Daniel Selon ’08 was at a friend’s house on July 15 when his phone started pinging non-stop. One particular text stood out from the rest: “Congratulations, you genius witch!”

Ron Buckmire

Professor of Mathematics | Years at Oxy: 30

“Ron showed me that mathematicians can be cool people with diverse interests who are great teachers and communicators.”
–Jesse Kreger ’15

Read his interview and alumni tribute

Peter Dreier

E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics; Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy | Years at Oxy: 32

As a student at UC Santa Cruz, Margi Rusmore was the youngest member of the first American Women’s Himalayan Expedition, which climbed the 10th-highest mountain in the world in November 1978. “There was a lot of buzz” around the expedition, Rusmore recalls—a New York Times headline read, “Himalayan Scaling Called an Inspiration to Women”—“and I realized early on that I don't take well to talking about myself. Some people are good at it—I’m not.”

Ron Buckmire grew up in a house full of Cap’n Crunch. His father, R.E. Buckmire, a University of Massachusetts Ph.D. turned food scientist for the Quaker Oats Co. in Barrington, Ill., invented the Crunch Berry for the iconic cereal line. “My sister and I had so much Cap’n Crunch as kids,” Ron recalls. “We were testers basically.”

As a student at Palisades High School in 1969, Warren Montag participated in a walkout to protest the Vietnam War. “I wasn't consistently politically active at that time, but looking back, I would say that was an important experience,” he says. After the walkout, he and his classmates went to a demonstration at UCLA—and while they were on campus, “The police attacked the demonstration. I had to run through UCLA, which was like a baptism of fire. It was scary but good.”

On the morning of May 18, as Oxy seniors and faculty lined up along Bird Road for the Commencement procession up to Hillside Theater, Professor of Kinesiology Stuart Rugg was in his element. “I kept teasing my students that it took me 38 years to get my diploma, compared to four for them,” he recalls. “I didn’t know the College actually gave emeriti faculty the equivalent of a diploma—which was kind of cool.”

Every spring, the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy hands out student awards for community service—and this year the department named a new award after Professor Peter Dreier, who retired in June after 32 years at Occidental. “They wanted to call it the Troublemaker Award,” he says. “I said, ‘Call it the Public Service and Community Organizing Award or something like that.’” (Ultimately, the Peter Dreier Community Organizing and Public Service Award was presented to Emma Galbraith ’25 on April 30.)

Alexandra Puerto came to academia later than most. “I went to graduate school in my early 30s,” says Puerto, who joined Occidental as an adjunct lecturer in Latin American history in 2004 and recently was awarded emerita status as an associate professor of history and Latina/o and Latin American studies. “I was at Oxy long enough to retire but still young enough to have a last chapter.”

(Editor's note: After 35 years, Glenn A. Elmer Griffin retired from Occidental last December as professor emeritus in the Department of Critical Theory and Social Justice. A three-time recipient of the Donald R. Loftgordon Award for Distinguished Teaching, he was profiled in Occidental magazine in Fall 2001. A tribute by Jill Normington ’94 follows the article.)  

Every dorm room tells a story—and depending on the temperature, it can be a horror story. Arriving at Chilcott Hall as a first-year from Boston, “I thought I’d landed in hell,” Amy Forest Montgomery ’96 recalls. “Opening those crazy windows only let in more heat.”  After calling her uncle, William Sherinyan ’58, in tears, “He had a massive fan overnighted to me,” she adds. “I kept that fan for at least 15 years.”