Most CMCers don’t know how the Athenaeum program started, or that CMCers used to hire typists for their senior theses, but one alumnus-in-residence remembers.

It was a leisurely, rainy and blustery Friday afternoon when I stepped inside CMC’s Claremont Boulevard building. After insisting that I help myself to some flower-shaped pieces of fruit, John Faranda, perhaps one of the most known CMC personalities, ushered me into his office.

Many programs at Claremont McKenna—from student computer labs to scholarships—are funded by alumni who give back to CMC so we can experience what they could not. One such program is the Annual ITAB trip to Silicon Valley in January.

Every year since 2005, a group of about a dozen Claremont McKenna students spend a week in San Jose where they have the opportunity to visit and network with various Silicon Valley executives at leading companies in the area.

“That guy at Collins who is always smiling,” a student would say. Oh yeah, another would respond, that guy is cool. One face every CMCer with a meal plan seems to know is that of Kevin Callahan, Assistant Manager of Collins since September ‘07.

A New York native, Callahan worked as an Assistant Beverage Manager at the renowned Treasure Island Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas before coming to CMC last fall.

It was barely after 5 pm, and CNN had announced no surprises (“Romney Wins Massachusetts!” “Obama wins Illinois!”), but CMC students were steadily arriving with their laptops and to-go boxes from Collins. They were coming to The Hub to see the makeshift projection TV and watch Wolf Blitzer at the Super Tuesday Results Party hosted by the Claremont Political Union.

The Claremont Political Union was created as a confluence of the Claremont Democrats and Claremont Republicans clubs, and CMC’s two partisan newspapers, the Claremont Port Side, and the Claremont Independent.

On Wednesday, January 20^th, four Claremont McKenna College professors from different fields of expertise participated in an Athenaeum panel to discuss one of the most burning concerns of the 21^st century – global warming. CMC’s Emily Meinhardt (’10) moderated the panel, which offered us a wealth of valuable insights from their respective disciplines of chemistry, philosophy, government and economics as to the responsibilities and challenges we face in tackling the issue.

• Dr.