Westmont Magazine Featuring Faculty
John Blondell (theater arts) traveled to Kazakhstan to direct Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for the Russian Theatre of Karaganda named after Stanislavsky in June. The show also plays at the Ohrid Summer Festival in Macedonia in August. John received an Independent Theatre Award for his direction of “The Magic Flute.” His colleague, Mitchell Thomas, earned an Indy for directing “Pride and Prejudice” in fall 2018.
Bruce Wydick, director of Westmont in San Francisco, has written a new book, “Shrewd Samaritan: Faith, Economics, and the Road to Loving Our Global Neighbor.” The work recounts both the beloved Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and the more enigmatic Parable of the Shrewd Manager (Luke 16:1-9). A scholar of economics, he devotes early sections of the book to describing the sources of poverty in the world and the causes of inequality in rich countries. An experienced evaluator of relief programs, he describes his own rating system for assessing the effectiveness of interventions. The book discusses what works well and what is far less effective in poverty reduction, education and the advancement of health.
Paul Willis, professor of English, won the 2018 Indies Bronze, Essays and was an Indies Finalist for Autobiography and Memoir by Foreword Reviews for his collection of essays “To Build a Trail: Essays on Curiosity, Love & Wonder” (WordFarm, 2018). The Foreword Reviews, which honor the best books published by an independent press each year, previously awarded Willis the Indies Gold for “Bright Shoots of Everlastingness: Essays on Faith and the American Wild” (WordFarm, 2005). Willis, Santa Barbara poet laureate from 2011-13, has published numerous collections of poetry, including most recently “Little Rhymes for Lowly Plants” (White Violet Press, 2019). In 2010, he revised his first novel, “No Clock in the Forest,” and published it with three sequels in a single book, “The Alpine Tales.”
A solo exhibition by Nathan Huff (art), “The Stories We Tell Ourselves,” appeared during August and September at the Sullivan Goss Gallery in Santa Barbara. His first solo exhibition with the gallery featured a diverse selection of paintings, including a monumental 14-foot-tall scroll painting and a variety of sculptures.
A grant of 26,600 node hours on the Stampede2 super- computer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin will support research by Brandon Haines (chemistry) with Westmont students. He explores some new aspects of computational chemistry, his area of expertise, investigating how chemical reactions take place on the molecular level and considering strategies for how they can be controlled. The grant comes from the National Science Foundation’s Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) program.