Latest Research

A study of older U.S. South Asians examines relationships between religious service attendance (temple, mosque, etc.), anxiety and feelings of emotional neglect by fellow congregation members. The research finds that among U.S. South Asians, those who attend religious services more often are also more likely to experience higher levels of anxiety. Further, much of this relationship can be attributed to feelings of being ignored or neglected by other members of the congregation.

Westmont’s science professors have obtained a new tool for their teaching and research. The biology, chemistry, engineering and physics departments will all use the Hitachi scanning electron microscope (SEM), housed in Winter Hall. Its focused beam of electrons interacts with atoms in the sample to produce an image.

Westmont senior Katie Knapp presents a paper about the thoughts and practices of the Cappadocian Fathers at the Great Lakes Theology Conference on Nov. 2-3 in Holland, Michigan.

For the first time in more than a decade, undergraduate students assisted with research at the Simons Array, a set of three telescopes in the Atacama Desert in Chile at an elevation of about 17,000 feet.

Westmont engineering students returned to Quito, Ecuador, in May to share their love of science, technology, engineering and math with children in an after-school program. The seven engineering students, Jonny Reitinger, Jonah Swanson, Jacob Bailey, Maria Judy, Elijah Cicileo, Becca Hudson and Tasha Loh, designed and built STEM educational materials to share with the children. They were joined by Dan Jensen, director of Westmont engineering, and a Compassion International representative.

Westmont biologist Amanda Sparkman ’03 and her research collaborators have won a $2 million, four-year grant from the National Science Foundation to continue investigating the evolution of dwarfism in Channel Islands National Park reptiles.

A record three Westmont graduates have earned prestigious Fulbright Scholarships this year to teach and conduct research around the world. Ebun Kalejaiye ’23 will teach English in Spain, Cody LeFebre ’22 will teach English in Colombia and Valerie Swisher ’22 will study personal experiences and perceptions of mental health care in Hungary.

During his post-doctoral work at the University of Pittsburgh, physics professor Ben Carlson mentored both under-graduate and graduate students. When they asked to work with him in the summer, he looked for suitable projects. “After two summers, I learned what was appropriate and helpful for students,” he says. “Two of my students at Pitt were offered ATLAS papers, which is significant because people in the collaboration — especially undergraduates — don’t necessarily get credit. My students did enough, so their names appear with the collaborators.

by Kelly Vivanco '24

What does free speech mean in a highly partisan society? In November, the Westmont Center for Dialogue and Deliberation hosted a 75-minute deliberative conversation, Free Speech and the Hospitable Campus, in the Global Leadership Center. Both students and faculty participated at the event, which explored this question: In today’s contentious and divided political environment, what should our college do to meet the roles and responsibilities of higher education to foster the kind of campus community we want?

Two Westmont alums have received prestigious Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation. Braden Chaffin ’23 and Chisondi Warioba ’21 have been chosen for the program whose purpose “is to ensure the quality, vitality and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States.” The five-year fellowship provides three years of financial support that includes an annual stipend of $37,000.

By the time Nicklas runs into Westmont’s Human Performance Lab, he’s already exhausted. The middle-aged man is breathing heavily and sweating profusely as Timothy Van Haitsma, associate professor of kinesiology, and senior Damien Ureste place electrodes on his body and insert a plastic tube into his mouth.

Westmont’s junior engineering students were revved up for the annual remote control car competition on Dec. 8 in front of Kerrwood Hall. The students spent the last 10 weeks working in teams to assemble hundreds of parts to create their race cars, which count for 5 percent of their overall grade in the Machine Design course.

In the end the team of Tasha Loh, Becca Hudson and driver Caleb Wilcox won the Championship Race, each receiving a trophy from President Gayle D. Beebe.

David Hunter’s 2017 research on umpire consistency continues to garner national attention. Hunter, Westmont professor of mathematics, devised a metric for consistency of home plate umpires that others have relied on to grade Major League Baseball umpires.

A Westmont professor has received a prestigious fellowship to serve at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI). The Lady Davis Fellowship Trust selected Ronald See, professor of psychology and neuroscience, as the Marie and Matthew Heller visiting professor in medicine at the Institute of Medical Research.

A Westmont professor and recent graduate won the Carl B. Allendoerfer Award from the Mathematical Association of America, the world’s largest community of mathematicians, students, and enthusiasts. David J.

A Westmont researcher has won a grant to further his search for evidence of the presence of mysterious dark matter. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $200,000 grant to Ben Carlson, Westmont assistant professor of physics, to continue his work on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, a particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.

Westmont’s engineering program welcomed more than a dozen impressive professional engineers to campus for two days of meetings and feedback on the young program. The Westmont Engineering Advisory Board explored ideas about the department’s curriculum, design projects, accreditation and funding.

“We talked quite a bit about creating a culture in the engineering program that helps students grow not only technically, but in every aspect — including their spiritual lives,” says Dan Jensen, director of the engineering program.

John’s account of Jesus and the woman at the well has long inspired Caryn Reeder, professor of New Testament and co-coordinator of gender studies at Westmont. “Because of her words and testimony, people in her village believed

in Jesus,” Caryn says. “She is a model for women’s voices being heard. I’ve always treasured this story of a woman engaging in theological debate and becoming the first missionary. This nameless woman, who lacks wealth and power, engages in the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the Bible. It teaches us about who gets to be God’s people.”

“My experience with summer research changed my life,” says John Corbett ’22. “I discovered that I love chemical re- search and want to pursue it in graduate school.” He worked with chemistry professor Brandon Haines and spent hours coding on a supercomputer that uses an equation to measure the energy of organic products. He has developed a passion for using chemical research to build more durable and cheaper medical diagnostic tools, like MRI machines, for low-income communities. As an intern at the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission, he regularly witnesses this need.

Lexy Gillette ’22 had planned to attend a large research university after graduating from high school in Bend, Oregon. But she discovered an old, dusty Westmont piggy bank in her room that her uncle, Marcus Gillette ’05, had given her and decided to visit the college. “I got out of the car and something felt right, and I absolutely loved it,” she says.

Westmont’s two new faculty members bring international expertise to the engineering department. Tenure-track professors Douglas Hector Fontes, a Brazilian national, and Johan Jair Estrada López, a Mexican national, joined the faculty in the spring.

BY CYNTHIA TOMS, PROFESSOR OF GLOBAL STUDIES AND KINESIOLOGY BASED ON HER TALK AT WESTMONT’S 2019 LEAD WHERE YOU STAND CONFERENCE

I approach development through the lens of global health. It’s personal for me. Twelve years ago, I was living in Uganda when I became pregnant with my first son. About six months into the pregnancy, I woke up with a swollen body, stabbing pains in my abdomen and a searing headache.

Six Westmont students completed major honors projects before graduating in 2022: Ethan Walker (chemistry), Abi Bradshaw (communication studies), Chapman Canlis (philosophy), Loren Schneider (communication studies), John Corbett (chemistry) and Wesley Brown (mathematics).

Kya Mangrum, assistant professor of English, has won a $9,900 Graves Award in Humanities research grant. A 2021 Westmont Teacher of the Year, Mangrum is conducting research for a new book exploring how Americans remembered and wrote about slavery and the Civil War in the first five decades (1865-1915) following Emancipation and the end of the war.

After a 10-year process, the American Chemical Society (ACS) Committee on Professional Training voted in January 2022 to include Westmont College on the list of institutions approved by ACS. Effective immediately, the society will certify the degrees of Westmont graduates who complete the requirements of the college’s Professional Track for Chemistry.

Religious believers who embrace accountability to God (or another transcendent guide for life) experience higher levels of three of the four variables of psychological well-being – mattering to others, dignity and meaning in their lives, though not happiness – according to a study from researchers with Baylor University, Westmont College and Hope College.

Sandra Richter, Robert H. Gundry professor of biblical studies, serves on the New International Version (NIV) Committee for Bible Translation (CBT). Few women have joined the prestigious team translating the top-selling English- language Bible.

A national study examines the link between perceived relationship with God and mental health from a sample of more than 1,600 Americans. The research suggests that religious believers who relate to God in an uncertain or anxious manner are more likely to experience symptoms of psychological distress, including anxiety, paranoia, obsession and compulsion.

Elizabeth Gardner, Westmont assistant professor of communication studies, won a Top Paper award in the Public Address Division at the National Communication Association Conference in November at Seattle. The paper, “Child Workers Redefining a Bolivian Childhood in the Código Niña, Niño y Adolescente,” describes strategies the young speakers used to campaign for their rights.

A steady string of awards continues to paint an impressive career for Scott Anderson, Westmont professor of art. A jury has chosen his illustration commissioned by the Westmont College Festival Theatre, for the 64th annual exhibition of the New York Society of Illustrators, one of the most prestigious and competitive shows in the field of professional illustration.

“Engineering is so hard you have to have fun,” said Dan Jensen, director of Westmont engineering, as small, remote control cars zipped along the road in front of Kerrwood Hall. On Dec. 6, students in Jensen’s Machine Design course raced their foot-long RC cars on a short, figure-eight racetrack as part of their coursework.

It is difficult to imagine life without our personal devices. Today’s digital technologies are designed to captivate our attention and encroach on our boundaries, shaping how we relate to time and space, to ourselves and others, even to God.

Beloved local educator Michelle Hughes has co-edited a new book that offers ways to reframe obstacles to teaching as opportunities for personal and professional growth. “Joyful Resilience as Educational Practice: Turning Challenges into Opportunities,” a collaborative effort with Hughes’ colleague and friend, Ken Badley, is available for pre-order through Routledge. A 20 percent discount is available if you enter the code FLY21 at checkout.

More than 30 Westmont students presented their findings on 21 posters at the 2021 Celebration of Summer Research on Sept. 24 around the Winter Hall third floor atrium.

A Westmont student won a national science research award and six students presented their research to a regional section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). Westmont senior Samuel Muthiah, a mathematics and English double major from Altadena, Calif., won a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates Award. His program, “Algebraic Methods of Computational Biology,” is at Texas A&M University. Muthiah, a full-tuition Monroe Scholar, is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi and Sigma Tau Delta Honor Societies.

One of the few West Coast biologists specifically studying deep-water corals, Professor Beth Horvath did some virtual deep-sea diving with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) from 2008-10. 

Professor Enrico Manlapig and his students in Westmont’s Applied Management Science (AMS) course offer their expertise in analytic decision-making to the local community. Last fall, they acted as the Westmont Decision Lab and assisted the Santa Barbara Zoo in making some decisions about its future.

Premature infants face an increased risk for cerebral palsy (CP), and detecting the condition early can lead to better treatment and outcomes. Don Patterson, professor of computer science, has patented a limb-motion monitor that may identify pre-term babies most likely to be diagnosed with CP. He is collaborating with a team of scientists from UC Irvine, Children’s Hospital of Orange County and Miller Children’s and Women’s Hospital in Long Beach to demonstrate that it works on a larger scale.

Researchers from Westmont and the University of Bath sent shock waves through the world when they released their findings about the energy cost of sitting versus standing. They discovered that standing naturally at a desk burns only slightly more calories than sitting naturally.

“I rarely drink coffee,” says Tiffany Gong ’23, a behavioral neuroscience student at Westmont, who is the subject and the researcher examining the impact of acute caffeine on cortisol and melatonin levels.

A new high-tech tool is helping Westmont researchers understand human neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease. Yi-Fan Lu, assistant professor of biology, has used the new microelectrode array to detect and record the response of neurons to genetic mutation or toxins.