At the heart of Caltech’s accessibility initiatives are Jocelyn Vargas and Chris Barragan, who work side by side at the Center for Student Success. I sat down with them last week to discuss how they help ensure access and equity for all members of the community.
If you don’t know yet, Caltech’s sex discrimination policy includes a specific clause (Article 15.5) prohibiting any relationship between employees—meaning faculty, postdocs, and staff—and undergraduate students. It also advises caution and professionalism in any relationship where a power imbalance exists.
Since our last column, Caltech Athletics has continued to take great strides in the fall sports seasons! It’s almost the home stretch for many of these sports, so let’s catch up on the past couple weeks of updates.
Who’s the smartest creature on the Caltech campus? You might think of a brilliant classmate who is always on top of everything, or a witty professor known for sharp remarks during your torturing candidacy exams. But at the pinnacle of the non-human world are a group of birds you might easily mistake for shadows—members of the corvid family: American crows and common ravens.
On October 13th, JPL announced that it will lay off roughly 550 employees—about 11 percent of its workforce—in what Lab Director Dave Gallagher described as a “reorganization” effort to “secure JPL’s future” through leaner operations and refocused priorities.
As Caltech researchers, there is perhaps nothing so guarded as data. We scrutinize with excessive detail our data collection methods, data analysis methods, false-positive and false negative rates, and possible sources of bias to ensure that our interpretation of said data is trustworthy. But even before that…we make sure the data is there.
We are thrilled to have our new and returning students on campus. We are also excited to announce this year’s Student Life and Experience Conference (SLEC).
A small layout hiccup in our last issue left Joseph Greenwell captioned incorrectly, featuring Betsy Mitchell’s instead of his own. This coupled with Greenwell’s iconically bowtied image made for a curious moment that, in its way, captured something of the Caltech spirit. Now, with a proper introduction, meet the Institute’s new Associate Vice President for Student Life and Chief Student Affairs Officer.
