and provided her with the opportunity to weave a full-size eagle’s aerie by hand from freshly harvested saplings. Erika says, “It was awesome when we finally saw children scrambling all over the structure, out of their minds in happy, active play.”
1996
Jake Sullivan shared recent experiences from
his business FlexFORCE (www.flexforce.us) during a Harvey Mudd College Entrepreneurial Network event in Portland, Ore., Sept. 22. Jake’s company specializes in robotics, signal processing and software development used to create products that protect the men and women who protect us. He also visited
campus during fall to speak about government contracting in Professor Gary Evans’ Enterprise and the Entrepreneur class.
1997
Unbroken records in high jump (1995: seven feet) and triple jump (1997: 48 feet, 7.25 inches) have placed Eric Jones among the elite group of athletes inducted into the CMS Hall of Fame. At the Nov. 16 Recognition Banquet, Eric was lauded for being a four-time All-American and three-time SCIAC champion and a key member of four SCIAC men’s track
and field championship teams. Eric learned to triple jump during his sophomore year and won SCIAC titles in that event in 1994 and 1997; he earned a SCIAC high jump title in 1993. During the 1994 season, he scored the fifth-highest number of points (59) in an SCIAC championship competition by any CMS track and field athlete and was named Harvey Mudd College Athlete of the Year. Eric is president of ViArch Integrated Solutions, a company he cofounded with his wife, Angela, that develops custom software applications for the aerospace industry.
ALUMNI PROFILE
Risk and Reward
Futures are formed by educator Ruben Arenas ’05 Written by K. Emily Hutta Photo by Jeanine Hill
RUBEN ARENAS ’05 TAKES RISKS. Not the
kind you see in viral video segments, risking life and limb for an adrenaline rush or personal gain. Arenas pushes the boundaries in his professional life thoughtfully, resolutely, without fanfare. But he pushes them just the same. Arenas is an associate professor of mathematics at East Los Angeles College (ELAC) in Monterey Park, Calif. Uncertain about whether education was the right career for him when he started at ELAC five years ago, Arenas is now all in. He is a passionately dedicated teacher, a proven problemsolver and a prolific education innovator. Which is where that risk-taking thing comes in. “It may seem kind of silly, but I do have to take a lot of risks in my job. Sometimes the decisions I make are going to affect a lot of people. Sometimes there are other peoples’ lives and careers on the line. I think I’d be a
lot more reticent about making those kinds of decisions if I’d gone to a place that was more conservative [than Harvey Mudd College].” The high-stakes decisions Arenas is talking about have to do with his leadership role in a series of initiatives to improve student outcomes at ELAC. Using mathematical precepts like data-based analysis, he and his colleagues are working to describe and address challenges to academic success for the school’s diverse, non-traditional student body. When data revealed that the longer a student waited to take the next-level math class, the less likely that student was to succeed, Arenas developed the Math Advancement Program. Piloted in 2012, this compressed sequence of classes enables students to take two full math courses in one semester. The results already show significant gains in student success and retention.
Arenas also has been working on an ambitious project to help new students—who enter ELAC at very different levels of preparedness— to achieve college-level proficiency in math and English by the end of their first year; new curriculum for developmental math courses; focus groups exploring issues of student success; a Math Supplemental Instruction Program; and, a STEM Enrichment Program. “Being a faculty member gives me lots of freedom to experiment. Our administration is very good, so we can propose new ideas, try new things. I wish I was teaching a bit more, honestly. But at the same time, these programs I’m working on do have large impacts.” And for Arenas, that makes all the risks worth taking.
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