Blog Posts by Westmont

Three local high school choirs will join voices with singers from Westmont later this month for the Fall Choral Festival Concert. The concert is Friday, Oct. 21, at 7 p.m., at Trinity Episcopal Church, 1500 State St. Adams Professor of Music and Worship Michael Shasberger will direct guest choirs from San Marcos, Paso Robles, and San Luis Obispo High Schools. The concert will also feature the Westmont College Choir and Chamber Singers. The evening will include a cameo appearance by the guest high school choirs and will conclude in a mass choir presentation.

Two separate estate gifts totaling $3.3 million will help endow student scholarships and the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Westmont. In its sixth year, the institute explores and promotes liberal arts education, which offers knowledge in a broad range of subjects as well as skills students need to succeed at work and in life.

Westmont President Stan D. Gaede announced he will conclude his presidency at the end of the academic year in June. He has served as the college’s president since July 2001. Previously, he was provost, the top academic officer, for five years. The 58-year old will return to Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., where he joined the faculty in 1974 and became provost in 1993.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has selected Westmont to receive a
prestigious $178,000 grant for computer science research over two years. The NSF’s
Cyber Trust Program will fund the Westmont project, “Survivable, Adaptive and
Scalable Distributed Systems.” NSF expects to fund fewer than 50 of the 487
proposals it reviewed this year.
“It’s exciting for such a small college like Westmont to receive this award,” says
Kim Kihlstrom, associate professor of computer science, “Although other Westmont

A specialist in 19th century British cultural and literary studies will deliver a lecture at Westmont next month. Associate Professor of English at U.C. Davis Catherine Robson will speak in Hieronymus Lounge, Monday, Oct. 24, at 7 p.m as part of Westmont’s Erasmus Lecture Series. Her lecture is entitled “Memorization and Memorialization: Poetry and the Burial of Heroes.”

Local residents will soon be able to connect with about 40 victims of Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita. Westmont Head Baseball Coach Rob Crawford will arrive in Santa
Barbara, Saturday, Oct. 1, after returning to the Gulf Coast for a week. He spent
several days videotaping and interviewing the evacuees who he and 21 other local
volunteers got to know in September.
“There’s so many gaps,” Crawford said. “I hope that Santa Barbara will respond to
this. I’ll show the video and hopefully get some sponsorships. We now need to