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FALL 2025
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Field Reports From Oxy’s Biology “A-Team”
Passion and Promise: Meet the Tigers of ’29
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FALL 2025
Growing up in Manhattan Beach after World War II, Ron Hahn ’66 didn’t have a clear path to college. His father died when Ron was 8, and “No one in my immediate family was a college graduate,” he recalls. But he turned out to be a good student, and the UC system was the natural, affordable option. When Occidental Dean of Admission Ben McKendall came to his high school, he says, “the small school liberal arts description of Oxy fit me perfectly, with the added advantage that I was a reasonably successful athlete. In those days, Occidental was a Division I track school with a legacy of great athletes and fantastic coaches.”
Ron and Susan Hahn met in Ben Culley’s statistics class at Oxy. They have been married for 59 years.
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A campus visit, including a dinner with newly selected Rhodes Scholar Richard Hallin ’62, sold him on Oxy. The final hurdle was financial, but the College “simply made it happen,” he says, with a combination of scholarships and loans. That gesture forged a loyalty that has lasted a lifetime. Ron found his intellectual home in Oxy’s integrated curriculum. With its emphasis on philosophy, literature, art, music, and science, “History of Civilization stimulated my curiosity, which has carried through in my life,” he says. He majored in English— not as a career move, but for intellectual enrichment, trusting that the skills of thinking, writing, and speaking would be invaluable for any career. He went on to earn his MBA from UCLA and enjoy a successful career as a venture capital investor and entrepreneur in the life science technology and healthcare industries. After 13 years on the Occidental Board of Trustees, Ron rotated off the board in July—and in his parting remarks, “I emphasized that the key to Occidental is its faculty,” he says, “and supporting faculty and Oxy’s signature programs are the most important elements for the College to not only survive but prosper.” Under a Gift Intention Agreement finalized in 2025 and using the required minimum distributions from their separate IRAs, Ron and his wife, Susan (Cochrane) Hahn ’65, have established endowed funds in three signature programs: media arts and culture, music, and biology. “Susan and I are in a fortunate position to contribute these funds in real time,” he says, and their goal is to ensure these departments have the immediate resources to thrive. “Being on the board allowed me to meet faculty members, and I made a real effort to do that,” Ron adds. “The best of our faculty have options just like the best students we recruit.” To secure the brightest future for Occidental, he concludes, “We need to make sure that our professors and their programs are well supported—providing intellectually curious students with an intimate, faculty-intensive educational experience.”
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Investing in the Future of Faculty
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