2026 Faculty and Staff Appreciation Brunch College Honors Employees, Retiring Biology Professor

Westmont honored a number of employees for their outstanding contributions at the May 14 Faculty and Staff Appreciation Brunch, an annual ceremony that recognizes individual work anniversaries and accomplishments. President Gayle D. Beebe and members of the college’s executive team selected the recipients from a peer-nominated pool. An endowment set up by the late Bruce and Adaline Bare fund the faculty awards; he was longtime college trustee. 

This year’s Employee of the Year awards recognized Brenda Tirado, assistant director of admissions for staff development and recruitment strategy, and Joe Foster, assistant vice president for finance and controller. The brunch is hosted by Westmont Human Resources.

Westmont Human Resources, which includes Greta Bruneel, Lorraine Yoro, Keri Lien, Sammie Kuo and Jillian Smith, was honored with the Department of the Year Award.

The brunch also served as a platform to thank retiring biology professor Jeff Schloss for 45-years of teaching and scholarship at Westmont. Fellow biology professor Steve Julio lauded Schloss by focusing on Schloss’ impact and legacy. While Schloss was originally trained as a forest ecologist, his career took a turn and he became one of the nation’s leading voices of the faith and science community. Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project and directed the National Institutes of Health, recruited Schloss to start the think tank Biologos. 

“Not only does Jeff bring incredible intellectual wisdom and vitality to the faith science conversation, but he does so with unparalleled grace, generosity and a humility that is willing to be corrected,” Julio said. “In short, Jeff was uniquely gifted to bring the posture of Jesus to a sometimes very contentious conversation.”

For more than four decades, Schloss taught Biology and Faith, one of the most sought-after courses for biology majors. “Students talk about how they were utterly transformed by this course, and when they come back and visit us several years later, they almost, to a person, say that their journey after Westmont was profoundly impacted by that one class,” Julio said. 

Beebe followed up the accolades by announcing that the college had received a matching gift and will be raising funds over the next year to establish the Jeff Schloss Center for Christian Faithful Science.