CMC Spotlight

"The professors have been very accessible."

"Everyone was so warm and friendly and welcoming. A professor even stopped my family while we were touring campus and asked if we had any questions," says Arjun Lall '07, describing his first visit to CMC.

While Lall enjoys the school's liberal arts approach, small class size and access to a wide range of courses through the Five C's, what he most appreciates as his college career draws to a close is CMC's supportive culture that has afforded him entrepreneurial as well as academic success.

Courted by one of the world's largest consulting companies, Lall, an economics major with a computer science sequence, plans instead to work full-time on the Fantasy Congress^TM website he launched in Fall 2006 with fellow CMC students Andrew Lee '07, Ryan Wilson '07 and Ian Hafkenshiel '07.

Political news junkies and newbies alike can sign up at the site, picking as team members senators and representatives they think will excel. "But we're making it more than just a game," Lall asserts, adding, "We want to provide a Congressional one-stop-shop so that participants can learn and share their political opinions."

The website's debut spawned a flurry of media coverage, garnering attention from blogs and a variety of traditional news outlets. "When it came out in the New York Times, it was the most e-mailed article of the day," explains Lall, adding that "I knew we'd get some press, but I never imagined that I'd be live on Fox News by age 21!"

Lall, who is responsible for much of the web programming and business aspects of the project, links the website's success to that same nurturing atmosphere he experienced when he first visited Claremont.

In addition to seed money obtained through a "Web-Based Entrepreneur of the Year" award, the four student founders benefited from the guidance of CMC professors, alumni and staff.

"Professors have been very accessible to help with all facets of the project, from the politics, to the technology, to the business side," asserts Lall, who also noted that he appreciates input given by alumni he contacted and CMC's publicity efforts on the students' behalf.

Lall concludes, "I'd definitely say creating and launching this website would have been much more difficult if we had waited until after graduation."