Jordan Alcasas
Social Media Editor
Al Clark, emeritus professor of humanities at the University of La Verne, edited the book “An Artful Reframing,” which was published earlier this year.
The book, which covers the University’s history from its origin and relationship with the Church of the Brethren, was a collaboration among ULV professors and photographers.
Each chapter covers a different aspect of the University’s history. The book was created with money from the “Reframing the Institutional Saga” grant offered by Network for Vocation Undergraduate Education, a group within the Council of Independent Colleges, which the book’s collaborators applied for.
“There were 10 studies proposed and accepted, and they were presented as lectures two years ago,” Clark said. “I worked with those people, I was one of them, to produce essays and then we worked on them to get them to the right guys and so on and so forth.”
The project involved a total of 13 collaborators.
Zandra Wagoner, university chaplain, wrote the preface with Jason Neidleman, professor of political science.
Neidleman also wrote the introduction and one of the chapters.
Clark wrote chapter one himself and collaborated on chapter two with Anne Collier, director of the Cultural and Natural History Collections, and Felicia Beardsley, the former director of the museum and an anthropology professor, who died in 2023.
Jon Marshall Hall, professor of humanities, wrote chapter three. Elaine Padilla, professor of anthropology, wrote chapter four. Benjamin Jenkins, former university archivist, wrote chapter five. Allyson Brantley, associate professor of history, wrote chapter six.
Additionally, faculty members Reneé Lotenero, Jennifer Vanderpool, Ruby Osorio and Dion Johnson all took pictures for the book.
The book tracked striking evidence of growing diversity at the University since its founding in 1891. It started as a mostly white, mostly Church of the Brethren-oriented school, with a singular religious system that helped to guide it. Over the years however, this has changed substantially.
“The University, even when it was La Verne College, had a certain amount of diversity here,” Clark said. “There was a picture that showed the first class at the University, and there were three other people … of Hispanic backgrounds. If we look at the numbers, and I did that the best I could… they weren’t focused on ethnicity but on religion.”
Clark noted that it wasn’t until about 1964 that the idea of a virtually white school had changed at the University. Despite that, there weren’t any statistics until the late 80s, but he created a graph to show the change in ethnic and religious diversity.
“So today we are something like 60 percent of Latino and Hispanic backgrounds,” Clark said.
He said that compared to 1968, there was a very low percentage of people of color at the university. There were still people of color present, but it was a low enough percentage to be difficult to quantify.
Another one of the big takeaways from the book was the values upheld in the Church that matched ULV’s mission statement. Historically, ULV’s mission statements have always emphasized the importance of community, something that it has in common with the church.
The book also makes the effort to highlight indigenous people who lived in the area around the same time as the church’s founding of the University. Chapter four, “Desert Blossoms in Native Lands: One College’s Story about Westward Movements of the Brethren into the San Gabriel Valley,” discusses the Tongva people, a group of indigenous people the book sought to highlight.
It’s revealed that while incredibly problematic and indicative of the horrible treatment of indigenous people at the time, there was an effort by the Church of the Brethren to try to integrate them into their communities as they lived on indigenous land.
“You see more and more, there is an integration of indigenous people,” Padilla said. “More towards our time, you see courses that are part of the curriculum that are around indigeneity. Voices of indigenous people are becoming the ones being heard, and they are the ones becoming more visible and you can see them in ceremonies, events, blessings of the campus, speaker engagements and other things that the indigenous of the area are invited to.”
“There is still much more to be done. I think it would be nice to see if a Tongva person could offer a seminar in the university setting.”
Padilla said that she was brought into the book by collaborators already involved, but every chapter was researched by the writers individually, so while people were brought into the process, they were still a part of the original material.
The book can now be found in Wilson Library, or purchased at the University bookstore.
Jordan Alcasas can be reached at jordan.alcasas@laverne.edu.
Jordan Alcasas is a sophomore journalism major with a concentration in print and online journalism. He is the news editor for the Campus Times, and previously served as social media editor and a staff writer.
Anthony Eramya, a senior journalism major, is a staff photographer for the Campus Times and La Verne Magazine. He has previously served as a staff writer for both publications.
