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University Club programs are open to the public and are held Tuesdays in the Padua Room of the Hughes Community Center, 1700 Danbury Road, Claremont, Cali fornia. Meetings start at 11:30 AM. The $20 meeting fee includes a buffet lunch. Membership applications are available at each meeting. Map to Hughes Community Center |
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| March Program Chair: Bill Waggener | |
March 6 –“From the Ooze” |
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| Speaker – Dr. Robert R. Gaines, Edwin F. and Martha Hahn Professor of Geology, Pomona College
In what has been hailed as the world’s most important fossil discovery in decades, Robert Gaines was a member of the team that discovered a stunning new Burgess Shale fossil site in Canada’s Kootenay National Park in 2014. His recent research at Burgess Shale sites has also offered a likely solution to one of biology’s greatest riddles, the preservation of soft-tissue fossils from the Cambrian Explosion, the flowering of complex life on Earth during the Late Neoproterozoic and Cambrian Periods some 570 to 500 million years ago. His hypothesis that a combination of calcium carbonate deposits and lower levels of oxygen and sulfur in the Cambrian seas prevented the degradation of the fossils by microbes was validated by a startlingly consistent pattern in the geochemical data he collected from around the world. He earned a BS from the College of William and Mary, MS from the University of Cincinnati, and PhD from UC Riverside. Among his various honors is Pomona College’s Wig Distinguished Professorship Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2007 and 2013. Introduction: Bill Waggener |
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March 13 – “Full STE-A-M Ahead: Advancing the Arts and Humanities at the U.S. Naval Academy” |
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| Speaker – Dr. William C. Corley,
Assoc. Professor of English,
California State Polytechnic University, PomonaDr. Corley’s presentation is about his experience teaching literature at the Naval Academy from 2013 to 2016. His focus will demonstrate the ways in which literature facilitates the moral and leadership development of midshipmen at USNA and the ways that literature is part of lifelong learning. Dr. Corley has taught American literature at Cal Poly since 2005. He primarily teaches texts written before 1900, but poetry, veterans studies, and Asian American literature have been known to bring him into the 20th and 21th centuries. The importance of religion to American literature has made the study of literature and religion a larger component of his teaching and research, and he also teaches the Bible as Literature. In 2008-2009, he was deployed to Afghanistan as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Reserve, and since that time has published several essays, poems, and stories on the connections between literature, the university world, and military life. He received his BA in rhetoric from UC Berkeley, an MA in English from San Jose State University, and a PhD in English from UC Riverside.Introduction: Art Sutton Fellowship: Beth Smith Greeters: Pat Kelly, Art Parker |
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March 20 – “Pan-Hellenic Games of Ancient Greece” |
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| Speaker – Dr. Evaggelos Vallianatos
The Olympic games were the oldest pan-Hellenic athletic and religious celebration among the Greeks. Similar festivals took place in Delphi (Pythian games), the Isthmus of Corinth (Isthmian games), Nemea in Argolis, Peloponnesos (Nemean games), Athens (Panathenaian games) and Dodona, Epirus. However, the festivities in Olympia, Peloponnesos, dominated Greece for centuries. The Olympics, taking place every four years, was a reliable national calendar. Fundamentally, these games honored the gods. Zeus in Olympia, Nemea and Dodona; Poseidon in Isthmus, Apollo in Delphi and Athena in Athens. In addition, these pan-Hellenic festivals aimed to bring the Greeks together: get to know each other and celebrate their common identity and culture. Poets read from Homer’s epics and their own poetry. Politicians made speeches. The games also had a restraining influence on war among the Greeks. During the games all hostile actions and war ceased. Dr. Vallianatos earned a BA in zoology, MA in Greek medieval history from the University of Illinois, and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin. Introduction: Anne Sonner |
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March 27 – “Devoured by Darkness” |
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| Speaker – Dr. Edwin C. Krupp, Director of the Griffith Observatory
Last August’s All-American Transcontinental Total Solar Eclipse crossed the entire country and confirmed the obvious. Total solar eclipses are now monumental mass entertainment and merchandising opportunities that command world attention. In the past, however, an eclipse was the last thing people wanted to see. In antiquity, an eclipse meant the foundations of the world were at risk, and to many traditional peoples, it looked as if some kind adversary was not just harassing the sun or the moon but taking a bite and swallowing it out of the sky. Ed Krupp studied physics and astronomy at Pomona College and lived for two years at the Brackett Observatory, serving as caretaker of the observatory, weatherman, and telescope demonstrator. Ed earned a BA from Pomona, and MA and PhD in astronomy from UCLA. His dissertation on the morphology of rich clusters of galaxies has been described as: “very respectable” – George Abell (his PhD advisor), “fine work; a definitive study” – Robert Chambers (his undergraduate advisor), and “a very tedious business” – Edwin Krupp. Introduction: Bill Waggener |
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Bulletin Committee Members: David and Anne Sonner
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