Students

The spark: “My dad taught high school science in Portland before becoming an insurance agent in Montana. My mom teaches general sciences at an elementary school. Growing up in Montana, we’d go hiking every weekend in the summer. My parents were Mr. and Mrs. Nature. A bird would call in a tree; my dad would answer back and tell me what kind of bird it was. We looked at fossils in rocks that we picked up on hikes. When we’d catch fish in summer or go ice fishing in winter, we’d talk about the biology of fish and how they survived in cold waters.

A record 22 first-year students have been named 2019 Appel fellows and will pursue independent writing projects over the summer.

The Appel Fellowship, funded by Joel Appel ’87, provides students completing their first year at CMC with a distinct summer opportunity to explore storytelling in a domestic or international setting. Students share their work when they return to campus in fall.

First-year students Sofia Victoria de la Pena ’22 and Toluwani Roberts ’22 are this year's winners of the CMC Summer Book Writing Prize.

Their essays on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein were chosen by the CMC Writing Committee and will be published in Discourse Magazine, a student-run literary/arts publication supported by the Center for Writing and Public Discourse. A discussion with de la Pena and Roberts is scheduled for 4:15 p.m., April 15, at the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies.

Make it back-to-back world championships for CMC Model UN.

Over spring break, the team of 11 beat Princeton University to win Best Small Delegation at the 28th annual Harvard World Model United Nations Conference in Madrid, Spain. Including last year’s victory in Panama City, CMC Model UN teams have been crowned champs at four of the last five WorldMUN competitions.

Why CMC: “I really wanted to become a lawyer, and I dreamed of eventually applying to law school. CMC had a lot of strong opportunities for me to pursue that path in the government major. Since I’ve been here, one of my favorite classes has been with Professor Pitney. His government course helped me meet a lot of like-minded peers who really enjoyed learning about politics. It was great to find that community right away, which eventually led me to the Rose Institute.”

Upstairs at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum, in a converted office with black soundproofing material cascading down the walls and a hunk of electronics on a table, Nandeeni Patel ’21 and Zach Wong ’19, quickly review their notes. All set.

Today’s guest, Benn Steil, senior fellow and director of international economics at the Council of Foreign Relations, arrives. It’s 4:28 p.m. The trio exchanges handshakes and hellos before they settle at the round table and adjust their mics. How’s the sound? Good.

And they’re live.

Senior year is moving fast. Soon-to-be graduates reflect on their biggest takeaways from life at CMC – and for a future beyond Claremont.

Like many students, Biniyam Asnake ’20 was astounded by the high cost of textbooks, which can sometimes top $200 a piece. Trying to buy used books from other students through online marketplaces, he found, wasn’t much help. “You could spend an hour looking for a book and you may never find it,” he said.

Why, he wondered, couldn’t there be a search tool as easy to use as Google? The Computer Science major from Los Angeles decided last year to create one.

Andrew Choi ’21 is a biochemistry/economics double major who’s also into applied mathematics. He spent the summer in a Cedars-Sinai research lab testing a little-known gene while trying out one of many career paths he is considering.

After her second year at CMC, Vicky Flores Najas ’20 knew she was drawn to the world of finance. Back-to-back internships at AXA Investment Managers and Bain & Co. helped her delve into different specialties to find the best fit.