On campus, the Forum broke the news of President Gann’s email concerning the fudged reports and compared a google cache of the Office of Admission webpage to its current page, and later highlighted former Dean Vos’ resignation. On Wednesday afternoon, the Forum publicized an official statement from CMC’s student government, ASCMC. Nationally, The New York Times and The LA Times were among those to first pick up the story, offering background on the events of the incident, including the score falsification, Richard Vos’ resignation, President Gann’s email to students, and the move to hire a law firm to investigate the matter more fully.

Photo Courtesy of CNN

A variety of reports have concluded that the college’s rankings will only be mildly affected, if at all.  CNN reported that according to U.S. News and World Report, SAT scores “account for about 7.5% of a school’s total score in the formula.”  In an interview with NPR, Robert Morse, the director of data research for U.S. News, speculated that while the score change wouldn’t have dire effects on the college’s ranking, it could likely drop out of the top ten.

USA TODAY interviewed Robert Franek, the senior vice president of publishing for The Princeton Review who stated that “he had never heard of a college intentionally reporting incorrect data.” However, Franek also told the Forum that he didn’t believe the score inflation would make a real difference in CMC’s standing with the Princeton Review, as their reviews are based entirely on student opinion.

Rankings aside, the Claremont Port Side conducted an in-depth investigation into how much the scores had been altered to create an upward trend in scoring. Reporter Jeremy B. Merrill ’12 published graphs which reveal critical reading scores were inflated by “an average of more than 17 points,” suggesting the score manipulation was more drastic than President Gann had originally suggested. Merrill reported an elevated mean during the past years to cover up a dip in scores and the fact that, “the freshmen admitted in 2011 — the class of 2015 — had mean Critical Reading scores that were the lowest since the class admitted in 2007.”

TIME magazine’s online newsfeed was sympathetic to CMC and criticized the rankings system for putting undue pressure on colleges to present a flawless face.  The Chronicle of Higher Education also reported on the competitive world of admissions and gave examples of several colleges in similar circumstances.  The article concluded by reaffirming, “We also maintain the belief that the system is fair and honest, and try to head off the cynicism that our families could easily adopt by viewing college admission as a rigged game of numbers and self-interest.”

As for the man responsible, The New York Times also confirmed that it was in fact Richard C. Vos the former Vice President and Dean of Admission and quoted him as saying, “No comment. It’s an internal personnel matter.”

The New York Times Education Section spent time on campus for an article entitled “Students at Claremont McKenna More Worried About Reputation Than Rankings” interviewing students who generally agreed that although the score adjustment was regrettable, it did not reflect negatively on their fellow students. Most students echoed senior Blake Bennett’s sentiment, “It’s still a great school. I just wish this wasn’t why it was getting headlines.”

ABC News reported on campus in front of the Kravis Center, gathering footage of sweatshirt-clad CMC students as a background to its report on the recent controversy.  More recently, ABC News reported that a spokesman for CMC, Associate Vice President for Public Affairs, Communications and Marketing, Max Benavidez, stated “We’re not hiding anything,” he said. “We’re the ones volunteering to tell people what took place and what we’re doing to fix it.”  The report also quoted Aditya Pai ’11, ASCMC Vice President, as saying, “[Vos’s] actions do not reflect the strength of our community, the excellence of our education, or the caliber of our people.”

Students continued to ask for answers as Nathan Falk ’14 called for a further explanation from the administration. “Only shedding light on the issue will bring us closure,” Falk said in his Forum op-ed.

In a positive take on recent events, Caroline Nyce ’13 defended her college and its community in another Forum op-ed published Wednesday morning. Nyce wrote, “The CMC they’re writing about? That’s not my school.”

Unfortunately the answer is obvious, and cringe-worthy: U.S. News & World Report National Liberal Arts College Rankings.

Claremont McKenna College has been rising on this list—and other lists—for some time now. The yearly reports have been big news on campus: we glorify falling admissions rates and drool when Forbes ranks us higher than Yale. We post on our Facebook walls about how we fared relative to other competitive colleges. We put flashy banners on our homepage telling us where we stand. The 5^th and 6^th lines of President Gann’s biography on the college’s website list the school’s ratings and its admissions selectivity ranking.

The administration is obsessed with our placement on an arbitrary scoreboard, and many of us students have joined the self-congratulatory bandwagon. We find ourselves today in an environment so focused on rankings that a senior admissions officer decided that a one-percent fudge was worth his career.

Shame on Mr. Vos, but he does not deserve all the blame.

Monday’s announcement was a wake-up call. Yes, these types of rankings games must be watched more closely. Yes, everyone involved should see the door. But the administration must also address the fact that the incentive to cheat at these games in our community seems to be unusually high. Beyond firing those responsible for cheating, the administration must address both the larger system of college rankings and its attitude towards our own ratings.

The college continues to insist on measuring itself by metrics calculated by people who have never eaten in Collins dining hall. We have an unusual and unhealthy obsession with moving up that list. It must stop now. If the administration continues to see us only in numbers, we will continue to bleed integrity. CMC will win the game. But we will lose ourselves.

Why would President Gann care what U.S. News and World Report thinks about our professors? The answer is simple: high rankings lead to better students, better professors, more money for the school and better jobs waiting for us after graduation. High rankings are good—and we can measure them. How can the college possibly be asked to ignore them?

It can’t really. Somehow, we have to attempt to strike a balance between caring and obsessing about our reputation as an institution. Unfortunately, this is an issue that every college community and every admissions department in the country must confront.

Why? Because the college ranking system is broken.

We know this intuitively. Measuring Harvey Mudd College on paper with Claremont McKenna on paper is like asking a blind man to compare apples and oranges. If a high school senior were to ask you which of the two schools she should attend, telling her the square footage of Kravis or the SAT score statistics of Mudd’s freshmen would be silly. Yet these are the very numbers that colleges around the country let rule the decisions they make at the very highest levels. These statistics are not inherently important; the ranking system makes them important. That’s ridiculous.

Once a school has been named among the top 20 schools in the nation, it should not be ranked against its peers. The differences between schools at this level come from the different focuses and strengths of each school. Publishing rankings only encourages an obsession with prestige: a gaggle of kindergartners standing on tippy toes trying to see who is the tallest.

Undeniably, the actions of anyone involved with this scandal are irredeemable and absolutely inexcusable.

But the admissions department was acting on the pressures it felt by the rankings fixation of this administration. “I put pressure on myself to drive up the rankings because it is in my office’s best interest,” Dean Vos told the Claremont Port Side in an interview in 2008, a year in which scores were inflated. This administration has created an environment that passively encouraged cheating.
But the administration was acting on outside pressures too—pressures caused by a broken ratings system that we know has no baring on the quality of this education. A solution, then, to properly address what happened will be complex.

U.S. News and World Report should admit that what it publishes is based on funny math from essentially all participants. And at some point, this college should stop sending data to institutions that rank colleges. More realistically in the short term, however, this administration needs to address its ranking mania. The resignation of Mr. Vos should not be the end of this fiasco. From here, the first step is to admit we have a problem.

I didn’t come to Claremont McKenna College because it’s number nine. I came here for the people, the classes and the professors. This won’t affect those things. But we must understand that it is worth reflecting on this situation further. For those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

And we are better than this, CMC.

Henry Kravis ‘67 knows a thing or two about Claremont McKenna College’s oft-heard tagline “leaders in the making.” As co-founder of the international private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR), Mr. Kravis has built a multi-billion dollar empire and made serious waves in the business world.

Mr. Kravis is among CMC’s greatest benefactors and most recently, contributed the funds for the new Kravis Center facility located on the westernmost part of campus. The $80 million building is the largest on CMC’s campus and houses faculty offices, classrooms, and a much-needed underground parking structure. The Kravis Center also unites five of CMC’s touted research institutes under one roof.

Three years after breaking ground, CMC celebrated the opening of the Kravis Center on Friday, October 21, 2011. As part of the convocation ceremonies, Mr. Kravis spoke with Tova Markowitz ’12 and Heath Hyatt ’12 at an Athenaeum luncheon. Mr. Kravis discussed lessons learned as a major corporate figure at KKR and emphasized the importance of a liberal arts education in today’s globalized world. In his opinion, successful CEOs are those that can innovate to adapt to a changing world and shifting markets. “There are very few companies today that aren’t somehow affected by what’s going on in the rest of the world,” said Mr. Kravis.

Below is a video recording of Mr. Kravis’s visit to the Athenaeum. The video also appears on CMC’s website.

Conversation with Henry Kravis ’67 from Claremont McKenna College on Vimeo.

It was a busy semester at CMC.

CMC moved up in the rankings to the 9^th best Liberal Arts College in the country.

The Kravis Center officially opened to students and faculty.  The Living Room (affectionately known as ‘the Kube’) attracted students’ attention  after some technical difficulties and the administration’s initial decision to limit access to students. This was all before the Kube became home to one Pomona student’s temporary interpretive dance studio.

The fall semester also celebrated and embodied student leadership at CMC.  Students started a movement to do a better job of cleaning up after parties and led an effort to change our campus conversation about sex and gender norms. Trying bridge the gap between our Building Attendants and their residents, the Forum got to know some of CMC’s friendliest staff members. CMCers led a campaign to be more environmentally friendly on campus and coordinated a day of reflection on 9/11. Others took the lead in social activity planning, expanding student involvement with Dean of Students and creating the College Programming Board (check out the big name they are bringing to campus). Student initiative also brought the popular TED talks to the Claremont Colleges, hosting a TEDx conference in September.

CMC also faced a number of challenges in the fall of 2011: an unexpected over-enrollment of students forced the conversion of two popular study spaces into four-person rooms and a large number of students returning to CMC in the spring from fall study abroad programs led to an on-campus housing crisis.  The story behind the “Marks Squatter” brought some humor to a rather-serious-but-now resolved issue of on-campus visitors.

The Associated Students of Claremont McKenna College was hard at work all semester, advocating for students on issues such as increased study spaces, building a better quality of life, and providing some much needed snack time.

The Occupy Movement swept the nation this semester and arrived at the doorstep of our Claremont Colleges. Students were active in the protests in Claremont, Los Angeles, and the rest of the nation. Indeed, two Pitzer students were arrested for their involvement in the Occupy LA protests.  Political dialogue was alive and well, especially towards the end of the semester, when CMC welcomed former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to our campus. Many 5C students, however, had a different plan in mind and formed an “unwelcoming” party for Rice’s visit. The planned protests forced a change in venue for Rice’s speech, which triggered an outcry from students. While the protests stirred up quite a controversy, the civility and political discourse throughout the evening exemplified students’ diversity of thought, without provoking violence or hostilities.

The Forum sat down with our very own college president Pamela Gann and discussed her current and future projects for the school, which included a revamp of the beloved North Quad and expanding the new Center for Civic Engagement.

But it wasn’t all business this semester at the Forum. Speaking with Paul Zak, a.k.a Dr. Love, the Forum got to hear the Doctor’s thoughts on love, life, and how giving 8 hugs a day will make the world a better place. Those student globe-trotters enjoying their study abroad experience took time to write home to CMC and share their experiences from far-off lands such as Washington D.C., South America, Italy and Oman. And for those bright-eyed freshmen, returning students and Dean Spellman gave them their two cents (sometimes musically) on how to navigate their first semester and discover how great this college really is.

We uncovered the top 5 companies that hire CMC students, brought Words with Friends lovers the 10 most useful Scrabble words, and suggested 8 classes to students that might have overlooked some academic treasures. Students contributed to the ongoing discussion on topics such as art, film, pop culture, public radio, music and concerts. And despite the delicious unveiling of a new Ath menu, the Forum offered some tips on how to stay healthy, even in the face of all those Rice Krispie treats.

A-Mitch even appeared for an encore.

ASCMC hosted a number of events this semester, improving on past traditions—Monte Carlo—and even starting some new ones—The Boardwalk Empire party and No Shave November. We know you can’t wait for the Wedding Party next spring—and neither can we. Expect even bigger surprises next semester.

Our tech guru offered some awesome tips on his #CMCTech blog, including advice on how to make your work faster and more effective, thoughts on the Semester in Silicon Valley Program and even a holiday gift guide (it’s never too late to get that perfect present).

The Forum also better incorporated sports into our publication. The Forum now offers live broadcasts of all home CMS athletic games, complete with video and audio from student broadcasters.  We celebrated triumph, defeat and the utter domination at SCIACs.  The publication also took and in-depth look at sports at CMC and uncovered how SCIAC rules hurt CMS recruiting high school athletes and what many are doing to save the Intramural program.

Outside of the CMC bubble, the Forum checked in with our beloved Claremont village, celebrating the once-in-a-century Zipcode Day (9/17/11=91711) and partaking in the delicious festivities at the California Beer Festival.

It was a busy semester and time for reflecting has just begun. First, we would like to thank you, our readers, for your support, comments, advice, kindness, crudeness, humor and thoughtful discussion. But, we have one more request. The Forum has grown considerably in the last semester but we want to know how we can continue to improve. Below is a short survey that we hope you will fill out so we can make this publication stronger. We look forward to hearing your constructive thoughts, suggestions and comments.

The Forum wishes you a wonderful break and a restful holiday. We promise to bring you the best in news, opinions, and insights from Claremont College students as we enter our spring semester. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading with us this fall, and we’ll see you in 2012!

The Motley: If you’re looking for coffee and can’t haul your butt all the way down to Honnold, the Motley is always a great choice. The noise level is moderate, but there are enough people that it all almost sounds like white noise. But beware: the seating is limited, and there are paper mache boobs on the wall.  The drinks and food are well worth it, though, and on these cold nights the Motley is always toasty and cheerful.

Hours: Mon-Thu, 8am-12am; Fri 8am-5pm; Sat, 11am-5pm; Sun, 11am-5pm, 8pm-12am

The Living Room: The most novel place to study on campus. The Living Room has cool new furniture that’s surprisingly comfortable – however, the tables are low, so all you can really do there is read.  Plus, be ready for the “new car” smell that permeates the whole room, a bi-product of those fancy new leather couches.  Always look to see who is studying in there. And a final reminder: When you’re in there at night, even if you can’t see everyone outside, creepily enough – they can see you.

Hours: Mon-Thurs, 8am-12am; Fri, 8am-10pm; Sat, 12pm-10pm; Sun, 12pm-12am

The Reading Room: Probably the most popular place on campus to study this year, the reading room offers two floors of absolute quiet. It’s like taking the 4^th floor of the library and putting it in Bauer. While there’s no food available, the short walk can’t be beat.  However, if you need to study in groups or like that “white noise” aspect of a study room, this may not be the one for you.  For those who need utter silence: you have found your haven.

Hours: Mon-Sun, 10am-1am (extended during finals week)

The Coop: If you’re like me, and the presence of anyone you recognize is the perfect way for you to procrastinate, take a walk to the Coop. There’s great food and drinks, and you are less likely to know the people there, so you won’t have that overwhelming and urge to talk to everyone you see (although, I’m sure they’re great people too). If you want even more privacy, sneak over to the Pomona Living Room: it has great couches, bright lights, and even a fake fireplace for your wintertime ambiance.  One of the less-known study-spot gems on the 5-C’s.

Hours: Mon-Thurs, 9am-12am; Fri, 9am-1:30 am; Sat, noon-1:30 am; Sun, noon-midnight

Off Campus: Drag yourself to Starbucks, The Last Drop Café or Coffee Bean in the village, or even further off campus to Panera or Fruizen, and you might find that removing yourself from the stressful atmosphere of finals makes you less stressed and more productive.  Enjoy the change of scenery and that fresh start might be just what you need to get a kick-start on your studying.

As you make your way to wherever it is you’re studying (everything feels like a trek during finals week – maybe it’s because your textbooks weigh more when you’re actually going to have to read them), just remember to mix it up. You’ll make it through, I promise. Just breathe, switch to decaf, and get some sleep.

“I have heard a lot of frustration from several students who find the spaces available to be too crowded or limited in hours,” said Mao. “The spaces in the proposal are ones where students should have increased access. Several other institutions allow 24-hour access to classrooms and a 24-hour library space. We’re a top academic institution, but lack these qualities of our peers.”

The SSTF submitted a proposal on Tuesday, December 6, to Dean Jefferson Huang, Vice President for Student Affairs, and Dean Gregory Hess, Vice President for Academic Affairs, which suggests how study spaces on campus can serve to satisfy what they identify as six primary student needs: a 24-hour (1) individual study space, (2) group meeting space, (3) group study space, (4) computer lab space, (5) outdoor space and (6) an informal gathering space.

Photo Credit: David Leathers

Identifying and detailing the proposed use of six spaces–the Hub, Frazee, the Living Room, the Kravis Center terraces, classrooms and the Crocker Reading Room–the proposal seeks to ameliorate the difficulties CMC students have recently encountered with procuring appropriate study spaces. The SSTF also suggests measures to increase the efficiency of printing in computer labs and ways to increase the availability of information to the CMC student body regarding hours of the study spaces.

The proposal recognizes the advancements made in the Hub over the past year, but points out that it is not being fully utilized by the student body. The Hub is most often used during the weekdays, when students can get meal replacements, snacks or socialize with friends. But, as the Hub grill only serves food after 8pm on weekends, the space is nearly empty for much of the day, excluding mealtimes. Thus, in the short-term, the proposal suggests that an expansion in the hours of operation would lead to students making better use of the Hub over the weekends as an informal hangout space. In the long term, the proposal suggests that the Hub should be accessible to students 24-hours a day through key-card access. Furthermore, as the Hub lags significantly in terms of food and aesthetics in comparison to its counterparts across the five colleges, the proposal suggests renovating the Hub as part of next summer’s North Mall Renovation Project.

In its proposal, the SSTF questions the effectiveness of Frazee, the newly created study space on campus, in creating a comfortable and suitable study environment for CMC students. In particular, the proposal sites the ‘chair room’–the room adjacent to the Hub Store–as an inconvenient answer to increased study space. In the short-term, the proposal suggests the conversion of the ‘chair-room’ into a 24-hour conference room for students by removing all the chairs and adding a table. The SSTF suggests that with this change, the room would be more useful as a group meeting space or a group study space. The long-term proposal suggests the elimination of the walls between Frazee’s two rooms to create a much bigger study space.

The Living Room does not currently serve as an appropriate study or a lounge space as the tables are too short for studying to take place and limited access to the building itself prevents students from taking full advantage of its resources. The proposal suggests that it is necessary to increase the accessibility of the room to 24-hours a day.

The SSTF also cites limited access to the Kravis Center terraces as seriously inconveniencing students and preventing use of the space for group meetings, group studying, or more social student interactions. The proposal suggests that day-time access to the second and the third floors should be granted to students every day of the week. ID card readers and security cameras will ensure that students are safe and treat the building respectfully.

According to their proposal, the SSTF assert that there is no group study space on campus where group collaboration can take place. The library and the reading room have restrictive noise rules, making them excellent places for peaceful studying but less great for rowdy meetings. Meanwhile the dorm lounges and the Hub are too noisy. The proposal suggests that classrooms in Kravis Center, Roberts, and Bauer be available for students to work in a group after-class hours. Currently, the Dean of Students Mary Spellman and Registrar Elizabeth Morgan are looking into this while Assistant Dean of Students Eric Vos and Dean Huang are also looking into the matter.

The Crocker Reading Room does a good job of providing a quiet, individual study space to students. The proposal suggests that the Presidential Collection on the second floor be moved elsewhere in order to allow for an extension of hours and access to the reading room. By moving the collection, students would be able to appreciate the collection at a more secure place and there would be no need for student monitors outside the room. The monitors could be reallocated to supervise the Ducey weight room, which would ensure that the student monitors are still employed. The proposal highlights this particular recommendation as it has a few costs for the college, with many benefits for the students.

To the SSTF, printing remains the main problem in the computer labs. Many students rely on the availability of computers at labs like Poppa in order to quickly print reading and study materials; more often than not, however, students arrive at a lab only to find that no computers are available for a simple print job. The proposal notes that these circumstances lead to one of two things: students leave unsuccessfully or interrupt students already at work. To remedy the problem, the proposal suggests the creation of 1-2 ‘printing stations’ in Poppa lab – computers designated for students who come in solely to print. This would solve the problem by allowing students to get in and out quickly, while preventing any additional equipment from being added to the lab.

Perhaps most important in the SSTF’s recent proposal is what they cite as the underlying reason for why the Kravis Technology Classroom or Frazee are underutilized: a general lack of communication. The proposal seeks to address the communication gap between students and the administration and suggests that the “Student Gateway” page of the CMC website include a detailed list of study spaces with availability and hours of operation.  Rather than sending out school-wide emails regarding the hours for a particular study space, the information could be consolidated in an easily accessible and readily available format on the school’s website.

SSTF hopes that with their proposal comes a marked change in how the CMC administration will assess and evaluate the existing–and potential–study spaces on campus. It is clear that procuring appropriate study space for college students is a high priority issue, and the SSTF hopes that their initiative will draw the attention of both administration officials and the CMC student body to this reality.

The full text of the proposal is here.

Recently, Claremont McKenna College students may have glimpsed Espindola dancing in the Living Room on select evenings. Espindola, whose dances run anywhere from four to eight hours, incorporates ballet, modern dance, and yoga poses into her routines. She chooses to use the Living Room as her dance studio as part of her ongoing interest in “site-specific dance.” As she describes it, “Site-specific dance is created to exist in a certain place where the artist considers a site’s unique environment, social context, and architecture. I see the beauty of moments that cannot be planned or created.” Espindola emphasizes that her performances are part on her ongoing research into the field of dance. She explains, “I am no different from the students that go there to study.”

Hold me closer tiny dancer!

Initial reactions to the dance performance were varied. Some, for example, thought that Espindola might be a Pitzer student protesting in conjunction with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Many speculated about her props, which include ropes and ribbons. One student playfully suggested that the props might be “symbolic of the oppression of the 1% on the working class.”

Espindola emphasizes that her performance had no ulterior motives or messages. When informed of fellow students’ reactions, however, Espindola was unsurprised, stating, “There is a power bigger than me that can communicate on a nonverbal level. Everyone will have their own experiences, ideas, questions and feelings when they see me dancing.”

After learning the reason for Espindola’s dancing, students have had mixed reactions.  CMC sophomore Sam Stone, who live-tweeted a portion of the performance, joked, “if Pomona students are entitled to express themselves in new CMC facilities, then I should be allowed to work on my Goldman Sachs application at Pomona in Sontag Hall!”

More seriously, senior/tech guru Dave Meyer was “impressed with her innovation, and [feels that] it is demonstrative of the lack of creativity on CMC’s campus. Perhaps the focus on economics and government pulls students away from their deeper passion for the arts.”

Espindola echoes Meyer’s sentiments, stating, “While there is plenty of artistic expression on campus, the problem is that we are too busy to see them, to appreciate them, and be thankful for them.” She hopes her dancing inspires students to think and create art in non-traditional ways. As she puts it, “There is always more to see. Open your senses to feel, to hear, and to see the hidden meaning of a space.”

While Espindola does not have any scheduled dances, she will be on the CMC campus performing at various locations for the rest of the year. You can find out more about Pomona’s site-specific dance program at www.sitespecific47.wordpress.com

President Pamela B. Gann

Nathan Falk: Thank you for meeting with me President Gann, I hope it’s all right if I start with some general questions about the “State of CMC.” What are the most important projects that you personally have been working on recently?

President Gann: Ok, yes of course. Obviously the biggest project that I’ve been dealing with for the last few months was finishing the Kravis Center and getting it ready for the beginning of school and its grand opening. It’s continuing to be a great success story, and we’ve probably gotten 95% there, but we still have some loose ends here and there that need to be dealt with.

Otherwise, to continue in the realm of buildings and grounds, our next big project is the renovation of the North Mall, which stretches from the Kravis Center all the way to Bauer. We have been working with student focus groups and ASCMC to figure out how best to preserve the aspects we love about the fountain, whether it is dropping students in on their birthdays, celebrating senior thesis accomplishments, or just having fun and hanging out on a really hot day. Student input was extremely important, and I think we have a design that would do that very well. Also, we want to enhance the seating areas and outdoor spaces along the North side of the Athenaeum to make that more of a useable daytime terrace, and also improve the South side of Emett Student Center, where the Hub is. Then, we’re moving forward with further planning for the section from Heggblade all the way to Bauer Center. Although there are no formal designs yet, one idea I like is putting a water feature where the four North Quad dorms meet. The first part of the renovation will be completed this coming summer, while the second piece has no detailed timeline right now.

The third buildings and grounds related project we’ve been working on, is the new Fitness and Athletic Center. This new space would house all our athletic facilities, but would also serve as a large events center where we could seat all students, faculty, and staff under one roof. Currently, we have no place on our campus that can house our 2000+ member community. We are beginning to review the programming for this project, and will start having fundraising conversations now that the Kravis Center is open and functional. We’ve already discussed how athletics will work during the 18-month transition period during construction, so we are ready to proceed with raising the necessary funds.

http://www.cmc.edu/civicengagement/

Transitioning to the Student Affairs and Academic arenas, our biggest project this year was to launch the Center for Civic Engagement, which brings together a lot of existing projects such as the community service internship programs, some community service projects that students have demonstrated interest for in past years, etc. But, the center is meant to pull all of those things together to make the programs more cohesive, robust, and garner broader student interest in the realm of volunteerism and service. We’re focusing on what I call “social capital,” which our country has always depended on. Whether that takes the form of voting, running for local or national office, working on campaigns, community volunteer projects, and environmental or sustainability projects, we want to be able to support students’ ventures in these areas, both domestically or abroad.

Another Student Affairs issue is library hours and study spaces. We are currently working with students on this, and although I don’t have any policy updates, Dean Hess and Dean Huang’s office are working with a student group to come up with a better solution.

Career Services and student needs are also a big focus for me. I think that currently the quality of services is excellent, but we need to increase the scale. Frankly, we’re trying to figure out how to best broaden the scale of our career services.

As for the purely academic side, in addition to conducting extensive faculty searches, our biggest single project is launching the Silicon Valley Program for next fall. Also, last year we ran several experimental models where we had students pursue international work for-credit. This is different than summer-internship credit, and much more similar to our program with Yonsei, where students study economics in South Korea, or the Jordan program, which we think is more likely to be a biennial opportunity.

CMC-Yonsei Korea Summer Program, Photo Credit: DSME Photographer

This year, we’re taking a very serious look at India. We have a faculty working group and student focus groups so that we can try to begin programs there in the areas of Technology, Business, Finance, Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, not to mention culture and religious studies.

NF: Perfect, that’s quite a lot to deal with at once. Next, I’m curious, what shortcomings have you or your administration encountered in the last few months?

PG: You know, I get asked that question a lot. Just the other day at Forum for the Future, the young alumni asked, “what are your big problems,” and my answer was this: If you look at the college internally, and the things that we can affect, CMC is in a very good spot right now. The biggest single challenge is one thing you can’t control, and that’s the economy. The economy affects our financial model because our revenue comes from three sources: tuition, gifts, and returns on the endowment. So if the economy is growing very slowly, families have a harder time affording tuition, which results in more financial aid, alumni may feel more pressure about how much they’re willing to give, and then you also have lower returns on investment.

Credit: USA Today

In 2008, we had to hit the “reset” button after what happened to the economy, and the markets are just now, a few years later, about to recover everything we lost. So we haven’t gotten above the point, we’re just getting back to where we were. Still, we’ve had two years of expenditures and modest inflation, so the purchasing power isn’t back to where it was, and, since July 1, we’re looking at negative investment returns. That’s not an environment where we can take on lots of new initiatives, etc. That’s an environment where you just try to hold on to everything. So when people ask me what my biggest challenge is, it’s managing the college in such a way that we remain with forward momentum, but not in a way that makes new financial commitments that, at this point, would put financial pressure on CMC. Basically, how do we run the college, keep it moving forward, but not start anything bold or expensive, because we can’t do that in this environment.

NF: How do you want to see CMC change in the next 5 years? In the next 10 years? In the next 50?

PG: Actually, I don’t want to change CMC in the most fundamental ways. We have an incredible mission to educate leaders through the liberal arts, and I think we are accomplishing that mission. I think our students and alumni like our mission, that’s why they’re here. You had lots of choices, and why did you come to this college? I think it’s because this is the right place to be for what you wanted to accomplish while in college.

Secondly, because we’re in the consortium, we have the luxury of not having to do everything at CMC. Let’s say these are the 13 things we do really well, and there’s another 50 in Claremont. I think that’s a luxury, because we don’t have to make trade-off decisions with lots of small departments, small programs, this organization or that organization. I think this is something special to Claremont, and I wouldn’t change that. I think that we should do as much as we can to use the consortium affirmatively to make it work for us and make sure we’re a strong partner with the rest of the consortium. You were asking what we need to be doing 10 years or 50 years out, and I think we have to pay a lot of attention to the consortium. So how do we keep building those bridges and making them more and more significant and more and more distinctive in higher education?

So I think the biggest things are making sure we stay the course, and just continue to work on quality and alignment of everything we do, while building the financial resources to give us the capacity to ride out economic challenges from time to time. I personally love CMC the way it is, and just want to be able to qualitatively improve and deepen the programs we offer. For example, we fund 125-150 summer internships each year. I’d like for us to have the means to fund internships for every CMC student. I’d also like to see every CMC student provided with the opportunity to have one international experience while they are here. It could be for two weeks, it could be in January, in the summer, or for a semester.

I think we are a very innovative place and we keep testing and trying out things, and then when they work, I work to try to figure out how to scale them financially.

Me: Ok, last question. What elements of your job do you most look forward to?

President Gann: My favorite part of my job is the ability to make a difference in people’s lives every day, and I really mean this. I want every student to come here and have a life-changing experience. If I’m a young faculty member, I want him or her to find this as a very satisfactory professional home for teaching and research and identify with CMC as an institution. I feel that my primary job is to come into work every day and try to make this the best possible institution for all of the people who have chosen to be here, and I also care that our staff feels great pride in their identification with this college. What I like to do is to come into work and think somehow I’m going to make this a richer and better and more successful experience for the members of this community.

Senior members of the faculty wanted the living room to be accessible at anytime of the day or night, but ultimately, someone decided to only open the structure while it could be kept under surveillance. Dean Jefferson Huang,Vice President for Student Affairs, explains, “The two reasons for phasing into it are campus safety and we want to see how the room’s personality evolves. The administration wants to see what kind of personality the living room takes on. We want to start with fewer hours and work our way up. There are four cameras inside and four cameras outside the building, which are currently recording but not streaming live to campus safety. Once we get the cameras working, we will be able to monitor the living room, as it cost us millions and we would not like to see it being abused. But stay tuned. We will watch this, we’ll get the mechanical things fixed, and we will make adjustments to the hours accordingly.”

Currently, the structure is locked. A mechanical problem with the hinges and an issue with the ventilation prevent the doors from closing properly.   Dean Huang also said, “first and foremost we want to get the doors opened as there are mechanical problems, which are stopping it from opening.

Contrary to popular belief, Dean Huang points out that the school has never had more study spaces than those  on campus today. Dean Huang says, “other than the two study lounges in Auen and Fawcett, we have never had more spaces that the ones we have opened this semester. We have the Crocker Reading room, we have two rooms outside the Center for Civic Engagement, and we will get the Living Room opened as soon as we can fix the doors. In some ways, I reject the primary premise that we are getting back to where we were, but rather we are going beyond.”

However, Greg Zahner ’12, the RA of Wohlford, feels the school is limiting study spaces by locking most facilities of the Kravis Center outside of  business hours. He cannot even provide visitors with a treat of what the Kravis Center is like during campus tours on Saturday because the elevators are locked  along with most of the rooms. He says, “the school is being overprotective of the Kravis Center and students are not going to trash it after all the effort and money has gone into building it.” He feels that curtailing the hours of living room does not help the situation as students were looking forward to being able to study there at any hour of the day, as there is already a shortage of group study space on campus. He suggests an open classroom policy for Robert’s North and South where students could swipe in once classes have ended for the day. He adds, “this will save the school a lot of money, as they will not have to extend library hours, they could make use of the existing structures on campus. From a safety standpoint, the school could hire a monitor, like the monitor who sits in the reading room, who would be in charge of the living room and the bottom classrooms on Roberts’ North and South. Students could use the classrooms for group work and could take advantage of the white boards and the projectors and could turn the Kravis center side of campus into a study hub at night.”

The RA’s hope that the administration will make Kravis Center facilities, including the living room, more available to students in the future. Meanwhile, Dean Huang understands the students’ outcry for extended hours in different facilities, but points out that it’s not a question of the college being overprotective of CMC’s new crown jewel, but rather an effort on the part of the college to be smart and phase the new buildings into use.

Professors, other adults, and your parents probably think that you are really good at using a computer. Based on my none-too-empirical observations of most Claremont McKenna College students, unless you’re an Resident Technology Assistant or Lab Technology Assistant, you probably suck at using a computer. Test number one: Are you reading this article on Internet Explorer? If yes, stop reading this article and download literally any other browser. All of the other options are faster, better designed, have more features, and are more secure. Subtest A: Do you know how to download another browser? If no, I’m not sure I can help you. Ok, now read on.

Should every CMC student be able to configure a VPN or access their computer’s root directory? No. Nobody wants to put the RTAs out of a job. There are, however, a lot of simple things you can do in order to make the time you spend on your computer more efficient, leaving more time for Reddit, or The Vampire Diaries, or, you know, being outside.