarly work, and service activities. Johnson’s research focuses on cross-cultural encounters, proto-ethnography, memory, and the experience of violence in the 16th century Habsburg Empire. 

Professor of Anthropology Claudia Strauss has been selected as the Jean M. Pitzer Endowed Professor. This professorship, established in 1987, recognizes academic excellence and is designated for a faculty member with demonstrable interests in archaeology or anthropology. Strauss studies personal and cultural meanings of social policy issues, such as immigration and economic fairness. Her current research investigates diverse understandings of work in the United States. 
 

Tying Mathematical Knots

Associate Professor of Mathematics Jemma Lorenat served as a speaker at the London Mathematical Society general meeting and celebration of the 200th anniversary of Lord Kelvin’s contributions to science. Lorenat presented the talk “An Illustrated History of Drawing Knots.”

Graffiti’s Cultural Nuances

In the spring, Professor of Environmental Analysis Susan A. Phillips talked to the Los Angeles Times about graffiti’s role in city spaces. “It’s really an anti-capitalism critique,” said Phillips. “It questions corporate control over public space. It upends our concept of private property and draws attention to the increasing privatization of public space in the city.”

Conspiracy Liars and Theorists

Professor of Philosophy Brian L. Keeley looks at the impact and influence of false data in the article “Conspiracy theorists are not the problem; Conspiracy liars are” recently published in Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.