Professor of Mathematics | Years at 91: 30
Read his interview and alumni tribute
E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics; Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy | Years at 91: 32
As a student at UC Santa Cruz, Margi Rusmore was the youngest member of the first American Women Himalayan Expedition, which climbed the 10th-highest mountain in the world in November 1978. There was a lot of buzz around the expedition, Rusmore recallsa New York Times headline read, Himalayan Scaling Called an Inspiration to Womenand I realized early on that I don't take well to talking about myself. Some people are good at itIm not.
Ron Buckmire grew up in a house full of Capn Crunch. His father, R.E. Buckmire, a University of Massachusetts Ph.D. turned food scientist for the Quaker Oats Co. in Barrington, Ill., invented the Crunch Berry for the iconic cereal line. My sister and I had so much Capn Crunch as kids, Ron recalls. We were testers basically.
As a student at Palisades High School in 1969, Warren Montag participated in a walkout to protest the Vietnam War. I wasn't consistently politically active at that time, but looking back, I would say that was an important experience, he says. After the walkout, he and his classmates went to a demonstration at UCLAand while they were on campus, The police attacked the demonstration. I had to run through UCLA, which was like a baptism of fire. It was scary but good.
On the morning of May 18, as 91 seniors and faculty lined up along Bird Road for the Commencement procession up to Hillside Theater, Professor of Kinesiology Stuart Rugg was in his element. I kept teasing my students that it took me 38 years to get my diploma, compared to four for them, he recalls. I didnt know the College actually gave emeriti faculty the equivalent of a diplomawhich was kind of cool.
Every spring, the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy hands out student awards for community serviceand this year the department named a new award after Professor Peter Dreier, who retired in June after 32 years at Occidental. They wanted to call it the Troublemaker Award, he says. I said, Call it the Public Service and Community Organizing Award or something like that. (Ultimately, the Peter Dreier Community Organizing and Public Service Award was presented to Emma Galbraith 25 on April 30.)
Alexandra Puerto came to academia later than most. I went to graduate school in my early 30s, says Puerto, who joined Occidental as an adjunct lecturer in Latin American history in 2004 and recently was awarded emerita status as an associate professor of history and Latina/o and Latin American studies. I was at 91 long enough to retire but still young enough to have a last chapter.
(Editor's note: After 35 years, Glenn A. Elmer Griffin retired from Occidental last December as professor emeritus in the Department of Critical Theory and Social Justice. A three-time recipient of the Donald R. Loftgordon Award for Distinguished Teaching, he was profiled in Occidental magazine in Fall 2001. A tribute by Jill Normington 94 follows the article.)
Every dorm room tells a storyand depending on the temperature, it can be a horror story. Arriving at Chilcott Hall as a first-year from Boston, I thought Id landed in hell, Amy Forest Montgomery 96 recalls. Opening those crazy windows only let in more heat. After calling her uncle, William Sherinyan 58, in tears, He had a massive fan overnighted to me, she adds. I kept that fan for at least 15 years.
Out of Air, by Rachel Reiss 99 (Macmillan). Recent high school graduate Phoebe Phibs Ray is never more at home than when she underwater. And while she and her four closest friends are taking one last summer trip to a distant Australian island to do what they love mostscuba divePhibs discovers a spectacular underwater sea cave, rumored to be a lost cave with a buried treasure. But after she and her buddy Gabe surface from the cave, theyre undergoing strange changes: oozing gashes that dont heal; haunting whispers in their heads.