Harvey Mudd College

$Kathleen Ewing \'11, part of the historic entering class of 42 percent women, searches for the sign to her hometown and that of her classmates. Each year, orientation sponsors create a signpost with the distance in miles from each new student\'s hometown to Harvey Mudd College. The frosh get to take their sign as a souvenir of their welcome to campus.$ $Mathematics major Tracy Backes \'08 traveled to India in fall 2006 for an anthropology study abroad program in Madurai. Six months later she was back for an internship with Microsoft in Bangalore. Asked if she\'d return to India a third time, Backes says, \"in a heartbeat.\" Here, she is blessed by Lakshmi, the temple elephant, on a visit to the town of Hampi.$ $Colleen Small \‘08, a chemistry major from Bloomsberg University in Pennsylvania, spent the summer conducting chemistry research at HMC, as part of the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program. Here, she attaches a flask to a rotary evaporator in the process of purifying a potential liquid crystalline material she synthesized.$ $Terence Wong \'09, a chemistry-biology joint major, consults with Assistant Professor of Chemistry David Vosburg on the interpretation of a reaction that used thin-layer chromatography.$ $Hufsa Ahmad \‘10 (right) and Megan Pham \‘10 participate in the Tricycle Pig Relay, as part of the Frosh/Sophomore Games, an annual HMC tradition.$ $Engineering major Jeff Rubinstein \’08 (center) works with local youngsters, as part of HMC\’s Science Bus Program, which helps teach science to elementary and middle school students. The day\’s lesson focused on ecosystems, with this experiment demonstrating nutrient transport in plants.$ $Rachel ArceJaeger \’10 and Vedika Khemani \’10 work on a robotics project, as part of HMC’s Summer Research Program. The pair, along with Jessica Wen \’10, took their robot to Orlando, Fla., where they participated in the 2007 Tapia Robotics competition and took first place among five teams. The trio was the youngest team present and used the least expensive platform among the entrants—a testament to their creativity and programming savvy.$ $Engineering majors Graham Orr \’09 (right) and Jason Choi \’08 prepare a rocket for its first launch in the Lucerne Valley Dry Lakebed in the Mojave Desert. The rocket, used to test electronics and sensors up to two times the speed of sound, was a joint project between the Mudd Amateur Rocket Club (MARC) and HMC\’s Experimental Engineering (E80) course, which allows students to engage in hands-on laboratory work to fly instrumented model rockets as a team, then analyze and report on their data.$ $Harvey Mudd College professors\' doors are (almost) always open. Here, Mathematics Professor Andrew Bernoff and Christine Kim \'09, a chemistry major, ponder a differential equation question.$ $Andrea Heald \'07 and Jonathan Beall \'07 celebrate their new status as alumni with a self portrait following graduation ceremonies on Sunday, May 13, 2007. Heald, who came to Mudd from Athens, Georgia, is headed to the University of Virginia next year to begin the Ph.D. program in mathematics. Beall, who hails from Boulder, Colorado, plans to spend the summer doing research in Seattle, Washington, before beginning the Ph.D. program in computer science at the University of Washington.$ $Who needs a car to get around\? HMC students normally roam the campus on bikes, unicycles and skateboards of all shapes and sizes.$ $Students in HMC\'s Math and Science Education class, led by mathematics professor Darryl Yong, set out to perfect a hot air balloon project for local high school students. Their task: inflate a plastic bag with the heat produced by birthday candles.$ $HMC students Annie Tan \‘07 and Sarah Rodenburg \‘06 examine specimen images being projected from the biology department\’s laser scanning confocal fluorescence microscope. Purchased in 2005 with a $350,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, this state-of-the-art research instrument is one of the first of its kind at The Claremont Colleges and is used in teaching and research.$ $Students soak up the California sun in HMC\’s Braun Liquidambar Mall while tackling a chemistry assignment.$ $Built in 1972, Hixon Court is a favorite place for faculty, students and staff to take a break in between classes and other activities. A gift from the Alexander Hixon family, the courtyard is home to HMC\’s Venus Fountain and koi pond. Adjacent to Hixon Court is Galileo Hall, where most public lectures are held.$ $Jennifer Logan (right), a post-doctoral researcher in professor Shenda Baker\’s chemistry lab, and chemistry major Benjamin Schiller ’08, deposit polymers on ultra pure water in a Langmuir trough to look at self-assembly processes of molecules. Professor Baker\’s lab examines how molecules spontaneously form nanoscopic-sized structures.$ $Cassandra Cortez \’08 (left) and Lai \'Anna\' Lei \’09 work in the state-of-the-art clean lab at bioSTAR West, located in an industrial park a few blocks from campus. The facility, where many HMC faculty and students collaborate on numerous multidisciplinary projects, offers the only clean-room laboratory at The Claremont Colleges.$ $Jay Markello \’08 builds a wireless sensor station capable of measuring temperature and humidity. Part of a student-driven summer research project in the Department of Computer Science, the station was deployed in the Robert J. Bernard Biological Field Station, located near The Claremont Colleges, to communicate with other stations and relay environmental data back to a base computer that logs the information.$ $Computer science majors Danny Turner \’07, Michael Roberts \’08, Morgan Conbere \’08 and Chris Roberts \’08 (left to right) work on Tinkernet, a computer cluster designed to simulate and control a computer networking laboratory.$ $David Asai, HMC\’s Stuart Mudd Professor of Biology and chair of the biology department, lectures to students in the Introduction to Biology class. The course is part of the college\’s cross-disciplinary core curriculum taken by all students.$ $Professor of mathematics Francis Su congratulates Nick Rauh \’06 after his senior thesis project, which explored properties of subtropical arithmetic.$ $Welcome to sunny Southern California. HMC\’s campus offers many grassy areas where students relax, study and play.$ $Jive Overdrive, HMC\’s student jazz band, performs outside of the Hoch-Shanahan Dining Commons. The group heralded the opening and closing music at President Maria Klawe\’s inauguration ceremony and was invited to play at the prestigious Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles.$ $Students from HMC\'s 2006 Shakespeare course work through their first dress rehearsal for King Lear. Led by Professor Jeff Groves, students spend half the semester studying selected plays and Shakespearean topics, and the other half mounting a full production of an assigned play. Performing outdoors in Thomas-Garrett Courtyard, students experience Shakespeare\'s playing conditions: no artificial lighting, a thrust stage open to the sky, limited props and special effects, and audience members on multiple levels. Since 1989, Groves and his students have produced a number of Shakespeare\'s most popular plays.$ $Working in the Department of Engineering\’s tissue culture lab, Elizabeth Orwin, assistant professor of engineering and biology, and physics major Emily Hogan \’07 examine a cluster of cells at the bottom of a test tube after centrifugation.$ $Demonstrating the fluid dynamics of a vortex cannon, Jon Jacobsen (right), HMC\’s Howard and Iris Critchell Assistant Professor of Mathematics, creates a smoke ring to blow out a candle across the room. The smoke is used to visualize the fluid flow.$ $Engineering major Nikhil Sonde \‘08, a member of the 2006-07 MaxViz Clinic Team, tests a system designed to transmit runway and weather information via a new airport approach lighting system at frequencies above the visible range. On one end of campus, Sonde signals LED lights through his laptop; at the other, his teammates successfully receive the signals. Their design concept proved successful.$

Darryl Yong, assistant professor of mathematics, and (left to right) Tera Bell, Alyssa Caridis, Josh Webb and Theresa Poindexter, all 2005 HMC graduates, enjoy the view through a geodesic dome made out of roll-up newspaper. The dome, build by local students from Pomona High School, was part of the Math and Science Education course, in which HMC students lead projects with ninth graders once a week.