Pomona to increase wages for visiting professors

Many students’ hopes for action extend beyond removing the statue. Dunkin explained that Scripps administration must acknowledge the harm it has caused and commit to not making any money off of the sculpture following its removal.

She added that the Scripps community must take generative action and replace the statue with a piece of art that directly addresses the harm caused by “Young Woman.”

“I really hope that the students that have been affected by this, the Jewish students on campus, the Black students on campus, the queer students on campus [and] anyone who’s had any sort of negative visceral reaction to the sculpture, I hope that they’re able to find closure,” Dunkin said. “I hope that we, as a school, represent them in a way that we’re proud of.”

Wolfgang Brauneis, a German art historian, will share more information on Kolbe’s and other similar artists’ work in a presentation on April 5 in the Hampton Room at Scripps.

Scripps’ Office of the President did not respond to an immediate request for comment.

Pomona College has announced its plans to increase the base salaries of visiting professors in the upcoming 2023-2024 fiscal year.

The decision comes after new research findings from Pomona’s Vice President for Academic Affairs, Yuqing Melanie Wu and Chief Operating Officer and Treasurer Jeff Roth, that indicate a disparity in salary increases among visiting and tenure-track professors.

“We conducted research and found that the vast majority of visiting faculty salaries did not increase at rates comparable to those of tenure-track faculty in the last eight years,” Wu said to TSL via email.

To address this inconsistency, Pomona will begin by increasing the base salaries of visiting professors.

“[In the future,] full-time visitor and one-course visitor starting salaries will increase at a rate that is similar to tenure-track faculty,” Wu said.

To Wu, this change is a necessary part of supporting Pomona’s “academic mission.”

Wu briefed faculty about this decision at a faculty meet-

University of La Verne dining hall workers vote to authorize a strike, 5C students organize support

ing at the end of the Fall 2022 semester. However, official approval of the proposed salary increases will not come until the spring.

In order to increase staff salaries, the proposed increases must be worked into the annual budget. The budget process begins in November and is eventually sent to the Board of Trustees (BOT) in May for approval.

Wu stated that “building the budget involves all campus units,” but that ultimately Roth is responsible for recommending a proposed budget to the BOT.

Although this conversation follows Pomona’s recent decision to increase wages for dining hall staff, Wu contended that there was no relation.

“There is no connection between the union agreement and faculty salary scales or increases,” Wu said.

KGI accelerates Master’s in medical device engineering to one-year program

SIENA SWIFT

Following approval from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) announced on Feb. 22 that its Master of Science in Medical Device Engineering (MSMDE) will shift from a two-year to one-year degree program, effective immediately.

MSMDE program director and associate professor Anna Hickerson has been at KGI for nearly 18 years. She helped KGI launch the MSMDE program in fall 2019 to provide graduate students with critical skills in everything MedTech — from product management to data analysis to prototyping.

Six students are graduating with an MSMDE this year, five of which are second-year students.

“We have one first-year student who gets to graduate in one year when he thought he would have to do two,” Hickerson said. “[So the change was] good luck for him and he gets to graduate with [the] other students.” different schools.”

The MSMDE is administered through KGI’s Henry E. Riggs School of Applied Life Sciences, which also offers a doctorate degree and six other masters programs. The MSMDE is KGI’s first ever offered one-year master’s degree.

The degree culminates in a unique capstone experience — the Team Master’s Project (TMP) — which provides companies with a team of three to five students supervised by one faculty member who execute the development of a medical device product. Hickerson said the program is modeled after Harvey Mudd College’s capstone clinics.

University of La Verne dining hall workers voted on Feb. 28 to authorize a strike for the first time in the university’s history.

ULV’s workers are organized under UNITE HERE Local 11, the same labor union that has represented the dining hall workers at Pomona College since 2010. ULV has been unionized since 2013.

100 percent of the unionized ULV workers present voted in favor of the strike authorization, with 17 out of the 18 ULV workers part of the bargaining unit voting yes and one abstaining.

Over the last year, ULV workers have organized multiple delegations in attempts to communicate their demands to the management team and negotiate a new contract for fairer wages. However, they have largely been dismissed and allegedly ignored by management, according to labor organizer and ULV student worker Stephen Gilson ULV ‘25.

The Claremont Student Workers Alliance (CSWA) has been actively supporting ULV workers and students throughout the process.

At the beginning of last semester, CSWA reached out to student organizers at ULV such as Gilson to encourage student workers to start their own alliance group, according to Luna Romero PZ ‘26. However, ULV’s group did not gain much traction after their first meeting in fall of last year.

Last semester, the ULV union workers won $40,000 worth of back pay for employees who never got their raises during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gilson stated that the union has had about five negotiations in total. Their original demands in September were for $22 an hour, but they raised it to $25 to maintain a living wage in Los Angeles County.

ULV students who work at the dining halls are also going on strike for union recognition.

“They think because we get paid minimum wage that they can treat us like that, but we’re not siding for that anymore,” Gilson said. “So we’re actually getting ready to strike ourselves as students.”

According to Gardner, there has been no response from dining hall management nor the university’s administration despite workers’ delegations talking with them.

“They’re definitely well aware of what’s going on with the workers,” Gardner said. “And there hasn’t been an acceptable response or change in behavior.”

This semester, CSWA has contributed to the ULV workers organizing through flyering and canvassing. They also attended delegations and the strike certification vote.

“Because both of these schools are under the UNITE HERE Local 11, although CSWA emphasizes external organizing, building off each other’s fights and building coalition support is really important,” Romero said.

Simone Gardner PZ ’25 said that CSWA has been visiting ULV’s campus to spread information about the workers’ situation.

CSWA has also been circulating a petition that calls on the university to meet workers’ demands and show solidarity with workers by agreeing to not cross the picket line at an upcoming strike.

According to Romero, CSWA currently has over 160 contacts and has been sending out weekly newsletters containing the labor fight updates and action items for the ULV student body since last week.

“Our main focus right now is empowering [ULV] students to take a step up,” Romero said. “We’ve been doing that by doing surveying trips just to have those conversations that would hopefully sustain and build trust.”

There are some difficulties in laying that groundwork, according to Gardner.

“I don’t think there’s quite as much of a focus on students being involved in student organizations at La Verne in quite the way it is here,” Gardner said. “But from all the conversations that we’ve had, we can tell students really care about the workers and they want it to be better.”

Gardner describes CSWA’s efforts in helping ULV establish a student workers alliance as similar to that of the 5Cs.

“There’s also the fact that there are students who are working and being mistreated,” Gardner said. “Some of the people who we’ve been working with are students who are workers, and they have been interested in starting a La Verne Student Workers Alliance.”

However, Romero says that right now, a student workers alliance at ULV is going to take the form of a temporary mobilization outreach group to spread information about upcoming strikes and spaces to support the workers.

On March 7, ULV’s dining hall workers organized a picket line in front of The Spot Dining Hall with the support of CSWA members, Pitzer College, Pomona College and Whittier College workers.

Gilson stated that ULV security showed up at the picket line, but did not attempt to stop the protest.

“I was so happy to see all the 5C students who came out there and it looked like the workers were grateful for that too,” Romero said. “We are all part of a greater worker labor movement in the area and that everyone has each other’s back.” Romero said that a strike at ULV is expected to take place in the next few weeks. Until then, CSWA hopes to establish a clear line of communication between the two schools.

“We’ll be bringing out students to La Verne’s campus to support them, and we’d expect a reciprocal relationship where La Verne students could come out here at the 5Cs if needed,” Romero said. “So the main goals will be just direct communication of support and aid.”

Hickerson added that most other MSMDE programs, of which there are only a handful in the U.S., are one-year long.

“It’s better for the students, [and] it’s better for KGI in terms of being competitive,” Hickerson said. “It’s such a large investment, so cutting it in half is a big deal, but I think we can offer the same level of skills.”

She explained that while the program is small right now, she hopes to eventually have around 20 or 25 students in the cohort.

“Maybe this new setup will be more enticing,” she said. “It’s [been] well received [by current students], so I’m really happy about that and I’ve certainly gotten a lot more interest from potential students I’ve talked to at

“Companies will actually come to KGI and pay KGI to have our students solve a specific problem. The students work together in a team to address the issue,” Angelika Nimez, the Dean of Faculty for Riggs School and a MSMDE professor at KGI, said in an interview with Actalent on Feb. 6. “So effectively they gain industry experience. Which is then great because they can put that on their resume and then that opens up doors later on when they’re trying to land a job.”

This year, the MSMDE cohort is working with Medtronic, one of the biggest medical device companies in the world, Hickerson said.

Hickerson gave a shout-out to KGI’s matching summer program, the Medical Device Development Bootcamp, which offers participants certificates in either medical device design or medical device prototype development depending on the session they choose.

The summer course itself is free, although students must cover their room and board costs if they choose the in-person program.

KGI’s MSMDE graduates have had a 100 percent success rate in securing a job in the field or attending medical school, Hickerson said.