THE PEPPERDINE GRAPHIC VOLUME L
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ISSUE 15 |
March 25, 2021
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pepperdine-graphic.com
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Isabella Teague| lead designer Beach Scenes | As fewer students stay close to Malibu, tourists take over beach spots during the COVID-19 pandemic. Local business owners stay afloat thanks to vistitors coming from places like Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Orange County. Most of the businesses flourish during the weekends.
Tourists replace student population in Malibu MIL ES C AM P BELL NEW S ASS I S TA N T With COVID-19 keeping Pepperdine students at home, many local businesses and restaurants in Malibu felt the effects of the lack of students in the area. As a college town for around 3,500 undergraduate college students as of 2020, Malibu typically relies on college students to support local businesses. Despite students being gone, Malibu was far from quiet as tourism ramped up during the pandemic. Visitors flocked to beaches, keeping local businesses afloat and helping new businesses opening up their doors. “Historical numbers,” Mayor of Malibu Mikke Pierson said. “We’ve never had crowds like this. Ever.” Malibu Business Booms A driving factor behind the success of Malibu businesses during COVID-19 was tourism, which allowed for a few new establish-
ments to open during the height of the pandemic, including Joules & Watts, a specialty coffee and gelato shop that opened its doors July 4. “It was scary because of the obvious health risks or the potential to contract a virus that was going around,” said Max Gualtieri, the owner of Joules & Watts. “There was hesitation, but we felt like we could approach it intelligently and safely.” Located in the Malibu Country Mart, the coffee shop began as a pop-up spot with plans to stay just three months, but community support allowed for Gualtieri to sign a full-year lease despite not having Pepperdine students around, Gualtieri said. “I’m eager to see what it’s like when classes resume in person,” Gualtieri said. “I’m eager to meet new people and share more broadly with people who are excited about coffee and ice cream.” While Joules & Watts received most of its support during the height of the pandemic from tourists, other businesses in the area
survived solely on local community support. Set to close its doors this past June, Gene Arnold’s Vitamin Barn, a Malibu staple, survived the pandemic as a result of the local community. “The driving factor for me in this town is the people who come in, and so many who say, ‘We want you here, we want you here,’” Arnold said. Arnold planned to close his shop due to an increase in rent and heightened competition with Whole Foods. The shop’s goingout-of-business sale combined with generous community support kept the shop from shutting down permanently, Arnold said. “I was overwhelmed,” Arnold said. “People were buying everything from me. It was an experience that was one or two up there in all my life experiences.” Tourism in Malibu Although students’ absence from Malibu certainly hurt many
small businesses, the increase of tourism greatly assisted small businesses throughout the pandemic, Gualtieri said. “The market so far has been mostly tourism here in Malibu,” Gualtieri said. “Mostly flourishing on the weekends, and then otherwise throughout the week there’s a steady stream of visitors — people either coming to Malibu for the day for a day trip or passing from Orange County to Santa Barbara.” The increase in tourism also posed new challenges for the city, something the city council was not prepared for, Pierson said. “We ended up spending a lot of money as a city cleaning up trash that we did not have in the budget,” Pierson said. “Trash was everywhere; people all over Malibu were saying that trash was everywhere.” Malibu’s renowned beaches were convenient, open locations during the pandemic, allowing people to gather and socialize in a safe and distanced manner. More visitors than expected were gather-
ing at beaches, especially on holidays, such as Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, leaving the city with the tough decision to keep the beaches open or not. “If we close the beaches, people are going to freak out, and if we open the beaches, people are going to freak out,” Pierson said. “So we didn’t, and it was crowded.” Although tourism certainly helped out small businesses around Malibu, not all businesses necessarily had tourists as the first priority; many businesses still prioritized locals. “The tourist aspect is great and I love it when we get all the different kinds of tourists in, but the No. 1 thing is that I create relationships with the people in town,” Arnold said. “They’re the people who support me the most, so those are the people I focus on.”
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Adjunct professors remain vital part of Seaver College AB BY W ILt NEW S ASS I S TA N T With a 13:1 student-faculty ratio and an average of 16 students per class, Seaver College prides itself in offering small class sizes and valuable faculty relationships with students. Adjunct professors make up almost 40% of Seaver faculty, allowing Pepperdine to keep class sizes small each semester, said Kendra Killpatrick, senior associate dean of Seaver College. Seaver College employs around 150 adjunct professors and around 250 full-time faculty members, Killpatrick said. Even in an online format, adjunct processors play a critical role in reducing class sizes and providing a true Pepperdine academic experience. They are also able to teach part-time and can teach up to eight units.
“We really cherish those faculty members who are willing to come and teach one class or two classes for us,” Killpatrick said. “They do really important work for us, and we’re grateful for that.” Hiring During the Pandemic Seaver hires an adjunct professor when a full-time faculty member goes on sabbatical, teaches at an International Program or when someone is specialized in one field for a specific class. Seaver looks for candidates who have at least a master’s degree and preferably some teaching experience, Killpatrick said. In addition, Seaver looks to hire adjunct professors to reduce class sizes, Killpatrick said. For example, in the spring 2021 semester, Seaver committed to keeping class
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sizes small, rather than the usual large lecture capacity of 150 to 200 students. Instead, those lecture-style classes were split into subsections of 30 students. In fall 2019, the majority of classes had 10-19 students per one instructor, according to the 2019-2020 Common Data Set. Before the fall 2020 semester, Pepperdine released COVID-19 Expense Optimization Measures the University would take during the pandemic. In regards to new employee hiring, Seaver decided “any new faculty or staff hirings will be carefully reviewed to ensure only essential roles are filled,” according to the measures. “Delivering the education to our students is absolutely essential and a top priority during the pandemic, so hiring faculty to cover classes has been viewed as a criti-
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cal expense,” Killpatrick said. To hire an adjunct professor, Seaver relies on connections with nearby universities and current faculty members to find the right candidates, Killpatrick said. Due to COVID-19, Seaver has been able to hire adjunct professors from anywhere, not just Los Angeles. “If our faculty knows a really good person elsewhere in the country, they can just ask them to teach remotely,” Killpatrick said. “We won’t be able to continue that, but it’s kind of a fun part of the pandemic.” Since adjunct professors are not full-time faculty, Seaver pays them an hourly rate and they do not receive benefits such as healthcare insurance or retirement plans. Killpatrick said some adjunct professors teach for just one semester,
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whereas some decide to stay for several years. “I just want our adjunct faculty and our students to know that we consider them a really critical part of our teaching faculty,” Killpatrick said. For Yvette Gellis, being an adjunct professor of art at Pepperdine gives her the opportunity to teach at a university that aligns with her values while working as an artist in Santa Monica, Calif.
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s p orts waves Sports Editor Paxton Ritchey and Sports Writer Karl Winter talk March Madness picks for the tournament. Available anywhere you listen to podcasts.
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