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Camilla Taylor had been driving for 16 hours on the night of January 7 and was getting close to their Altadena home when the fire on the mountain came into view. “The hillside was black besides the fire because all of the power was out,” recalls Taylor, an artist, printmaker, and sculptor who joined the �鶹��Ƶ faculty as a resident assistant professor in 2018. Once they got home, they ran inside to find their husband, Jason Troff, with an overnight bag packed and carriers at the ready for their four cats, waiting for an evacuation order.

Whenever Administrative Law Judge Ira Sandron ’71 of Miami is in Los Angeles for a trial, he has lunch with his L.A.-based counterpart, Brian Gee ’87. “We enjoy reminiscing as well as discussing procedural issues,” says Sandron, who works out of the Washington, D.C., Branch of the Division of Judges within the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

“Ira and I have a lot in common, including our shared �鶹��Ƶ experience,” says Gee, who works out of the San Francisco Branch—just like Sandron did at the outset of his nearly 50-year career in government service.

Higher education has a unique capacity to address national priorities, confront global challenges, and improve outcomes for humanity. Many of our most important medical, technological, and social advancements have been driven by academic researchers who dedicate their careers to furthering our collective knowledge.

Our society benefits from the rigorous work accomplished at U.S. colleges and universities—not just at large research institutions but at small liberal arts colleges such as Occidental.

From art to history to politics, the �鶹��Ƶ calendar has been top-heavy with visitors who had plenty to say this semester. �鶹��Ƶ Live! welcomed visual artist Ed Ruscha to Thorne Hall on February 4. On February 18 and 19, historian and reproductive justice advocate Deirdre Cooper Owens visited Occidental as the 2025 Stafford Ellison Wright Scholar-in-Residence. On April 8, Atlantic staff writer Tom Nichols delivered the 2025 Jack Kemp ’57 Distinguished Lecture in Choi Auditorium.

When South Carolina resident Julian Washington enlisted in the Army in 1966, he expected to be deployed to Vietnam for his service. Instead, he was sent to learn photography during basic training in New Jersey. After that, he did public relations and photojournalism while stationed in Germany, and he continued to pursue photography professionally after his discharge in 1969. “I grew up with my dad taking pictures and with cameras and lights being around,” says his daughter, Janna Ireland.

Mira Hart ’26 enjoyed science in high school and assumed she would major in chemistry, although as a self-described “outdoorsy person,” she had a hard time imagining herself working with molecules in a lab as a career. But when she joined the Geology Club in her first semester at Occidental, the Seattle resident found her passion—a field of study that combined her existing love for the outdoors and chemistry with her newfound interests.

“Politics was something my family never shied away from talking about within our household,” Samantha Acuña says. “My parents have had very different trajectories in terms of their life and immigration experiences because of the political histories of their respective countries. All the work I do is inspired by my family and our own history.”

It’s a meet-cute story that bears repeating: Anne Marie Kurtz ’57 met her future husband, George Novinger ’54, in a bedroom of the ATO house. “George had been injured in a football game against Pomona, and he was sitting on the bed, with his leg in a cast, where the girls put their coats and purses,” she recalls. “I immediately fell for him because he was very good-looking. George said he’d been smiling and waving at me on the Quad for weeks, but I would look the other way because I was very nearsighted.