Professor of biology Gretchen North has been appointed the John W. McMenamin Endowed Chair in Biology, a new position created with an estate gift by the late Dickson Shafer ’50 as a tribute to his favorite professor. A 1940 graduate of Oxy, McMenamin taught biology at the College from 1946 until his retirement in 1982. His teaching and research interests focused on cellular and developmental biology. Later in his career he studied the histology of fishes, especially the structural adaptations of the ovary of surfperch (the livebearing marine fishes along the West Coast). John W. McMenamin ’40 During his 12 years as chair of the College’s biology department, several institutional grants provided modern facilities and instrumentation for research and the number of faculty members in the department doubled. North joined the Oxy faculty in 1997. Her research focuses on plant physiological ecology, with an emphasis on the water relations of arid land plants and plants in the rainforest canopy. She also investigates cellular and subcellular mechanisms of plant water uptake and transport. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution, and she has received numerous honors while at Oxy, most recently the Linda and Tod White ’59 Teaching Prize in 2015. Dickson Shafer, who died in 2015, attended Oxy for two years as a psychology major. While at Oxy, he was intrigued by Professor McMenamin’s plant physiology class, and later he returned to this passion as an avid avocado grower in his retirement. Together with his late wife, Lois, he created a pair of charitable trusts, the remainder of which (more than $1.8 million) will fund the McMenamin Chair Professor of biology Gretchen North in perpetuity.
A $100,000 grant from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation will make it possible for Occidental to continue to meet its longstanding commitment to first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students. The new grant provided annual scholarship support for seven highachieving Occidental students with financial need during the 2015-16 academic year. The funds will complement the College’s endowed Hearst Scholarship Program, which was established in 1985 and currently supports two students. The 2015-16 scholarship recipients are: Gabriel Barrett-Jackson ’18, an urban and environmental policy major from Seattle; Marcus Forbes ’19, a critical theory and social justice major from Folsom; Onye Nwabueze ’17, a cognitive science major from San Francisco; Saaron Ramirez ’17, a politics major from Los Angeles; Ruth Sanchez ’16, a Latino/a and Latin American studies and Spanish studies double major from Los Angeles; Gabrielle Seiwert ’18, a critical theory and social justice major from Galesburg, Ill.; and Kailee Whitten ’18, a Chinese studies Hearst Scholar and All-SCIAC sprinter Onye Nwabueze ’17 major from Wuhan, China. “Occidental’s mission and strategic plan are both clear: Our goal is to ensure that students from all backgrounds have the opportunity to attend, and thrive at, Occidental,” says Vince Cuseo, vice president for enrollment and dean of admission. “The continuing generosity of the Hearst Foundation will play an important role in making sure we continue to meet that goal.”
annual report
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