The Athenaeum will celebrate the grand opening of its new kitchen (known as the Rath Al Fresco Pavilion, pictured above) on May 12, a date that also marks the beginning of the Rath's outdoor summer dining season.

The club's new 1,900-square-foot kitchen addition opened in April, doubling the size of the previous food-preparation area and included new features such as a rotisserie and a gas-fired pizza oven.

The Rath Al Fresco Pavilion is open from 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m. daily and offers diners a variety of new grab-and-go lunchtime options, including salads and sandwiches. Al Fresco dining is available 5–9 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Hoping to become better mentors to Caltech undergrads, dozens of staff and faculty members gathered on May 11 for a daylong series of workshops, presentations, and discussions aimed at helping them hone their skills.

The event, Mentoring Across Difference: Conference on Mentoring Undergraduate Researchers, was open to anyone from Caltech or JPL who mentors undergraduate students in research.

The day opened with nine workshops from which participants could choose, featuring topics such as managing personality differences in a mentoring relationship, balancing competing demands, dealing with procrastination, and avoiding the pitfalls of perfectionism.

"Good mentoring relies on a set of skills and experience that develops over time," Candace Rypisi, director of Student-Faculty Programs, told the audience. "Our hope today is to provide you with information and a set of tools that you can use as you move forward on your mentoring journey."

Kelsey Boyle, a graduate student working in the lab of Jacqueline K. Barton, the John G. Kirkwood and Arthur A. Noyes Professor of Chemistry and Norman Davidson Leadership Chair of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, hosted a workshop on how to translate and apply teaching pedagogies to mentoring situations. She said the day was a good reminder to mentors that the start of summer research programs is approaching quickly. 

"It's nice to get us thinking about who we're going to mentor," she says. "It gets people thinking about these programs before Day One."

Following the workshops, the 80-or-so attendees gathered for a keynote lecture by Becky Wai-Ling Packard, a professor of psychology and education and director of the Weissman Center for Leadership at Mount Holyoke College. Wai-Ling Packard, who is responsible for mentoring new faculty at Mount Holyoke, stressed the importance of creating an environment where mentored students can thrive.

In the afternoon, participants attended breakout sessions with panels of undergraduate students who shared their personal experiences of being mentored in a research setting.

Stefan Baldet, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Erik Winfree, professor of computer science, computation and neural systems, and bioengineering, attended the breakout session for the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering. Baldet says he understands how difficult school can be for undergraduate students at times.

"I have been a student for a long time. I know myself. I struggled with things. My colleagues have struggled," he says.

He said that much of the information shared is something he has already learned through the years, but that mentoring conferences are valuable for keeping mentors up-to-date.

"It's good to know what the state of the art of mentoring is, so I know if I'm missing anything," he says.

Caltech will host its 62nd Staff Service & Impact Awards on June 1 to honor more than 300 staff members and the work they do to advance the mission of the Institute. Service awards are presented in recognition of length of service, with the first award bestowed at the 10-year mark. This year's event honors those who have given service ranging from 10 to 45 years. It will also include the presentation of the Thomas W. Schmitt Annual Staff Prize and Team Impact Award.
Thursday, June 1, 10 a.m., Beckman Auditorium 

At the 62nd annual Staff Impact Awards on June 1, Caltech honored more than 300 staff members, including Michael Walsh, an engineer in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering who has completed 45 years of service to the Institute.

For the last four decades, Walsh has designed, assembled, and tested electronic and electromechanical instrumentation for the research groups in BBE.

"I enjoy the daily novelty in my job. I seldom find myself doing the same old thing," he says. "I especially enjoy working with the graduate students and postdocs. Their approach to what can be done to succeed in their research seems boundless. Trying to keep up with that attitude has helped to keep my job exciting and fresh."

Walsh, who spent his first five years on campus working as an electronics technician in the lab of Nobel Laureate Max Delbruck, says it has been interesting to watch the campus grow since he started just a few months after the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, when Throop Hall was still standing. Back then, for example, San Pasqual ran all the way through campus and Walsh's wife could drop him off in front of the Norman W. Church Laboratory for Chemical Biology.

After five years at Caltech, Walsh received a job offer from La Cañada High School to be an electronics teacher. But by then, he says, he had grown fond of the Caltech campus, with its Ditch Days, pumpkin drops, and Rose Bowl scoreboard pranks that "made it fun to be a part of the Caltech family." He instead chose to apply for a position at Caltech as an instrumentation engineer—the job he holds to this day.

Walsh, who lives in West Covina with his wife, Kathy—he married her six months before arriving at Caltech—calls his time working for the Institute "a roller coaster ride" he still enjoys.

"I'm doing what I love to do every day," he says, "and getting paid for it."

Glenn Price joined Caltech last fall as band director and director of performing and visual arts. He came to Pasadena with a resume that included time spent conducting in more than 30 countries as well as full-time positions in both Canada and the United States.

This Friday will be Price's first time conducting the Caltech Convocation Brass and Percussion Ensemble for the Institute's 123rd annual commencement ceremony, held on the lawn in front of Beckman Auditorium.

Several months ago, we caught up with Price to find out his initial impressions of Caltech and his vision for his new role. Hear what he had to say on the Caltech magazine website.

Caltech alumnus Jerry Nelson (BS '65), credited as being the "father of the Keck telescope," has passed away at the age of 73. Nelson was the principal designer for the W. M. Keck Observatory—the world's largest observatory, consisting of twin 10-meter telescopes atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Nelson's segmented mirror design, in which 36 hexagonal tiles were assembled together into one large mirror, enabled the creation of Keck's giant mirrors—and, with them, years of astronomical discoveries including hundreds of exoplanets and dark energy.

"Jerry was the heart and soul of the segmented mirror telescope concept. He demonstrated the stressed mirror polishing technique and led the design of the Keck telescopes with a thorough and deep understanding that was, to me, always astounding," says Tom Soifer (BS '68), the Harold Brown Professor of Physics at Caltech. "The fact that the major new generation of telescopes, both ground and in space, all follow the architecture that Jerry invented demonstrates his profound impact on astronomy in the 21st century."

Recently, Nelson served as the project scientist for the planned Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), which will succeed Keck as the world's largest telescope when it begins operations in the late 2020s. The TMT mirror will be made up of 492 segments, assembled in a similar fashion to those of Keck.

Nelson received his BS in physics from Caltech in 1965 and his PhD in physics from UC Berkeley in 1972. From 1970 to 1981, he worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and, from 1981 to 1994, he was a professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley. In 1994, he moved to UC Santa Cruz, where he served as a professor of astronomy until his passing. Nelson was the project scientist for Keck from 1985 to 2012. He also served as the founding director of UC Santa Cruz's Center for Adaptive Optics from 1999 to 2004.

"He defined the spirit that is Keck: skilled, smart, dedicated; never dismissive of those who knew less and patient in teaching them; above all, caring and always generous with his time and friendship," said Hilton Lewis, director of the Keck Observatory, in a statement.

"The Keck telescope had an extraordinarily large impact on astronomy not simply because of its enormous aperture but also because it came many years ahead of the modern generation of telescopes," says Caltech's Shri Kulkarni, the George Ellery Hale Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science and director of Caltech Optical Observatories.

While at Caltech as a student, Nelson worked with the late Gerry Neugebauer (BS '60), a pioneer in infrared astronomy, on the Two-Micron Sky Survey. The two would later work together on Keck. As an undergraduate, Nelson took the legendary physics series, called Ph1 and Ph2, taught by the late Richard P. Feynman.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Nelson received many awards and honors for his achievements, including the 2010 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering, the André Lallemand Prize of the French Academy of Sciences, and the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics of the American Astronomical Society.

Nelson is survived by his wife, Jocelyn Nelson; his sister, Jeanne Moat; two children from his first marriage, Leif and Alexandra; and three grandchildren. His first wife, Victoria, died in 1992.

The W. M. Keck Observatory is a private 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and a scientific partnership of Caltech, the University of California, and NASA.

The TMT International Observatory LLC (TIO), a nonprofit organization, was established in May 2014 to carry out the construction and operation phases of the TMT Project. The Members of TIO are Caltech, UC, the National Institutes of Natural Sciences of Japan, the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Department of Science and Technology of India, and the National Research Council (Canada); the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) is a TIO Associate. Major funding has been provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Hall Daily, Caltech's director of government relations, has announced his intention to retire in Autumn 2017. A national search will be conducted to identify his successor.

"Over the course of his 30-year career at Caltech, Hall skillfully established and improved the Institute's relationships with governmental offices and agencies, community groups and neighbors, higher education associations, and the general public," said Caltech president Thomas F. Rosenbaum in a letter to the Caltech community. "We are indebted to him for his tireless efforts to connect Caltech to the broader community and to represent and champion our interests to external entities."

Daily has served as the Institute's primary government relations point person for three decades, managing the Institute's relationship and participation with key governmental offices and agencies, community groups, higher education associations, and the general public. Daily works closely with elected officials and staff in local, regional, state, and federal governments, as well as serves as a key liaison between Caltech and its adjoining neighbors.

Among the significant accomplishments of his tenure were the Institute's successful bid and approval for a 30-year campus development plan, which has enabled the Institute to increase significantly its constructed space, adding facilities that better meet the needs and demands of Caltech's developing community. Daily also helped start and sustain three Pasadena working groups—the emergency coordinators roundtable; Pasadena: City of Learning; and the Pasadena Water and Power large customers group—that have helped strengthen collaboration and communication in the area.

Daily originally joined Caltech in 1987, as the then assistant director of public relations. Before coming to Caltech, Daily was an established journalist, working for 15 years in positions at The Associated Press, the San Jose Mercury-News, and the Pasadena Star-News, where he led a 55-person newsroom. Daily has a degree in communications from Stanford University.

A joint faculty and staff search committee has been appointed to lead the search and make recommendations for Daily's successor. The committee is chaired by Farnaz Khadem, Caltech's chief communications officer, and includes faculty members Joanna Austin, professor of aerospace, Jennifer Jackson, professor of mineral physics, and Jonathan Katz, the Kay Sugahara Professor of Social Sciences and Statistics; as well as staff members Theresa Davis, assistant vice president for engagement and annual programs, Dave Gallagher, JPL's associate director for strategic integration, and Jennifer Lum, deputy general counsel.

The Farthest tells the story of NASA's Voyager mission and its journey to the outer planets and beyond. Launched 40 years ago, Voyager's twin spacecraft have sent back data and images that revolutionized our understanding of the solar system—and each craft has continued sailing into interstellar space bearing greetings, music, and images from Earth, preserved on two golden records.

Following the screening, join science journalist Miles O'Brien in conversation with Voyager team members

• Suzanne Dodd (BS '84), Voyager project manager and JPL's director for the Interplanetary Network Directorate
• Carolyn Porco (PhD '83), Voyager I imaging specialist and imaging team leader for the Cassini-Huygens Mission, Space Science Institute
• Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist for JPL and Caltech's David Morrisroe Professor of Physics and Vice Provost for Special Projects

Admission is free, but tickets are required.

Please contact the Caltech Ticket Office between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday by calling (626) 395-4652 or visiting the Keith Spalding Building at the corner of California Blvd. and Wilson Ave.

An information technology leader with experience in the research, development, and government sectors has been appointed as Caltech's next chief information officer (CIO).

Jin Chang will start on June 30. Among his priorities will be developing and implementing a strategic plan for technology, with special attention to cloud computing and high-performance computing.

"I am very excited to be part of Caltech's mission of enhancing human knowledge and to be able to support the Institute's world-renowned faculty, as well as students and staff," Chang says. "I look forward to providing robust and efficient computing services, enabling their work."

Chang served most recently as deputy CIO at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), a Department of Energy-funded laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. There he led strategic planning for research computing, business computing, cyber security, and other areas. He was also responsible for Fermilab's computing governance processes that support thousands of scientists around the world.  

Prior to joining Fermilab, Chang was CIO for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, one of the nation's largest integrated water and sewer municipal agencies, serving millions of New York City residents. He started his career as a member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratory and has also worked for Accenture and the Exelon Corporation.

Chang earned bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from University of Southern California.

A veteran public safety professional with experience in law enforcement as well as campus and private security has been appointed as Caltech's chief of campus security and parking services.

Victor Clay will start on June 30.

"A safe campus environment is a first step toward ensuring that students, faculty, and staff can confidently pursue the research and innovation for which Caltech is renowned," Clay says. "This is not a job any one individual or department can do alone, and I look forward to working collaboratively so that all members of the Caltech community have the opportunity to work and study in an open—but secure—atmosphere."

Clay comes to Caltech from Occidental College, where he served as director and chief of campus safety, responsible for developing and implementing a comprehensive campus security plan, overseeing Clery Act compliance, leading a campus safety advisory committee, and supervising uniformed and administrative personnel, among other responsibilities.

At Occidental, Clay considered himself a "working chief," participating in routine patrols and investigations to help strengthen relationships with students, faculty, and staff.  

Before joining Occidental, he worked for several years in private security and for 28 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, earning a meritorious conduct medal for bravery in 1996. In 2012, he retired from the department as a lieutenant, a position in which he managed the Century Station area, one of the most densely populated policing zones in South Central Los Angeles.

At Caltech, Clay will be responsible for designing and executing a campus safety program that reflects best practices in community policing, campus security operations, and crime prevention education and outreach. He will oversee investigations, trainings on Caltech's campus emergency notification system, and parking registration and enforcement processes. Clay will also build and maintain relationships with external law enforcement agencies, including the Pasadena Police Department.

Campus eateries have switched to new summer hours, and Dining Services officials say they have plans to enliven the dining experience with a varied menu and some literal magic.

Jonathan Webster, senior director of dining services, says the Chandler menu will feature smoked meats, fresh pastas, seasonal vegetables and sides, as well as new dinner specials and varied grill and pizza offerings.

In addition, Chandler will feature Magic Castle magicians performing from 5–7:30 p.m. on Mondays in July starting July 10.

Summer hours (in effect through Sept. 19):

Broad Café: Weekdays, 7:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

Red Door Marketplace: Weekdays, 7:30 a.m.–10 p.m.; weekends, noon–10 p.m.

Chandler Café: Weekdays, 7 a.m.–3:30 p.m. and 5–7:30 p.m. (Dinner hours only through Aug. 25)

The Associated Students of Caltech (ASCIT) and Caltech's Graduate Student Council (GSC) on June 14 announced the honorees of their annual teaching awards, celebrating professors, TAs, and mentors for outstanding teaching in the 2016–17 academic year.

Based on voting by undergraduates, the ASCIT Teaching Awards honored professors Paul Asimow (MS '93, PhD '97), the Eleanor and John R. McMillan Professor of Geology and Geochemistry; Rob Phillips, the Fred and Nancy Morris Professor of Biophysics and Biology; Adam Wierman, professor of computing and mathematical sciences; and Evan Kirby, assistant professor of astronomy. The TAs honored were Chinmay Nirkhe (BS '17) and graduate students Dylan Freas (CCE), Eugene Tang (PMA), and Todd Norton (PMA).

The GSC's Teaching and Mentoring Awards, which honor those who have "made an extraordinary impact on graduate students," went to a professor, a TA, and a mentor; two honorable mentions were named as well.

Xie Chen, assistant professor of theoretical physics, won the teaching award; Michael Wong (MS '14), a graduate student in GPS, won the TA award; and Beverley McKeon, the Theodore von Karman Professor of Aeronautics, won the mentoring award. The two honorable mentions went to Heather Knutson, professor of planetary science; and Laura Flower Kim, associate director of International Student Programs.

In late June, CaltechAUTHORS—the Institute's repository for research publications authored by Caltech faculty and affiliated researchers—reached a landmark 10 million downloads since tracking began in July 2008.

CaltechAUTHORS offers a searchable and open repository of the scholarly output of the Institute, granting users access to the most definitive versions of research that Caltech is permitted to distribute. It contains over 50,000 articles, 8,000 books or book chapters, and 3,300 Caltech technical reports.

"Researchers are only able to stand upon the shoulders of giants when those shoulders can be reached. CaltechAUTHORS provides both visibility and access to allow researchers to build upon the groundbreaking work performed at the Institute," says engineering librarian George Porter.

Reaching 10 million downloads is a significant achievement: in comparison, Harvard University's DASH repository has had 11.7 million downloads, while MIT's DSpace repository has logged 7.8 million. 

That CaltechAUTHORS contains over 65,000 research publications is the result of effective collaboration between the faculty and the Caltech Library. The faculty has embraced the repository's role in increasing the accessibility of scientific research: in 2013, the Faculty Board voted to approve an Institute-wide open-access policy. Seventy-three percent of all materials in the repository are now open access.

Complementing CaltechAUTHORS, the library has just launched CaltechDATA, a service for storing and sharing data files and software associated with Caltech research. Tom Morrell, a Caltech Library research data specialist, notes that traditional publications cannot always effectively handle diverse types of data files or software. CaltechDATA ensures that users can archive and share their data and software. 

Porter says these two digital repositories, CaltechAUTHORS and CaltechDATA, are "key to the library's commitment to preserving Caltech research contributions for the long term—and to increasing the accessibility of Caltech research to a broader audience."

Artworks created by members of the Caltech community will go on display Friday, July 21, at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena to accompany a summer chamber music concert celebrating the nation's immigrants.

Fifteen pieces of art, selected from the 75 pieces displayed in Chandler Café as part of this year's Caltech Art Competition, will be featured on stage during the concert—and in the lobby before and after the performance. They will be displayed for limited periods of time over the weekend before returning to Chandler on July 24.

The artworks—large pieces that include photographs, paintings, and a collage—were created by a diverse group of students, staff, and faculty from countries across the world and echo the theme of the concert, which focuses on inclusiveness and the nation's immigrant community.

The concert highlights European immigrants coming through Ellis Island in the early 1900s and will include performances of chamber music those immigrants would have heard on both sides of their journey, including pieces by Johannes Brahms and American immigrants George Gershwin, Curt Weill, and Irving Berlin.

The event marks the first of several off-campus displays of Caltech art that are being coordinated by the Graduate Student Council's Arts Committee and Caltech Dining, with the aim of building additional support on campus for the arts and better integrating Caltech into the local Pasadena community.

The free concert (donations will be accepted) will take place at Lake Avenue Church, 393 N. Lake Ave. in Pasadena. Doors open at 7 p.m. for the 7:30 p.m. performance; the exhibit will be on view Friday, July 21 from 7–7:30 p.m. and 9–9:30 p.m.; Saturday, July 22 from 6:15–6:45 p.m.; and Sunday, July 23 from 8:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

Most people think about time throughout the day, but Sean Carroll, research professor of physics at Caltech, notes that very few people appreciate just how "weird" time is.

Carroll points out that in space, for instance, you can go from point A to point B and back again—but once you leave a given point in time, you can never return to that moment. Speaking to a packed Hameetman Auditorium on July 6, he told the crowd, "You could say, 'This is the most boring lecture I've ever heard. I will get up and walk away.' But you cannot choose to have not come to the lecture. Right? You cannot make a choice right now about the past. Why is that?"

Carroll's 45-minute lecture was part of the weekly Innovation Speaker Series science and technology talks presented each Thursday through August 3 by Summer App Space, a summer program that teaches programming to Los Angeles-area students and teachers while at the same time, they get paid to do fun space-related projects. The speaker series, which features entrepreneurs, researchers, and technologists from Caltech and elsewhere, aims to showcase the ways in which people with science- and space-related backgrounds and education can help change the world.

During his lecture, Carroll led an audience that included middle- and high-school students—as well as Caltech students, staff, and faculty, who are welcome to attend these public talks—on a tour of physics, quantum mechanics, and cosmology that examined what science can tell us about the origins of existence. Covering theories that delved into what happened before the Big Bang and what might occur when the universe ends, he also discussed how time might frame our perspective of the universe.

"Is any of this true?" he asked, referring to what happened before the Big Bang. "Who knows? I don't know. That's why we do physics. Physics is not about solving problems that you can see the solution to in the back of the book. It's about asking questions we don't know the answers to, suggesting possibilities, figuring out what those possibilities predict, and going out and collecting data and seeing which one is right."

• • •

The Innovation Speaker Series will feature two speakers each Thursday, one at 8 a.m. and one at 8:45 a.m., in Hameetman Auditorium. The schedule for the remaining lectures is as follows:

Thursday, July 20:

• 8 a.m.: Adam Lichtl, founder and CEO of Delta Brain Inc.
• 8:45 a.m.:  Solange Ramírez, associate staff scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute

Thursday, July 27

• 8 a.m.: Theoretical astrophysicist Jorge Moreno
• 8:45 a.m.:  Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Westworld actress Talulah Riley

Thursday, August 3

• 8 a.m.: Caltech postdoc and member of the 2017 NASA astronaut class Jessica Watkins
• 8:45 a.m.: Jessie Christiansen, Caltech astronomer at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute

On July 11, workers dissected Caltech's 400-year-old Engelman oak, which died last year. The wood will be preserved for several uses including: research rounds for GPS paleoclimatology research; historic rounds for display of key science and Caltech milestones; construction of a communal table for the new Red Door Café; and development donor gifts and recognition pieces.

Read more about the history of the oak in Caltech magazine.

Caltech sustainability efforts paid dividends in fiscal year 2016, cutting water use by 11 percent and trash generation by 5 percent while increasing hazardous material recycling by 11 percent compared to the previous year.

Those highlights, reported by Caltech Sustainability in its "Annual Sustainability Update 2016" report were among dozens of metrics showing the Institute's progress in reducing its environmental footprint. The report also highlighted areas where improvements could be made, such as increasing carpool usage and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

John Onderdonk, director of sustainability programs, says that "progress in the last year has been steady and really strengthened long-term positive trends."

For example, he notes that the Institute has made significant progress in reducing demand for and increasing efficiency in energy and water use. Recent achievements in those areas have included: installation of a direct chilled-water loop to connect the campus's central and satellite utility plants to improve cooling in campus buildings; installing dedicated tree irrigation systems; installing low-flow urinals campus-wide; overhauling the 10-megawatt gas turbine in the central plant to bolster efficiency; and upgrading fuel cells providing 2 megawatts to boost their efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.

Here are some other highlights from the report:

• Caltech now derives 88 percent of its own power needs from on-campus sources—and those on-campus sources are 15 percent cleaner than power provided by the municipal utility;
• Water features including the Gene Pool and the Watson Lab fountain have been outfitted with systems to use recycled water from air conditioning condensation, saving as much as 200,000 gallons of water annually;
• The campus now recycles 34 percent of its waste, a 3 percent increase over the previous year;
• In 2016, the campus installed 61 Level 2 electric vehicle charging stations around campus; the stations are free to use for campus electric vehicle owners as part of a research project led by Steven Low, professor of computer science and electrical engineering, to determine how the Institute can best integrate large numbers of electric vehicles into the campus power grid. The 300-kilowatt stations can fully charge an electric vehicle in about five hours.

Onderdonk says the biggest challenge remaining is further reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which have plateaued—partly as a result of increased energy demands due to new building construction and research as well as from reliance on natural gas combustion to generate electricity and heat on campus. To address that challenge, the Institute approved an energy resource plan in April that aims to significantly decarbonize the campus's electrical supply by 2025 through the deployment of on- and off-site renewable energy projects.

The annual report—which details the goals, successes, and challenges facing the Institute in terms of sustainability—can be found at http://www.caltech.edu/content/2016-report-institute-sustainability-released.

Onderdonk says the report underscores the depth and breadth of the campus's continuing efforts to reduce its environmental impact. "Having detailed metrics and meaningful initiatives across multiple key areas—energy, water, materials, built environment, transportation, and emissions—is rare and certainly shows our commitment to transparency and sustained progress," he says.

The Caltech Store reopened on Monday, July 24, after moving to its new (albeit temporary) location on campus—in the lobby of Millikan Library. The move was made to allow for the demolition of the existing Winnett Student Center and the subsequent construction of a new campus hub, the Hameetman Center, on that same site.

Current plans are for the Caltech Store to be part of the Hameetman Center's retail space when the building opens in the fall of 2018.

"Student Affairs would like to thank the offices of the president and provost, Development and Institute Relations, and the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering for allowing us to use their respective spaces during this transition period as well as for their patience during the construction phase," says Joe Shepherd, Caltech's vice president for student affairs.

The Caltech Store's new operating hours will be 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Workers have erected fencing and scaffolding around the Winnett Student Center to prepare for abatement of any hazardous materials in the building before its demolition.

The demolition of Winnett is expected to begin at the end of August, and construction of the Hameetman Center, which will replace Winnett as a new campus hub, should begin as soon as that demolition is complete, says Greg Norden, the project manager for the new Hameetman Center.

Key services previously available at Winnett have been moved to various locations as follows:

• the Caltech SAS Store has been temporarily relocated to the lobby of Millikan Library;
• the Red Door Café is now temporarily located in Chandler Dining Hall, sharing space with the C-Store in what is now called the Red Door Marketplace, and;
• the Ticket Office has been moved permanently to the Keith Spalding Building of Business Services, next to the post office;
• the ATM remains in its current location and is still accessible from a path west of the construction site. The ATM will remain in place until about August 11, 2017, when it will be moved to its new location south of the Red Door Marketplace;
• the prayer room formerly located in the basement of Winnett is now located in the Center for Student Services, Room 248.

The Hameetman Center, named in honor of Caltech trustee Fred Hameetman (BS '62) and his wife, Joyce, is scheduled to open in late 2018. It will feature a large public lounge, an expanded Red Door Marketplace, Caltech SAS Store, music rehearsal facilities, student club rooms, multipurpose room, and conference room.

For questions about the project, contact Dimitris Sakellariou, assistant vice president for student affairs operations, at dimitris@caltech.edu.

The ATM formerly located at Winnett has been installed in its new location on the west side of Chandler, adjacent to the Red Door Café, and is open for business. Meanwhile, interior removals and demolition of Winnett continue through the end of this week, with exterior demolition to follow, pending inspections and issuance of City of Pasadena permits.