Westmont Magazine Faculty News

Scott Anderson (art) was commissioned to create a portrait illustration of Emmy host Kenan Thompson for Entertainment Weekly’s coverage of the 2022 Emmy awards, and illustrated the cover for the December issue of MAD Magazine.

Martin Asher (economics and business) earned the Wharton Teaching Excellence Award, which considers student evaluations, number of students taught, and nominations from department chairs and vice deans of the undergraduate program.

Lauren Bedoy (library) presented a poster, “Short Staffed, Many Hats: Resilience and Reinvention in Multiple Roles,” at the 2022 Association of Christian Librarians Conference. Her devotional, “Who’s Wearing Armor in the Library?” was published in the Association of Christian Librarians’ 2022 book, “FAITHFUL Words.”

Holly Beers (religious studies) has published two works on the Holy Spirit: a chapter in “The Spirit Throughout the Canon: Pentecostal Pneumatology” (Brill, 2022); and an article in Pneuma, the journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies.

Ben Carlson (physics) published the paper “Nanosecond machine learning regression with deep boosted decision trees in FPGA for high energy physics” (arXiv 2207.05602) in the Journal of Instrumentation He also gave a talk, “Measurements of multi-boson production including vector-boson scattering at ATLAS,” on behalf of the ATLAS collaboration at the 2022 Lake Louise Winter Institute international conference.

Nathalie Confiac (nursing) presented a poster, “Mexican Heritage Parents’ Cultural Beliefs about Healthy and Unhealthy Weight in Children 2 to 11 Years of Age,” through the lens of justice, equity and diversity at the 48th annual Transcultural Nursing Society Conference: Transformative Culture Care in Louisville, Kentucky.

Stephen Contakes (chemistry) published an essay review, “Chemistry to the Glory of God?” in the journal Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (2022, 74[3], 156-182), and will be guest edit­ing a future issue of the journal exploring this topic.

Aaron Cooke ’11 (economics and business) published an editorial, “Housing: A Self-Inflicted Crisis — This Is One Problem Santa Barbara Can Build Its Way Out Of,” in the Santa Barbara Independent.

Jesse Covington (political science) co-authored an essay, “Hopeful Realism: Renewing Evangelical Political Morality,” published in Public Discourse in July 2022.

Andrea Gurney (psychology) led a two-day marriage boot camp at Grace Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas, based on the e-course she developed during the pandemic for couples to renew, refocus and refresh their marriage.

Robert Haring-Kaye (physics), Faith Palombi ’21 and other collaborators published an article, “Onset of band structure in Ga-70,” in the May 2022 issue of Physical Review C.

Russell Howell (mathematics) answered the question, “Is the nature of mathematics evidence of the existence of God?” for the Arab YouTube channel Religious Answers run by colleagues at Ankara University in Turkey. The Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences also installed him as its first Brabenec Lecturer, named after founder Robert Brabenec.

Michelle Hughes ’89 (education) gave the Emerging Scholars Address, “Restoration: Emerging with Courage,” at the International Christian Community for Teacher Education Conference at George Fox Univer­sity in May 2022. At the same conference, she served on a panel, “Remembering Why We Chose to Teach,” sharing excerpts from her 2022 book, “Joyful Resilience as Educational Practice” (Routledge).

David Hunter (mathematics) co-authored a paper, “Context-dependent concordance between physiological divergence and phenotypic selection in sister taxa with contrasting phenology and mating systems,” in the American Journal of Botany.

Rick Ifland ’83 (economics and business) co-founded a company attempting to change the way cataract surgery is performed and received 14 new pat­ents in the past 12 months in the area of ophthalmology.

Dan Jensen (engineering) and seniors Jared Lush and Josh Guinto presented “Under­standing Trade-Offs Between Digital and Physical Prototyping: Development and Assessment of a Design Process and Heuristics” at the American Society of Mechanical Engineering’s annual conference in Co­lumbus, Ohio, in November 2022.

Blake Victor Kent (sociology) served as lead author on a study, “Do Religious/Spiritual Factors Moderate the Association Between Suffering and Religious/Spiritual Struggles? A Three-Wave Longitudinal Study of U.S. Adults with Chronic Illness,” which appears in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

The Evangelical Covenant Church ordained in word and sacrament campus pastor Scott Lisea ’88 this summer at the covenant’s annual meeting in Kansas City.

Edd Noell (economics and business) published a chapter, “Smith and the Scholastic Tradition on Markets and Their Moral Rationale,” in “Theology, Morality and Adam Smith” (Rout­ledge). He published a review of “Divine Provi­dence in Early Modern Economic Thought” in “History of Politi­cal Economy” (Duke University Press).

Rick Ostrander (Westmont Downtown) presented a paper, “Balancing Institutional Mission and Academic Innovation,” at the Kuyers Institute Conference on Teaching and Learning in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in October 2022.

Don Patterson (computer science) published a paper, “Proof-By-Location as an Energy-Efficient, Globally-Redistributive, Crypto-currency Infrastructure,” in the IEEE Global Emerging Technology Blockchain Conference.

Steve Porter (Martin Institute) spoke on “Christian Spiritual Formation in Theolog­ical Education” at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, in September 2022. He co-authored “On the Integration of Positive Psychology and the Psychology of Religion/Spirituality: Logical, Normative, and Methodological Questions” in the “Handbook of Positive Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality” (Springer).

Zig Reichwald (music) published “Re­deeming Chamber Music: Experiencing Solace in Mendelssohn’s Late Chamber Music” in the Soci­ety for Christian Scholarship in Music’s “Sacred and Secular Intersections in Music of the Long Nineteenth Century” (Lexington University Press).

Helen Rhee (religious studies) published a new book, “Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity” (Eerdmans).

Sandra Richter (religious studies) released three essays: “Environmental Approaches in Old Testament Studies” in the forthcoming “The State of Old Testament Studies: A Survey of Recent Research”; “Does God Really Command Women to Marry Their Rapists? A Study of Deuteronomic Law” in “The Biblical World of Gender: The Daily Lives of Ancient Women and Men”; and “The Biblical Mandate for Creation Care,” in Evangelicals Magazine. She filmed a documentary, “In Those Days,” with Gesher Media.

Steve Rogers (psychology) and Allison Nobles ’22 presented two research projects at the annual Convention of the International Neuropsychology Society that examine the effect of antipsychotic medications on the processing speed of geriatric neurology patients and the influence of comorbid bipolar disorder on the cognition of patients with Parkinson’s disease.

The Clay Studio of Santa Barbara featured work from the collection of Heather ’00 and Chris Rupp ’00 (art) in “A Collector’s Eye: Se­lections from the Rupp Collection” from June to October 2022.

James E. Taylor ’78 (philosophy) and his wife, Jennifer Moe Taylor, coauthored a book, “Soul Pilgrimage: Knowing God in Everyday Life,” published by Cascade Books. James also contributed a chapter, “Mystical Experiences,” to the anthology “Handbook of Philosophy and Religion.”

At its October meeting, the Westmont Board of Trustees approved emeritus status for Grey Brothers (music), John Moore ’78 (kinesiology), Greg Spencer (communication studies), Michael Shasberger (music) and Randall VanderMey (English), who all retired last year.