Oxy Stories | Occidental College

From academics to real-world impact, explore stories from our community that highlight the people and experiences making Occidental College a place of opportunity, discovery, and success.

Frank Macabenta

Frank Macabenta

Faculty Biology

Frank Macabenta focuses on understanding the mechanisms underlying collective cell behavior leading up to organogenesis.

Alberto Lopez Martin

Alberto López Martín

Faculty Spanish & French Studies

Alberto López Martín specializes in 20th- and 21st-century Spanish cultural production, with a focus on contemporary poetry, comic, and graphic novels.

Faculty History

Margaret Gaida studies cross-cultural knowledge transmission in the medieval Mediterranean, with a particular focus on astronomy, astrology, optics, and magic.

Kai Yui Samuel Chan

Faculty Politics

Kai Yui Samuel Chan teaches classes on political theory, democratic theory, and transnational politics. His research concerns individuals and communities traversing state borders.

Manuela Borzone

Manuela Borzone

Faculty Spanish & French Studies

Manuela Borzone is a literary scholar whose work focuses on the representation of the Argentine gaucho in literature, illustration, and film.

Faculty Sociology

Eric Bjorklund specializes in health, inequality, and political sociology. His research examines how the distribution of power within society shapes material conditions and formal political processes in ways that generate and reinforce health disparities.

Alaa Abdelfattah

Faculty Economics

Alaa Abdelfattah studies the distributional effects of public policy and national economic shocks on local labor markets. She is particularly interested in spatial inequality and the factors that contribute to wage and firm dispersion across space and over time.

Student Biochemistry

In just two years, Kenna Mueller ’27 helped lead the Occidental Dance Team from a spirit squad to a nationally competing, student-run program grounded in passion and community.

Student Environmental Science

From the Bluegrass State to Occidental College, Jaymes Griggs has found community and a path to leadership through science, civic engagement, and the Obama Scholars Program. And amid all this, he still has time for pickleball.

A young Oxy alumna with long brown hair and a big smile

Mariah Rutiaga Amaya ’22

Driven by her experiences in food justice and her father’s health struggles, Mariah Rutiaga Amaya found her calling in medicine. Now, she’s preparing to become a physician who centers community, advocates compassionately, and uplifts the most marginalized.

Samantha Acuña

Faculty Politics

Samantha Acuña is interested in constitutional law, immigration policy, judicial behavior, and gender-based violence.

Faculty Chemistry

Vikram Shende's research group studies the structure and function of molecules found in nature, and how we can engineer enzymes—proteins that catalyze chemical reactions—that biosynthesize these “natural products.”