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I had completed my first year of studies at Occidental when a serendipitous encounter in July 2012 sparked the beginning of a decade-long intergenerational friendship. My mom’s car, adorned with an ����TV bumper sticker, was parked outside the Kirkland (Wash.) Library. A passerby saw the sticker and left a simple note (with his email) on the windshield: “Hi ����TV-ite! David Wigglesworth, Occidental Class of ’50.” My mom sent me a photo of the note, and I emailed Dave later that day.

I am at an age where I have elated on mountain tops and groveled in murky swamps and ambled through brambles in the tricky valleys as well as thickets of downed timber. ����TV and Frank Lambert—a name synonymous with organic chemistry students during his 33 years in the classroom—have been my guides throughout my journey.

“Gamers are the most vocal audience on the internet of any scale,” says Sam Bergen ’04, who speaks from nearly 20 years’ experience as an advertising executive. “Everything you do is scrutinized to a T. You know immediately if what you did was a hit or a flop in the eyes of the audience.”

Linda Besemer 
James Irvine Distinguished Professor, Art and Art History
Years at Occidental: 36

Nina Gelbart
Professor of History and Anita Johnson Wand Professor of Women’s Studies
Years at Occidental: 48

How did you wind up at Occidental? My husband [William Gelbart] and I were living in Berkeley at the time, where he was teaching, and he was basically poached by UCLA. He came in as a full professor at some absurdly young age. I had finished my Ph.D. just a couple years before, and I had just had our first child, so I thought an adjunct position of some kind would be perfect.

Arthur F. Saint-Aubin
Professor of Spanish and French studies
Years at Occidental: 44

What’s been your favorite class to teach and why? I teach three different categories of courses, and I have a favorite in each: first-year courses that target principally language acquisition; second-year courses that further develop students’ language skills with an increasing emphasis on exploring the diversity of Francophone cultures; and advanced seminars in literature and culture—courses aimed principally at majors, minors, and native speakers.

Sunshine and show business have always fueled the Los Angeles mystique. But the city’s earliest impressions gushed from an altogether different source, one whose hazardous legacy is felt more than a century later in some of the region’s more vulnerable neighborhoods.

Mekong Medicine: A U.S. Doctor’s Year Treating Vietnam’s Forgotten Victims, by Richard W. Carlson ’60 (McFarland). In 1966, along with nearly half of his 1964 med school classmates, Richard Carlson was drafted into the U.S. Army Medical Corps. He applied to Vietnam’s Military Provincial Hospital Assistance Program—and as Carlson led a team in Bac Liêu province in the Mekong Delta from 1966 to 1967, he “religiously” chronicled his daily activities as well as life around him.

Eight Occidental sophomores and juniors, including four first-generation college students, have been selected as Occidental’s 2023-24 cohort of Barack Obama Scholars. The prestigious leadership training program seeks to empower exceptional students committed to the public good.