Articles Written By: Staff

Letter Box

September 5, 2018 by Staff Comments Off

Remembering Martha

If there was one person more than any other who personified what made my experience of Pomona extraordinary, it was Professor Martha Andresen. The brilliance of her intellect was matched by the openness of her heart, and she instilled in me a love of literature that remains alive after more than three decades. I know that I am far from unique in that regard; a number of my classmates who have gone into teaching have spoken of drawing on her example years later. She challenged her students in the best possible way, confronting the flaws and unexamined assumptions in our thinking not to make us feel inferior but to push us to become the better readers, writers and thinkers she believed we could be.

I had the great good fortune of continuing a friendship with Professor Andresen long after I had graduated, corresponding about our lives, art, politics, and most of all writing. We would discuss the books we had recommended to each other, explicating what a particular writer had achieved or failed to achieve. This was never dull academic pontificating, at least on her end; everything she wrote burned with her love of the written word. I have kept every one of those letters from her, and I cherish them.

Pomona will of course go on, with other talented and dedicated professors to lead it into the future, but it will never be the same. Martha Andresen will never be replaced.

—Eric Meyer ’87
Lake Oswego, OR

Wilds of L.A.

Thanks to Char Miller for his review of the natural systems that have shaped Los Angeles (“The Wilds of L.A.,” PCM Spring 2018). But I think he’s misreading the city when he calls it “concretized and controlled” and claims that it’s “nearly impossible to locate nature” in Los Angeles, except in the earthquakes, fires and floods that he describes in almost apocalyptic tones.

In contrast to many large cities, wildlife and nature are a wonderful, unavoidable part of everyday life in Los Angeles. At our home just two miles north of Downtown L.A., we are frequently visited by coyotes, bobcats, possums, raccoons, skunks and snakes. Birds of prey like red-tailed hawks and screech owls share the trees with woodpeckers, finches, warblers and hummingbirds.

I was especially chagrined that Prof. Miller dismisses the Los Angeles River as an “inverted freeway.” The channelized River is indeed a concrete ditch for much of its 52-mile run, but it is also a habitat for much wildlife, especially in the three “soft-bottom” sections of the river (the Sepulveda Basin, the Glendale Narrows, and the Long Beach Estuary). I recently published a novel set on the L.A. River (The Ballad of Huck & Miguel), and the fugitives in the book encounter many of the same animals that I’ve encountered down there, including herons, egrets, turtles, fish and snakes.

What’s more, millions of LA residents live less than an hour away from mountain waterfalls, desert oases and ocean tide pools. For nature lovers who also want access to the cultural diversity (and economic opportunity) of a major urban metropolis, there is no better place to be than Los Angeles.

—Tim DeRoche ‘92
Los Angeles, CA

A Rural Voice

As a longtime “Rural Voice” from Beaver Dam, Wis., I was especially interested in Mark Wood’s piece on Rachel Monroe ’06 and Marfa, Texas, because I had just been reading Possibilities by Patricia Vigderman. In the chapter “Sebald in Starbucks” she writes about sitting in Starbucks in Marfa and reading W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz. She explains how Marfa got its name: In 1881, a Russian woman came with her husband, a railroad overseer, to an unnamed whistle stop. She was reading a novel published the previous year, The Brothers Karamazov, in which Dostoevsky gave the name Marfa to the Karamazov family servant—and the unnamed town in Texas got its name. The essay is delightful, as is the book by Vigderman.

—Caroline Burrow Jones ’55
Pasadena, CA

Dwyer Passing

Thank you, PCM, for publishing news of the passing of former Pomona College Assistant Professor of History John Dwyer. He served at Pomona for only a few years, but the quality of that service was unmatched in my experience. I remain grateful beyond words for his friendship and guidance, for his love of history and Africa and for his wonderful family. Saturday mornings will always bring memories of the Metropolitan Opera broadcast, accompanied by a proper pot of tea. Thank you, Mr. Dwyer, for everything.

—David Beales ’73
Elk Grove, CA

A Barnett Fan

Okay, maybe the good part of being a children’s author is that Mac Barnett’s (’04) kid audience doesn’t “fanboy” over him…but the adults reading his books definitely do! I was so psyched to open the Spring 2018 issue to “Ideas That Feel Alive.” We are HUGE fans of his work in our family, and we read one of his books with our 2½-year-old Lyra almost every day. We particularly love his collaborations with illustrator Jon Klassen—Extra Yarn and The Wolf, The Duck & The Mouse are our most beloved favorites. We’d actually just bought Triangle for Greg Conroy’s (Pomona ‘00) son Malcolm’s third birthday on the same day the PCM arrived in the mail! It’s super refreshing to read kids’ books that are quirky and smart: Barnett doesn’t talk down to kids or dumb down his stories, even when they’re a little dark or offbeat (in the best way possible). We can’t wait to keep reading everything he writes!

—Chelsea Morse ‘02
Astoria, NY

Kudos for PCM

Pomona College Magazine continues to be readable, relevant and enlightening, thanks to your creativity and hard work. We look forward to each issue and read it cover to cover.

—Bonnie Home ’62 and
DeForrest Home ’61
San Jose, CA

Alumni, parents and friends are invited to email letters to pcm@pomona.edu or “snail-mail” them to Pomona College Magazine, 550 North College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Letters may be edited for length, style and clarity.

New Dean of Students has Pomona Homecoming

September 5, 2018 by Staff Comments Off

Pomona College’s new vice president for student affairs and dean of students, Avis E. Hinkson, brings more than three decades of higher education experience in areas ranging from residential life to student recruitment to undergraduate advising. Her new role, which she began on Aug. 1, marks her return to Pomona College, where she was an associate dean of admissions from 1990 to 1994.

As dean of the college at Barnard College in New York, Hinkson led a staff of more than 100, overseeing academic advising, career development, registrar, health and wellness services, counseling services, Title IX services, residential and campus life, international and intercultural programs and diversity initiatives.

At Barnard, she worked with colleagues to shape the student experience and campus culture while sustaining direct involvement with many of Barnard’s 2,500 undergraduate women and serving as a key partner in Barnard’s unique connection with Columbia University.

“Avis brings just the right experience, energy and high level of engagement to this crucial role,” says Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr. “She is someone who reaches out, listens and helps spark change where it is needed. Our students and the wider campus community will benefit from collaborating with her.”

Hinkson’s other roles have included dean of admission and enrollment planning at Mills College in Oakland, Calif.; associate director of admission and director of minority recruitment at the University of Southern California; and associate director of admission and minority recruitment director at Cornell University.

Among her current professional activities, Hinkson serves on the board of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education as chair of the assembly for the organization of 35 highly selective private colleges and universities committed to meeting the full demonstrated financial need of admitted students.

In addition to earning a doctor of education degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Hinkson holds a master’s degree in student personnel administration from Columbia University’s Teachers College and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Barnard.

She succeeds Miriam Feldblum, who departed in February after a decade of service to become executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a new initiative that advocates for the legislative interests of immigrant, undocumented and international students on college campuses.

Stray Thoughts: What’s Next? (A Thought Experiment)

September 5, 2018 by Mark Wood Comments Off

There was a time, not so very long ago, historically speaking, when everyone assumed the future would look pretty much like the past—if they were lucky. Any sort of significant change was something to be feared and avoided, because it probably meant invasion or plague or something equally likely to send your life up in flames.

The modern concept of progress—the notion that advances in science, culture and social organization are feeding a steady improvement in the human condition—was a product of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. As an ideology, the cult of progress may have reached its peak in the optimism of middle-class America in the ’50s and ’60s, when new medicines and a parade of shiny and suddenly affordable labor-saving gadgets seemed to promise an end to drudgery and dread.

But as the pace of change has continued to accelerate, we’ve become a bit more world-weary about what it all means. The optimism of the ’50s and ’60s has curdled into fatalism. We expect change—and a lot of it—but we don’t necessarily expect progress. We’ve reverted to our historic default—viewing change with a high degree of trepidation.

Maybe that’s why anticipating the next big change has become such a fascination. We’ve all become futurists of a sort. Not that planning for tomorrow is in any way new. Indeed, some believe the ability to think about the future is what made us human in the first place. But predicting what tomorrow may bring has now become a central facet of our lives.

Did you check the weather forecast this morning to see if you needed an umbrella? Did you read the election polls or watch a TV pundit discuss the possible fallout from a recent Supreme Court decision? Did you put off buying a new computer or a new car because you read that the next iteration will be amazing? Did you, just for fun, fill out a World Cup or Final Four or MLB, NFL or NHL playoff bracket? Did you invest your hard-earned money in a stock you think/hope might be on the rise?

Yeah, so did I.

To do all of this future-gazing, we employ a range of cognitive tools, some more effective than others. We use the science of statistics with a remarkable degree of success—when we do it right. We use deductive reasoning with rather more mixed success. And of course, we use lots of guesswork and magical thinking, with just enough accidental success to make us superstitious.

We’re wrong a lot—or else Hillary Clinton would be president, cars would fly through the air, and we’d all be fabulously rich.

So, when we at PCM asked Sagehen experts in a variety of disciplines to make some daring predictions about what’s next in their fields, our purpose wasn’t really to give you a preview of the future, though we hope that you’ll take away some interesting ideas of what may be in store for us down the road.

The main reason we sought these predictions, and the reason our experts offered them, was as a kind of thought experiment. Thoughtful, informed predictions tell us as much about the present as they do about the future. Whether or not these predictions turn out to be right, I hope you’ll find the reasoning behind them intriguing and enlightening.

Of course, if you shake the dust off this issue of PCM a decade from now, you may find that some of these predictions were dead wrong. A few may even seem quaint and funny.

Like the science fiction writers of the ’50s whose spacefaring heroes went rocketing about the solar system while navigating with slide rules, sometimes we know something revolutionary is coming, but we pick the wrong revolution.

That’s the danger of prediction, even for experts.

Walking Through Time

September 5, 2018 by Robyn Norwood Comments Off

Alison Rose Jefferson ’80 brings the history of L.A.’s Central Avenue to life.

Alison Rose Jefferson ’80

Buildings tend to stand still. History never does.

Central Avenue, the hub of Black life in Los Angeles during the Jim Crow era, is now more associated with the taquerias and vibrant Spanish-speaking community that share the sidewalks today.

The Lincoln Theatre, nicknamed the “West Coast Apollo” in its heyday for hosting such performers as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Nat “King” Cole and Billie Holiday, now hosts the congregation of the Iglesia de Jesucristo Judá. Yet at the nearby 28th Street YMCA, built in 1926, one can still glimpse the terra cotta likenesses of Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass in the upper corners, watching over a building that housed one of the few swimming pools where Blacks were always welcome.

Historian Alison Rose Jefferson ’80 seeks to illuminate both the past and present of this important South L.A. neighborhood in a deeply researched walking tour she created with Angels Walk LA, a nonprofit that has produced 10 other self-guided historic trails around the city. Jefferson and collaborator Martha Groves chose an inclusive embrace, highlighting both the 27th Street Bakery – owned by 1984 Olympic sprinter Jeanette Bolden and known for its Southern sweet potato pies – and the nearby Las Palmas Carniceria, known for its chorizo.

Angels Walk LA will install 15 stanchions highlighting some of the 65 sites along the trail that stretches roughly from 24th Street to Vernon Avenue later this year. They will tell the story of the neighborhood not only to those who live there but to curious visitors and the music lovers who flock to the Central Avenue Jazz Festival each July.

A Different Kind of Historian

A sociology major at Pomona College, Jefferson took an unusual academic path, returning to school to earn a master’s degree in heritage conservation from the University of Southern California in 2007 and a Ph.D. in history at UC Santa Barbara in 2015, 35 years after earning her undergraduate degree.

Her goal was to enhance a career in writing and public projects that has made her a sought-after expert for documentaries and other reports. It is a role sometimes defined as a “public historian,” and just one of many career paths for history majors beyond academia.

“I’ve always been interested in history,” says Jefferson, who worked for a historic preservation firm before pursuing a doctorate. But even as she devoted her days to documenting and preserving brick-and-mortar sites, Jefferson understood that history is what happens within and beyond the walls.

“The world of historic preservation really focuses on the built environment,” she says. “I decided I wanted a broader platform.”

By completing her doctorate, she acquired the training and credentials that bolster her qualifications for various efforts and grants.

“With a Ph.D., I could do a broader array of projects,” Jefferson says.

Among her many endeavors, she has expanded awareness of the Santa Monica beach at Bay Street that was sometimes known as the Inkwell during the era of de facto segregation in California, along with the life story of Nick Gabaldón, L.A.’s first documented surfer of African-American and Mexican-American descent. Jefferson also has an upcoming book, Leisure’s Race, Power and Place in Los Angeles and California Dreams in the Jim Crow Era, to be published by the University of Nebraska Press in late 2019.

A Walk in the Neighborhood

The stretch of Central Avenue that lies south of the 10 Freeway and north of Vernon is in some ways nondescript, like so many others in South Los Angeles marked by older storefronts with hand-painted signs and the occasional street vendor. But a stroll with Jefferson reveals the unseen history of the Jim Crow era and the early civil rights movement in L.A., along with the melding of the old neighborhood with the influx of Latin American immigrants.

It is not merely history to Jefferson: It’s also personal: Her grandfather, Dr. Peter Price Cobbs, was a neighborhood physician for many years before his death in 1960.

“My mother would bring us over here. I was little. I’d be fascinated, thinking, ‘I’m in the old neighborhood,’” Jefferson says.

Besides her long familiarity with the area, Jefferson drew on her extensive previous research and writing on the Black Angeleno experience to create the Central Avenue guide with Groves, a former Los Angeles Times reporter and editor. The pair delved into archive collections, examined census records, perused old photographs, and read articles from the three newspapers that once covered the community, the California Eagle, the Los Angeles Sentinel and the Times. They also drew from books and scholarly articles.

“A special treat of the research process that I enjoyed was visiting the businesses along the avenue and interviewing the owners for the information that was to go into the guidebook,” Jefferson says.

Middle-class Black families flourished in the area around Central Avenue during the first half of the 20th century in what was largely a parallel society to white L.A., where Blacks faced restrictions in the workplace and community. Blacks were even limited by which homes they could buy, Jefferson notes, at least until the system of racially restrictive “covenants” in property deeds was ruled unenforceable under the 14th Amendment in the 1948 U.S. Supreme Court decision Shelley v. Kraemer.

Segregation was not only a feature of the American South; it was also pervasive in L.A. The African American Firefighter Museum at historic Fire Station No. 30 on Central Avenue just north of the 10 Freeway documents the era from 1924 to 1955 when the city’s Black firefighters were allowed to serve only in two segregated fire stations, and promotions were limited.

Even nightlife was affected. Central Avenue became home to the famous jazz club scene dubbed the “Brown Broadway” by the California Eagle newspaper in part because Black musicians and their fans were not welcome at all-white clubs – though whites made forays to Central Avenue to visit famous spots like Club Alabam and Jack’s Basket Room.

At a time when luxury hotels would not serve Blacks, traveling musicians such as Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne and Louis Armstrong stayed at Central Avenue’s Dunbar Hotel, which opened in 1928 under the name Somerville Hotel just in time to host delegates to the first West Coast convention of the NAACP. Other dignitaries also stayed there, including boxer Joe Louis, poet Langston Hughes and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. The Dunbar still stands, with a lovely renovated courtyard, and is now part of a complex for low-income seniors and others.

A Changing Community

By the 1950s, Black families – including Jefferson’s – began to move farther south and west in the city, no longer limited to the old neighborhood. Some businesses and institutions from the earlier era still thrive, among them the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper, which moved to Crenshaw Boulevard, and Second Baptist Church, a stately Romanesque Revival church that hosted speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Still home to one of the most influential Black congregations in L.A., the church at 24th Street and Griffith Avenue was designed by trailblazing Black architect Paul Revere Williams and is on the National Register of Historic Places, as is his 28th Street YMCA, now housing for special needs adults and former foster youth.

Along with the Angels Walk heritage trail, other efforts to revitalize the neighborhood include the Central Avenue Constituent Services Center, a strikingly contemporary building that is home to the district office of L.A. City Councilman Curren D. Price Jr. Yet the community’s most vibrant indicator of its past, present and perhaps its future might be the neighborhood’s many murals.

On 42nd Place across from the Dunbar Hotel is a mural featuring such important figures as Dodgers star Jackie Robinson, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, longtime legislator Augustus F. “Gus” Hawkins and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph J. Bunche, whose boyhood home is on 40thPlace.

Jefferson points out another mural on the side of El Montoso Market at 40th Place that pays tribute to the Latin American immigrants who now make up 75 percent of the neighborhood’s population. A man hauls a basket filled with vegetables and a depiction of a house on his back, and the L.A. skyscrapers are shown as stacks of U.S. currency.

At 41st Street, another shows a black and brown hand clasped together, and above it, the words cultura cura: Culture heals.

A walk, Jefferson knows, can sometimes teach more than a lecture.

How to Become a Circus Performer (and a Doctor)

September 5, 2018 by Staff Comments Off

Photo by Beihua Guo (Pitzer ’21)

Thanks to a childhood fascination with circus activities, Jack Gomberg ’18 found himself, at the tender age of 18, at a crossroads, having to choose between two radically different paths in life. Should he seize a rare opportunity with Cirque de Soleil or keep his love of the circus arts as an avocation while pursuing a more traditional education at Pomona? Put yourself in his shoes…

Jack Gomberg ’18
Neuroscience Major

Grow up in a baseball-centric family in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago—near the Chicago Cubs’ famed ballpark, Wrigley Field—and start playing tee-ball at 3. Discover that you’re “a little above average” as a toddler-athlete, meaning that you can run all the way to first base without falling down.

In kindergarten, attend a hands-on workshop by the nonprofit social-circus group CircEsteem. After failing miserably at juggling scarves, test your sense of balance on a rolling globe—a hard sphere about four feet in diameter—and do so well that the group invites you to join them for practices.

Partly because the workshop was so cool and partly to escape the soccer practice you despise, join CircEsteem’s new after-school program and discover an awe-inspiring new world—a cavernous circus ring where kids up to high-school age are performing all sorts of acrobatics on the ground and in the air.

At first, stay in your comfort zone with your rolling globe. Then slowly branch out to other circus arts, such as trampoline and partner acrobatics. Avoid two things like the plague: juggling and aerial acrobatics. Conquer your dread of juggling at the age of 8, and two years later, overcome your fear of heights on the static trapeze.

See your first Cirque de Soleil—Corteo—at age 12 and realize that the circus can be truly artistic. Then, when world gym wheel champion Wolfgang Bientzle comes to Chicago to create a Team U.S.A. in the sport, catch his eye and fall in love with the gym wheel under his expert tutelage.

Win your first national championship in gym wheel at 14 after telling your mom she didn’t need to stay because the competition was “no big deal.” Go to your first World Championships in Arnsberg, Germany, and make friends from around the world while reaching the finals in all three 18-and-under events, including one fourth-place finish.

Two years later, apply to Cirque du Soleil to spend a week at their training facility in Montreal, Canada, and get invited to serve as a temporary gym wheel coach for the Cirque du Soleil acrobats. Then, when the World Championships come to Chicago, defend your home turf by winning two bronze medals.

While applying for college, also apply to the École de Cirque in Quebec, a feeder school for Cirque du Soleil. Since you know its three-year program is impossibly exclusive, apply for a gap year in its slightly more accessible one-year program. Get accepted to the three-year program instead. Have to choose between a circus life and Pomona. Choose Pomona.

Even before arriving on campus, make arrangements to form a club at The Claremont Colleges because you want to build a community of people with an interest in the circus arts. Name the club 5Circus and serve as its president for three years before, in the name of continuity, letting someone else take over during your senior year.

Major in neuroscience and decide to become a doctor. But since you didn’t take a gap year before college, decide to take one before entering medical school. Win a Fulbright Fellowship to spend the year in Israel, melding your passions for medicine and the circus by studying an innovative paramedical practice known as “medical clowning.”

From Theory to Practice

September 5, 2018 by Patricia Vest Comments Off

Professor Nicholas Ball

A rare collaboration between one of the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies and a chemistry lab at a small liberal arts college began as the result of a chance encounter.

Chemistry major Ariana Tribby ’17 was presenting a poster at the American Chemistry Society (ACS) National Meeting in Philadelphia in 2016 when her research, under the guidance of Assistant Professor of Chemistry Nicholas Ball, caught the attention of Pfizer’s Senior Principal Scientist Dr. Christopher am Ende.

The biopharmaceutical giant was interested in Ball’s lab work using sulfonyl fluorides to make other sulfur-based molecules. Dr. am Ende was particularly interested in Ball’s work with sulfonamides.

Sulfonyl fluorides have been used in biology for decades, are valued for their stability in water and bioactivity and are now emerging as precursors for a myriad of sulfur-based compounds. According to Ball, the stability of sulfonyl fluorides are more attractive over traditional routes using sulfonamides that require reagents that have a short self-life or undesirable side reactions. The key challenge for Pomona-Pfizer collaborative study was to figure out a way to unlock the reactivity of sulfonyl fluorides for the desired reaction.

Sulfonamides are widely prevalent in the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries. They represented 15 percent of the top 100 most prescribed drugs, with therapeutic applications against cardiovascular, infectious and neurological diseases in 2016.

This mutual interest between Pfizer and the Ball Lab led to a year-long research partnership to develop a methodology to make sulfonamides from sulfonyl fluorides using calcium salts. Pfizer did the initial work to come up with a sketch for a synthetic route, while Ball’s lab work involved optimizing that synthetic route and testing its versatility. After countless hours in the lab–both at Pfizer and at Pomona–many teleconference calls and more than 100 chemical reactions later, the research team had found an optimal reaction by the end of the summer of 2017.

The study was recently published as an open access article in Organic Letters, one of the most highly-regarded academic journals in organic chemistry. Their work will hopefully translate into more efficient ways to make a diverse array of sulfonamides, key for discovering new drug targets.

The article’s authors include five Pomona students who worked with Ball: Cristian Woroch ’19, Mark Rusznak ’18, Ryan Franzese ’19, Sarah Etuk ’19 and Sabrina Kwan ’20, who are a mixture of chemistry and neuroscience majors. On Pfizer’s side, along with am Ende, the research and article author team includes scientists and medical chemists: Paramita Mukherjee, Matthew Reese, Joseph Tucker, John Humphrey, who work in Pfizer’s Worldwide Research and Development division. Leah Cleary of Ideaya Biosciences was also part of the team.

For Ball, the goal for students in his lab is to learn how to turn theory into practice, to critically work through scientific challenges and to understand and take ownership of their work. With this Pfizer study, Pomona students were able to better understand the applications of pharmaceutical and medicinal chemistry.

“My experience with industry wasn’t until I was on the job market,” says Ball. “I was never exposed to the fantastic science that is occurring at these companies or realized that it was a career possibility. My hope is that this collaboration shows students that there are options for the them with a science degree other than academia.”

Woroch, who was second author in the study, worked closely with both Ball and Pfizer’s am Ende. This project had such an influence on Woroch’s research interests that he is continuing to pursue the topic for his senior thesis, and am Ende will be a second reader for it.

“What I am most excited for is an opportunity to answer questions that have been popping up since the project began,” says Woroch. “Since our collaboration started over a year ago, there has been a clear direction for the research and so when tangentially-related issues arose, I couldn’t address them. Now, I can revisit them and find an entirely new project that is derived from my interests. Dr. am Ende is a very talented scientist and will be a great guide to help me do meaningful and interesting research.”

Woroch adds that the ability to apply science to real world problems is a big part of what drew him to research. “Particularly when projects are challenging or frustrating, having a practical application for your work is a driving force,” he says.

According to ACS data from 2013, 53 percent of chemistry graduates are employed in industry sectors after attending graduate school, while 39 percent go to work in academia.

Besides this research study, Ball, am Ende and Woroch share another commonality: They all received a Beckman Scholarship at some point in their chemistry research careers. The Beckman Foundation provides grants to researchers and nonprofit research institutions in chemistry and life sciences to promote scientific discoveries and to foster the invention of methods, instruments and materials that will open up new avenues of research.

“I am very excited that our collaboration with Dr. am Ende’s group at Pfizer is continuing,” says Ball. “We already have a follow-up [study] to this recent paper underway. During my first conversation with Dr. am Ende, he stated that we should be working together versus working against each other and I couldn’t agree more! It is even more special that we share the bond of being Beckman Scholars.”

Bulletin Board

September 5, 2018 by Staff Comments Off

Thank You, Sagehen Community!

As we welcome the incoming Class of 2022 and kick off a new academic year, we would like to thank our worldwide family of alumni, families and friends for making 2017-2018 a vibrant year of support and communion for the Pomona community.

Last October, alumni and friends joined the campus community for the Inaugural Ceremony, including a barbecue and a dance party under the stars, to welcome Pomona’s 10th president, G. Gabrielle Starr. Celebratory gatherings continued on campus throughout the year, as thousands of community members returned home for Rivalry Weekend in November— Sagehens beat the Stags to bring home the Sixth Street trophy—and revitalized editions of Family Weekend in February and Alumni Weekend in the spring.

Around the world, Sagehens traded stories and laughs at nine Winter Break Parties and 16 Summer Welcome Parties for incoming students and their families, and current Pomona scholars shared ideas with lifelong learners at Pomona in the City events in Seattle and Los Angeles. Our growing tradition of community goodwill, the 4/7 Celebration of Sagehen Impact on April 7, featured 10 alumni volunteer service events from Claremont to London and Hong Kong in addition to the now-traditional campus and online celebrations of Sagehens bearing their added riches.

A 4/7 giving challenge to benefit Pomona’s Draper Center for Community Partnerships, the Student Emergency Grant Fund, the Alumni Scholarship Fund, and The Claremont Colleges’ Empower Center yielded $172,000 in support for students from more than 750 generous alumni and friends. And donors to the Annual Fund set a new record with a total of $5,514,075 given, including gifts from more than 5,500 alumni whose contributions increased the College’s giving participation for the first time in more than a decade.

47 loud, proud, resounding chirps to every single Sagehen who stepped up to support our community with your generosity and your presence. Thank you! Let’s make 2018-2019 another year worth chirping about.

The Inauguration of
President G. Gabrielle Starr

Alumni Weekend

Sagehens with the Sixth Street
trophy on Rivalry Weekend

Summer Welcome Party in Miami, Fla.

Summer Welcome Party in Denver, Col.

4/7 alumni volunteer event in Seattle, Wash.

Thank You, Alumni Board!

At the Alumni Board’s final meeting of the year on June 9, Matt Thompson ’96 completed his term as Alumni Association President and passed the gavel to incoming president, Diane Ung ’85. Jon Siegel ’84 was elected as president-elect. The following members completed their service: Jordan Pedraza ’09 (Past President), LJ Kwak ’05, Kyle Hill ’09, Professor Lorn Foster (Faculty Representative), Slade Burns ’14 (Admissions Representative) and Maria Vides ’18 (ASPC President). The following new members are joining the Alumni Board: Jill Grigsby (Faculty Representative), Alejandro Guerrero ’19 (ASPC President), Cris Monroy ’14 (Admissions Representative), and at-large members Aaron Davis ’09, Terril Jones ’80, Jim McCallum ’70, Jon Moore ’86, Andrea Ravich ’06, Alex Tran ’09 and Anna Twum ’14.

Summer/Fall Book Selection

This fall, join the Class of 2022 as they start their Pomona journeys by reading Exit West, a book The Los Angeles Times called “…a breathtaking novel by one of the world’s most fascinating young writers.” Named a Top 10 Book of 2017 by The New York Times, Mohsin Hamid’s work follows two lovers displaced by civil unrest in their home country.

Book Club Events

In-person Book Club events for the summer/fall selection began in August in Washington D.C., Seattle and Honolulu, with additional gatherings planned this fall in St. Paul, MN (September 21), Bedford Hills, NY (October 16) and Austin, TX (October, date TBD). Join the Book Club to learn more about events near you and to read along with alumni, professors, students, parents and staff around the world.

Mark Your Calendar

Save the dates for these favorite annual events and update your contact information to hear about more opportunities to come together with the Sagehen community.

The Claremont Colleges Worldwide Socials— September 2018 and March 2019
Rivalry Weekend—November 9 (dinner) and November 10 (game vs. CMS), 2018
Winter Break Parties—January 2019
Family Weekend—February 15–17, 2019
4/7 Celebration—April 7, 2019
Alumni Weekend—May 2–5, 2019

What’s Next for Women in Math?

September 5, 2018 by Staff Comments Off

Prestigious Fields Medal Hidden figures no more. That’s the future that Professor of Mathematics Ami Radunskaya hopes to see soon in the world of mathematics: more women—particularly more women of color—in the field.

What’s Next For:

Revolutions?
Syria?
Mexico?
Japan?
The United States?
Earthquake Safety?
Climate Action?
California Water?
Climate Science?
Solar Energy?
California Fruit Farming?
Technology Investing?
Nanoscience?
Digital Storage?
Artificial Intelligence?
Cyber-Threats?
Social Media?
Space Exploration?
Science Museums?
The Sagehen?
Biodiversity?
The Blind?
Big Data?
Mental Illness?
Health Care Apps?
Maternity Care?
Etiquette?
Ballroom Dance?
Thrill Seekers?
Outdoor Recreation?
Funerals?
Writers?
Movies?
Manga?
Alt Rock?
Women in Mathematics?

“There’s been an increase of awareness about equity in mathematics thanks to the Hidden Figures movie, which came out almost two years ago,” says Radunskaya, who has seen the success of programs like Black Girls Code—part of a growing trend to get middle and elementary school-aged girls interested in math.

The first and last time a woman received the prestigious Fields Medal, the highest honor a mathematician can receive, was in 2014, when Maryam Mirzakhani won the coveted medal, often described as the “Nobel Prize for mathematics,” for her work in the field of geometry.

Although the Fields Medal is awarded to only a handful of mathematicians every four years, Radunskaya is hopeful that more women will be named winners in the near future.

Radunskaya, who is also the president of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM), adds that while more young women are majoring in math at the undergraduate level, more needs to be done to see women continue studying math at the graduate level and beyond. “It’s like a leaky pipe,” she says. “As you go up, the numbers of women faculty at large and prestigious research universities gets smaller and smaller. The gender equity needs to trickle up.”

So what’s needed exactly to see more women win the Fields Medal in the future? Radunskaya says, “It’s really about supporting women of color get into positions where they are visible who can then become role models for the future so that when we walk into a room at a math conference we’re not surprised to see all kinds of people: different genders, different races and different backgrounds.”

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What’s Next?

September 5, 2018 by Staff Comments Off

As a thought experiment, we asked alumni, faculty and staff experts in a wide range of fields to go out on a limb and make some bold predictions about the years to come. Here’s what we learned…

Start reading (What’s Next in Revolutions?)

WHAT’S NEXT FOR:

Alt Rock?

Artificial Intelligence?

Ballroom Dance?

Big Data?

Biodiversity?

California Fruit Farming?

Technology Investing?

Women in Mathematics?

Writers?

What’s Next for Alt Rock?

August 30, 2018 by Staff Comments Off

solar trailer A solar-powered Coachella? That’s a future that alternative rocker Skylar Funk ’10 hopes to see one day. Although there isn’t a solar generator that is big enough to power the Coachella main stage yet—things are moving in that direction, says Funk.

What’s Next For:

As students in the environmental analysis program, Funk and classmate Merritt Graves ’10 became passionate about environmental issues, and since founding Trapdoor Social together, they have combined their love of music with their sustainability activism. After driving around the country to play shows, Funk became frustrated with all the gas they were burning. So, in 2015, the band acquired a solar trailer that provides them with more than enough power for their concerts. “The real treat is that there is no loud generator which disrupts the whole sonic experience of the festival,” says Funk.

In 2016, Trapdoor Social launched the fully solar-powered Sunstock Solar Festival in Los Angeles, a zero-waste event that also raises money for worthy causes. He adds, “We need a place, we need a positive space to cross-pollinate and to grow our movement and to be a community.”

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