Westmont News

Roger Voskuyl, who served as president of Westmont College from 1950 to 1968, died Nov. 9 in Santa Barbara at the age of 95. The Harvard-educated chemist, who participated in the Manhattan Project during World War II, led Westmont during a crucial time in its history.

Westmont is hoping the allure of slime and liquid nitrogen ice cream will get youngsters interested in science. The college’s chemistry students recently held a Family Science Night at Westmont with another event scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 9, from 7-8:30 p.m.

About 35 fifth grade students and their parents came to the first event and made dry ice balloons, methane bubbles and explosions along with slime and ice cream.

Representatives from at least 29 graduate programs from around the country will be taking part in Westmont’s annual Graduate School & Seminary Day Fair. The fair will be held from 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. on the Magnolia Lawn. In case of inclement weather, the event will move to the Kerr Student Center.

Representatives will speak to students and alums about what their programs have to offer.

For more information, contact Carrie Rydman-Hanley in the career and life planning office at (805)565-7333. For directions to campus, visit the college Web site at www.westmont.edu.

Westmont’s Reynolds Gallery will display the works of California painter R. Kenton Nelson beginning next month in an exhibition titled “Narrative Idealism.” The free exhibit runs Nov. 10-Dec. 16 at the gallery, which is open to the public Wednesday through Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.

There will also be a public opening reception and book signing with the artist, Thursday, Nov. 10, from 4-6 p.m. A new large-scale painting will be premiered at the opening reception.

President Abraham Lincoln’s greatest speech wasn’t the Gettysburg Address, it was his Sermon on the Mount. That’s the belief of Ronald C. White, professor at San Francisco Theological Seminary. White will discuss the topic as part of Westmont’s Erasmus Lecture series, Wednesday, Nov. 2, at 3:30 p.m. at Hieronymus Lounge. The lecture is titled, “Abraham Lincoln’s Sermon on the Mount: The Second Inaugural Address.”

Patty Martin of Woodside, Calif., has been installed as the newest member of the Westmont College Board of Trustees. Martin, 56, is a certified spiritual director and teaches classes at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in spiritual formation.

“I think Westmont has a great balance of encouraging critical Christian thinking without being legalistic,” she says, “and looking at the whole person in terms of growing to become God-like within whatever realm God calls you to.”

The Westmont theater season opens next week, Friday, Nov. 4, with Shakespeare’s achingly beautiful history play “King Richard II” at Santa Barbara Trinity Episcopal Church. It is the first in a yearlong season of events that centers on contemporary, international approaches to Shakespeare’s plays.

Politics and religion will mix at a lecture in downtown Santa Barbara next week. The Westmont Downtown Conversation will include several local community leaders of different faiths and focus on the interactions and conflicts between faith and politics in our community. It will be held, Thursday, Nov. 3, from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m, at the University Club, 1332 Santa Barbara St.

Three local high school choirs will join voices with singers from Westmont later this month for the Fall Choral Festival Concert. The concert is Friday, Oct. 21, at 7 p.m., at Trinity Episcopal Church, 1500 State St. Adams Professor of Music and Worship Michael Shasberger will direct guest choirs from San Marcos, Paso Robles, and San Luis Obispo High Schools. The concert will also feature the Westmont College Choir and Chamber Singers. The evening will include a cameo appearance by the guest high school choirs and will conclude in a mass choir presentation.

Two separate estate gifts totaling $3.3 million will help endow student scholarships and the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Westmont. In its sixth year, the institute explores and promotes liberal arts education, which offers knowledge in a broad range of subjects as well as skills students need to succeed at work and in life.

Westmont President Stan D. Gaede announced he will conclude his presidency at the end of the academic year in June. He has served as the college’s president since July 2001. Previously, he was provost, the top academic officer, for five years. The 58-year old will return to Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., where he joined the faculty in 1974 and became provost in 1993.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has selected Westmont to receive a
prestigious $178,000 grant for computer science research over two years. The NSF’s
Cyber Trust Program will fund the Westmont project, “Survivable, Adaptive and
Scalable Distributed Systems.” NSF expects to fund fewer than 50 of the 487
proposals it reviewed this year.
“It’s exciting for such a small college like Westmont to receive this award,” says
Kim Kihlstrom, associate professor of computer science, “Although other Westmont

A specialist in 19th century British cultural and literary studies will deliver a lecture at Westmont next month. Associate Professor of English at U.C. Davis Catherine Robson will speak in Hieronymus Lounge, Monday, Oct. 24, at 7 p.m as part of Westmont’s Erasmus Lecture Series. Her lecture is entitled “Memorization and Memorialization: Poetry and the Burial of Heroes.”

Local residents will soon be able to connect with about 40 victims of Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita. Westmont Head Baseball Coach Rob Crawford will arrive in Santa
Barbara, Saturday, Oct. 1, after returning to the Gulf Coast for a week. He spent
several days videotaping and interviewing the evacuees who he and 21 other local
volunteers got to know in September.
“There’s so many gaps,” Crawford said. “I hope that Santa Barbara will respond to
this. I’ll show the video and hopefully get some sponsorships. We now need to

San Diego author and physician David Peck will present a slide show and lecture on his book, “Or Perish in the Attempt: Wilderness Medicine in the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” 7 p.m. Oct. 6 in Hieronymus Lounge in Kerrwood Hall on Westmont’s upper campus.

Peck has turned his love of the outdoors, history and medicine into a book that details the expedition with wit, explaining that embarking into the wilderness of the 1700s with few medical supplies or medicines was tantamount to suicide.

Princeton Professor Albert Raboteau will speak on “Healing the Wounds of Racism: The Role of Memory and Mourning” 4 p.m. Oct. 2 in Hieronymus Lounge in Kerrwood Hall on the upper Westmont campus.

The lecture, sponsored by the Erasmus Society, is free and open to the public.

Raboteau, the Henry W. Putnam professor of religion at Princeton, will discuss the ongoing effects of racism upon the nation and will suggest that Americans are still struggling to come to terms with the history of slavery and the racial hatred sowed by slavery.

Westmont will focus on the global presence of Christianity by hosting speakers from India and West Papua, Indonesia, this October. The college launched the lecture series, World Christianity and Global Encounters of the 21st Century, in 2002. The goal is to learn how Christian movements affect relationships between rival ethnic and religious groups in the non-Western world.

Thanks to a $50,000 matching grant, the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Westmont will reach out to underserved students this fall through an innovative Liberal Arts Ambassadors program. The collaborative project between Westmont and the University of La Verne involves college students from underserved groups engaging with prospective students in junior high and high schools.

This important college fair is part of a national program which brings information regarding over 30 regional and national Christian colleges to high school students and their parents. A successful event in the Tri-Counties and across the country, this event offers the opportunity for prospective students and their families to meet with college representatives and attend a financial aid session.

Date of the fair: Tuesday, October 4th

At: Montecito Covenant Church

From: 6:00pm to 8:30pm.

Two Westmont theater arts professors will offer their creative insight and discuss the artistic choices involved in staging a Shakespearean play. John Blondell and Mitchell Thomas will host the opening 2005-2006 Westmont Downtown Conversation, Thursday, Oct. 6, at 5:30 p.m. at the University Club, 1332 Santa Barbara St. The lecture is entitled: “Sad Stories of the Death of Kings: Approaches to Staging Shakespeare’s ‘King Richard II.’”

Westmont Head Baseball Coach Rob Crawford is returning to the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast this week to help 16 families who were forced to evacuate. Crawford is following up with about 40 people he and other local residents helped on a trip earlier this month. Crawford hopes to take the victims shopping for food and clothes with money donated from the Santa Barbara community. Crawford is concentrating his efforts on the families that 21 local volunteers relocated to hotels where they are being allowed to stay for 30 days.

Local volunteers are heading back to Santa Barbara after working the past several days in Louisiana and Texas aiding victims of Hurricane Katrina. Twenty-one volunteers from Hope Community Church, Westmont and the community worked through the day Wednesday, Sept. 14, in Houston before driving back to the West Coast. The group is expected to arrive in Santa Barbara Friday night, Sept. 16, at about 6 p.m. They left Westmont last Saturday morning and arrived in Shreveport early Monday morning.

More than 90 volunteers from Westmont will put on sunscreen and work gloves Saturday morning. They’ll spend the day volunteering at several charitable organizations in Santa Barbara County as part of United Way’s Day of Caring. More than a thousand people are expected to take part in the county-wide effort, painting, gardening and sorting for over 40 charitable organizations. Last year, Westmont sent a team of 52 people. This year, thanks to a huge student response, Westmont is expecting 93 volunteers.

Westmont has honored two students with the Intercultural Leadership Award for the 2005-06 academic year. Jamie Gates and Gloria Tebelman will each receive a $3,700 award for their work on campus diversity.

Westmont established the award to develop and encourage student leaders who are committed to promoting diversity on campus. Applicants are required to encourage student interest, support and participation in intercultural activities. They must also organize an original intercultural campus activity.

A Westmont professor and a student researcher may be closing in on a cure for rheumatoid arthritis. Dr. Eileen McMahon has discovered a strain of mice that spontaneously develops arthritis after about 50 days of age and may represent a new model of rheumatoid arthritis. Student Joel Wilcox will present some of the findings as part of A Celebration of Student Research at Westmont, this Thursday, Sept. 8, from 4-6 p.m. at the Founders Dining Room.

Santa Barbara crews will soon begin loading up supplies in preparation for a week-long hurricane relief effort in northwest Louisiana. A team of about 17 local volunteers will be leaving from Westmont’s Murchison Gym early Saturday morning.

Volunteers are expected to arrive in Shreveport, La., Sunday, and will work in area shelters and a distribution center to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Thanks to a $50,000 matching grant, the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Westmont will reach out to underserved students this fall through an innovative Liberal Arts Ambassadors program. The collaborative project between Westmont and the University of La Verne involves college students from underserved groups engaging with prospective students in junior high and high schools.

They arrived with boxes, pillows, computers and probably some anxiety. For many of these teens, it’s their first time living away from home. About 340 first-year students representing the Class of 2009 have begun their Westmont College career. The fall 2005 orientation kicked off Thursday, Aug. 25, as students arrived with their parents and unloaded their belongings into the residence halls.

Westmont has once again been listed among the nation’s top liberal arts colleges in the most recent U.S. News & World Report rankings, which were recently released.

U.S. News moved Westmont into the first tier with a ranking of 104th. The numeric rank puts Westmont in the top half of schools in each of 10 categories. Westmont is just one of two ranked members of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.

Westmont moved into the second tier from the third tier in 2003.

Westmont sociology professor Ron Enroth is no stranger to some of the world’s most unusual religions. In fact, he’s appeared on numerous television and radio broadcasts, including NBC Nightly News and Oprah as an expert cult consultant. Enroth penned, “Youth, Brainwashing and the Extremist Cults” six months before the Jonestown massacre in 1978, the mass suicide that put the word “cult” on the map. He warned of other dangerous religions before the tragedies in Waco and with Heaven’s Gate. In 1982, he received the Leo J.

Several Westmont students have returned home following a trip to Sri Lanka to help children who lost their parents in the December 2004 tsunami. Four Westmont students joined Professor Thomas Jayawardene and his wife, Jasmine, on the month-long summer service trip. The group left July 3 to meet a team of 14 to serve with the Jayawardenes’ The Children of Joy. The organization is founding a new home for about a dozen orphaned children. It’s also set up a children’s center to provide food, clothing, medical care and school needs to 150 kids.

More than three dozen Westmont students are returning to the United States after spending a month of their
summer serving overseas. Different groups visited Tanzania, Rwanda and Indonesia. Meantime, three teams remain in Guatemala, Russia and Sri Lanka. The students have been involved in building classrooms, teaching English and serving at orphanages.

Students in Westmont’s art department have received a $10,700 Worship Renewal grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, Mich., for a project titled “Stations of the Life of Christ.”

Students will create a series of 14 images interpreting moments in Christ’s life that speak to Westmont’s identity as a Christian liberal arts college.

“The Power of WORD,” a theme show judged by Art Historian Richard West, will be on exhibit May 19 through June 30 in Reynolds Gallery. An independent curator, West is the former director of both the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Frye Museum in Seattle. An artists’ reception, open to the public, is 4-6 p.m. May 19 in the college Art Center, on the lower Westmont campus.

English Professor Marilyn McEntyre will give a lecture, “Loving Words,” in conjunction with the exhibition at 4 p.m., May 19 in the Art Center room 101.

The next Westmont Downtown Conversation, “Simplicity, Wonder and Wisdom: Reflections on Alexander McCall Smith’s “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,” by Westmont Provost Shirley Mullen begins at 5:30 p.m. May 3 at the University Club, 1332 Santa Barbara St. The event is free and open to the public. No reservations are necessary.

Westmont musicians will showcase their skills at the spring concert for the Wind Ensemble and Chamber Orchestra at 8 p.m. April 29 in Deane Chapel on the lower campus. Admission is free and the concert is open to the public.

Westmont’s annual Spring Choral Concert featuring the College Choir, Chamber Singers and Vox Lumina Women’s Chorale will take place 8 p.m. April 22 at Trinity Episcopal Church, 1500 State St. at Micheltorena. A free-will donation will be requested.

A highlight of the evening will be “And Can it Be, that I Should Gain?” a group of well-loved hymn arrangements by Westmont’s composer-arranger and Professor Emeritus John Lundberg, who taught and directed music at Westmont from 1947 to 1979.

The Westmont Jazz Ensembles, directed by adjunct music professor Ron McCarley, will perform 8 p.m. April 15 in Deane Chapel on Westmont’s lower campus. Admission is free.

Three combos and a big band will treat the audience to a variety of pieces ranging from jazz standards to original compositions. Students Elizabeth Woodruff, Mary Patterson and Ben Banner will perform solos.

The Jazz Ensembles will also play in the courtyard of Restaurant Nu, 1129 State St., 7-10 p.m. April 5.

The Westmont theatre arts department presents unique performance art at the Fringe Festival 8 p.m. April 21 and 22 in Porter Theatre. Tickets are $10 for general admission and $5 for children, students and seniors.

The festival brings together senior students with theatre and dance faculty showcasing original theatre, dance, performance art and film. Fringe festivals usually refer to alternative productions with promises of younger, more adventurous performance art. The event replaces the “New Works Festival” that Westmont hosts each spring.

Westmont’s senior art majors will present their final work as undergraduates in the annual Senior Art Show, April 14 through May 7. An opening reception will be held 4-6 p.m. April 14 in Reynolds Gallery on lower campus. Free and open to the public, the reception will feature a student awards presentation at 5 p.m.

After more than 50 years, Westmont will retire its 16-inch Newtonian telescope from Carroll Observatory and install a 24-inch F/8 Cassegrain with Ritchey-Chrétien optics. The new instrument features more than twice the light-gathering power of the old one and nearly twice the resolving power.

A $300,000 W. M. Keck Foundation grant for the telescope follows a $90,000 award from the James L. Stamps Foundation and a $15,000 gift from another foundation. College officials are working to secure the remaining funds for the $635,000 project.

Professor Dorothy Wang of Northwestern University will speak on Asian American poets at 3:30 pm on Monday, March 21, in Hieronymus Lounge, in Kerrwood Hall on the upper campus.

The lecture, “Reading Asian American Literature,” is the first lecture this semester in the Erasmus Series. It is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.