dmail November2007

OCC Honors Founding Faculty Member Dr. Giles T. Brown

Mother-Daughter Exhibition Continues Through Nov. 30 In Doyle Arts Pavilion Gallery

EOPS Honors Club Raffles Off Motor Scooter

OCC Honors Founding Faculty Member Dr. Giles T. Brown

Giles Brown Forum Orange Coast College will honored founding faculty member, Dr. Giles T. Brown, with a luncheon on campus on Wednesday, Nov. 14.

Only four of OCC’s original 35 faculty members are still living.

The luncheon commemorated the naming of OCC’s 300-seat lecture hall – known since its construction in 1960 as the Forum – the Giles T. Brown Forum. The building officially received its new name last fall.

Giles Brown

Brown, now 91 and a resident of Newport Beach, was an OCC charter faculty member and served as dean of the Social Sciences Division from 1948 through 1960. In 1951 he married the college’s first librarian, Beth Cosner Brown. She died in 1992.

Brown left OCC in the fall of 1960 to serve as chairman of the History Department at California State University at Fullerton.

The Forum was the first large lecture hall built on campus. Construction began in 1959. Brown played a substantial role in its design. Today, OCC has more than a dozen such large lecture halls on campus.

Brown worked with the building’s architect, William Blurock and Associates, to create the likeness of a classic Greek theater with a semicircle of steep risers around a round podium. A world traveler, Brown had viewed many Greek amphitheaters in person. He replicated the Greek ideal on OCC’s campus.

“Our goal was to have no seat in the hall farther than 50 feet from the podium,” Brown says today. “Also, because of the restricted focal length of the various projectors that were available at the time, the very back wall of the hall actually had to be closer to the stage than the two rear ‘corners’ of the building – hence the hall’s elliptical shape. You didn’t have telephoto lenses in those days, or other modern optics for projectors.”

The Giles T. Brown Forum currently accommodates large-lecture history, psychology, political science and sociology courses.

Mother-Daughter Exhibition Continues Through Nov. 30 In Doyle Arts Pavilion Gallery

“Generations,” a show that focuses on the work of mother and daughter artists, Donna and Johanna Westerman, continues through Nov. 30 in Orange Coast College’s gleaming new $6-million Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion.

The gallery is open Tuesdays through Fridays, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Wednesday evenings, from 5-8 p.m. Admission is free.

Donna Westerman, 66, an OCC art professor for 31 years until her retirement last May. She became an Orange Coast art professor in 1975, and taught classes over the years in printmaking, painting, experimental painting and illustration, and served for 10 years as chair of the Art Department. She was a pioneer in the field of computer graphics, and served as chairperson of Orange Coast College’s Computer Graphics Program from 1979-91. In 1979, she taught OCC’s first computer graphics class, which developed into a certificate program that is now called Digital Media Arts and Design.

Donna has exhibited her work widely, both nationally and internationally. Donna has been featured at the Laguna Art Festival, and her illustrations recently appeared in a book of poetry published in Italy. She specializes in printmaking and egg tempera painting.

Westerman art work This year the William Andrews Clark Library at UCLA purchased Donna’s wood engraving, “Channel,” for its permanent collection.

Johanna Westerman, 39, is a children’s books illustrator. Her mother says she has wanted to illustrate children’s books from the time she could first hold a crayon. Johanna has taken OCC art courses – including her mother’s printmaking classes – and earned a bachelor’s degree in studio art from Scripps College in Claremont. While attending the Rhode Island School of Design, she signed her first picture book contract at the age of 22.

Johanna illustrated Julie Andrews’ 2006 HarperCollins book, “Mandy.” She’s also been the illustrator for such children’s books as “Maggie Mab and the Bogey Beast,” by Valere Scho, “The Christmas Snowman,” by Margery Cuyler, “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat” and “Wynken, Blynken and Nod,” by Eugene Field, “Little Swan,” by Adele Geras, and “Mother Holly,” by John Stewig.

Johanna is currently at work on a book about the American Revolution.

EOPS Honors Club Raffles Off Motor Scooter

scooter Orange Coast College’s EOPS Honors Club is raising funds this fall by raffling off a beautiful new motor scooter.

The scooter is valued at $3,500. The raffle is sponsored by Malcolm Smith Motorsports of Riverside.

EOPS is a state-funded academic counseling program. The mission of EOPS is to provide moral, financial and academic support to economically disadvantaged students.

Raffle tickets are available for $2 each, or 10 for $15. Tickets may be purchased in OCC’s EOPS Office located on the fourth floor of Watson Hall. The drawing will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 20, at 12:30 p.m. in OCC’s quad.

Upon delivery of the motor scooter, the winner will be responsible for paying DMV documentation, tax and license.

For information about the drawing, phone (714) 432-0202, Ext. 26266.

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