Westmont Magazine Faculty News

A painting by Scott Anderson (art), “Big Top Anticipation,” included in the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art’s 2021 faculty art exhibition, took Gold in the gallery category of the 60th annual exhibition of the Society of Illustrators Los Angeles (SILA). Previously, he earned Gold in 2018 for a Westmont theater poster and Bronze in 2020 for a newsweekly cover, both from SILA.

Evan Barnes (biology) presents a paper, “Teaching Assistant’s Talk Moves During Elicitation Discussions: Examining Adjacency Pairs in an Undergraduate Biology Laboratory,” at the 2022 American Educational Research Association national conference. He presented “Talk Moves as Pedagogical Tools for Eliciting and Working with Student Ideas in an Undergraduate Biology Laboratory” at the 2021 Biology Teaching Assistant Project national conference.

Lauren Bedoy (library) published a book review of “Humming Words: A Collection of Poetry” by Nancy Warwick in The Christian Librarian (Vol. 64 (2) 2021).

Holly Beers (religious studies) presented two papers at the 2021 Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting: “Cumulative Characterization and the Possibility of a Major Character in Acts” and “The Role of Isaiah in Reframing the Insider-Outsider Boundary in Acts 13” for the Society for Pentecostal Studies. She published: “The Spirit in Colossians and Philemon” in Pneuma, the journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies; “Who Carries the Mission Forward? The Unnamed and Overlooked Characters in Acts” in The Spirit Says: Inspiration and Interpretation in Israelite, Jewish, and Early Christian Texts (De Gruyter); and “The Servant(s) in Luke- Acts” in “Isaiah’s Servants in Early Judaism and Christianity: The Isaian Servant and the Exegetical Formation of Community Identity” (Mohr Siebeck).

Ben Carlson (physics) played a leading role in defining the scope of work for his ATLAS experiment team at the large Hadron Collider, submitted to arXiv and the Journal of High Energy Physics. The European Journal of Physics has also accepted their work. Carlson pursued these projects during his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh.

Paul Delaney (English) published a review essay in the journal Society on a new, 1,000-page biography, “Tom Stoppard: A Life,” by Hermione Lee.

Douglas Fontes (engineering and physics) published “Numerical Estimations of Lunar Regolith Trajectories and Damage to Rocket Plumes” in Acta Astronautica Journal.

Elizabeth Gardner (communication studies) presented “Child Workers Redefining a Bolivian Childhood in the Código Niña, Niño y Adolescente” at the National Communication Association Conference in Seattle.

Daniel Gee ’13 (music) completed a commissioned work for the Westmont Orchestra, “Divinum Mysterium,” which premiered at the 2021 Westmont Christmas Festival at the Granada Theatre. The composition is dedicated to Michael Shasberger (music), who conducted it, in honor of his retirement.

Andrea Gurney (psychology) spoke at the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians (ECO) National Gathering in Dallas, Texas, on “Rising Every Time We Fall: Stress, Coping, and Attributes that Lead to Resilience.” She led a weekend workshop in Santa Barbara, “Reboot Your Relationship: Put the ‘Happily’ Back into Ever After.”

In March, Johan Estrada López (physics and engineering) presented a half-day tutorial, “Battery Life Extension Techniques for Energy Harvesting-Based IoT Devices,” at the 13th IEEE Latin American Symposium on Circuits and Systems. He co-authored “Energy Efficient Framework for a AIoT Cardiac Arrhythmia Detection System Wearable During Sport” for the Applied Science journal.

Mark Nelson (philosophy) published “Could There Be an Atheistic Political Theology?" in Forum Philosophicum, the journal of the Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow, Poland.

Rick Ostrander (Westmont Downtown) led “Benefits of Academic Collaboration for Christian Colleges” at the 2022 Council for Christian Colleges & Universities International Forum.

Sandra Richter (religious studies) gave the keynote address for the Institute of Biblical Research (IBR) at the 2021 Society of Biblical Literature in San Antonio, Texas: “Reading Deuteronomy through an Economic Lens — A Question of Provenance.” The IBR Student Group interviewed her for a podcast, Wisdom from a Seasoned Scholar.

The retrospective exhibition on famed ceramic artist Don Reitz that Chris Rupp ’00 (art) curated in 2019 was featured at the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts annual conference in Sacramento in March along with the accompanying catalogue.

Edward Song (philosophy) presented “Legitimacy as Affirmation” at the Southern Political Science Association annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

Lesa Stern (communication studies) and three colleagues published an article examining body disturbance ads, “Digital Body Disturbances in Advertising: Attraction or Repulsion?”

Cynthia Toms (kinesiology) has been appointed to a Sabbatical Research Fellowship for 2022–23 at the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice at Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine. The center addresses food insecurity of U.S. college students, and Toms served as the principal investigator of a multi-institutional project studying food insecurity among Santa Barbara County college students. She presented “Generating Institutional Commitment to Principles of Ethical Community Engagement” at the annual gathering of the Forum on Education Abroad.

David Vander Laan (philosophy) published “The Timing of Divine Conservation: Pushes, Nudges, and Merry-Go-Rounds” in “Philosophical Essays on Divine Causation” (Routledge, 2021).

Randall VanderMey (English) exhibited his iPhone photography, in a solo show, “Water & Light,” at Trinity Lutheran Church in Santa Barbara. He created a limited-edition book of his photographic images and accompanying poems. Daniel Gee ’13 (music) incorporated VanderMey’s poem “Metaxu” in a composition for piano and spoken voice, which premiered at the Spring Faculty Recital. Vandermey presented “Photography and Poetry: Against My Will,” for a Westmont Downtown lecture.

A 2021 article by Maryke van der Walt (mathematics) and two co-authors, “A Function Approximation Approach to the Prediction of Blood Glucose Levels,” received the Outstanding Article Award — Editor’s Pick 2021 from the journal Frontiers in Applied Mathematics and Statistics. It will appear in 2021 Editor’s Pick: Applied Mathematics and Statistics.