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As the school year gets underway, I can feel the hum of excitement on campus. To me, August is always a time of anticipation and opportunity. We’re establishing new routines, setting goals for the months ahead, and embarking on new chapters in our academic journey.

The Alumni Board of Governors (BOG) works to connect alumni around the world. A subset of the BOG represents a standing committee that meets regularly to consider and promote ideas for sustaining the �������� community we knew and loved during our years in Eagle Rock. How are we doing this?

On February 24, during a matinee performance of Occidental’s New Works Festival, an unidentified visitor snuck into Keck Theater. “It was really hard for me not to say hi to everybody because I like to say hi to everybody,” Tom Stritikus admits. The play he watched was A Slight Disruption, by Gianna Nguyen ’26, an urban and environmental policy major and interdisciplinary writing minor from Huntington Beach.

Talk to any �������� alumni long enough about their fondest college memories, and inevitably the conversation will turn to their favorite destinations close to campus. Eateries rank high on any list, and many longstanding favorites remain in business today—Casa Bianca (founded in 1955), Pat & Lorraine’s (1977), and Señor Fish (1995) among them. With a constant influx of new businesses, it was hard to limit this list to 10 notable neighbors new and old, but we tried. (Share your favorites with us.)

Maryanne Horowitz
Professor of History
Years at ��������: 51

Roberta Pollock
Professor of Biology
Years at ��������: 35

Beth Braker
Professor of Biology
Years at Occidental: 33

What attracted you to Occidental? So many things! I was searching for a position at a liberal arts college, and �������� had a lot of what I was looking for: an emphasis on student-faculty research, the opportunity to work with students away from campus on field trips and for international study, and a commitment to social justice.

In the fall of 1923—mere months before the birth of Omar Paxson ’48, longtime professor and patron saint of �������� theater—Occidental established a speech education department with the hiring of Charles F. Lindsley, an actor and orator of considerable renown. (More than 110 reels and disks of his work are preserved in the College’s Special Collections and Archives.)

Occidental Children’s Theater has been a staple of the Northeast L.A. community for nearly three decades now. But before it became the institution that we all know and love, there was a predecessor children’s theater company that—well, how shall we put it nicely?

Just over four years ago, in February 2020, I received a life-changing phone call: Stephen Rountree ’71, who was then chair of the Board of Trustees, shared that the trustees had just selected me to be ��������’s 16th president.