Westmont News

Westmont kicks off its annual youth summer sports camps Monday, June 19, beginning with Sports Skills, which helps develop the motor skills of co-ed campers from ages 5-10, and girls soccer.

Nearly 5,000 family members and friends soaked in the pageantry of a Westmont Commencement that honored 300 graduates (103 with honors) during a drizzly morning May 6 at Carr Field. Paul Delaney, Westmont English professor, dubbed the occasion “making memories in the mist.”

The Westmont College Choir and Chamber Singers will visit Ventura and Los Angeles before flying to Northern Italy and Austria. The free performances will be Sunday, May 7, at 7 p.m. in First Presbyterian Church of Granada Hills, and Monday, May 8, at 7 p.m. in First United Methodist Church of Ventura.

Tremper Longman III, prolific author, popular speaker and beloved religious studies professor, is retiring from Westmont to be closer to his children and grandchildren on the East Coast.

A record 85 Westmont students will take part in 27 individual, new pieces of theater, dance and film at the Westmont Fringe Festival on April 20 and 23 at 7 p.m., April 21 at 8 p.m. and April 22 at 3 p.m. at various locations in and around Westmont’s Porter Theatre.

Carol Houston, who serves the Watts community as senior pastor of Bethel Unspeakable Joy Church, speaks at Westmont’s Commencement Saturday, May 6, at 9:30 a.m. on Carr Field. President Gayle D.

Westmont’s Spring Sing, a student-performed variety show and competition between residence halls, celebrates its 56^th anniversary on Saturday, April 1, at 6:30 p.m. at the Santa Barbara Bowl.

Fourteen graduating art majors will offer the capstone art projects, which span painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, performance and video, April 6-May 6 at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art. A free, public opening reception for “As of Yet Unknown” is Thursday, April 6, from 4-6 p.m.

The month of April features several free concerts with select ensembles of Westmont students and faculty. For more information, please call the music department at (805) 565-6040.

The Choral Masterworks Concert, featuring selections by Georg Philipp Telemann, Thomas Linley Jr. and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, is Sunday, March 26, at 3 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 305 East Anapamu Street. Admission is $10, students are free. For more information, please contact the music department at (805) 565-6040.

Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams open play in the 2017 NAIA Division I National Championship on March 16.

Westmont students will find it easier to complete a minor in computer science thanks to a new program beginning next year. Open to students from all majors, the minor requires five computer science classes.

General Stan McChrystal addressed more than 700 people at Westmont’s 12th annual President’s Breakfast in the Fess Parker Grand Ballroom on March 3. Later that morning, he fielded questions from four Westmont students during convocation on campus, speaking to about a thousand people. At both events, he discussed challenges presented by the rapid pace of technology, globalization and our increasingly complex society.

John Blondell, Westmont professor of theater arts, directs a Lit Moon Theatre production of William Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” presenting the king’s Machiavellian rise to power and short reign, on March 9-11 at 7:30 p.m. in Westmont’s Porter Hall Black-Box Theatre.

The Westmont College Festival Theatre offers “Blood Wedding,” a tragedy written by Federico García Lorca, one of Spain’s most revered and controversial dramatists, Feb. 24-25 and March 2-4, at 7:30 p.m. in Westmont’s Porter Theatre. General admission is $12; $7 for students, children and seniors. Tickets may be purchased online at westmont.edu/boxoffice.