Growing up in Sonoma County, Eileen Spain demonstrated a natural proclivity for math and science—aided, she says, by an “awesome” high school chemistry teacher. A first-generation college student, she majored in chemistry as an undergrad at Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State University and as a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah, where she completed her doctorate in 1992.
You, Your Parent, and Your Caregiving Journey: Strategies, Resources, and Inspiration to Guide the Way, by Carole MacNeil ’84 (Gatekeeper Press). MacNeil’s work and research h
The end of the calendar year traditionally is a time for evaluating our accomplishments, planning ahead for changes yet to come, and envisioning the progress we hope to achieve as a community.
“Some people can publish books while they are teaching undergraduates,” says Professor of English Emeritus Eric Newhall ’67, “and I wasn’t one of those people.” But he had a story in him dating back to 1970, when he was released from prison after spending nine and a half months behind bars as a draft resister.
For her senior comps at Oxy, Angelina Lee ’22 made a 10-minute science fiction short titled Quercus, which is the genus name for the oak tree. The film is set in a not-so-distant future where there are no trees due to pollution and other environmental disasters, driving people to live in underground bunkers. Through advanced technology, they have a museum exhibit that’s so immersive that they can see what trees were like.
Each fall, an influx of new faces arrives on the Occidental campus—bringing with them new ideas, new dreams, and new visions that may shape our collective futures. Hyperbole, you say? It was 45 years ago that a freshman named “Barry” Obama joined the Oxy community. We introduce to you nine new members of the Tiger family—we don’t know where they’re going, but every hero has an origin story.
Eleanor Goddard ’25 lived in Ghana for seventh and eighth grade and had been eager to return ever since. “Being in Ghana is more of a feeling—it’s like listening to your favorite song and thinking, ‘Everything’s going to be OK,’” says Goddard, a biochemistry major from Minneapolis. “The people of Ghana smile about everything. They put other people first. They’re part of such an amazing community that it’s hard not to want to go there.”
With a body of work that includes more than 200 TV shows, in addition to his work in film, commercials, and theater, actor Loren Lester ’83 gets recognized fairly often—even if people don’t know exactly who he is.
As a graduate student at USC half a century ago, Lynn Mehl was attending a karate tournament in Hollywood when she decided that she wanted to train with Takayuki Kubota—known to all as “Soke,” the title bestowed upon him as the creator of his own karate style called Gosoku-ryu. (“Soke” means “founder” or “grandmaster.”) There was one slight hitch—“Soke wasn’t overly excited about training a woman,” Mehl recalls—but she persisted. “Week after week, month after month, year after year I was fortunate enough—and stubborn enough—to train with Soke and ultimately teach for him.”