Chapman Magazine Spring 2017

Spring 2017

MAGAZINE

UP FRONT

2 President Struppa recalls his first academic journey to America.

3 First Person: The real snowflakes are those who try to pin the term on college students.

Executive Editor:

Sheryl Bourgeois, Ph.D. Executive Vice President for University Advancement

CHAPMAN NOW

Editor:

5 Plácido Domingo gets an honorary doctorate at Musco Center’s celebration.

Dennis Arp arp@chapman.edu

6 Pacific Symphony musicians provide sideby-side mentorship to Chapman students.

Staff Writer:

8 Faculty member Cheryl Boone Isaacs is honored as a film industry pioneer.

Dawn Bonker (MFA ’19) bonker@chapman.edu

9 Once again, Chapman gains recognition as a top producer of Fulbright Scholars.

Design:

Hayden Design

14 A Holocaust survivor’s testimony highlights parallels to the plight of Syrian refugees.

Editorial Office:

16 Student researchers look for insights in the fibrous slime of the humble hagfish.

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DEPARTMENTS ON THESE PAGES: “Growing up, I would always watch the Oscars, thinking it was completely unattainable,” says Brenna Malloy (MFA ’16), a graduate of Chapman’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. So when she and Brian Robau (MFA ’17) were chosen to carry statuettes to presenters during this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, it was more than fantastic.

“It grounded this dream in reality,” Malloy says. “If I work hard and stay committed, maybe one day I can tell a story that is celebrated by the film community.” Malloy and Robau won the opportunity as Student Academy Award honorees. Robau’s film It’s Just a Gun took silver and Malloy’s Rocket bronze in the narrative category of the Academy’s prestigious student competition. Like Malloy, Robau found the Oscar experience inspiring. “Being surrounded by some of your filmmaking heroes humanizes them a little,” he says. “But it also instills in you a belief that if they can do it, maybe you can too.”

Photo by Richard Harbaugh / © A.M.P.A.S.

ON THE COVER: Los Angeles artist Michael Massenburg The mission of Chapman University is to provide personalized education of distinction that leads to inquiring, ethical and productive lives as global citizens. chapman.edu

Chapman Magazine is printed on recycled-content paper.

was thrilled when he learned that a student advisory council had selected several of his multimedia works for display in Chapman University’s new Cross-Cultural Center. It’s the ideal place for art to feed conversations that “create common ground while also exploring the nuances and differences that make life interesting,” he says. Massenburg’s colorful works – including our cover image, called Mother’s Nature – hang in the conference room named Hope at the center, which opened this spring in Argyros Forum as an inclusive space for ideas to intersect. Like those who advocated for the center and joined in its planning, Massenburg hopes it will be “a space to expand those conversations.” To read more about the Cross-Cultural Center, turn to page 20.

10 Sports: Dave Currey headlines a new Hall of Fame class.

11 Voices & Verities 34 Bookshelf 35 In Memoriam: Charles D. Martin FEATURES

18 At the Launch Labs, entrepreneurs incubate ideas in “a cool little ecosystem.”

24 Students take up the challenge of finding common values that bridge political divides.

28 Alumni and faculty authors help drive the flourishing young adult market.

ALUMNI NEWS 36 Despite his success, Henry Allen ’11

slips in the side door to pop music fame.

38 Class Notes

FIRST PERSON

Beside the Golden Door his column will not examine the legality of the so-called travel-ban executive order, and I will not discuss its policy implications. Rather, I want to offer my personal story.

I think it will be self-explanatory.

Back in 1977, I received my mathematics degree from the University of Milano in Italy. I absolutely wanted to become a mathematician, and since at that time the universities in Italy did not offer doctoral programs, I decided to try to come to the United States, the greatest country in the world for a mathematician.

I had to secure admission to an American university, I had to find financial resources, and I had to secure a visa. The entire project took almost a year. I applied to the University of Maryland (which had a fantastic department of mathematics, and where a friend of mine had gone before), I applied to the Italian government for a very competitive scholarship, I took an impossibly difficult test (at least that’s how it appeared to me) designed to establish that I knew enough English to succeed in a university setting, and I waited.

I passed the test – barely. The results were sent to Maryland, together with my academic qualifications, and after a few months of anxiety I received the news that I had been admitted to a Ph.D. program at the College Park campus, and that I had received, as well, a generous assistantship of $400 per month (exciting, considering that my rent was going to be $212 per month).

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Officers Wylie Aitken Chair Zeinab H. Dabbah (JD ’12) Vice Chair Parker S. Kennedy Vice Chair Joann Leatherby Vice Chair James Mazzo Vice Chair Scott Chapman Secretary Zelma M. Allred Assistant Secretary Trustees Richard Afable Donna Ford Attallah ’61 Raj S. Bhathal James P. Burra Michael J. Carver Phillip H. Case Akin Ceylan ’90 Irving M. Chase Hazem H. Chehabi Jerome W. Cwiertnia Kristina Dodge Dale E. Fowler ’58 Barry Goldfarb Stan Harrelson

2 | CHAPMAN MAGAZINE

Gavin S. Herbert, Jr. Mark Hilbert William K. Hood Mark Chapin Johnson ’05 Jennifer L. Keller Laura Khouri Thomas E. Malloy Ann D. Moskowitz Sebastian Paul Musco Richard Muth James J. Peterson Harry S. Rinker James B. Roszak The Honorable Loretta Sanchez ’82 Mohindar S. Sandhu Ronald M. Simon Ronald E. Soderling Emily Crean Vogler Karen R. Wilkinson ’69 David W. Wilson Emeritus Chairs The Honorable George L. Argyros ’59 Doy B. Henley David A. Janes, Sr. Donald E. Sodaro Emeritus Trustees Richard Bertea Lynn Hirsch Booth Arlene R. Craig

That’s when I finally applied for a visa at the U.S. Consulate in Milano. I had to present all my academic credentials and have them translated by a notary (a very expensive proposition that my mother funded). I provided the admission letter from Maryland, and I was interviewed.

Finally – it was now spring – I received the visa, in a sealed envelope that only the border control officer was entitled to open.

I bought a plane ticket for Washington D.C., and on Aug. 9, 1978, I took the plunge.

After a long flight on what seemed to me to be a gigantic airplane (a 747), I landed at my port of entry, JFK Airport in New York.

I was tired, confused and not sure what to expect. I gave my passport to the officer; he opened it, looked at me, then opened the sealed envelope and carefully read the complicated form (called an I-20).

He looked up something in a book, then stamped my passport and the form, and returned everything to me.

He then said something I did not understand. I asked him to repeat it … twice. Finally, he leaned toward me and, very slowly, said, “Welcome to America.”

Now I am an American citizen and the president of Chapman University. Thank you, America.

Daniele C. Struppa

J. Ben Crowell Robert A. Elliott David C. Henley Roger C. Hobbs Randall R. McCardle ’58 (M.A. ’66) Cecilia Presley Barry Rodgers Richard R. Schmid R. David Threshie Ex-Officio Trustees Reverend LaTaunya Bynum ’76 Reverend Don Dewey Barbara Eidson Reverend Dayna Kinkade Linda D. Ruth Daniele C. Struppa Reverend Felix Villanueva Reverend Denny Williams BOARD OF GOVERNORS

Officers Melinda M. Masson Chair Michael Penn (JD ’04) Executive Vice Chair Paul A. Cook Vice Chair Rebecca A. Hall ’96 Secretary

Governors George Adams, Jr. Marilyn Alexander Lisa Argyros ’07 Margaret Baldwin Bob Barry James E. Blalock (JD ’09) Deborah Bridges Brenda Carver Eva Chen Ronn C. Cornelius Robin Follman-Otta (EMBA ’15) Kathleen M. Gardarian Judith A. Garfi-Partridge Steve Greinke Galen Grillo (EMBA ’13) Sinan Kanatsiz ’97 (M.A. ’00) Elim Kay ’09 Dustin Kemmerer ’97 Scott A. Kisting Dennis Kuhl John H. Sanders ’70 James F. Wilson Emeritus Governors Marta S. Bhathal Kathleen A. Bronstein Gary E. Liebl Jean H. Macino Richard D. Marconi Jerrel T. Richards Douglas E. Willits ’72

Ex-Officio Governors Sheryl A. Bourgeois Daniele C. Struppa PRESIDENT’S CABINET

Nicolaos G. Alexopoulos George L. Argyros, Jr. ’89, (JD ’01) Julianne Argyros Joyce Brandman Stephen J. Cloobeck Heidi Cortese Sherman Paul Folino Douglas K. Freeman Marie Gray Frank P. Greinke Gavin S. Herbert Shelley Hoss Steeve Kay Joe E. Kiani General William Lyon Frank O’Bryan The Honorable Milan Panic Lord Swraj Paul James H. Randall The Honorable Ed Royce Susan Samueli Ralph Stern David Stone Alan L. True

Photos by Alexey Kljatov

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Flipping a Term of

ICY INTENT

By Tom Zoellner

J

ust as the term “fake news” was in the American vocabulary for about five minutes before it was flipped on its head, I am hopeful the pejorative term “snowflake” as applied to college students might soon be reversed and applied to its users. It’s not just that the word is smug and patronizing. It is also inaccurate.

I spend my working life among 18-to-22-year-olds, many of them from comfortable backgrounds, and I see little evidence to support the popular stereotype of emotionally fragile beings demanding that the world bend to their whim. I rather see the opposite traits in my students: humility, curiosity and tough-mindedness about the things that matter.

Some of them have already fought hard battles and shown great personal courage in ways that outsiders may never know. Those who are in opposition to the current drift of events at the presidential level often risk abuse and shame from their own families and peers, and must think through the same moral obstacle course that dissenters from all eras have had to navigate.

The etymology of the insult “snowflake” – with its mocking insinuations of fragility and privilege – appears to be rooted in the self-esteem programs of some modern primary-school curricula that encourage students to value their own individual talents. According to Merriam-Webster, the first weaponization of frozen crystals

occurred in the 1996 novel Fight Club when a tough-guy character sneered to some weak initiates: “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.”

While it might be easy to imagine some fictional golden era in which all college students were not alarmed about the state of the larger world – or willing to let their unhappiness be known – the reality is that student unrest is as old as the university

Youth is a season of idealism and ideological flirtation, of passion and experimentation.

This is how it should be. system itself. The medieval campuses of Oxford and Perugia were riven with periodic unrest, and American student agitation was not invented in Berkeley in 1968. Youth is a season of idealism and ideological flirtation, of passion and experimentation. This is how it should be.

Based on what I see every day at Chapman University, I harbor no worries whatsoever about the young people of the early 21st century who will soon pick up the mantle of power, and it makes me angry when older people look down on them as a group and tell them how terrible they are.

This cynicism is of no help whatsoever. And these accusers have conveniently forgotten

their own fidgety period of early adulthood – as they sailed forever from childhood’s harbor – of improvisation and questioning.

They are either clueless or jealous.

Yes, there are times when petty university dramas look ridiculous to the general public, but our learning institutions are supposed to be restless, challenging and even threatening to certain entrenched constituencies. I sometimes get exhausted with certain byzantine discussions. But the university is, above all, a place of free inquiry, and that also means pushing back against the excesses of identity politics or partisan politics, because that freedom to raise objections and cross-examine orthodoxies is also a value we uphold at Chapman University. I always make room for these discussions with any student who wants to talk. Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” That’s what should happen in a university. Because that’s how we push society forward.

If this historic mission of a university bothers anyone, they might ask themselves if they are exhibiting a certain type of excessive woundedness and victimization.

Oh, if only there were a word for such sensitivity …

Tom Zoellner is an associate professor of English at Chapman University and politics editor for The Los Angeles Review of Books.

S P R I N G 2 017 | 3

IN-BOX

CHAPMAN NOW

Tessa Germaine @tessagermaine • Apr 7 I’m so glad that my school supports and encourages female filmmakers, and that I got to meet these amazing women! #WomenInFocus2017

Jeff Garvin @jeffgarvinbooks • Apr 12 What a thrill to meet my favorite crime writer @Connellybooks at the@Chapman Pub Crawl!

Can’t wait to read THE WRONG SIDE OF GOODBYE.

Chapman honors the opera legend as the University celebrates Musco Center’s first anniversary.

The Oroville Dam in Northern California is the tallest in the nation and recently experienced potentially catastrophic failure of its main spillway due to erosion.

How important is it to you for Congress to focus on the maintenance and expansion of the nation’s infrastructure?

• Congress needs to focus on our failing infrastructure pronto! Not only did the American Society of Civil Engineers grade our infrastructure with a D, (but) the jobs created from improving and maintaining our infrastructure would decrease unemployment and get our country moving (Keynesian multiplier).

• Obviously the safety of this nation’s people should be our top priority. We really need to focus on preventing dangerous situations as well as making sure our (natural) resources are preserved.

• The failing infrastructure of the country should not be debatable. People were in danger and had to be evacuated from their homes. Our nation’s resources must be for our people. This is common sense.

Upcoming in Chapman Magazine Jordan Kaiser @jordykaikai • Feb 7 Today Disney legend & head of the Disney archives Dave Smith came to speak to our class so that was cool @ChapmanU

The impact of Alzheimer’s is felt far beyond the 5 million or so Americans afflicted. We examine the many angles of this disease through the lens of Chapman alumni and faculty who are exploring better treatments, helping caregivers cope and teaching about prevention.

Chapman Magazine Online Don’t forget to check out Chapman Magazine online, with Web-only stories, links to video, slide shows and more. Find it all at chapman.edu/magazine.

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We welcome comments on Chapman Magazine or any aspect of the University experience. Send submissions to magazine@chapman.edu.

4 | CHAPMAN MAGAZINE

Dr. Domingo

C

hapman University celebrated the one-year anniversary of Musco Center for the Arts by bestowing an honorary Doctor of Arts on renowned opera star Plácido Domingo, who headlined the center’s opening night a year ago this spring.

Hundreds of fans and University supporters gathered in Musco for the afternoon event and hooding ceremony in March, highlighted by arias sung by alumni, the unveiling of a bronze bust of Domingo and a save-the-date announcement.

“Typically, institutions engage in this tradition at commencement. But, much as Maestro Domingo has defined and redefined his art, today we ourselves have decided to break with tradition,” said President Daniele Struppa.

Such recognition could not be more timely in the bigger picture, too, Struppa said. At a time when society “appears to be becoming increasingly materialistic,” the arts must be remembered for what they add to the human experience, he said.

“The arts are important to our society and to the education of our students because they offer them a different lens through which they perceive, understand, explain and describe the world,” Struppa added.

The event also honored Domingo with one of Chapman’s signature bronze busts. Domingo’s bust is a gift from Robert Day, founder of Trust Company of the West and also a longtime friend of Domingo.

In accepting the honor, Domingo paid tribute to the center’s principal supporters, Marybelle and S. Paul Musco, and all who advance the arts as visionaries shaping the future with their generosity.

“I really want to be sure that future generations, my grandchildren and your grandchildren, will have the opportunity to hear classical music and be transported by the power of opera. I also want to be sure that the talent of young singers is discovered and that they are trained and mentored to become the great stars they are meant to be,” he said. “These goals are dear to my heart, and I know they are central to the mission of Musco Center and Chapman University.”

Honorary Degrees Others receiving honorary doctorates:

Wylie Aitken Founding partner of the award-winning firm Aitken-Aitken-Cohn Trial Lawyers

Photo by Doug Gifford

LETTERS, EMAILS, COMMENTS AND POSTS

EXCERPTS FROM THE CONVERSATION ON THE GLOBAL CITIZENS WALL IN THE STUDENT UNION:

Mario Vargas Llosa Peruvian-born Nobel Prize-winning author Chapman Provost Glenn Pfeiffer makes it official as the University presents an honorary Doctor of Arts degree to renowned opera star Plácido Domingo.

In his closing remarks, William Hall, DMA, dean and artistic director of Musco Center, announced that Domingo will return to Musco in the 2017 fall season in the lead role of Verdi’s great opera Nabucco. The opera will be staged Nov. 14 in collaboration with the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra and Chorus, under the direction of alumnus Grant Gershon, and the College of Performing Arts.

Nabucco will mark the second time Domingo has performed at Musco alongside Chapman alumni and students.

Don Hahn Academy Award-nominated producer of Disney’s The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast

Pico Iyer Essayist, novelist, travel writer and Chapman Presidential Fellow

Joe Kiani Founder, chairman and CEO of the global medical technology company Masimo

Michael B. Matsuda Superintendent of the Anaheim Union High School District

S P R I N G 2 017 | 5

CHAPMAN NOW

“Music will never come into your presence because somebody told it to. … It has to be worked toward.”

— Pacific Symphony conductor Carl St.Clair, left, mentoring Chapman student musicians

Story by Dawn Bonker (MFA ’19) | Photos by Dennis Arp

Musicians call it a side-by-side, and it’s literally what happens when professional orchestra members mentor students trumpet-by-trumpet, tuba-by-tuba, flute-by-flute during a rehearsal.

Chapman University’s Wind Symphony enjoyed just such a special experience this spring during the annual Interplay Festival of music, culture and ideas. Professionals from Pacific Symphony and its music director, Maestro Carl St.Clair, met in the Crean Orchestral Recital Hall for a rehearsal of the students’ Interplay concert, “Celebrating the California Dream Space.”

It wasn’t a lark. Under the direction of St.Clair, every musician worked through challenges. Pros often leaned toward their student counterparts to offer a bit of advice. St.Clair pushed all involved to refine every note and harness their efforts to a single goal.

6 | CHAPMAN MAGAZINE

“Music will never come into your presence because somebody told it to,” St.Clair told the musicians as he led them through Rest by composer Frank Ticheli. “It will only happen if we all go together to the same place and, at that moment where this is possible, as we open ourselves to accept it.

But it will never be commanded by a mere human, especially a conductor. It has to be worked toward.”

This year’s side-by-side was a new addition to Interplay and one Chapman hopes to continue, says Susan Key, Interplay curator and a faculty member in the College of Performing Arts.

“To have the students on a truly collegial basis with their professional counterparts has tangible benefits for the rehearsal,” Key says. “But it also has intangible benefits. I still look back on side-by-sides I had in college. The experience stays with students.

It’s deepening and enriching.”

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CHAPMAN NOW

Chapman a Top Producer of Fulbrights

F

Isaacs Honored as Film Industry Pioneer

Photo: Rob Latour/Variety/Shutterstock

W

hen Steven Spielberg hails your passion for cinema and calls you a pioneer, chances are your night is going well.

Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, enjoyed just such an evening recently when she was honored as Pioneer of the Year. The occasion was the 76th annual Will Rogers Motion Picture Foundation Dinner, at which Isaacs, a faculty member in Chapman’s Dodge College of Film & Media Arts, became the first African-American and fourth woman to receive the Pioneer of the Year honor.

“Cheryl, you have become a pioneer in your own right because you are the face and the voice of the Academy, and in these wildly unpredictable times you do it with such grace and such passion for movies that protects the Academy … for all of us,” Spielberg said in a taped tribute during the event, an annual highlight of CinemaCon, the convention of the National Association of Theatre Owners.

In accepting the honor, Isaacs said she was

Actor David Oyelowo, star of Selma, presents Cheryl Boone Isaacs with the Pioneer of the Year award at CinemaCon. “We’re not growing if we’re not gaining perspective,” Isaacs said in her acceptance speech.

privileged to learn from previous honorees such as Jeffrey Katzenberg, Frank Mancuso “and none more so than Sherry Lansing.” The two worked together on a number of hugely successful films at Paramount, including Oscar winners Forrest Gump and Braveheart.

“As Academy president, I wanted to make sure our industry saw the value of diversity and inclusion,” Isaacs added. “Yes, it is a personal

thing for me as a woman, and as a woman of color. After all, the heart of moviegoing is perspective – whose point of view is being represented, what do you see through the camera lens, who is behind the camera itself?

We’re not growing if we’re not gaining perspective. We’re all stronger. Our art is more alive, our industry more innovative to fresh perspective, when we widen the lens.”

Caitlyn Nguyen ’17

F

or the third year in a row, Chapman University has been recognized as a top producer of Fulbright scholars.

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program.

Top-producing institutions are highlighted annually in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“We couldn’t be prouder of our students for this accomplishment,” said Glenn Pfeiffer, Ph.D., Chapman provost. “The impact of this announcement on the campus and community will only have positive benefits to our already growing and competitive University.”

Three Chapman alumni are teaching abroad for the 2016– 17 academic year through the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant award.

Damaris Bangean ’16 is in Romania, Ashley Barba ’16 in the Czech Republic and Esme Aston ’16 in Malaysia.

For the 2017–18 academic year, 35 percent of Chapman applicants reached the semifinals – the highest rate in the University’s history.

Caitlyn Nguyen ’17 is Chapman’s newest fellowship recipient. She earned an English Teaching Assistant position to Vietnam, where she will teach English and U.S. culture to Vietnamese students during the 2017–18 school year.

The Fulbright competition is administered at Chapman through Julye Bidmead, Ph.D., director, fellowships and scholar programs. For the first time this year, Chapman is promoting the Fulbright Summer Institute – a summer Fulbright opportunity designed for first- and second-year college students.

Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 370,000 participants – chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential – with the opportunity to exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns. More than 1,900 U.S. students, artists and young professionals in more than 100 different fields of study are offered Fulbright Program grants to study, teach English and conduct research annually. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program operates in more than 140 countries throughout the world.

Math Student Awarded Prestigious Language Scholarship Chapman University student William Ochoa ’18 has been awarded a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship to study Japanese at the University of Shiga Prefecture in Japan.

“I’m incredibly excited to be immersed in Japanese society for two months,” Ochoa said. “I’m eager to bring that knowledge back with me to further my studies here at Chapman.”

The Critical Languages Scholarship (CLS) program helps high-achieving students master second languages while fostering community and relationships abroad. CLS scholars enjoy a fully funded summer of cultural and language immersion.

Ochoa is one of a select few nationally to be awarded the scholarship this year.

He’s a mathematics major who’s minoring in Japanese studies. He plans to apply to the Japanese Exchange and Teaching Program after graduation.

William Ochoa ’18

Sanchez Donates Congressional Papers

L

oretta Sanchez ’82, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1997 to 2017, has donated her congressional papers to Chapman University’s Leatherby Libraries.

The collection includes 25 boxes of her files, papers and committee work, mostly focused on Vietnamese human rights, her work with the House Committee on Homeland Security, the voter investigation into the 1996 election she won against Republican incumbent Bob Dornan and materials related to her legislation on sexual assault in the military.

The donation continues Sanchez’s

8 | CHAPMAN MAGAZINE

dedication to her alma mater – she is a trustee and regular lecturer – and includes materials that will be vital to generations of Chapman students and scholars, said Charlene Baldwin, dean of the Leatherby Libraries. Moreover, the papers join the library’s growing collections related to California and Orange County, which Sanchez represented.

At Chapman, Sanchez studied with President Emeritus Jim Doti and earned a degree in economics. During her House tenure, she was a tenacious advocate for allowing women to serve in combat. In addition, she fought cuts to

Garage Sale Find: Suffrage History

Loretta Sanchez ’82

Head Start, the same development program for children and families that she herself benefited from as a shy preschooler. Sanchez ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016 but was defeated by former California Attorney General Kamala Harris.

A

n original Report of the 1888 International Council of Women, assembled by the National Woman Suffrage Association in Washington, D.C., has been donated to Chapman’s Leatherby Libraries. The book is signed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

A leader of the women’s suffrage movement, Stanton worked for years to gain the vote for women, setting the stage for ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Her signature on the volume makes it particularly significant, said Stephanie George, special collections and archives librarian at Leatherby Libraries.

The book came to Chapman through David Moore, director of planned giving in University Advancement, by way of his mother, who found it at a garage sale in Elgin, Texas.

The work is now available to Chapman scholars and members of the public alike in its new home, Chapman’s Frank Mt. Pleasant Library of Special Collections & Archives.

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SPORTS

Former Athletic Director Dave Currey

Currey, Ly ’10, Sanders ’03 and Phillips ’79 will be honored as the 37th class to enter Chapman’s Athletic Hall of Fame. leader who steered Chapman Athletics toward excellence for more than two decades, and a two-sport star whose feats fill multiple school record books are among the latest inductees to the University’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

Former Athletic Director Dave Currey and volleyball and basketball star Lindy Ly ’10 are joined in the 2017 Hall of Fame class by baseball standout Brian Sanders ’03 and track national champion Joe Phillips ’79. The four will be inducted Oct. 28 during an evening that will include a banquet in Sandhu Conference Center and a ceremony at halftime of the Panthers football game vs. Cal Lutheran on Wilson Field.

The banquet keynote speaker is former UCLA and St. John’s basketball coach Steve Lavin ’88.

Highlighting Currey’s 25 years as director of athletics, Chapman won two Division III national championships (in softball and baseball) and 18 regional titles. In addition, Chapman gained membership in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC), relaunched its football program and developed premier sports facilities such as the Lastinger Athletics Complex and the Allred Aquatics Center.

But the impact of the man still known around campus simply as “Coach” extends far beyond the competitive venues of the Donald P. Kennedy Intercollegiate Athletic Program.

“His passion resonates down to all of us on campus,” says Terry Boesel, who worked for years with Currey and then succeeded him as athletic director after Currey retired in 2015.

For Ly, achievement in two demanding sports meant she was seldom far from the Hutton Sports Center. In volleyball, she remains Chapman’s career digs leader – a record she broke during her sophomore season. She was a two-time All-American and three-time All-Region selection. When fall transitioned to 10 | CHAPMAN MAGAZINE

Brian Sanders ’03

KELLY

I was brought on by PBS as a researcher for a show about the Smithsonian. At the last minute they fired the writers and brought me on as a writer, and they said the new host-narrator is someone named

STONE

“Jacob, thanks for making the greatest proposal I have ever received.

I can’t tell you what an honor that was and how much I smiled through that entire beautifully orchestrated video. I’m in London working, but I hope you have the best time at prom, and I’m grateful

GENE KELLY.

Lindy Ly ’10

winter, Ly switched to basketball, with success that included scoring more than 1,000 points during her career. She ranks in the top 10 all-time in points, free throws, steals, assists and offensive rebounds.

Sanders was a standout on the diamond, where he captained the Panthers’ 2003 NCAA Division III national championship baseball team. He was a three-time All-Region selection and an Academic All-American as a senior. He still holds Chapman’s Division III career records in home runs (21) and RBIs (162). A career .352 hitter, he ranks in the top 10 in a number of categories, Joe Phillips ’79 including hits, doubles and runs scored.

Phillips had an outstanding career on Hall of Fame Inductions Chapman’s men’s track team as a high jumper.

Oct. 28 He won the NCAA Division II national championship in the high jump in 1978 and was an All-American • Banquet at 4 p.m. in Sandhu in 1979. After 38 years, he retains Chapman’s Conference Center; school record in the high jump with a mark of football game vs. Cal Lutheran 7 feet, 2½ inches. During a meet with Cal State at 7 p.m. on Wilson Field.

Long Beach, Phillips defeated Dwight Stones, who was the world record-holder at the time, in a • Table sponsorships and head-to-head competition. Phillips passed away tickets are available at in 2016 and will be inducted posthumously. chapmanathletics.com/hof/event.

In addition to being honored at halftime of • For more information, contact Chapman’s conference football game against Cal Lutheran, the new Hall of Famers will have Doug Aiken at daiken@chapman.edu their plaques unveiled on Gray Victory Way or (714) 997-6900. immediately following the on-field recognition.

you thought of me. P.S. I do see Gosling around the eyes.”

I had no idea if that was a man or a woman. And when they were talking about this thing called Singing in the Rain that was to die for, I had no idea what they were talking about, but I wasn’t about to let on that I didn’t know.

LOVE, EMMA

Emma Stone, replying to a video “promposal” by incoming Chapman film student Jacob Staudenmeier. The video, inspired by the opening scene of La La Land, has attracted more than 1.2 million views on YouTube.

Patricia Ward Kelly, during her one-woman show paying tribute to Gene Kelly, her late husband, at Musco Center for the Arts.

Frank Oz, legendary director, puppeteer and voice of Yoda, speaking to students in Professor James Dutcher’s Film Script Analysis class at Marion Knott Studios.

“(Good ideas) are dangerous.

Saying no to them is difficult, but when you’re the director, you have to make your own mistakes.”

BARONE

“ If someone ever asks you what you would do differently,

have a good answer and have some thought behind it, because people at Facebook, people at Google and in Silicon Valley in general, want you to push the envelope and to think about

what’s going to happen next.”

Jessica Barone ’12 of Facebook, speaking to students in Beckman Hall at an event sponsored by the Career Development Center

“It looks like this thing that was magic and just went right up to the top. That’s not how it happened. We almost went bankrupt a few times.”

BEHAR

Howard Behar, founding president of Starbucks International, speaking to Chapman students in Argyros Forum S P R I N G 2 017 | 11

THE GLAMOUR. THE GLITZ. THE GALA.

S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A’ S M O S T S P E C TA C U L A R E X T R AVA G A N Z A

GalaNight S AT U R D AY, N O V E M B E R 4

OpeningNight F R I D AY, N O V E M B E R 3

Honorary Chairs JULIANNE AND GEORGE L. ARGYROS ’59

Gala Night Chairs L A U R A K H O U R I A N D M I C H A E L K . H AY D E

Gala Night Vice Chairs K E R RY A N D G AV I N S . H E R B E RT, J R .

DALE E. FOWLER ’58 SARAH ANN FOWLER

Citizens of theYear Throughout its 36 amazing years, Chapman Celebrates has created scores of unforgettable memories. Chapman University’s signature fundraising gala features more than 100 talented students in a dazzlingly choreographed spectacular drawn from the American songbook. That translates, over the years, to 35,000 hours of rehearsals and 1,000 song-and-dance routines by Chapman University students – and a show rivaling Broadway’s best.

ROSS DUFFER ’07

M AT T D U F F E R ’ 0 7

MASTERMINDS OF THE NETFLIX BLOCKBUSTER STRANGER THINGS

Alumni Achievement Award

It’s all followed by a sumptuous dinner and dancing. Since its inception, Chapman Celebrates has welcomed nearly 60,000 attendees and raised more than $30 million for the Chapman Scholarship Fund. Experience Southern California’s most spectacular extravaganza for yourself!

A specially priced gala night alumni package is available.

Package includes a reception with the Duffer Brothers and designated alumni seating at the performance.

ONE EPIC NIGHT FOR ONE V E RY I M P O RTA N T C A U S E …

C H A P M A N . E D U / C H A P M A N - C E L E B R AT E S

STUDENT SCHOLARSHIPS

S P O N S O R S H I P O P P O RT U N I T I E S A N D I N D I V I D U A L T I C K E T S A R E AVA I L A B L E .

For sponsorship information or tickets please contact Tami R. Thompson at (714) 744-7031 or tthompso@chapman.edu

M in e to T e ll

C Record Participation for Holocaust Art and Writing Contest

By Lillia Velau

“H

ow am I supposed to make this story my own?” I think this as I watch the video testimony of Holocaust survivor Dr. Sol Messinger. After all, I am not a young Jewish boy. I am not a victim of persecution. I am not a refugee fleeing Nazi slaughter. I am just a student with a writing assignment. So I listen to Sol’s testimony again, closing my eyes and picturing his story.

It is May 13, 1939. I see 937 men, women and children – almost all of them Jewish – boarding the German ocean liner St. Louis in Hamburg, Germany, apprehensive but hopeful that they can escape the hatred of their homelands and find safety in Cuba, where they will wait until they can enter the United States.

During the voyage, the mood is joyful.

Captain Gustav Schroeder has ordered his crew to treat the Jews as they would any other passengers. They enjoy good food, music and movies. They relax in the chairs that dot the eight polished decks of the St. Louis. Six-yearold Sol Messinger swims in a pool for the first time in his life; for the first time in a long

time, he and the other Jewish children run and play without fear.

On May 27, the ship arrives at Havana Harbor, but it does not dock. “What is going on?” ask worried voices. When the passengers learn that they will not be allowed to disembark, I hear their sobbing. I feel their disbelief. Soon, small fishing boats carrying relatives already living in Cuba encircle the St. Louis. Sol’s favorite cousin, Edith, is with her parents in one of those boats. How happy Sol is to see her! How close she seems as they chat through the porthole in his cabin! But Edith and safety seem very far away when, a few days later, the St. Louis must leave Havana harbor. Despite entreaties from the captain, company officials and the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Cuban president Federico Laredo Bru refuses to allow the passengers into Cuba.

I see young Sol on deck with his father as the St. Louis sails along the Florida coast. His eyes widen when he spots the lights of Miami; they are nearly close enough to touch. His father’s eyes, though, are full of sadness. The

passengers’ request for asylum in the United States has been denied. Jewish organizations petition the Canadian government. Denied.

They appeal to governments in Central and South America. Denied. Not one of these countries will help.

The television in my family room spits out news of the Syrian crisis, and my eyes open. Images of Syrian refugees mingle with the images I have just been picturing of the St. Louis passengers. And in that instant, Sol Messinger’s story becomes mine to tell.

I have been told that economic and political factors complicate the Syrian situation, just as they complicated the world’s response to the St. Louis passengers in 1939. But while I recognize the complexity, I cannot ignore the complicity of those who choose not to help. As Dr. Messinger explains in his testimony, “The story of the St. Louis really has a statement to make, and that statement is that although the Germans did the actual killing, there were a lot of other countries and a lot of other people who, although they didn’t kill, passively allowed this killing to

happen.” In this respect, what we vowed would “Never Again” happen is happening again. How can we sympathize with the passengers of the St. Louis but turn a blind eye to the men, women, and children trying to escape war and persecution today?

I may not yet fully understand all of the concerns that figure into a country’s response to the plight of immigrants and refugees, but I do understand that those concerns must include some consideration for the human beings affected. Soon enough, my classmates and I will be responsible for making decisions that will affect this country and the whole world. I want to be sure that we remember one thing: that the most successful of those decisions will be the ones that reveal an authentic concern for our fellow man.

hapman University’s annual Holocaust Art and Writing Contest reached new heights this year with a record-breaking 250 middle and high schools participating. Now in its 18th year, the contest involves some 7,000 students representing 30 states and eight countries. Each school sent to the final round of judging three entries on the theme “I Have a Story to Tell.”

The award ceremony honoring entries in prose, poetry, art and film was held March 10 in Chapman’s Memorial Hall, with about 1,000 students and teachers and 25–30 Holocaust survivors attending.

“This year, at a time when our nation is divided on many issues and when anti-semitism is on the rise, the contest takes on even greater importance and meaning,” said Marilyn Harran, Ph.D., director of Chapman’s Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education, which presents the contest.

“Students in the contest come from many backgrounds and represent great diversity, and yet they have all chosen to engage with the story of a Holocaust survivor and learn from it in ways that affirm our shared humanity,” Harran added.

“Over the past 17 years, the contest has grown in scope – except in one area: the number of Holocaust survivors in attendance decreases, making the passing on of stories and memories even more vital.”

Photo: Jeanine Hill

CHAPMAN NOW

Essayist Lillia Velau spends a moment with Holocaust survivor Phil Raucher after the award ceremony for Chapman’s annual Art and Writing Contest.

Lillia Velau is a 10th-grader at JSerra Catholic High School in San Juan Capistrano, Calif.

Her essay won first place in the high school division of the annual Holocaust Art and Writing Contest at Chapman University. She wrote about the testimony of survivor Sol Messinger.

When You Left by Juliet Marcroft

Hand in Hand by Rachel Chae Night of the Broken Glass and Broken Hearts

by Ashlyn Elggren

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Remembrance by Savila Young S P R I N G 2 017 | 15

CHAPMAN NOW

THE WONDERS OF

WIGGLE ROOM Biochemistry major Lauren Friend ’19 (far left) displays hagfish slime, which stretches to reveal its silky fibers and is being studied in the marine lab of Professor Douglas Fudge (left).

Student researchers reach deep into the slippery world of the hagfish, chasing insights that hold gobs of promise.

Story by Dennis Arp | Photos by Nathan Worden ’13 (MBA ’15) he first time she saw one, Lauren Friend ’19 was repelled. “Maybe even disgusted,” she says. But over time, she has developed a healthy respect for her research subject, the humble hagfish, which despite its slimy appearance and scavenging nature wiggles its way into the hearts of researchers by steering them toward scientific breakthroughs.

“You have to appreciate what they can teach us,” the biochemistry major says.

Friend and her Chapman University student colleagues in the marine research lab of Professor Douglas Fudge, Ph.D., have 16 | CHAPMAN MAGAZINE

dived deeply into the bottom-dwelling world of this intriguing creature. Behold the hagfish: once mistaken for a worm, with a skull but no vertebrae, lacking sight or a jaw but with the ability to produce a jaw-dropping amount of slime as a defense against predators.

Fudge has been hooked ever since he was a grad student. He considered focusing his research on squid, “but in the end, hagfish slime was something I couldn’t resist,” he says.

That slime is never far from the lives of the student researchers who frequent the stuffy closet-sized space that is the home of the hagfish at Chapman. On a recent Tuesday,

Friend descends to the basement of Hashinger Science Center and lifts the lid from a circular tank.

“We have to be careful,” she says. “They’re escape artists.”

Using a net, she rouses several hagfish from their PVC-pipe lair in this DIY marine environment. After some deft coaxing and a transfer to a plastic bucket, she holds a single coiled specimen in the palm of her hand.

Moments later, she returns the hagfish to the tank and reaches back into the bucket, then extends her fingers to reveal a transparent, mucousy, gelatinous goo.

It’s slime time.

As she holds up the pliable substance, silky strands elucidate why hagfish slime has researchers so excited. Thousands of super-strong threads – each more than 100 times thinner than a human hair – weave throughout the goo. If those strands can be replicated and mass-produced, they might provide an alternative to petroleum-based fibers like nylon and Kevlar.

“These are billion-dollar industries,” says Fudge, who adds that three industrial collaborators are in various stages of funding the team’s research.

Insights from the slime might also lead to advances in firefighting, anti-shark sprays, suspension gels for drugs – the possibilities seem limitless.

Ramteen Rafii ’18 and Dylan Blumberg ’18 are investigating just how the hagfish produces all that slime. In the controlled conditions of the lab, Rafii and Blumberg collect and then release a pre-slime substance called exudate, produced by glands on the hagfish. When it hits seawater, just a teaspoonful of the exudate almost instantly swells to create a supersized paste that clogs the gills of potential predators.

“We can hypothesize how the skeins (of the slime) unravel, but we don’t know just how they entrap the water,” Rafii says.

Their research might provide insights into clotting, and it could have food-science applications that lead to better storage gels.

“Understanding these mechanisms could reveal a lot,” Blumberg says.

ne of the research projects in Professor Douglas Fudge’s marine lab looks at how hagfish can squirm into impossibly tight places. In the basement of Hashinger Science Center, students know the feeling. They have to The research of Sara Siwiecki ’18 is also slime-related. She’s breaking down its components to better understand the mix of thread skeins and mucous cells. Imaging with an atomic-force microscope helps her investigate how positively and negatively charged ions and proteins interact.

“There are not many scientific papers except from this lab, which allows us to be super creative as we try to solve problems,” Siwiecki says.

Even Siwiecki’s family members are pitching in on the problem-solving. When they learned that the student researchers had named only one of their 94 hagfish, Siwiecki’s family took up the challenge over spring break.

“My family came up with 93 names in like 20 minutes,” Siwiecki says. “This was at an engagement party. They asked how the hagfish are doing, and that led really fast to, ‘Oh, let’s name them all.’”

It seems that like slime in seawater, the hagfish legend is a growth industry.

squeeze into a pretty snug space themselves.

That will change when the new Center for Science and Technology opens in fall 2018. The 140,000-square-foot building’s design features a marine lab with more than twice the current capacity for researching hagfish. Fudge and his colleagues in the Schmid College of Science and Technology will also have room to add more equipment such as sophisticated microscopes and high-speed cameras, which are integral to the hagfish research.

Student researchers say they can’t wait to stretch out in the new facilities once the largest building project in Chapman’s history is completed.

“There will be so much more room and so many more opportunities,” says Stacey Zuppa ’18, a biology major and hagfish researcher.

“We’ll be able to bring in a second tank and another species of hagfish. I’m excited about the possibilities.”

S P R I N G 2 017 | 17

Photo by Daniel Malikyar ’17

CHAPMAN NOW

At the Launch Labs, budding entrepreneurs incubate their ideas in “a cool little ecosystem where everyone is helping each other.”

By Matthew Wheatley (MFA ’17)

T

here’s chatter down the halls. In one room, a team strategizes how best to market its new software. In another, someone tests a virtual-reality game as a teammate gathers important data on bugs and glitches.

Everyone is perfecting their products.

In the Launch Labs, Chapman University’s startup incubator, there’s always someone working and always someone around to lend a hand.

A key initiative of Chapman’s Leatherby Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics, the Launch Labs are helping 36 startup teams – composed largely of Chapman students and alumni – prepare to succeed in the marketplace.

With so many teams sharing Launch Labs office space, collaboration and crosspollination come naturally to these budding entrepreneurs.

18 | CHAPMAN MAGAZINE

For Austin Stofer ’17, CEO and founder of siëo, which markets a Web and mobile platform designed to help other startups succeed, the company’s competitor-analysis software would not have been possible without the Launch Labs’ collaborative environment.

When siëo was just beginning, another Launch Labs company was developing an algorithm that tracked how people felt about brands or public figures on social media.

Stofer realized the tool would give siëo an edge on other businesses, so he persuaded its developer, Shevis Johnson ’18, to join forces on the project. Now they’ve combined their ideas to give siëo something no other platform can match.

“This is kind of a cool little ecosystem where everyone is helping each other out with certain things within their specialty,”

Stofer said. It’s a place where curiosity about a neighbor team’s project can lead to a role in shaping its core features, he added.

The space allows for great networking opportunities, said Karen Akiyama, administrative assistant for the Leatherby Center. The Launch Labs host events where entrepreneurs can meet mentors and investors.

Even more than that, the space tends to foster a spirit of belonging. In one case a student who failed to get into a fraternity “found his home here,” Akiyama said.

The collaborative spirit of Launch Labs has helped fuel the growth of Well Told Entertainment, a maker of virtual-reality and augmented-reality games and apps, says founder and CEO Sam Warner ’15. The Launch Labs initially gave Well Told a place to meet, and within months the startup’s

leaders developed relationships with legal teams as well as financial and businessdevelopment support experts as they also gathered advice from experienced mentors, Warner said.

“These really kindhearted and intelligent mentors were able to provide really good business-life advice, not just ‘Here’s how you set up an LLC – do the math,’” he added.

“It’s really cool to share in the ambition of these other teams and share our creativity with them.”

Well Told always needs people to test the company’s new games, and people always want to play them. For the other Launch Labs teams, “it’s a de-stressor,” Warner noted.

“Keep the door open, turn on the music and play some games. It’s a really cool thing to be able to provide to a lot of the teams here.”

Whether doors are open or closed, new ideas naturally form, Launch Labs team members say.

“Everyone has their own expertise,” said Jen Re ’15, Well Told’s animation lead.

“If (other teams) need any creative work, they usually come knocking on the door.”

Another startup that has benefited from the incubator atmosphere is 23FIFTN, a creative content and branding enterprise that has won seven American Advertising Awards.

Legal advice the 23FIFTN team members have received has been invaluable, helping them with non-disclosure agreements and other documents they need to shoot music videos or ad campaigns for clients such as the music producer Marshmello, Fujifilm and MVMT watches.

The 23FIFTN team has gained insights that would have been far more difficult to amass if the startup existed outside the Launch Labs ecosystem, company leaders say.

“We were able to see the workflow of other companies that may not necessarily do what we do but had a business structure in place,” said Daniel Malikyar ’17, who along with Reed Matthews ’16 and Karam Gill ’16 founded 23FIFTN. “It taught us that we need to take a little bit of what they do and formulate it so that it can cater to our company.”

Beyond documents and infrastructure, the Launch Labs provide benefits that are harder to quantify but are just as sustaining.

“Seeing the attitude of everyone in here is really inspiring,” Matthews said.

From an Icelandic lagoon that was the site of a photo shoot for a watch ad by the startup 23FIFTN (far left), to a virtual-reality world created by Well Told Entertainment (immediate left), the young entrepreneurs of Chapman University’s Launch Labs are already having an impact.

Below, Jen Re ’15 of Well Told and Kyle Herron ’17 of siëo are among those who praise the program’s collaborative spirit.

S P R I N G 2 017 | 19

Cultural Center welcomes students eager to advance its multifaceted mission of bridging divides and fostering inclusion.

Photo by Nathan Worden ’13 (MBA ’15)

By Dawn Bonker (MFA ’19)

‘IT JUST FEELS LIKE HOME’

The Cross-Cultural Center is welcoming all kinds of gatherings, including informal ones such as this one bringing together, from left, Safieh Moshir-Fatemi ’19, Lel Jones ’17, Rose Mackenzie ’17, Farrah Su ’17, Van Chung ’17 and Olivia Harden ’19.

fter the years of planning, after all those discussions and questions that started with “should” or “would” or “what if” and were freighted with serious thoughts, concerns and hopes about Chapman University’s new Cross-Cultural Center, there is a funny little thing going on that no one expected.

Food appears.

It’s not too mysterious. Leftovers happen when there are so many events, guest talks, club meetings and social gatherings. But students say it’s more than a perk. It’s a tangible sign of the role the center already plays in student life so soon after its opening, which many see as a milestone moment for the University.

“Honestly, from the first week, I think there’s always been some food in here. I feel like in a really weird way that it signifies that it’s a home for a lot of students,” said business and French double major Camille Wampler ’17 when she and fellow members of the University Programming Board arrived for their meeting and discovered a tray of still-warm pasta and garlic bread left by, well, no one was quite sure whom. Not that it mattered.

“It just feels like home to see people having a good time and hanging out,” Wampler said.

That’s just one brand of welcome the center has extended in its first days. Since its February ribbon-cutting, the center, located on the third floor of Argyros Forum, has hosted film nights, talks and discussion forums. Student clubs and Greek Life organizations hold meetings in its four unique conference rooms. A clutch of cardinalcolored sofas in the main lounge has proved to be a good landing for informal gatherings.

And that’s just the beginning. Organizers are excited about the center’s future as a hub of cultural life on campus – a place where students can learn about diversity in

Photo by Dennis Arp

Chapman’s new Cross-

“The intersection of ideas is natural here,” says Leti Romo, right, assistant director of cross-cultural engagement at Chapman. Joining Romo at the center’s ribbon-cutting event are, from left, Dean of Students Jerry Price, Imani Woodley ’18, Annabell Liao ’17, Tyler Samano ’17, Justice Crudup ’17, Cassidy Scanlon ’17 and Eugenia Lee ’17.

all its forms and those who need support in those journeys can find a haven. Leti Romo, Chapman’s assistant director of cross-cultural engagement, looks forward to planning leadership programs, retreats, guest speakers, mentoring services and outreach activities in the residence halls.

The center is uniquely equipped for that multifaceted mission, Romo says. Unlike the ethnically based centers that rose up at colleges and universities in previous decades, Chapman’s center was developed to bridge all identities of race, culture, ethnicity, gender, class and economic background. The design was intentional. It addressed students’ vision for such a center and administrators’ desire that the space not foster isolation, but rather inclusion.

“It’s different because it’s specific to different identities,” Romo said. “It encompasses a lot.

The intersection of ideas is natural here.”

In a symbolic tribute to the goals for the space, students from the Department of Dance performed a modern-dance piece at the ribbon-cutting, gathering a rainbow of ribbons into a single cluster. As part of her blessing for the center, Gail Stearns, Ph.D., dean of the Wallace All Faiths Chapel, offered these words: “Each person is like all others, each person is like some others, each person is like no other. Each culture is like all others, each culture is like some others, each culture is like no other.”

Such sentiments were long at the heart of students’ dreams for the center. But they gained momentum in 2015 as part of the UniversityContinued on next page

“EACH CULTURE IS LIKE ALL OTHERS, EACH CULTURE IS LIKE SOME OTHERS, EACH CULTURE IS LIKE NO OTHER.” — Gail Stearns, Ph.D., dean of the Wallace All Faiths Chapel

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S P R I N G 2 017 | 21

wide Diversity Project, an initiative aimed at welcoming more underrepresented groups to Chapman. Some tracks of the project are still being planned, while others have been realized, including a refurbished and bigger food pantry for students facing food insecurity, and expanded community outreach to schools and civic groups in the City of Orange.

inaugural names and themes include Perseverance, Asian-Americans; Respect, LGBTQIA(+); Resilience, Latinx; and Hope, African-Americans. The advisory board will rotate themes and names each year.

On a recent afternoon, biology majors AJ Silvia ’18 and Matt Ibrahim ’18 hunkered down to study in the Hope room, surrounded by the artwork of African-American artist Michael Massenburg. They enjoyed it for its own sake – “I just love looking at the artwork,” Ibrahim said. But they were also moved by its significance.

A SENSE OF BELONGING, A PLACE TO THRIVE

By Amanda Ball ’17

MEET MATCHA

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Photo by Dawn Bonker (MFA ’19)

A green friend greets all who visit the new Cross-Cultural Center. It’s a jade-colored dragon about the size of a springer spaniel that students have dubbed Matcha, a nod to the popular tea powder of the same color.

But the jury’s out on Matcha’s gender.

While the center embraces serious conversations about gender identity and diversity, students had to smile when it was time to choose a nook for Matcha. Where should he be placed? Oh, but wait, is Matcha a he? And by the way, is that real jade?

And where was Matcha’s original home?

No one knows for sure. Matcha was delivered one day when no one was there to ask questions.

“With dragons, we assume it’s male.

But it’s interesting that we assigned gender to it at all,” Leti Romo, Chapman’s assistant director of cross-cultural engagement, said with a laugh, adding that the dragon gender question inspired “maybe a two-minute conversation.”

Most important is that a happy place was found for a beautiful-and-handsomestone-possibly-jade dragon that is starting conversations. Welcome home, Matcha.

Michael Massenburg’s mixed-media work Still I Rise hangs in the Hope conference room.

AJ Silvia ’18, left, and Matt Ibrahim ’18, both biology majors, find a quiet study space in the new Cross-Cultural Center.

Meanwhile, the welcome mat is definitely out at the center, said public relations and advertising major Sneh Chawla ’19.

“I walk in here a lot, and there hasn’t been a single time where there wasn’t a friendly face,” she said. “A lot of people can truly be their true selves, whereas in other places on campus they might have to hide part of their true identity.”

The teaching literally extends to the walls, too. A variety of artwork, historic photos, timelines and videos selected by a student advisory council are displayed in the center’s four conference rooms, and each honors an underrepresented identity. The

“I’ve walked into all the rooms and looked at the photos and images,” Silvia said. “It’s beautiful artwork that introduces you to new artists and pulls you in. And it makes you think.”

Those kind of serendipitous lessons can be profound, President Daniele Struppa said in his remarks at the center’s ribbon-cutting ceremony.

In a personal reflection, he recalled how his worldview was changed when he arrived in the United States as a graduate student from Italy and for the first time in his life found himself in a community with cultural, religious and ethnic diversity.

“Within the first few months a new world was opened to me, a universe that I didn’t know existed,” he said. “I realized that the world was so different, so much more interesting than what I thought it had been.

I think that the United States is a great place where these cross-cultural conversations happen.”

Some of the students who long advocated for the center and are the most grateful to see it launched will enjoy it just briefly.

Annabell Liao ’17, president of the Student Government Association, graduated in May, but shared tearful and moving words of thanks during the center’s opening event.

Liao recounted how in her early days at Chapman, she was often uncomfortable and admitted to having “mixed feelings” about fitting in. She said she was fortunate to find community in the Next Step Social Justice Retreat, but she is excited for the opportunities that can thrive in a permanent facility with year-round programs.

“Come learn about the various identities on campus,” she said. “Even with different histories and cultures, you’ll find that we still have much in common.”

When I first arrived on Chapman’s campus four years ago, it was hard for me to feel like I was a part of the Chapman Family. I was a long way from my home in Chicago, and everything felt so unfamiliar. If I had a problem, I couldn’t walk downstairs and have my parents help me fix it.

After my first semester here, I was fatigued with the thought of 3½ more years at an institution where the majority of my peers and professors didn’t seem to look like or understand me. I was almost sure that I would transfer if my experience didn’t improve. I needed to create change, and I did it by becoming more involved.

The student community I found with other underrepresented or marginalized students helped me navigate the culture shock and develop a sense of belonging.

I joined Chapman’s Black Student Union (BSU) because it seemed like a good way to make friends. I didn’t anticipate how important BSU as a space and community would become to me. It was where I felt comfortable enough to be my authentic self. I gained the confidence to believe that I could feel just as at home elsewhere on campus if I put myself out there.

During my four years at Chapman, I’ve served on the executive boards of various clubs, including BSU and Chapman Feminists. With a friend I started Chap Slam, a club for slam poetry. I have also worked for three years as a program assistant in Cross-Cultural Engagement.

While participating in these activities I have met communities of people who shared my sense of displacement. Together we advocated for a multicultural center, and I found inspiration in helping students feel like they were being heard.

I‘ve collaborated with other students to plan

Photo by Nathan Worden ’13 (MBA ’15)

‘IT JUST FEELS LIKE HOME’

events that uplift, empower and educate about the experiences of marginalized peoples.

Students have long wanted a space on this campus where they feel like they can come and be themselves. When the campus climate is not welcoming, it is easy for students to feel like it is their job to fix it and forge a space for themselves, because they may be unfamiliar with all the avenues of a university.

The Cross-Cultural Center is significant because it shows that the University is addressing the unique ways in which marginalized students have to navigate predominantly white institutions.

The resources that will be available to students in the center indicate that Chapman wants more than for students to simply exist on this campus.

It wants them to thrive.

When I first stepped into the Cross-Cultural Center even before its opening, I was overwhelmed with joy. As the furniture was being placed and the artwork put on the walls, I couldn’t wait until my new home felt lived in. Now every day when I come into the office to work, it is a like a breath of relief to see people I know and can relate to hanging out, working on homework and enjoying each other’s company. Watching people interact with the space, I feel as though all of the open forums, protests, opinion pieces in The Panther, meetings with administrators, faculty and staff, and meetings with members of the Chapman Diversity Project have paid off. I know that now fewer students will feel as lost as I was.

I am immensely thankful to all who have helped fight for this new home, and I am excited for the opportunity to welcome future students into it. The Cross-Cultural Center is an important space to help students feel welcomed into the Chapman Family.

S P R I N G 2 017 | 23

It’s getting late in the semester, and Leah Thomas ’17 is deep into the capstone project that will culminate her degree in environmental science and policy. Meanwhile, Alton Moore (JD ’17) ponders constitutional questions as he wraps up his Fowler Law studies and maps the intensive prep that’s his prelude to the bar exam.

Free time teases them like a wistful dream.

And yet the two Chapman University students don’t hesitate when asked to take part in a thoughtful exchange that at times will highlight their areas of expertise and at others nudge them into unfamiliar terrain.

“Life begins where your comfort zone ends,” Moore says.

The two find inspiration in a dialogue between Chapman professors Vernon Smith and Peter McLaren that ran in the winter issue of Chapman Magazine. Like the faculty scholars, Moore, a conservative-to-moderate Republican, and Thomas, a progressive Democrat, slip easily into a friendly discourse that belies their political differences and seems light years removed from the rancor of the most recent presidential campaign.

Here are excerpts from their exchange.

Read more at chapman.edu/magazine.

MOORE: I looked you up on LinkedIn. It’s pretty impressive what you’ve done. I didn’t do anything like that as an undergrad.

How long ago did you start your blog?

THOMAS: I’ve been freelance writing all during my college career, but I started my blog “Green Girl Food” in January. I’ve been building an audience on Instagram, and that seems to work well. I’m getting the kind of traffic I want. I do interviews and write about sustainable food and plant-based eating.

MOORE: I would imagine that takes a lot of work.

THOMAS: It’s a lot of work to attract followers, but it’s a pretty fun space. I write about more serious things, too, but food is a passion.

MOORE: Dennis mentioned that you had worked in Kansas and met the farmers there and learned their opinions about EPA regulation. How was that experience?

THOMAS: I got involved with the Student Conservation Association, which has internships with the National Park Service.

My first one was in rural Kansas, where I worked alongside a lot of farmers because it

Conversation Peace Leah Thomas ’17 is an environmental science and policy major who has worked as a lead resident advisor at Chapman and as a leadership intern for the Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve. She has also served as an editorial assistant for Kimberly Elise and in multiple roles aiding the National Park Service at

MOORE: Sounds like you learned a lot.

I imagine that if you’re a farmer in Kansas, you can feel pretty isolated from Washington.

You work long hours, and your life is getting harder.

THOMAS: It’s true. And then they get a letter in the mail or a phone call telling them they aren’t allowed use a certain pesticide anymore. It’s like their rights are being taken away. This is at the same time that their children are going to college in Kansas City Continued on next page

Editing by Dennis Arp Photos by Nathan Worden ’13 (MBA ’15)

Alton Moore (JD ’17) is a third-year student at Chapman’s Fowler School of Law with a dual emphasis in tax law and business law. He has served in legal externships with the Office of Chief Counsel, Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, as well as internships with The Ayco Company and

President’s Park (The White House) and the

Ernst & Young, for which he will begin

Nicodemus National Historic Site in Kansas.

work after taking the bar exam in July.

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was the time of the annual wheat harvest.

So I rode on combines and talked with them about environmental policy. I learned there is a big disconnect between environmental policymaking and rural Kansans. To many of them, the government is Big Brother, telling them they can’t use certain pesticides. Even though I’m one who thinks they shouldn’t use pesticides that are found to be harmful to the environment, I realized that policy is just getting handed down to these farmers without any face-to-face interaction. At that time I wanted to someday work for the EPA, so when I told them that, I was surrounded by farmers every day telling me what they wanted to tell the EPA.

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to see yourself in the people in the community.

You don’t have to be the same race as them, but you have to be able to see them as people. It’s scary to be a police officer, and it’s scary to work in certain neighborhoods.

So I’m not blaming police officers.

MOORE: I was reading about records in certain cities, and there does seem to be a disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics being stopped in some cities.

THOMAS: I was blissfully unaware of my race until I got into college. I think my dad, as a black man, had different experiences.

He’d say, “I got stopped for no reason,” and I’d say, “Are you sure you weren’t speeding?”

I just so trusted the system. And then I was confronted with Ferguson.

or somewhere even farther away, and often they aren’t coming back to help. It’s like the family business is dying, and that’s very sad.

MOORE: I know that Trump has picked Scott Pruitt to head the EPA, and you probably know more about this than I do.

What are your thoughts on rolling back regulations?

THOMAS: It’s hard. Growing up, I

Moore, a conservative-to-moderate Republican, and Thomas, a progressive Democrat, slip easily into a friendly discourse that belies their political differences and seems light years removed from the rancor of the most recent presidential campaign.

MOORE: Someone who is very good

always thought that science would be the kind of thing people trusted. I’ve always loved science and math and thought facts were facts. It was a dream job in my freshman year to work with the EPA. It’s not anymore.

What’s happening has made me go more in the direction of state environmental protection.

at that is Neil deGrasse Tyson. His book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry comes out in May. Someone like him would be good at telling this type of information.

In your email you also said you wanted to talk about racial profiling and criminal justice reform. I know you grew up in St. Louis.

How does that influence your perspective?

MOORE: I’m one who tends to focus on

THOMAS: I grew up about 10 minutes

what’s proven. I tend to agree with the 97 percent consensus (among climate scientists) that we are contributing to carbon emissions and should address that. I’ve also been reading some articles about the coal industry.

Trump is a jobs president, and that influences his thinking. He wants to bring back the jobs of hard-working coal miners. But even the coal industry acknowledges that they’re not going to be able to hire back all the workers.

THOMAS: At the same time that I’ve dedicated my life to science, I don’t want people to trust things blindly. So I understand why people are not so trusting of the government. People have been hurt on both sides. However, I think it’s time for scientists to become a bit more political. Scientists usually present their data to other scientists and write in journals. I think now it’s time to present to the people.

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from Ferguson, and I was there during the unrest that followed the shooting of Michael Brown (in 2014). My mother was a counselor in the Ferguson school district and was helping children process all that they were seeing and hearing.

MOORE: I’m hopeful that with new training and uses of technology like body cameras, we’ll see fewer incidents like this.

But I think it’s important to understand that it’s hard to be a police officer. They wake up and go to work every day not knowing if they’re coming home.

THOMAS: I don’t blame police officers.

Everyone has implicit bias. I have it. Like when I’m working with an African-American girl who wants to become a doctor, I can see myself in her. I think community policing is very important, because you have to be able

The day of the altercation, I was driving near Ferguson when the radio station shut down and people were asking, “What’s happening? A body has been in the street for two hours.” And at this point the body was still uncovered. People were speculating: Were there 10 shots? Fifteen shots? There was a fight – his hands were down, his hands were up. There was a story in this narrative that was able to form because of misinformation. Then there was a fire close to us, and suddenly we couldn’t get any television coverage. It was insane. That’s why I plan to write a book about my experience in Ferguson, because of all the misinformation. It’s a study in social media.

One of my favorite poems is by Langston Hughes, about Harlem. “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up, like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore – and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over – like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags, like a heavy load. Or does it explode?”

That kind of describes Ferguson. They were just baking, simmering in the sun, then they exploded. And then I realized I was black. (Laughter.)

MOORE: I know that when we go through traumatic experiences, it’s important

to have family and friends and others to rely on. From my understanding, I hear about movements like Black Lives Matter, and I don’t know who is leading it. I think you need people to shine a light on abuses of power, but there are always going to be some people who enter from outside that realm.

There are some who will just say “Black Lives Matter” and then throw a chair through a window. Sometimes there is a mob mentality.

It makes me think about what’s happening on some college campuses, where free speech is coming up against people who don’t want to hear from someone who doesn’t think like they do. I think everyone has a right to protest, including to say that they don’t want to hear someone speak. But I think we need to lean on the First Amendment, especially when it becomes a mob mentality, because First Amendment rights often get lost in the mob.

born in Ohio, and he moved here and never wanted to go back. My family is very conservative, which is common for where I grew up. My views are based on economic and financial incentives. I believe in limited government and less regulation. Clearly there has to be some regulation of businesses to cover unfair practices, and I’m for some environmental regulation. We need taxes because we want good roads and good schools, but the incentives should be there for job growth and innovation.

On social issues, I think I was a bit naïve growing up. I went to Arizona State for my undergraduate degree, and I benefited from meeting a more diverse group of people in college. I came to Chapman to go to law school and pursue an emphasis in tax law.

For me, it was a really good decision.

MOORE: That’s a concern. I think the

THOMAS: I don’t have a deep under-

THOMAS: I think the last election shows

standing of tax policy. I’ve been working since I was 15, so I know something about paying taxes. What can you tell me about President Trump’s tax plan?

that a lot of people feel marginalized. A lot of people felt that they were left out.

foreign income in China. So I think he has some interesting proposals. No one knows what companies would really come back, and then there is the question of whether it would increase the deficit.

THOMAS: I’m curious how it would pan out on a social-justice level because it seems like it would just lead to more stratification. thing about the president is that he knows he’s not the smartest person in the room, so he defers to other people. But is he picking the right people? I think this is true with every president – they are only as effective as their colleagues, including those in Congress.

And this president already has seen how hard it is to get things through Congress.

THOMAS: There are a lot of people who say things I don’t like, but I agree that they have the right to say them. However, there’s a difference between sharing ideas and hate speech. I’d like to hear your opinions about that. Should universities coddle people who participate in hate speech, and what is that boundary between just talking and saying things that may incite violence?

MOORE: I tend to stick with what the law says. There’s a debate about whether a school is a government entity or not. In past cases, it’s been decided that a school is covered by the First Amendment, so if it tries to restrict what you say, then generally that’s not allowed. But there are forms of unprotected speech, and one of those is speech that presents an imminent threat to others. Exactly where you can draw that line is unclear to me, even though I’ve studied it.

I do think it’s important that schools promote a variety of views. I think in some cases, universities are trying to bring in speakers who present another view, but people are coming in from outside and shutting down that opportunity. I think in those cases, everyone loses.

THOMAS: I agree. I want to hear a variety of views. College should be a place where we exchange ideas and get a deeper understanding of issues. One of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation is that I’d like to know more about your views on the role of government and how you came to develop them.

MOORE: I’m an Orange County native; I grew up in Mission Viejo. My father was

MOORE: Well, he wants to bolster the economy and bring jobs back to America.

Under his reform proposal, everyone gets an individual rate reduction, so everyone stands to benefit. Then there are corporate taxes.

America has the highest corporate rate in the world. Trump wants to bring that down from about 40 percent to 15 percent, which would make it one of the lowest rates. This could incentivize a lot of companies to bring back their manufacturing, production, etc., to the U.S. He has also proposed a 10 percent one-time fee on foreign income, targeting companies like Apple, which has a lot of

MOORE: A lot of people voted from a financial perspective.

THOMAS: Where I’m coming from is based less on economics. I’m voting as someone who is black and a woman and who has a sister who is gay. So I come from a social perspective.

I have this triple layer of things I need to consider before I look at the financial impact.

MOORE: I think we all come at this starting with the perspective of our background. That’s why discussions like this are so valuable. It’s been great to share this time with you and to learn more about your perspective.

THOMAS: I’ve enjoyed it, too.

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INTO THE

Chapman authors help drive the flourishing young adult market, attracting way more than just teen readers.

By Dawn Bonker (MFA ’19) | Illustration by Jonny Lindner

WORLD Sarah Nicole Smetana ’09 did not intend to write a great young adult novel. She just wanted to write a great novel, something akin to the coming-of-age stories she loves.

Turns out, she did both.

Next year HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollins, will publish Smetana’s The Midnights, a teen girl’s story of loss and creativity set in Southern California. Smetana chuckles now to think she resisted the teen tag, even as her agent shopped it around to both adult and young adult publishers.

“I really didn’t know what ‘young adult’ was. I’ve always loved writing about teenagers. Even a lot of the adult literary fiction I love best is about teenagers,” says

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Smetana, who counts Janet Fitch’s White Oleander among her favorites. “I just assumed it would be an adult book.”

Not to worry. The teen shelf is proving to be one of the coolest hangouts in publishing.

Children’s and young adult (YA) fiction accounts for $1.4 billion a year in industry revenue, and that figure is rising, according to the Association of American Publishers.

Heaps of adults are buying YA in particular.

A Publishers Weekly survey indicates that more than half of YA readers are adults.

YA is starting to be lickety-split responsive, too. The Hate You Give, a YA novel about the Black Lives Matter movement, hit the top of the New York Times YA

bestseller list within a week of its February release and is already optioned for film.

The trend is proving fruitful for a number of Chapman University alumni contributing popular titles in this category. Both creative writing and film alumni have published YA tales ranging from dystopias and mysteries, to fantasy and contemporary drama. Among them is Jeff Garvin ’98, whose widely praised novel about a gender-fluid teen was featured at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in April. The American Library Association also included Symptoms of Being Human on its 2017 list of best YA fiction, and Barnes & Noble listed it as one of “16 YAs That Get it Right.”

In Praise of Tenacity Whether they chose YA or it chose them, the authors say it hardly matters. To a one, they maintain that regardless of audience, market trend or genre, all good writing starts with the habits they honed in Chapman’s writing programs: tenacity, discipline, devotion to craft, and practice, practice, practice.

In short, there’s nothing easy about it.

“There are so many moments when you feel completely overwhelmed by the task at hand. You have to have the willingness to go back and beat yourself up about these stories until you get it right,” says Julia Walton (MFA creative writing ’16), whose debut YA novel, Words on Bathroom Walls, is the story of a schizophrenic teen and will be published

by Random House in July. “The biggest thing that my workshops did is teach me that it’s OK to fail and to learn from that and to continue to experiment.”

Kate Karyus Quinn (MFA film production ’06) has published four YA novels, most recently Down with the Shine, from HarperTeen.

Quinn cut her teeth on two other novels that were rejected. She credits the training ground of Dodge College for teaching her that first efforts often don’t stick.

“Being in the editing lab and putting different pieces together, just having that time to play with story and see the different ways you can put the story together, I learned a lot from that. I think that has a lot to do with how I put stories together on the page,” she says.

Continued on next page

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“There are so many moments when you feel completely overwhelmed by the task at hand. You have to have the willingness to go back and beat yourself up about these stories until you get it right.” — Julia Walton (MFA creative writing ’16), whose debut YA novel,

Adventures in Publishing

Words on Bathroom Walls, will be published by Random House in July

Some self-published writers are also finding success in the young adult market. In fact, one alumna novelist says that now is a great time to be what she calls an “author-preneur.”

“Self-publishing used to be considered a vanity choice, but with the current flux of the book industry, independent publishing has blossomed into an exciting new market,” says Ingrid Sundberg (MFA screenwriting ’03).

Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, recently published Sundberg’s debut novel All We Left Behind. Still, the author acknowledges that self-publishing is intriguing.

She features several self-published authors in her blog at ingridsundberg.com and offers writing tips to all writers on her YouTube channel called Ingrid’s Notes.

“There’s never been a better time to take your publishing career into your own hands,” she says.

Chapman alumni are part of that independent writing community. Here are a few of their new titles. Each is available on Amazon.com.

Unshorn Thread is the first of a planned fantasy trilogy by Colin Druce-McFadden ’05, who began work on the series in one of Professor Blaylock’s creative writing classes.

Jim Blaylock

Photo by Troy Nikolic

Julia Walton (MFA creative writing ’16) submitted the final draft of her first YA novel two weeks before she gave birth to her daughter, Alexandria. Now she’s juggling motherhood and a second novel, which means that she writes whenever and however she can.

• The

Magical Adventures of Brian Leonard by Adam Myman ’95 pits an average teen against a scary world of ghosts and ectoplasmic goo.

Kate Karyus Quinn (MFA film production ’06)

Veronica Bane ’11

Jeff Garvin ’98

• The

• Jeremy

Bixtu and the Hillman Husky by Lisbeth Welch-Stamos ’89 is a novel for middle grades that combines time travel and magic in a Southern California setting.

If you’re publishing for the YA market, we’d love to hear about it. Please share your news at magazine@chapman.edu.

It was painful at the time, but Veronica Bane ’11 remembers that the high expectations of her first writing professor were a wake-up call. Now she’s grateful for that course taught

by Ryan Gattis ’01, who himself debuted in YA and has since published the adult novel All Involved, which unfolds over the six days of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. HBO is producing an adaptation of the 2015 novel.

“Professor Gattis completely changed how I write by the level of discipline that he demanded,” says Bane, who teaches high school English in Los Angeles and writes YA novellas for Black Hill Press, a small publishing house started by Kevin Staniec ’01.

“I don’t think I’d be writing professionally without his encouragement.”

The Habit of Reading

Ingrid Sundberg (MFA screenwriting ’03)

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The growth of YA delights professor and novelist Jim Blaylock, director of Chapman’s MFA program in creative writing.

“It means that the world is full of young readers, who once having developed the

habit of reading, will branch out to books of all varieties,” says Blaylock, a pioneering author of steampunk and fantasy who has also published in the YA market.

He’s seen an uptick in the number of creative writing students working on YA projects. But he credits alumni success to the program’s focus on teaching writing, whatever the genre.

“We’re interested in students developing an original voice and writing stories and novels that are aimed at advanced, thoughtful readers, regardless of genre. That said, we want to help writers in the program write as well as they can. If they choose to write a genre novel, then we aim to help them make it as good as they can make it,” he says. “A novel is a novel regardless of the audience.”

Indeed, craft is the foundation, say the alumni writing YA. But neither do they lose sight of the unique needs and sensibilities of their young fans – readers who turn to fiction not just for entertainment but for comfort and understanding as they make that teetering leap to adulthood.

Inspiring Devotion Sarah Nicole Smetana ’09

“It’s such a great time of life,” Quinn says.

“So much drama. And everything matters so much and you’re really trying to figure out who you are. It’s definitely not the last time you’ll do that; that’s something I know. It definitely continues. But it’s the first time you have to wrestle that out.”

The authors suspect the universality of such adolescent themes may also be why adults are such avid readers.

“It helps them puzzle out what they went through,” Garvin says.

That tendency extends to YA nonfiction, as well. Neesha Arter ’12 says teen and adult readers write to her about Controlled, a memoir published by Heliotrope that recounts her recovery from rape and an eating disorder.

“Readers are becoming more open to the tough topics, which I think is incredibly necessary,” Arter says.

Still, it is the matchless passion and enthusiasm of the younger fans that bring the YA authors the most joy. Teen readers fill social media with comments, opinions, reviews and even carefully crafted photos of their favorite books. They start online conversations with their favorite authors through Twitter, Goodreads and fan blogs.

Some even make a hobby of amassing hardcover collections.

“They want to own it and love it and fan over it,” Smetana says.

Quinn, who adores the Instagram photos her fans post of her books, envies young readers in this new age of communal, almost tribal, reading.

“When I was their age, reading was my secret hobby,” she says. “There just wasn’t that community, and I wish there had been. I think I would have been online and blogging about books and finding people who loved the same things I do. It’s an amazing community of people who are excited about books.”

Neesha Arter ’12

Perhaps best of all is that this audience is especially keen about writing to favorite authors. Garvin treasures a note from a teen reader who received an early-review copy of Symptoms of Being Human from a friend.

The reader found comfort and identity in the character’s transgender experience.

“Reading my book was their way of going, ‘Oh, gosh. This is me,’” Garvin says. After that, the author didn’t worry much about critical reviews. “It was such a relief for me.

When the book comes out, I thought no matter what the reviewers say, I touched this person. And I win.”

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General Greatness: Historian’s Efforts Tell Soldiers’ Tales

Rich Stories Emerge from Bausch’s World

A

By Robyn Norwood

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S Photo by Dennis Arp

s he launches a new nationwide initiative to save America’s war letters, Chapman University historian Andrew Carroll is also sharing an astonishing collection of writings by the only six-star general in our nation’s history.

Carroll’s recently released book My Fellow Soldiers tells the story of Gen. John Pershing and the U.S. experience in World War I via diaries and other writings that are part of an unparalleled collection of war correspondences at Chapman. Carroll’s book frames the challenge faced by Pershing, who led the U.S. Expeditionary Forces, transforming them from a primitive group into a 1.5-million-member unit whose contributions proved decisive during the Great War. Carroll’s own campaign spans the nation, seeking to collect and preserve at least 1 million war-related correspondences from every conflict in U.S. history, from handwritten missives penned during the American Revolution to emails sent from Iraq and Afghanistan. Carroll is the founding director of Chapman’s Center for American War Letters, and he’s speaking at libraries, schools, historical societies, museums and veterans’ organizations to encourage people to donate their war-related correspondences so they will be preserved forever.

“I believe there has never been a coordinated initiative of this size and scope to save American war-related letters and emails,” Carroll says.

“These correspondences help us to honor and remember the troops. No one can tell their stories better than they can.”

In My Fellow Soldiers: General John Pershing and the Americans Who Helped Win the Great War (Penguin Press), Carroll includes littleknown and newly uncovered letters by Pershing and those who served with him. The writings reveal an emotionally vulnerable man whose personal tragedy kept him focused on victory.

In August 1915, Pershing’s beloved wife and three young daughters perished in a house fire; only his 6-year-old son, Warren, survived.

With My Fellow Soldiers, never before has the war’s profound impact on America been conveyed with such humanity and emotional force.

Historian Andrew Carroll shows Chapman President Daniele Struppa one of the latest additions to the Center for American War Letters.

Insightful Experience he Great War was a grand success for PBS. The six-hour series that aired on American Experience was called “enormously absorbing” by The Wall Street Journal and “detailed and entertaining” by The New York Times. Prominently featured were Chapman University historians Andrew Carroll and Jennifer Keene, Ph.D., both of whom offered insights during each of the three nights. In addition, Keene consulted throughout the process, reviewing scripts, vetting rough cuts and suggesting other historians for on-camera interviews.

“The opportunity to translate written scholarship to documentary form so

itting in a darkened theatre at New York’s French Institute, author Richard Bausch watched as six of his stories came to life on the screen, entwined in ways he hadn’t recognized as he wrote them.

Though the private screening of Espèces Menacées (Endangered Species) with director Gilles Bourdos was “an incredible experience,” the committing of ink to paper still holds sway for Bausch, a Chapman University professor and the acclaimed author of 12 novels and nine books of short stories.

“It’s the book. It’s always the book,” said Bausch, whose latest work, Living in the Weather of the World, was released April 4.

“I get better as I get older, I think,” he added. “I look at the stories I did when I was in my 40s, and I don’t know, they just don’t have the same resonance as the ones I’m writing now.

I’m proud of all of them. I wouldn’t let them out of the house if I wasn’t proud of them. But I just think this book is richer.”

The New York Times reviewer Dominic Smith says readers of Living in the Weather of the World are “in the hands of a writer keenly attuned to the subtleties of human frailty and want.”

Set mostly in Memphis, where Bausch lived for seven years before joining the Chapman faculty, the book’s 14 stories explore romantic

Jennifer Keene, Ph.D.

accurately and effectively is a scholar’s dream come true,” says Keene, a renowned World War I expert and president of the Society of Military History.

Viewers found the material just as compelling because “it’s not just like a history lesson; it feels like stories that are important for us to know now,” she adds. “At a moment when we’re thinking about terrorism and the balance between freedom and safety concerns, about racial tensions and women’s rights, about America’s role in the world, it’s important to remember that the stories of World War I speak to our times as well.”

Richard Bausch

and familial relationships that bloom in the humidity or wither in the heat and the passing of time.

In “The Same People,” a married couple contemplates the end of their days as she faces a terminal illness. In “The Lineaments of Gratified Desire,” a title taken from a line by poet William Blake, a young artist who is engaged to be married predictably tumbles into a torrid affair with his nude model, the fiancée of a wealthy elderly man. (It does not end well.)

In “Still Here, Still There,” World War II survivors from opposite sides reunite in a companion piece to Bausch’s 2009 novel Peace, which also is scheduled to become a movie, joining the current Bourdos film and 1994’s The Last Good Time, based on Bausch’s novel of the same name.

The writer’s life has suited Bausch, and his enthusiasm for it has not waned. A 13th novel is in the works, though he hasn’t decided which of several in-progress manuscripts it will be. His writing process remains a mix of diligence and mystery. Something of value emerges, and Bausch cannot always tell you how.

“I never feel like I’m getting enough done,” he said. “I always feel like it’s catch as catch can, but then it mounts up.”

Photo by Jeanine Hill

BOOKSHELF

“Never mind success, go for greatness,” says Presidential Fellow Ruebén Martinez, with faculty colleague Anaida Colon-Muniz.

Innovative Fellow

S

pend any time with Chapman University Presidential Fellow Ruebén Martinez and you’ll witness his special brand of magic, such as when he says, “I work 10 days a week, but I like what I do.”

His enthusiasm and good humor helped him turn his Santa Ana barbershop into a beloved bookstore, earning him a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. And in April he received the Innovator’s Award at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Martinez shows “how books can be celebrated anywhere, and how essential they are to all our lives,” says Carolyn Kellogg, Times book editor.

Today the legacy of the barbershopturned-bookstore lives on at Centro Comunitario de Educación, a community learning center operated by Chapman, and Martinez encourages young people from underrepresented groups to pursue college.

“With the kids at the University, I say never mind success, go for greatness,” he says.

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BOOKSHELF

IN MEMORIAM

The Stars Align for a Generational Journey

By Robyn Norwood

I

n the wee hours one night in 1989, Doug Dechow came home from his job as a bartender and found a party in his living room.

“I saw this woman across the room, and surrounding her were three of my very good friends, and it was kind of like she was holding court,” said Dechow, then a student at Knox College in Illinois and now digital humanities and science librarian at Chapman University.

“I thought, ‘That’s an interesting person. We should meet at some point.’”

Dechow went straight to bed that night, but soon he would go for a walk across campus with Anna Leahy – then a recent Knox graduate and now a professor of English and director of Chapman’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity. Not long after that, on a date to an air show, they discovered their mutual passion for anything that flies.

“I was shocked that you were willing to go,” he said, turning toward her, “because there was no one else in my life who was willing to go to this air show with me.”

So began the romance that led to Generation Space: A Love Story, the new book by the nowmarried couple about their love for rockets, shuttles, jets and each other.

The book is part memoir and part nonfiction look at the era of space exploration spanning President John F. Kennedy’s

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Louie, Take a Look at This!

My Time with Huell Howser

Twyla and Charles Martin

(Prospect Park Books) Luis Fuerte and David Duron

Charles D. Martin

Three years after the death of Howser, Louie – aka Luis Fuerte, a five-time Emmy-winning cameraman – shares the stories of their adventures exploring California, making great television and showcasing Howser’s infectious love for the Golden State.

Generation Space co-authors Anna Leahy and Doug Dechow share a love of rockets, shuttles, jets and each other.

1961 pledge to put a man on the moon and the last flight of the Space Shuttle in 2011. The work takes readers on explorations of Cape Canaveral and beyond, guided by a poet and a scientist.

There are discoveries all along the way. At one point, Leahy, visiting the Kennedy Space Center on a media credential for the first time, trundles onto a bus with the press herd, not even sure where she was going.

“And then when I got there, I realized that Challenger had

taken off from that launch pad decades earlier,” she said. “And I think that’s something that made us think that we had a book that others would want to read, because every time we talked about the Challenger accident, people of our generation remember where they were and have something to say.”

To Leahy and Dechow, Generation Space is made up of Americans born between the Soviet forays into space in the 1950s and the first Space Shuttle mission in 1981.

The era’s emotional end is highlighted by the authors “coming to terms with the fact that we’re not going to Mars, despite having been promised that as children,” Dechow said.

“We sort of bequeath the future to Generation Mars, and in the end, those who will get there.”

Rulers, Religion, & Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not (Cambridge University Press) Jared Rubin, Ph.D., associate professor at the Economic Science Institute For centuries following the spread of Islam, the Middle East was far ahead of Europe. Yet, the modern economy was born in Europe. Why was it not born in the Middle East?

Rubin examines the role Islam played in this reversal of fortunes.

You Are the Universe: Discovering Your Cosmic Self and Why It Matters (Harmony) Deepak Chopra, M.D. and Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., the Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor of Computational Physics Chopra and Kafatos tell us that we’ve reached a turning point in which modern science challenges everything we know about reality.

The authors explain how each of us is a co-creator of a reality extending to the vast reaches of time and space.

A member of Chapman University’s Board of Trustees for nearly 30 years, Chuck Martin passed away March 28. He was 80.

Aperture (Shearsman Books) Anna Leahy, Ph.D. associate professor of English This book of poetry opens a gap to the lives of women, playing with notions of how we present ourselves and how we are perceived and represented by others. The work is designed by Claudine Jaenichen and features a painting by Lia Halloran, both professors in the Department of Art.

Superman in America & Other Absurd Plays (Black Scat Books) Mark Axelrod, Ph.D., professor of English This outrageous and timely collection of eight absurdist dramas confronts our contemporary nightmares with wit and insight. In the provocative title play, Superman stands trial as an illegal alien.

Balzac’s Coffee, DaVinci’s Ristorante (Verbivoracious Press) Axelrod In this sequel to Borges’ Travel, Hemingway’s Garage, Axelrod

photographs products and businesses that bear the great names of Western civilization. Then he recounts the turns of fate by which immortals ended up in these mundane straits.

Poetics of Prose (Palgrave/Macmillan) Axelrod This creative yet scholarly work discusses prose’s important relationship to close literary analysis. Bringing together a literary history of writers such as Lermontov, Chekhov and Camus, Axelrod interweaves discussions of structure, plot and other key elements often applied to poetry.

Women and Value in Jane Austen’s Novels (Palgrave Macmillan) Lynda A. Hall, Ph.D., assistant professor of English Hall’s work explores how Austen’s minor female characters expose the economic and social realities of British women in the 18th century, reflecting the conflict between intrinsic and expressed value within the evolving marketplace.

Together with his wife Twyla, Martin was a longtime benefactor of an array of programs at the University. In 2013, the couple served as gala chairs for the signature gala fundraising event now known as Chapman Celebrates. They also were faithful supporters of Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, endowing the Twyla Reed Martin Dean’s Chair held by Bob Bassett.

During his widely successful business career, Martin was chairman and CEO of Mont Pelerin Capital, an equities hedge fund, and also was the founder and manager of two notable investment firms, Enterprise Partners, which became the largest venture capital firm based in Southern California, and Westar Capital, founded with fellow trustee George Argyros.

Martin’s business acumen greatly benefited Chapman, and during his tenure on the Board of Trustees’ Investment Committee, the size of the University’s endowment doubled.

He also served on the boards of more than 40 public and private companies as well as the boards of several charitable organizations, among them the Orange County Museum of Art and the Graduate School of Management and Irvine Foundation at UC Irvine.

In addition, Martin was the author of numerous publications and several books, including 2016’s Orange County, Inc., The Evolution of an Economic Powerhouse.

Chapman President Daniele Struppa called Martin “a dear friend,” adding that “my debt to him is immense, and so is my sadness.”

W I N T E R 2 017 | 35

Alumni

save the date

friday, october 6, 2017

distinguished

awa r d s

highest award of distinction

the Honorable George L. Argyros ’59 Chairman, Arnel & Affiliates

Bert C. Williams Lifetime Service Award school and college distinguished alumni

Ken Bunt ’93

Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks (emba ’16)

Elim Kay ’09

Justin Simien ’05

President, Disney Music Group Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

Despite his kingly success, Henry Allen ’11 slips in the side

Founding Partner, REDDS Venture Investment Partners School of Communication

By Dawn Bonker (MFA ’19)

Stephen Thorne (mha ’94)

Teacher/Philanthropist College of Educational Studies

building on a collaborative and classical foundation.

CEO, Pacific Dental Services, Inc. Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences

Dr. Zeinab Dabbah (jd ’12)

Keith Hancock ’02 (m.a. ’04)

Dale E. Fowler School of Law

36 | CHAPMAN MAGAZINE

Director/Writer Dear White People film and Netflix original series Dodge College of Film and Media Arts

Elizabeth Tierney (m.a. ’80)

entrance to pop music fame,

usic producer and Chapman University alumnus Henry Allen ’11 was coming off one terrific year. He released his debut EP and earned production and writing credits on Major Lazer’s chart-topping Cold Water and The Weeknd’s Starboy. Then there was his work on a little something called “All Night” for Beyoncé’s Grammy-winning album Lemonade.

But on Grammy night, when it was time to trot down that red carpet, Allen – who goes

by King Henry in the music world – slipped away with friends and unceremoniously found another door into Staples Center for the awards show.

“I was nervous. I didn’t actually do the red carpet because I didn’t think I was cool enough,” Allen says with a quiet laugh.

Maybe it’s hard to be nonchalant when you’re busy burning up with red-hot success.

Allen shared the producing and writing credits on “All Night,” which earned him a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year in connection with Lemonade. The album won Best Urban Contemporary Album, an award that doesn’t put one of the coveted gilded gramophones into the hands of all co-producers, but is, frankly, still pretty darn cool.

CEO and President, Earth Friendly Products George L. Argyros School of Business and Economics

“We hoped for Album of the Year, but I never even imagined a nomination in the first place,” says Allen, who graduated from the College of Performing Arts (CoPA), where he was part of several award-winning classical guitar ensembles.

In addition to the Grammy experience, Allen’s own Duke City imprint released his EP Don’t Stay Away, which was also released internationally on Black Butter Records.

Don’t Stay Away incorporates a video homage to his native New Mexico, produced by fellow Chapman alumni Dillon Moore ’14, Dan Streit ’15 and Tanner Hall ’15. The song has been streamed more than 2 million times on multiple platforms.

The April 2016 release of the Beyoncé album “was the start of the momentum,” he says. But the seed of it all was planted at Chapman, he notes in crediting his success to his rigorous training in musical foundations and classical guitar.

“Just understanding music at all different levels has given me an advantage to come up with different sounds, basically different approaches,” he says. “I understand how music works.”

And those multilayered skills were honed

Dr. Richard Pitts ’70

King Henry (Henry Allen ’11) credits his classical guitar training in Chapman’s College of Performing Arts for his chart-topping success writing and producing for Beyoncé, The Weeknd and Major Lazer.

“Just understanding music at all different levels has given me an advantage to come up with different sounds,” Allen says.

to precision thanks to training under the tutelage of Jeff Cogan, associate professor and director of guitar studies and music technology at Chapman.

Cogan prodded Allen to practice for hours a day, “even though all I wanted to do was hang out with my friends and make weird electronic music,” the musician says.

“It all panned out into what I’m doing now.”

Now Allen is on to the next thing, which includes more storytelling pieces like Don’t Stay Away. He’s also producing for the electronic music trio Major Lazer and developing ventures he’s not quite ready to talk about.

“It’s been crazy, but in an awesome way.

There’s so much going on and so many good projects,” he says.

Sounds like before long Allen just might have to reconsider his side-door entrances at award events.

Chief Medical Officer, Arrowhead Regional Medical Center Schmid College of Science and Technology

Choral Music Director/GRAMMY® Educator of the Year Tesoro High School College of Performing Arts

Soliel K. Doman (M.S. ’16) FDA Pathways Student Biologist School of Pharmacy

additional distinction

Erin J. Lastinger ’88

CEO, A. Gary Anderson Family Foundation Distinguished Alumni Athlete

Jennifer Backhaus ’94

Instructor/Founder and Artistic Director, Backhausdance Distinguished Alumni Faculty Member

Behzad Binesh (mba ’77)

Maci Peterson ’09

Vice President, Finance/University Controller Chapman University Distinguished Alumni Staff Member

Co-Founder and CEO, On Second Thought Distinguished Young Alumna

hosted by

Daniele C. Struppa, Ph.D. President, Chapman University

Akin Ceylan ’90

President, Chapman University Alumni Association COO of Home Entertainment, Lionsgate

| chapman.edu/alumni

CLASS NOTES Email your news and photos to Laurie Sicaeros (MHA ’97)

Record Impact

alumni@chapman.edu or mail to: Alumni Engagement, One University Drive, Orange, Calif. 92866. Any photos received by mail will be scanned and returned. Class notes

By Melissa Grace Hoon

are subject to editing due to space.

S

To post class notes and photos

ince childhood, Laurie Sicaeros (MHA ’97) had always wanted to be an orthodontist.

She dreamed of attending dental school and was eventually accepted. But before she began her studies, her father passed away and she deferred her post-graduate education for a year.

That delay provided a time of introspection and prompted a self-reinvention of sorts, as Sicaeros took on various work experiences to explore her professional options. One of her most eye-opening roles was as the manager of a medical office.

“I realized I could actually impact the business more working next to the doctor than being the doctor,” Sicaeros said.

She went on to receive her master’s degree in healthcare administration and joined MemorialCare Medical Foundation of Orange County, where she “found gaps or service needs and jumped in to fill them.”

She enjoyed her role in informatics, which began in 2004, as she established a team responsible for helping the company’s physicians adopt and utilize electronic health records.

This was groundbreaking work, as it ultimately provided patients with easy online access to their health records as well as educational health materials.

Today, Sicaeros finds fulfillment in her roles as the foundation’s chief operating officer and MemorialCare Health System’s vice president of physician alignment. She says her Chapman education gave her the platform to integrate herself into the healthcare environment with physicians, pharmacists, nurses and accountants alike.

38 | CHAPMAN MAGAZINE

online, visit chapman.edu/alumni.

19 4 0 s Mary Lou (Khantamour) Savage, B.A. theatre ’48, is serving on the planning committee for the 50th anniversary celebration of Town & Gown, a Chapman University support group that was founded in 1968. She was president of Town & Gown from 1994 to 1996.

19 5 0 s Bob Schomp, B.A. philosophy ’58, is retired from the ministry and lives in Plano, Texas. He became a first-time grandfather at the age of 80 when Luke Schomp, his grandson, was born in December 2016.

19 6 0 s Christine (Williams) Baker, B.A. religion ’64, attended Chapman University Founders Day in March to support her friend, the Rev. Nora Jacob, who was honored as Disciples Church Leader of the Year. Christine gets together annually with her fellow Beta Chi members from her Chapman days to celebrate their birthdays. The birthday lunch party often includes Willy (Van Rooyen) Hall, B.A. home economics ’64 (M.A. education ’75); Salli (Antick) Stockton, B.A. economics and

sociology ’73 (MBA ’92); Christine (De Moretz) Eastwood, B.A. French ’74; and Barbara (Harris) Post, B.A. mathematics ’65.

19 7 0 s Doug Brown, B.A. physical education ’73, and his wife, Lynne (Morganthaler) Brown, B.A. physical education ’72, are enjoying retirement in Carlsbad, Calif. Their grandson, Kobee Douglas Byrd, is a junior in high school and is considering Chapman University. He would represent the fifth generation of their family to attend Chapman.

The Browns are the largest family of Chapman alumni, with more than 30 members having attended, beginning in the 1920s.

Janice Hecht, B.A. communications ’75, owns Half Moon Publishers, which works with clients in all genres of books. Her latest screenplay in development is with The New York Times best-selling writer Jens Hansen, author of JFK: A Conspiracy of Silence. She often works with first-time writers and playwrights and is exploring sci-fi trilogies along with reader’s theatre and musicals.

Ginger Sherman Silverman, B.A. English ’77, is proud that her daughter, Eve Silverman, B.A. integrated educational studies ’20, started her Chapman experience in fall 2016. The fifth member of the family to attend Chapman, Eve also follows in the footsteps of her aunt, Kim Healy, B.A. English ’80; uncle, Dan Healy, B.A. English ’80; and cousin, Daniel Healy, B.S. mathematics ’15. Eve lives in South Morlan Residence Hall,

where her mother spent many of her undergraduate days.

Diane (Rutherford) Wilkinson, B.A. sociology ’71, is a member of Town & Gown and the Assistance League of Fullerton. She also runs half marathons and enjoys summer at Santa Catalina Island on her sailboat.

19 8 0 s Daniel Busby, B.A. music performance ’88, is the chair of the Department of Drama at UCLA. Before joining the University of California, Irvine, as a professor of musical theatre in 2003, he was the associate director of the Ray Bolger Musical Theatre Program in the School of Theater, Film and Television at UCLA. Daniel holds master’s and doctoral degrees in conducting from UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music.

Johnese Spisso, B.S. health sciences ’87, is president of UCLA Health, CEO of UCLA Hospital System, and associate vice chancellor of UCLA Health Sciences.

UCLA Health was named in March as a leader in equitable care for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer.

Deb Stanley, B.A. communications ’89, launched hikingdebbie.com, a blog where she shares stories and photos from her hiking adventures.

Deb works in the television news industry in Denver.

Gil Yurly, B.A. sociology ’82, owns Body-Wise Fitness Center (mybodywisegym.com) in Costa Mesa, where he offers discounts for members of the Chapman Family.

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19 9 0 s Stasi Dimassis-Benbow, B.A. movement and exercise science ’93, lives in Kirkland, Wash., and visited Chapman in March.

She showed her two boys around campus and took them running on Wilson Field. They had lunch with her former Chapman soccer coach, Athletic Hall of Fame recipient Eunice Bobert, B.S. biology ’82, who is known as “Uncle Eunice” to the boys.

John W. Hodge (M.A. education ’94) is the president and co-founder of the Urban Learning and Leadership Center, an organization focused on student achievement. In his education career, he has served as a teacher and school administrator, as well as the director of the An Achievable Dream Academy, a high-performing school that has received numerous national awards. John holds a doctoral degree from Virginia Tech.

Jeffrey Lewis, B.A. legal studies ’93, is a real estate speculator and television personality best known for starring in the reality television series Flipping Out. Mark Lisa (MHA ’92) is the chief executive officer of Twin Cities Community Hospital in Templeton, Calif. He was previously CEO of Doctors Hospital of Manteca.

In 2011, Mark served as president for the California Association of Healthcare Leaders, which represents 51 of 58 California counties.

Creative Focus

By Melissa Grace Hoon

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Krista (Miller) Mashore (M.A. education ’98) is a real estate broker and owner of Homes By Krista, based in Brentwood, Calif.

She holds numerous specialty certifications and was recognized as an Expert Network Distinguished Professional.

Chad Murray, BFA film and television ’98, was hired as the men’s basketball coach at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash. Chad served as head coach at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, for the past eight seasons.

Ben Mason, B.A. English ’98, joined EPIC Creative, a full-service advertising and marketing agency headquartered in West Bend, Wis., as senior copywriter. In this role, Ben is responsible for understanding the products, services, brands and audiences of EPIC Creative’s clients, as well as writing effective content.

Mark Purcell, B.M. instrumental performance ’93, serves as a pastoral associate for liturgy and music and the parish’s music director at Sts. Simon & Jude Catholic Church in Huntington Beach, Calif.

Ruben Mendoza (M.S. human resources management ’99) retired from a career in law enforcement and was sworn in as board trustee-elect for Madera Unified School District in December.

Jeremy Roberts, B.A. Spanish ’98, began a new role as vice president of customer experience for HiringSolved, a human resources technology startup that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to make recruiters more productive. Previously, Jeremy spent 15 years as a talent acquisition practitioner. He lives in Denton, Texas, with his wife of 20 years and their three children, ages 10, 12 and 16.

am Tenney, BFA film and television ’02, spends his days overlooking the lush, mountainous lands of the greater Portland, Ore., area – while perched atop a tower crane, camera in hand.

Sam is a photographer for Portland’s Daily Journal of Commerce, a newspaper that covers the building industry, including architecture, construction, engineering, real estate and transportation in Oregon and Southwest Washington.

A few years after graduating from Chapman, Sam began a career in photojournalism, which led him to shoot for newspapers first in Northern California and then in central New York. When the newspaper industry rapidly declined in the late2000s, Sam returned to the West Coast, where he thought he might attend graduate school.

Instead, he took a gamble with another printindustry photography position. Six years later, he’s still enjoying the position with the Daily Journal of Commerce “in the trenches of print journalism” with no regrets.

He says that the Daily Journal succeeds because it’s a niche publication. This niche factor has also influenced his freelance work, inspiring him to focus on the building industry, piquing his appreciation for architectural design and the building process.

Sam credits his Chapman experience for guiding him into discovering his passion for photojournalism.

“I just knew I wanted to do something creative,” he said. “Chapman was instrumental in bringing that into focus.”

S P R I N G 2 017 | 39

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Genevieve Carson ’07

Stepping Out

Ryan Robinson ’12

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Course Correction

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By Melissa Grace Hoon

By Melissa Grace Hoon

“I

A

fter graduating from Chapman University, Genevieve Carson, BFA dance performance ’07, says she started from scratch as she moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of a dance career.

“I had no job, no money and no community or contacts to help guide me,” she said.

She accepted a 9-to-5 office job to support herself as she took dance classes at night. She eventually landed a job teaching dance classes, and in 2009 her choreography was selected to be in the Los Angeles Dance Invitational. She also became a member of the Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company (LACDC).

Carson’s Chapman education helped pave the way for her career.

“I have always felt that having a Chapman degree on my resume has helped me secure jobs – especially teaching jobs,” Carson says. “Also, there is a great network and community of Chapman dancers/choreographers in Los Angeles.”

She choreographed Nana, a piece for LACDC that was selected to represent the company in the prestigious Celebrate Dance Festival at the Alex Theater in Glendale.

Carson stayed with the company and was invited to take over as its artistic director in 2014 – a milestone for an artist whose dance pursuits can be traced to early childhood.

“I always wanted to be a choreographer. I would set entire shows on the neighborhood kids and have them perform for the parents,” said Carson, a native of Juneau, Alaska.

In addition to her work for LACDC, Carson continues to freelance, leading to exciting projects all over the world. For instance, she has choreographed for the Super Bowl pre-game show and for musical artists, including Foster the People.

40 | CHAPMAN MAGAZINE

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2000s Christopher Roach, B.A. political science ’04 (M.A. leadership development ’17), graduated with his master’s in leadership development from Chapman in January.

Rob Selway, B.S. business administration ’07 (MBA ’10), was elected to the Boys Town California Uncork for Hope’s planning committee.

Justin Simien, BFA film production ’05, is the creator of the new Netflix series Dear White People, which debuted its 10-episode first season April 28.

The series is an adaptation of his 2014 film of the same name.

Michael Van Gorder, B.A. sociology ’07, a professional photographer, is running for Glendale City Council.

2010s Casey J. Adler, B.A. theatre performance ’11, and his sister, Kari Adler, are a writing team who go by the pen names Boychick & Bear. Their children’s book, Yorkietown, is available in many children’s stores throughout Southern California and at all Gelson’s Market locations, as well as on Amazon. They did a reading at Children’s Hospital of Orange County through the Ryan Seacrest Foundation. ​Yorkietown promotes self-acceptance by embracing the differences and individual gifts within each of us.

Rachel (Panchal) Chiavatti, B.A. music ’13, is part of the singer/songwriter duo Lord & Lady.

The duo gained more than 3 million views on its latest YouTube video, a cover of songs from the film La La Land.

Anna Evans (JD ’15) and Mathieu Putterman (JD ’15) welcomed the birth of their son, Liam Michael, on Jan. 10.

Benjamin Finer, B.M. vocal performance ’15, earned a master’s of music degree in voice from Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts in May.

Sara Knobel, B.A. integrated educational studies ’16, traveled to Australia and New Zealand in March. She met up with Rachel Tilghman (Class of ’13), who lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

Anna Lisa Lukes (MBA ’13) was promoted at Golden State Foods in January. In addition to her role as executive director of the GSF Foundation, she is now the director of corporate social responsibility.

Natasha Martinez, B.A. television broadcast journalism ’15, appeared as a special guest on The Cinema Squad podcast episode 45.

Natasha has been a dancer since age 5 and was a Los Angeles Laker Girl from 2011–2012. She is an entertainment host and

news anchor for Collider Video and Complex Media covering movie, music and pop culture news in Los Angeles. She is also the host of American Latino TV, a nationally syndicated entertainment news show focusing on Latinos in the industry. She was Miss California USA in 2015.

Julia Smith, B.S. political science ’15, is living in Budondo, Uganda, working at the Budondo Intercultural Center with local leaders to help their community become self-sustainable. She blogs at buildingpotentialtogetherblog. wordpress.com.

Chris Watkins, B.S. mathematics ’15, successfully defended his thesis, “Quantitative Study of Math Excel Courses,” for his M.S. in mathematics at Oregon State University.

Nicky Wilks, B.S. business administration ’10 (MBA ’13), started Journeymen, a nonprofit that seeks to inspire and empower young men through nature-based rites of passage, long-term mentoring and community engagement.

found my calling as an entrepreneur in college when I began to feel the necessity to be in command of my own destiny,” said Ryan Robinson, B.S. business administration ’12.

Now Ryan shares the lessons of his successes and failures as a business owner. Though he teaches 200,000 monthly readers how to start side businesses through his ryrob.com blog, and he has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur and Business Insider, he didn’t gain his economic freedom free of charge.

His first company went under and cost him thousands of dollars, and according to Ryan, he has pursued dozens of opportunities that “never went anywhere.”

“I’ve launched products to the sound of crickets. I’ve had online courses that sold to practically zero people,” he said.

However, these “failures” that Ryan illuminates for his growing readership are also his key to success.

Ryan started his first company, Case Escape, with Matt Feldman ’12. The company helps others start custom phone-case-making businesses by offering a startup tool kit. Later, he took a job in San Francisco at an online education startup company and quit after he’d built ryrob.com to be a financially sustainable success.

In addition to offering business consulting, Ryan now focuses on producing more online courses and educational resources through ryrob.com.

S P R I N G 2 017 | 41

FRIENDS WE WILL MISS Ralph Rodheim

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In May, nearly 2,400 graduates in the Class of 2017 crossed the stage during Chapman University’s 156th annual commencement ceremonies.

These newly minted members of the Chapman University Alumni Association have big plans for the future, from

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pursuing medical degrees to running startups to making their mark in Washington, D.C.

Chapman Radio, Gamma Beta Phi Society, Mortar Board and Beta Gamma Sigma, and has been on the Provost List each semester.

2 0 17 Caroline Aziz, B.S. biological sciences ’17, will attend medical school and plans to become a pediatrician. Eventually she hopes to teach medicine as a university faculty member. As a Chapman student, Caroline was the supplemental instructor for organic chemistry, researched at the School of Pharmacy on bioactive compounds found in plants used in traditional medicine, and volunteered at Kaiser Permanente, where she shadowed physicians.

She also volunteered on a medical mission in Nicaragua as a member of Global Medical Brigades.

Becca Batkin, B.A. strategic and corporate communications ’17, works in media and public relations at Prime Five Homes, a residential design and development firm in Los Angeles. Becca founded an organization that benefits the Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting childhood cancer. Becca also founded the Chapman University Dance Marathon, which has raised 42 | CHAPMAN MAGAZINE

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$85,000 in two years, providing financial assistance nationwide to more than 120 families of children with cancer.

Kyle Herron, B.A. strategic and corporate communication ’17, is the COO and co-founder of siëo, a software-based company that seeks to help startup companies launch by providing them with financial, legal, team management, investor relations and market research digital tools. He volunteers at Orange High School teaching an entrepreneurship class. Also passionate about music, Kyle interned at Columbia Records and was the music director of Chapman Radio. He is a graduate of the Financial LEAD Program and Summit Career Institute.

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Allyson Hoch, B.A. integrated educational studies ’17, will begin the multiple-subject credential and M.A. in teaching at Chapman this fall, and plans to become an elementary school teacher – her childhood dream. Allyson, a firstgeneration college student, was an Outstanding First-Year Student as a freshman, Greek Life coordinator and president of Alpha Phi. She was also named the C.A.R.E.S. Woman of Strength, Courage and Action last year.

Katie Kendrick, B.A. economics and communication studies ’17, will begin working as a financial analyst for Sunwest Bank in Irvine this summer. She later plans to attend law school and become a corporate attorney. During her time at Chapman, Katie participated in the Summit Career Institute,

Adlai Nissen, B.S. business administration, B.A. economics ’17, will begin working at Microsoft this summer as a finance rotation analyst in Seattle. During his time at Chapman, he was the vice president of fraternal affairs and president of Alpha Kappa Psi. Adlai has interned at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and was a resident advisor.

Taylor Patti, B.A. Spanish, B.S. mathematics and physics & computational science ’17, will begin her Ph.D. in theoretical physics at Harvard University this summer.

She later plans to secure a research position and ultimately tenure as a research faculty member at a university. Taylor says that upon enrolling at Chapman, she didn’t know what physics was and thought she hated math. She credits the “agglomeration” of her Chapman experience for supporting her exploration of her true love of theoretical physics.

Tyler Porterfield, B.A. public relations and advertising ’17, has accepted a position in human resources at Target and will start this summer. Last summer, she was an executive intern in human resources at Target. Her favorite leadership positions at Chapman were as a resident advisor and tour guide in the Office of Admission. Tyler was the junior class senator and vice president of the Student Government Association.

Lotus Thai, B.A. political science, B.S. business administration and environmental science & policy ’17, will take a gap year to explore careers in environmental science before applying to graduate school. She passed the CBEST this spring and will start working as a substitute teacher this fall. A first-generation student, Lotus was the director of marketing for the Chapman University Program Board, and she interns for Earth Friendly Products.

Robert Schumaker, BFA creative writing and B.A. French ’17, will begin the MFA in creative writing program at Ohio State University this fall, where he received a graduate fellowship for his first year of study. He’d like to become a professor as well as teach creative writing to underserved communities, incarcerated populations and trauma survivors.

Robert’s work has been published in The Indiana Review and The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle.

Tonicia Williams, B.A. psychology ’17, will begin working this summer as an advocacy representative in Washington, D.C., for Grassroots Campaigns, an organization that represents groups such as the Democratic National Committee and Planned Parenthood. A Kingston, Jamaica, native, she plans to advocate for people of color, and to learn more and teach about race relations within and outside the United States. As a Chapman student, Tonicia was the vice president for the Black Student Union, studied abroad in South Africa and received the 2016 Spirit of Chapman Award.

Ralph Rodheim, B.A. psychology ’66, passed away in February at age 72 after a long battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Ralph was an active member of his community in Newport Beach, and was named Citizen of the Year by the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce in 2010.

Joseph Silveira (M.A. history ’69) passed away Nov. 18, 2016. A decorated Korean War veteran and major in the Army National Guard, Joseph retired as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves.

In his career as an educator, he taught at Livingston Elementary School and Atwater High School, and served as assistant superintendent at the Merced County Office of Education. Joseph’s interests included camping, fishing, hunting and singing opera.

Leah Royal, B.S. health sciences ’90, passed away March 22.

Raised in Bishop, Calif., Leah began her career in the hospitality industry, and eventually pursued

her lifelong dream of becoming a registered nurse through Truckee Meadows Community College, where she was valedictorian of her class. She and her husband, Jerry, enjoyed attending church together, listening to gospel music and traveling in their motor home.

Leah will be remembered for her dedication to her two daughters, Jenni Jones and Denise Jones, her commitment to her job as a nurse, and her great sense of humor.

Andrew McIvor, B.A. economics ’12, passed away unexpectedly on March 16. He will be remembered by his friends and family for his kindness and generosity and his willingness to go out of his way to help others. In 2011, Andrew was chosen by his peers at Chapman to receive the Man of Integrity Award, which recognizes students who treat others with respect and equality and lead by example. He was also a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.

S P R I N G 2 017 | 43

Alumni Summer Bash

PA N T H E R S

O N

T H E

Get together with fellow alumni for a fun-filled evening catching up with old friends and meeting new ones over dinner, drinks, music and games.

P R O W L

Thursday, July 20 6:30–9:30 p.m.

Musco Center for the Arts, Aitken Arts Plaza Purchase tickets at bit.ly/alumnisummerbash

ALUMNI NEWS AND CAMPUS EVENTS

The Chapman Family Homecoming Celebration

Alex Popescu, B.A. communications studies ’10 (M.A. leadership development ’18); Paula Pearl, B.A. communications studies ’15 (M.A. leadership development ’18); and Steve Taylor, B.S. accounting and business administration ’10, and his wife, Jen, celebrated Thanksgiving together by traveling across Japan for 10 days last November. They explored Tokyo and took the bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka and Kyoto, and spent a day at Tokyo Disney. As undergrads, Steve and Alex were roommates and co-hosted The Steve Taylor and Alex Popescu Nation, a Chapman Radio talk show with commentary on current events and politics. They won the Chapman Radio Talk Show of the Year in 2010. About the Japan trip, Alex said, “I really liked touring the Akihabara District in Tokyo, which highlights anime and video games. And of course, nothing beats the sushi, tempura and ramen!”

Friday and Saturday, Oct. 6–7 Registration and details: chapman.edu/homecoming

We’re excited to welcome you home with a weekend full of alumni events, including: • Inaugural

Chapman Family Pancake Breakfast

• “Socktober” service project, collecting socks for the homeless • Chapman

Family Picnic

• 8th

Annual Chapman Alumni Chili Cook-off and College Tailgate Zone

• Homecoming

Nicole Madonia, B.A. kinesiology ’04 (DPT ’07); Brandon Young, B.S. computer science ’07; Sarah Barton, B.A. liberal studies ’06 (M.A. leadership development ’13); Alyce Perry, B.S. kinesiology ’05; and Russell Lloyd (Class of ’07) played on the women’s and men’s soccer teams at Chapman. Though they live in Orange County (Nicole, Brandon and Sarah), Portland, Ore. (Russell), and San Diego (Alyce), they remain close friends and take annual snowboarding trips together, among other adventurous vacations and get-togethers with others from the soccer teams.

Their most recent trip was to Mt. Bachelor, Ore., where Sarah says they “reminisced on the good times, shredded the perfect powder this winter provided, hit a tree or two, and visited some of the awesome breweries in Bend.”

football game: Chapman Panthers vs. Whittier Poets

• Panther

Piazza Party, including a live band and live streaming of the football game

Alumni Make History

Nearly 500 Panthers went beyond the business card and opted for relationship-based networking at the 5th Annual Alumni Entertainment Industry Mixer in April. View photos, watch the video and read the blog post about the largest Chapman networking event to date at chapman.edu/aeimixer. Plan to attend the 6th Annual Alumni Entertainment Industry Mixer in April 2018 – we’ll let you know when we have the exact date!

Mark your calendar for your class reunion during Homecoming: • Classes • Classes

of 2007 and 2012: Oct. 6 of 1967 and 1992: Oct. 7

Find Us Online Eva McAvoy, B.A. political science and sociology ’14, completed her time in the Peace Corps this spring in Ghana.

During this time, she met up with Marley McLaughlin, B.A. anthropology and history ’14, in Africa.

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Peace Corps

Web: chapman.edu/alumni Blog: blogs.chapman.edu/alumni Facebook: facebook.com/chapmanuniversityalumni Instagram: @chapmanualumni Twitter: @ChapmanAlum LinkedIn: Search for Chapman University Alumni Association

Chapman Family Night with Angels Baseball Saturday, Aug. 26 Angels vs.

Houston Astros 6:07 p.m.

Exclusive Chapman-Angels co-branded hat available for those who purchase tickets at angels.com/chapman Pre-Game Tailgate at 4 p.m.: Mix and meet up with your fellow Panthers while enjoying fun and games.

Photo by Tara Salvesen ’19

Those faces. Even amid a nursery of newborn sea lion pups, two stood out. And then when one flipped its head straight back to get an upside-down view of photographer Tara Salvesen ’19, well, the cuteness vaulted to a whole new level. Salvesen, a news and documentary major, snapped this photo during Chapman University’s annual interterm natural history expedition in the Galapagos Islands. The New Jersey native leapt at the chance to join 13 other student researchers retracing Darwin’s steps and studying species found nowhere else in the world. But during the 10 days of on-site course work, it was the sea lions that captured Salvesen’s heart. “Swimming with them was the coolest thing ever,” she says, adding that the overall course experience “is something I never expected would happen in my entire life.”