Let's Play Some Softball... Pitzer Style!

Every year, faculty and staff give the seniors their last educational lesson at Pitzer College by beating them at the traditional softball game.

This year was no different. The Class of 2011 played a great game! Many of the players on the field included some of our very own Admission Fellows and student workers from the class of 2011.

About a year ago I was playing as a senior against the faculty and staff, but oh my how the tables have turned! This year I had the opportunity to roll up my sleeves, take off the tie, and take a swing at the ball... I almost made it past first base until Admission Fellow, Chris Moore '11, tagged me out! Next time Chris, next time!

Emma Fisher '11

Admission Fellows Alex Smith '11 and Ben Harris '11 put up a good fight, but that didn't last too long. Assistant Director of Admission, Danny Irving, went up to bat on behalf of the staff/faculty and how to show the seniors how it's done!

Cecil the Sagehen would have been proud to see us all playing a good game of softball!.

January Interviews

I hope everyone had a relaxing and meaningful Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend! The rest of the admission staff and I spent the weekend scattered across the country holding the last interviews of the year. We had counselors and/or Admission Fellows in San Francisco, Emeryville, Seattle, Washington D.C., and Chicago. (We'll be wrapping up in Portland this coming weekend). All added up, we did approximately 300 interviews in one weekend! Thanks as well to all of our prospective students who took time and energy to schedule an interview with us on the road. We love meeting you and hearing your stories!

We worked and traveled over a long weekend which, for most people is a holiday, because we really value the opportunity to interview as many of our applicants as we can.

Returning to the office today, we saw the parking lots and dining halls full of students who returned from winter break while we were away. The campus has energy and life again, despite the rain. Yes! Rain! Do not adjust your screen, you're reading correctly. It's been pouring, by our standards, for a couple of days now. Rain in the desert is often bewildering, and many of us are joking about the "awful weather." The truth is, however, that the rain is also a critical part of the ecosystem that we inhabit and so it's nice to see the plants and animals soaking up the much anticipated water.

While I was in Chicago for interviews I got to check in with some Pitzer College alumni!
From left: Caitlin Pierce '09 is a first-year corps member of Teach For America in Saint Louis, MO; Yael Berenson '08 lives in Chicago and works for Youth Outreach Services; Ben White '08 also lives in Chicago and works at Easter Seals Therapeutic Day School; I am me; and Kevin Garvey '08 just moved to Chicago after teaching English in South Korea for a year and a half.

What a great opportunity for some Pitzer propaganda! But really, it was fantastic to see the good work that Pitzer alumni are doing in the world. Keep it up!

For the next month or so, the admission staff will be reading the applications that you have all put so much time and energy into. It is a labor of love. Though it may seem strange, I encourage you to take this time to relax as much as you can. Not so much that you start failing classes, but enough so that you can enjoy the second half of your senior year. The process is now truly out of your hands. Read fun books, ride a bike, stay up late with your friends, write songs, eat meals with your family.

...and let us know if you have any questions!

Beyond Buzzwords, part 3

Interdisciplinary Learning…I can almost see all of your eyes rolling at just the thought of these words together. This term represents perhaps the most overused buzzword in higher education today. For more than a century, the “modern” social science disciplines like Sociology, Economics, Psychology, and Anthropology have battled each other professionally and intellectually. In a very literal sense, college and university faculty argue with each other and with administrations to justify expanding their particular departments. More generally, debates continue about which discipline best prepares students to study and understand the world around them. In fact, traditional higher education in America is based on these debates.

Since the 1960s, however, a new way of looking at the world has begun to earn a place in the academy. Pitzer, founded in 1963, has always embraced the interdisciplinary approach to learning. Interdisciplinary learning is an acknowledgment that people are multi-faceted, that the world does not conform to traditional academic disciplines. As a result, we are looking for students and faculty who agree that the learning process is best served when we ask what traditional disciplines can do together, rather than how they differ.

One of the ways you can see this value manifested on campus is in the structure of our Field Groups. Most colleges and universities place their faculty within traditional departments. We’re not most colleges. At Pitzer, faculty members can choose to identify with different Field Groups, allowing for a freer exchange of intellectual perspectives. We have professors here at Pitzer who may have been “trained” in graduate school as Anthropologists or Neuroscientists, but they choose to teach courses in History or Psychology. Further, we don’t physically separate our faculty by subject area. You won’t find the “Sociology building” on campus, or the “English/World Literature” building either. You will find Economists sitting next to Psychologists and Poets sitting next to Mathematicians.

Andre Wakefield, Professor of History at Pitzer, teaches a course on the History of the Disciplines and is currently working on a new project that will consider the historical, intellectual, and practical issues surrounding academic disciplines in higher education.

Another example of Interdisciplinary Learning has been the rise of the “Studies” in higher education, and particularly at Pitzer. Several of our Field Groups and majors fall into inherently interdisciplinary categories such as Media Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies, Political Studies, and Organizational Studies (to name but a few). The idea behind these degree programs is to provide room for students to explore a subject from a variety of perspectives. For example, in Environmental Studies when we talk about water usage in the Southern California area, we are forced to acknowledge that we are really talking about a political issue, and a sociological issue, and an economic issue, and an historical issue, as well as a scientific issue.

Christine Zarker Primomo is currently a Senior at Pitzer College and an Admission Fellow here in our office, among other things. Her major - Science, Technology, and Society (STS) - is a great example of Interdisciplinary Learning. Christine says, “These classes span across multiple disciplines including but not limited to: history, philosophy, anthropology, politics and public policy, and sociology. After taking Governing India my first semester, I discovered my interest in global water issues. STS has allowed me to combine my love for science with my passion for improving the health of and access to water resources. One of the best parts about Pitzer, especially majoring in an interdisciplinary field, is that each semester, without consciously trying, my classes all come together. Learning takes on a new face when in addition to taking classes I love, I see that they are all somehow connected under a bigger idea, one not tied to a specific discipline but rather have a diversity of views and practices. Part of the excitement of the semester involves discovering new links between classes like Environmental Chemistry, Language and Society, the Politics of Water and Philosophy of Science.”

For prospective students, we’re interested to know how the idea of Interdisciplinary Learning helps you look at your world. What are the theoretical and methodological tools that you need to take on challenges in your community? What kinds of multi-dimensional issues pique your interest? If you could create your own major, what would it include?

If you are excited to answer these questions, then you have gone beyond the buzzword. I encourage you to think about how your education will challenge you to find questions and answers in curious places. Tell us how you see the world, its problems, its successes, and why you want to continue your explorations at Pitzer. Read faculty bios and course descriptions at the various institutions that you’re considering right now; if they’re not assigning readings from different fields, then they’re not interdisciplinary. If they’re not assigning men and women on their reading lists, then they’re not interdisciplinary. If they’re not assigning ethnically and racially diverse sources, then they’re not interdisciplinary. Put institutions of higher education to the test.

Thanks for coming back to Admission Unpeeled. There’s a lot more information coming in the days ahead so stay tuned and keep reading!

Pictures from Fall Preview Pitzer Days!

Admission Fellows Joahna Ruffin, Suhail Sheikh, and Misa Kabashima join Admission Counselor Danny Irving by the pool in front of our Gold LEED certified First-Year residence halls. Not bad for November, eh?
Families arriving on a beautiful Southern California morning!
That's me in the purple, just gushing with enthusiasm to some prospective families!


Here are some of our dedicated student-workers laboring away to inflate biodegradable balloons early in the morning.
Emma and Chris, Office of Admission student-workers, welcoming prospective families to campus. Cecil, do you feel left out?

WAC(AC)-TASTIC

If anyone called our office last week, you probably heard that most of the staff was out of the office between Wed and Fri. This was because we were attending the annual WACAC conference. On top of putting on an amazing conference that gave me a great opportunity for professional development, WACAC is an important organization for you to know about. WACAC is an ACAC, Association of College Admission Counseling, and there are a number of different ACACs for each area of the country.

There is WACAC-the Western Association of College Admission Counseling.
There is NACAC-the National Association of College Admission Counseling.
There is RMACAC-the Rocky Mountain Association of College Admission Counseling.
There is OACAC-the Overseas Association of College Admission Counseling.
And so on.

These organizations are a collection of College Admission Counselors, High School College Counselors and Independent Counselors all working together to find the best way to serve you, the students. WACAC represents the states of California and Nevada and works on advocating for student’s rights, making sure colleges adhere to The Statement of Principles of Good Practice and conducts research.

This year the conference was at Chapman University and it was an amazing experience for me. I hate to admit it, but this was actually the first time I had visited Chapman’s campus and I must say they have a beautiful campus. I also must thank the entire Chapman Admission Staff, you did an excellent job setting up the conference and all the social events. Since this was my first WACAC, they set the bar pretty high for all the conferences I will attend in the future.

This year’s conference was great, it gave me a chance to meet some new people in the industry, catch up with my colleagues and attend some amazing sessions. My favorite sessions were “Seniors Save the Day”, “Moving Images in the College Admission Process” and “Ready Set Launch! Help Students Get Their Scholarship Search off the Ground”.

Now I hate to be biased, but the “Seniors Save the Day” session was one of my favorites because it was presented by Adam Sapp, Claremont McKenna College’s Associate Dean of Admission and our very own Jasmin Escobar, Pitzer College’s Associate Director of Admission. This session talked about how seniors work to help the Admission Offices at their respective schools. Here at Pitzer we have what we call the Admission Fellow Program. The Admission Fellows help us by conducting interviews, presenting information sessions, recalculating GPAs and staffing college fairs. These Admission Fellows really do “save the day” for our office, and I am not just saying this because I used to be one. This year the Admission Fellows conducted 489 interviews and during the fall, while the counselors were on the road visiting your high schools, the Admission Fellows and Alumni Interviewers conducted 80% of our interviews.

Now I know a number of parents out there are hesitant when they hear their son or daughter will be interviewing with a student. I want to take this time to reassure all of you parents that interviewing with an Admission Fellows carries the same weight as interviewing with an Admission Counselor. The Admission Fellows actually go through a rigorous 40 hour week of training and are more than qualified to conduct these interviews. In fact students tend to enjoy their interviews with our Admission Fellows more than they enjoy interviewing with one of the counselors. (With the exception of my interviews of course)

The next session that I really enjoyed was “Moving Images in the College Admission Process” and it was also amazing. This session was presented by David May, Chapman’s Assistant Director of Admission and one of his student workers, Sasha de Mello. This session was amazing for me since I am in the process of creating a virtual campus tour for Pitzer and we have never done something like this before. It was great to see how another college approached this project and how they use other online resources such as blogs. You can find David’s College Admission blog at http://chappenings.blogspot.com/. After David and Sasha’s session I am even more excited to get started on our virtual tour and hope I can impress David with our finished product.

The last of my favorite sessions was “Ready Set Launch! Help Students Get Their Scholarship Search off the Ground”. This session was presented by Lynette Matthews, the Director of College Connection and Rhondalynne McClintock, the Director of Scholarship Club. Rhonadalynne’s daughter Talia, who will be starting her career at Pitzer in the fall, also contributed to the presentation. This session was a little bit different from the others I attended, since I don’t get to contribute as much in student’s scholarship search. However, this session was surprisingly relevant for me. Private School education is not cheap and even with our policy to guarantee to meet 100% of a student’s demonstrated need, sometimes families still need a little more help paying for school. There is a ton of money out there to help students pay for college, but it is up to you to find it (and the you I am referring to is the students, not you parents). In the past I have directed families to the 2 scholarship search engines that I knew of, the College Board’s Scholarship Search Engine http://apps.collegeboard.com/cbsearch_ss/welcome.jsp, and FastWeb http://www.fastweb.com/. In reality there are a ton of other websites that are great for starting a scholarship search (see below for a longer list).

The key to starting your scholarship search, is to make a list of your attributes, this is also called a personal inventory and think outside of the box when making this list. There are scholarships out there for things as random as people with one blue eye one brown eye. Look at things like your parents employer, your parents previous employers, if anyone in your family has served in the military, what you are interested in studying, if you do community service etc. At this point start looking through the scholarship searches to see what you can find. Some of the other great search engines I learned about in this session were http://www.scholarshipexperts.com/, http://www.meritaid.com/, http://www.finaid.com/, http://www.gradefund.com/, http://www.scholarshipcoach.com/ and of course Rondalynne and Talia’s website http://www.thescholarshipclub.com/. Talia and Rondalynne are located in Rancho Cucamonga, so if you are a student from the Inland Empire I highly recommend checking them out. Remember it is never too early to start looking for money for college and the process doesn’t stop after you start your first year of college.

There was one other big issue that we discussed frequently during the WACAC conference, the Cal Grant. For those of you who don’t know, the Cal Grant is free money for students who are California natives, who are attending a College in California who, demonstrate financial need and meet certain GPA requirements. The Cal Grant award can be up to $9,700 a year and is sometimes the extra money a student needs to be able to attend a college or university. Unfortunately, with our current economic crisis, the Governor is proposing to cut the Cal Grant. This cut would affect over 200,000 students, but there is something you can do to help. Write a letter to your local California Legislator and ask them to vote against cutting the Cal Grant. You can also write directly to Governor Schwarzenegger and tell him how you feel. This takes only a few minutes and can really make a difference. You can also log onto the NACAC website and fill out a short form that will send the email for you, http://capwiz.com/nacac/issues/alert/?alertid=13464096
Please every email or letter makes a difference.


As you can see, I learned a lot while I was at WACAC and came away rejuvenated and ready for next years travel season. Now on to some blog business, as you have seen there has been a little less posting on the blog over the summer, and since I will be out of town it will continue to be a little lighter in terms of posting. Later this week I am heading down to San Diego to help conduct mock interviews at my Alma Mater Francis Parker, and then I am heading out on vacation, so expect some posts about that. Don’t despair the light posting, keep tuning in and be ready for the fall because there will be some exciting new changes to the blog.

Committee

Hi everyone.

So we are in committee now. Another completely new experience for me. During committee we discuss all of the files and create the best class possible. We are still only starting so I will post some pictures and more details next week, but to tide you over until then, here is another post from one of our fabulous Admission Fellows.

Hey readers,

I’ve never written a blog before so I hope I don’t fail you. There’s really a lot going on with me these days as I close out my last semester of college. Mostly what’s on my plate the next few weeks is my thesis and finding something do after graduation.
Just to give you all a little background on myself I’m Tori! I’m a Neuroscience major and a Spanish minor here at Pitzer. While I finished my minor a while ago I still have quite a bit of work left on my major.
As a Neuroscience major I’m required to complete a 2-semester experimental thesis project of my own design. I spent last semester doing background research and designing my experiment and this week I’ll finally start it! I’ll be studying the effects of increased serotonin through dietary means. You guys might have heard about Serotonin in reference to depression, but it does a lot of other things in your body as well. Serotonin is really considered the universal neurotransmitter because it’s involved in so many processes from appetite and weight control to regulating body temperature and how much pain you feel. Also, of course, it affects your mood and emotional state.
Basically what I’ll be doing over the next 2 weeks is administering tryptophan dietarily, which is a protein you normally get from some foods. You might have heard that it’s in turkey. This protein, and only this protein, becomes serotonin in your brain. I’ll be watching for various effects of this treatment and trying to help determine if tryptophan could be a viable treatment option for various conditions such as depression or acute pain.
My study should end just in time for Spring Break so wish me luck! Hopefully there are no snags that would prevent me from having to stay here over break but they don’t call it experimental for nothing.
After the study ends I will write up my results into the paper that will be my actual thesis and I’ll also create a poster for presenting my findings. When I say a poster I don’t mean I’m gluing things to a piece of poster board, it’s a professionally-printed 5 foot by 3 foot display and no easy task to create.
Even though thesis is the biggest item on my plate right now I still have other classes that I’m taking and have to keep up with, like I have a midterm in Cell Bio tomorrow that I’m not very excited about. I’m also taking a class on Meditation & Xi-Quong, which is a slow martial art. I thought it would be nice to take a class that was designed to relieve stress! My last class, but not least, is Neuropsychology which I love. The professor is hilarious and we get to learn about the effects of head trauma and things like that.
Despite all the work I really do love school and will be very sad to leave it. After spending four years here I’ve come to know a great deal of people that I don’t want to leave behind, but at the same time I feel like I’m ready for a transition, something new. It’s very bittersweet really. I imagine you all are feeling something like that.
Well enjoy your last semester of high school and be sure to make the most of college when you get there. And keep reading! Who knows, maybe I’ll post my thesis results….

Admission Fellow's Perspective

Hi everyone. Here is a post from one of our Admission Fellows, Emma Perlmutter.

Hey everyone! My name is Emma, and I'm one of the awesome admission fellows here at Pitzer. As a second semester senior I'm currently in the process of writing an honors thesis for my major, Organizational Studies (which is basically a liberal arts, interdisciplinary way of doing a business major), on the effectiveness of Appreciative Inquiry as an method of evaluation. For the past couple of months I've been doing lots of library research with the aid of our very helpful Honnold-Mudd librarians, brainstorming ideas with my advisors, sending emails to leaders in the field, and I even attended the Positive Psychology Symposium at Claremont Graduate University, which had the founders and leaders of the field speaking. Unfortunately, the easy part is now over and I must start writing. Yuck.

Aside from being an Organizational Studies major I also have a minor in Economics. As one of the professors will be retiring at the end of the year, the school recently went through a job search to fill his position and had the final three candidates to campus in the past three weeks. Everyone on campus was invited to attend the job talks and attendance ranged from the Dean of Faculty to members of the Economics field group to students to members of the maintenance staff, and everyone's evaluation of the candidates was taken into consideration. I was invited by the field group to take a larger role in the selection process by eating lunch with the candidates after their talks in order for us to better get to know them and for them to get to know what Pitzer students are really like. Although the verdict is still out on who will be joining the Economics field group this fall, having met all three candidates I can say with complete confidence that no matter who is chosen they will make an excellent addition to the campus!

I hope that this was a good peek into what the life of a senior is like here at Pitzer and into our selection process for new faculty. If you have any question about the Economics or Organizational Studies field groups (or about anything related to Pitzer) please feel free to shoot me an email and give me a good distraction from writing my thesis!

Reading Time

Hi everyone. I know it has been ages, but I had no idea what reading season actually entails and I have been busy. Allow me to fill you in. After we receive your wonderful applications and spend weeks on end putting them together, see previous pictures of piles of mail taller than I am, the Admission Counselors are finally ready to read. During reading season the admission counselors work from home, YAY!

At this point I must digress, and give a big thank you to our wonderful processing staff. While the counselors take off to read files, they are still here tackling those piles of credentials.

Now don't get too jealous, just because I get to work from home doesn't mean that life is easy. I have to read 135 files a week. That is a lot of reading. I must say, I have really enjoyed some of your essays. My name has even come up in a few of your supplements and it cheers me up every time.

To let you know, we do read everything in your application and we have a holistic approach to admission, so we have no formulas and every part of your application is considered. In fact, just to make sure you get your fair day in court, all the applications get read twice.

Then, every Thursday, our staff gets together and has a mini committee. This is where the two readers present your application and we make a final decision as a group.

As you can tell, I don't have as much to write about these days. So to keep the blog lively, I am going to have some of our Admission Fellows write entries. For those of you who haven't met the Admission Fellows, they are Seniors who conduct interviews, and information sessions and attend college fairs. Since this is their last semester of college, I figure I would allow them to tell you what is going on around campus and maybe share some of that knowledge they have gained over the last 4 years. You can check out their bios on our website.

https://fepzhal.pitzer.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.pitzer.edu/admission/senior_fellows.asp

Congratulations of reaching your final semester of high school. Enjoy it, but not too much, we do still look at those last semester grades :)

Danny