Campus News

Danielle Lynch Named Athletic Director of Pomona and Pitzer Colleges

February 13, 2026 by Staff Comments Off

The Pomona-Pitzer athletics program has announced the appointment of Danielle Lynch, Ed.D., as Director, effective April 1.

Most recently serving as Director of Athletics of Haverford College in Pennsylvania, Lynch brings more than two decades of leadership in collegiate athletics administration.

“I am excited to join an institution where academic excellence, athletic achievement and physical education are all essential parts of the student experience,” says Lynch, who will also chair Pomona’s Physical Education Department. “Pomona-Pitzer’s commitment to holistic development aligns deeply with my values.”

Lynch will lead a program with 21 NCAA Division III varsity sports and more than 600 intercollegiate scholar-athletes; a robust physical education curriculum; club and intramural programs; and student wellness initiatives.

The academic program has captured dozens of SCIAC championships the past 10 years. Deep postseason runs are regularly made by teams such as women’s soccer, men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s swimming and diving, baseball and men’s tennis. Men’s cross country has won three NCAA titles since 2019, and women’s water polo is on a run of four straight USA water polo Division III championships. Angie Zhou ’23 captured the 2023 NCAA Division III women’s tennis singles championship, and in 2024, women’s swimming won NCAA titles in the 200- and 400-yard freestyle relays.

A former college athlete herself, Lynch competed in the 400-meter hurdles and pentathlon while at Rutgers, an experience that ignited a lifelong passion for athletics and student development. Her career of coaching and athletic administration began at the United States Military Academy (West Point) and continued at schools such as Bucknell, Penn State Harrisburg, Susquehanna University, and Haverford.

Sagehens Shine in Fall Season

February 13, 2026 by Staff Comments Off

With seven teams representing Pomona-Pitzer in the fall, the first sports season of the 2025-26 academic year delivered individual and team championships, record-breaking performances and Sagehen spirit. Below are a few highlights.

Women’s Soccer

The Sagehens won 16 games, secured a seventh consecutive Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) regular-season championship and advanced to the NCAA Division III quarterfinals for the first time since 2019.

Teammates Hannah Hong ’26 (Offensive Player of the Year) and Vivian Rojas Collins ’27 (Defensive Player of the Year), along with Jen Scanlon (Coach of the Year), swept the SCIAC’s regular-season honors. Hong, Rojas Collins and Goalkeeper Hadley Johnson ’26 also earned All-American honors.

Johnson allowed only one goal in 1,010 minutes, a Sagehens record 0.09 goals-against-average (GAA) that led all NCAA divisions.

Men’s Soccer

Under first-year coach Clint Moore, the Sagehens hit double-digit wins for the first time since 2014 and came within a point of securing a share of the SCIAC regular-season title.

Moore and his staff were recognized as the SCIAC Coaching Staff of the Year for getting the Sagehens back on the winning track, while Niclas Ulrich earned SCIAC Defensive Athlete of the Year honors for anchoring a back line that surrendered the fewest goals in the conference.

Women’s Volleyball

Paige Mountanos ’26 set the career record for total kills in the rally score era with 1,151 and earned All-SCIAC First-Team honors a third straight season.

Teammate Corrina Benson ’27 earned All-SCIAC Second-Team laurels after leading the Sagehens with 536 digs and 45 service aces—a single-season program record in the rally score era.

Football

The Sagehens defeated rival Claremont-Mudd-Scripps on September 28 and ended the season with five wins. They defeated Redlands in the SCIAC Third Place Game.

Defensive lineman Alden Kling ’27 received All-SCIAC First Team honors after leading the team in tackles for loss.

Women’s Cross Country

After finishing 30th at the 2024 NCAA Division III cross country championships, the Sagehens placed 14th at this season’s culminating race. All-SCIAC First-Team runners Joya Terdiman ’26 and Eva Novy-Hildesley led the way.

Men’s Cross Country

Paced by All-American and SCIAC Athlete of the Year Jack Stein ’26, the Sagehens finished eighth at the NCAA Division III cross country championships. The team continued its conference dominance, securing the program’s eighth straight SCIAC title.

Emma DeLira was named West Region Coach of the Year.

Men’s Water Polo

The Sagehens appeared in the USA water polo Division III championships for the first time since 2021 but lost to rival Claremont-Mudd-Scripps in the title match.

The team repeated as SCIAC regular-season champions, while Greg Moore was named SCIAC Defensive Athlete of the Year, Jaden Winters, SCIAC Newcomer of the Year and Alex Rodriguez, SCIAC Coach of the Year.

Beloved Neuroscience Professor Karl G. Johnson Passes Away

February 13, 2026 by Marilyn Thomsen Comments Off

Karl Johnson officiates the 2016 wedding of Meredith Course ’12 and Nick Clute-Reinig ’13—students he introduced during office hours.

Karl G. Johnson, the Sara Rampel and Herbert S. Rampel Professor of Neuroscience who inspired Pomona students for nearly 20 years, passed away in July at 52. Johnson joined the Pomona faculty in 2005 and was the first professor at the College hired into neuroscience with a joint appointment in biology.

“He was the heart and soul of neuroscience at Pomona, and no one can ever replace him,” says longtime colleague Richard S. Lewis, professor of neuroscience and psychological science.

Unlike those who get annoyed by Drosophila—fruit flies—Johnson studied them to find windows into the way central nervous systems are constructed. His work sought answers to two important questions: How do neurons find the right synaptic targets, and how do neurons build synapses?

Johnson and his active lab of student researchers studied how molecules called “heparan sulfate proteoglycans” (HSPGs) influence central nervous system development. He was the lead author of a 2006 paper in the journal Neuron reporting the discovery of a novel molecular mechanism that controls synapse strengthening, a process essential for learning and memory.

Students who flocked to Johnson’s courses—such as Vertebrate Sensory Systems and Introductory Cell Chemistry and Cell Biology—found him to be an exceptional lecturer and an approachable and humorous teacher. “He has the amazing ability to take really complex scientific content and walk the class through it in a way that is comprehensive, non-intimidating and also fun,” wrote one student in nominating him for the Wig Distinguished Professor Award, which he won twice. “Can he teach me everything for the rest of my life?”

Rachel Levin, emerita professor of biology and neuroscience, describes Johnson as “one of those magical teachers who makes his students want to know more about whatever he is teaching.” His classes, she says, were “always filled to capacity. He [was] adored and respected as a friend and colleague.”

Meredith Course ’12 is a professor at Colorado College, and credits Johnson as her professional motivation.

“He had the superpowers of both seeing generously who we could become, and knowing how to help us get there,” she wrote in a tribute. “He was everything I could ever hope to be as a teacher, mentor, advisor and researcher.”

An A-Z Guide: Pomona Welcomes 15 New Faculty!

February 13, 2026 by Staff Comments Off

Returning to Pomona after a five-year hiatus, Mark Andrejevic (media studies) researches and writes about digital media technology.

Yuki Arita (Asian languages and literatures) conducts conversation analysis, investigating the systematicity of social interaction in Japanese.

Jordan Daniels (environmental analysis) works at the intersection of environmental philosophy, critical theory and feminist thought, and was previously a visiting lecturer and visiting assistant professor.

Olivia Lafferty(English) studies contemporary trans-Pacific literatures and visual cultures, examining the circuits of U.S. and Spanish colonialism.

Clint Moore (physical education) is the new head coach of the men’s soccer team after eight seasons as assistant coach at Colorado School of Mines.

Sarah E. Noll ’13 (chemistry) develops ambient ionization mass spectrometry methods, alongside more traditional techniques, to characterize biomaterials used in cultural heritage.

Leila Safavi (economics and public policy) conducts research on energy and environmental markets, including electricity and natural gas regulation, pricing, and the economic and business impacts of environmental policy and legal frameworks.

Kelsey Sasaki (linguistics and cognitive science) examines the mental mechanisms involved in our comprehension of linguistic meaning, and also does community-engaged linguistic fieldwork.

Samuel Thomas (computer science) studies secure computer hardware and focuses on building and optimizing systems to study these architectures.

Previously a visiting assistant professor, Jody Valentine (classics) researches contemporary artists who reimagine ancient materials in new, discordant ways.

Returning to Pomona after six years in Australia, Zala Volcic (media studies) focuses on media and nationalism, and has published and taught widely on media education, transitional justice, gender and civic disposition.

Ania Vu (music) explores the interplay between language, time, and the sounds of nature. As a pianist, she performs music from both the standard and contemporary repertoire.

Previously a visiting assistant professor, Daniel Watling (religious studies) specializes in Islamic philosophy and theology, with a particular focus on medieval Iberia and North Africa.

Yuqing Zhu (neuroscience), a visiting assistant professor at Pomona in 2023, builds AI models inspired by brains to discover new ways to make AI more energy-efficient and better understand what makes real brains so computationally adept.

Michael Zlatin (computer science) works to design improved algorithms for fundamental problems in combinatorial optimization and decision sciences.

More info on our website

Founders Day 2025—138 Years and Counting

February 13, 2026 by Brian Whitehead Comments Off

Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr speaking at Founders Day A stone’s throw from a red sandstone hunk on which Sagehens of the past carved their class numerals and motto, “Not to live but to live well,” in Greek, Sagehens of the present and future gathered to celebrate their beloved Pomona College’s founding.

President G. Gabrielle Starr (top right) kicked off Pomona’s annual Founders Day Celebration on October 15 with a State of the College Address inside Little Bridges Auditorium. Scores of students, staff, faculty and College administrators then mingled on Marston Quad over lunch as the Draper Center accepted donations from the Sagehen community.

Starr told the story of Charles Sumner, who saved the College from a serious financial challenge in its early days; expressed pride in Pomona becoming one of the most highly-regarded colleges in the nation; and touted the milestones Pomona has hit in its 138 years.

“Pomona is a ‘we,’” Starr said, “and it’s a ‘we’ that does all kinds of things. We argue with each other, we disagree, we learn. We care about each other an extraordinary amount. We chirp together. We plan for the future, and we do things that are consequential on this campus.”

Starr emphasized that Pomona can also be better, and more true to its ideals.

“We always look higher—to who we can become and what we can do,” she said. “It’s crucial for all of us here to remember that the acts we carry out today, the things we’re doing now, lay the foundation for the future.”

Nayla Ward ’29, a first-generation Sagehen from Georgia, found comfort in learning Pomona has initiatives in place to support a diverse student body. Jared Sedlis ’29, a Massachusetts native, said he took great interest in hearing about Pomona’s globalization efforts “because we live in an interconnected world.”

What lies ahead for all Sagehens is a promise to give more college-aged students from middle-income families an avenue to Pomona, Starr said. Admissions officers do tireless work recruiting new students every year, she added, and record fundraising has made it possible for Sagehens to graduate in four years and debt-free.

Sagehens taking a picture with Cecil “Having a day where we think about where we’ve been helps motivate [us on] this shared path we’re taking on together,” said Michael Steinberger, associate professor of economics and chair of the department. “I particularly appreciate that the events today bring together staff, faculty and students to say that we are together in this incredibly important mission.”

Founders Day also provided an opportunity for Sagehens to give back. The Draper Center partnered with local organizations to collect canned and packaged food, books and clothing. Pomona staff looking for ESL support had the chance to sign up for a personal tutor.

“Now more than ever, with what’s going on in the world, it’s important to focus on what we as a College can do,” said Sefa Aina, associate dean and director of the Draper Center. “Giving back is the nature of higher ed, but specifically at Pomona, it’s nurtured. All of our big events are centered around giving, around community service, around an externalizing of our energy and of our gifts.”

Founders Day

Women’s Water Polo Four-Peats as Division III National Champions

September 24, 2025 by Brian Whitehead Comments Off

Water Polo National Championship
Pomona Pitzer vs. CMS

In May Pomona-Pitzer captured its fourth straight USA Water Polo Division III championship, defeating chief rival Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS), 9-8, to cap another unblemished postseason run.

Kaylee Stigar ’25

The four-peat sent Zosia Amberger ’25 and Kaylee Stigar ’25 into the sunset with the unprecedented milestone of having never lost a playoff game in blue and orange. Amberger started in goal all four years and was named Tournament MVP this spring.

“Zosia’s probably the best goalie I’ve had here [and] a huge part of what we’ve been able to do,” says head coach Alex Rodriguez. “Kaylee really stepped up and played phenomenally in the finals—she had this anger and vengeance that really helped us.”

As seniors, Amberger and Stigar were among the class of Sagehens that started at Pomona when students returned to campus following the initial pandemic shutdown. In that first year as Sagehens, Rodriguez says the current seniors learned much from the Class of 2022, including how to lead and handle adversity.

With as much winning as the program has done these past four years, the pressure to retain the top spot in Division III mounts, Rodriguez says.

“I have a simple philosophy that to get better, you have to play better teams,” the coach adds. “Because our sport is small, we play a lot of Division I teams early in the season, and that’s how we develop small goals. To be clutch, to be someone who plays well in big moments, you have to understand you’re going to fail sometimes.”

Zosia Amberger ’25

Despite losing Pomona grads Amberger, Stigar and a handful of seniors from Pitzer College, the Sagehens do not expect to relinquish their stranglehold on Division III women’s water polo anytime soon.

Rodriguez and associate head coach Alex La—one of the best coaches in Division III, Rodriguez says—expect leadership roles to be filled by Brienz Lang ’26, Gabby Lewis ’26 and Zosia’s sister Mia Amberger ’26, with key underclassmen continuing to develop and contribute in meaningful ways.

“The goal of every season is to try to have little championship moments every week,” Rodriguez says. “We try to prepare to win certain types of games, get more feathers in our cap, then win a Division III championship by the end.”

100 Years of the 7 Colleges

September 24, 2025 by Marilyn Thomsen Comments Off

The year was 1925, and Pomona College had a problem: too many students wanted to enroll. The solution it kick-started a century ago this fall set the stage for The Claremont Colleges, an educational system unmatched in American higher education—and it all began with then-President James Blaisdell’s audacious idea.

In the “roaring ’20s,” Southern California’s population was exploding. Within a 60-mile radius of Claremont, the population doubled in just six years. The attractiveness of Pomona was so strong that by 1926, only one in four applicants gained admission. Clearly, the college needed to expand. But how to do so without becoming, as 1907 alumnus and Rhodes Scholar E.H. Kennard warned in a 1925 article in The Pomona College Quarterly Magazine, “one more drab university”?

In Oxford, a university eight centuries older than Pomona, President Blaisdell saw a possible model for the future: a collection of small colleges that share some common facilities while each maintains its own independence and identity. “I should hope to preserve the inestimable personal values of the small college while securing the facilities of the great university,” he wrote.

1925 illustration of the Group Plan

By 1925, what became known as the Group Plan was quickly taking shape in the minds of Blaisdell and other leaders—some of whose names are now etched in stone across campus. Among them were George Marston, Ellen Browning Scripps and William L. Honnold. In March 1925 Blaisdell gave a trustee-appointed committee his summary of the Group Plan. His right-hand man, Robert J. Bernard, took an all-night train to Sacramento to file articles of incorporation for the new educational enterprise on October 14, 1925, exactly 38 years to the day after Pomona itself was incorporated.

The new entity, says Brenda Barham Hill, who served as CEO of The Claremont Colleges consortium from 2000 to 2006, had three main functions. It would provide common services, hold land on behalf of the group and offer graduate education.

Aerial shot of the campuses taken in 1930

With tuition set at $150 per semester and seminars offered in 14 fields, including geology, Latin, psychology and zoology, classes began in 1926 at the clunkily named Graduate School of Claremont Colleges, known since 2000 as Claremont Graduate University (CGU). That same year the inaugural class of first-years was admitted to a new Claremont college named after Scripps, a philanthropist and supporter of education and women’s rights whose fortune was tied to the E.W. Scripps newspaper publishing empire. An ardent advocate of Blaisdell’s vision, she made multiple real estate purchases that became a significant part of the footprint for Scripps, CGU and three additional new colleges.

The end of World War II saw a flood of returning GIs ready to continue their education, and The Claremont Colleges were poised to admit them. The next 20 years saw the launch of three more colleges, including Claremont Men’s College (1946, later renamed Claremont McKenna College), Harvey Mudd (1957) and Pitzer (1963).

Thanks to Ms. Scripps’ foresight and real estate prowess, the colleges are almost entirely contiguous, minus Keck Graduate Institute located west of Indian Hill Boulevard. One easily walkable square mile—these days often biked, scootered or skateboarded—is now home to roughly 9,000 students, 3,000 faculty and staff, and nearly 3.2 million square feet of building space. The central library is the third largest among private institutions in California, behind only Stanford and USC.

Blending the vision and needs of seven distinct institutions that are at once partners and competitors has required informal collaboration and formal agreements hammered out over many decades. Sharing services, from an early steam-heating plant to sophisticated modern cloud-computing clusters, has occasionally required challenging negotiation and a recognition of the importance of “group over the individual.” As Blaisdell put it, “The whole project depends upon whether the participants are primarily interested in their separate organizations or, first of all, concerned in the creation at Claremont of a common and efficient center….”

And yet, a century in, the experiment shoulders on. The consortium has been modified over the years: graduate education, once the purview of all the colleges, is now housed in two distinct consortium members, and individual schools can choose to participate in some shared services but not others, with procedural guidelines and formulas in place to promote fairness. “Part of the genius of the model from day one was that they saw the benefit of sharing, and that it’s not static,” says Barham Hill.

Blaisdell would no doubt marvel at how his idea has flourished in what’s now called the “City of Trees and Ph.D.s.” When he became Pomona’s president in 1910, Claremont had no paved streets and Marston Quad was still a rye field. Now the colleges have collectively graduated about 100,000 alumni, and all five of the colleges are among the most highly ranked liberal arts schools in the country.

Yet Blaisdell would likely not be surprised. As he wrote to Scripps in 1923, “all I can hope to do is to draw the outlines of a project so fine and yet so sane that the generations will not suffer it to fail.”

The Central Pacific Railroad passenger depot in Sacramento, where Robert J. Bernard filed the articles of incorporation for Claremont Colleges. [Credit California State Railroad Museum Library]

Celebrating 20 Years of QuestBridge

September 24, 2025 by Staff Comments Off

This year Pomona is celebrating 20 years of partnership with QuestBridge, a national nonprofit that connects exceptional, low-income youth with leading colleges. Through the QuestBridge National College Match college and scholarship application process, Pomona offers a number of College Match scholarships annually that cover the full cost of tuition, room and board and are loan-free.

Bayarmaa Bat-Erdene ’26

“The access to college that QuestBridge provides is closely aligned with our mission statement at Pomona College to gather individuals, regardless of financial circumstances,” says Edward Pickett III, senior associate dean of admissions and director of recruitment.

Pomona has also hosted QuestBridge-related events such as the National College Admissions Conference, where QuestBridge participants can learn about the college admissions process and meet with admissions staff from partner colleges. This year there are 25 QuestBridge scholars at Pomona. Here’s a snapshot of a couple of them!

Illinois native Bayarmaa Bat-Erdene ’26 credits QuestBridge for making her college experience. She says that her parents, who emigrated from Mongolia, worked really hard to get her to Pomona, and wants to make sure that her parents’ “contributions and efforts were worth it.” Bat-Erdene is studying sociology and public policy analysis, thinking closely about issues like income and immigration. Reading the book The Maid’s Daughter for a class, she was able to compare it to her own experience as her mom worked as a housekeeper for a time.

Peter Schwammlein ’26

Peter Schwammlein ’26 was drawn to Pomona for the Claremont Colleges consortium, the liberal arts education, and students he had met through the QuestBridge network. Raised in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Schwammlein is majoring in linguistics and considering double majoring in German Studies. Schwammlein has especially enjoyed the students at Pomona. “People are willing to listen to other perspectives,” he says. “The school pulls deep-thinking people that can see multiple sides and are not fully set on their ideology.”

A Century of Commencement Speakers

April 4, 2025 by Staff Comments Off

Top: Danny Kaye, Richard Chamberlain, Bill Bradley, Coretta Scott King, Twyla Tharp. Bottom: Patrick Stewart, John Cleese, Walter Cronkite, Janet Napolitano, Jennifer Doudna.

Pomona’s first commencement was in 1894, but it wasn’t until May 1925—100 years ago this spring—that the school brought in outside speakers to dispense wisdom to the new graduates.

As English Professor Bruce McCulley put it in February of that year, “There was a strong sentiment in many quarters that it may be to the advantage of all if the present practice of having [exclusively] student commencement speakers were discontinued and a [person] of national repute as a speaker be secured.”

As Pomona’s reputation grew in the ’70s, the College was increasingly able to procure bigger and bigger names from the worlds of education, public service, politics and the arts. Here’s a look back at some of the most notable speakers of the last 50 years.

1978: Comedian Danny Kaye
1981: Actor Richard Chamberlain ’56
1982: New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley
1984: Civil rights activist Coretta Scott King
1987: Choreographer Twyla Tharp
1995: Actor Patrick Stewart
1999: Actor/comedian John Cleese
2004: News anchor Walter Cronkite
2010: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
2022: Gene-editing pioneer & Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna ’85

Notable Quotes

“When we make politics a crusade, politicians will begin to understand that they must serve all the people and not just a select few.” —Coretta Scott King, 1984

“Go out and celebrate, but before you do, spend a few moments writing in your yearbook about how your life and the world unfolded, 47 years from today. After that, go out and do something. Do something that you love. Do something that matters. Do something to preserve and cherish our pale blue dot.” —Steven Chu, 2011 (U.S. Secretary of Energy and Nobel laureate)

“I suspect that if kinship was our goal, we would no longer be promoting justice, we would be celebrating it…The measure of your compassion lies not in your service to those on the margins, but in your willingness to see yourselves in kinship with them.”—Father Gregory Boyle, 2014 (founder, Homeboy Industries)

“Real success comes when you identify what you are passionate about doing, and then you do it 110 percent. … We all face challenges in our lives—that’s a part of being human. I think what sets apart those that are successful in whatever they want to do is just embracing those challenging moments and turning them as much as possible into opportunity.” —Jennifer Doudna, 2022

“Tomorrow you will move on. With an education, with experience and with choices. Make a difference.” —Patrick Stewart, 1995

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Bill Bradley was a senator from New York. In fact, he represented New Jersey in the U.S. Senate from 1979 to 1997. We regret the error and thank Steve Johnson ’82 for bringing it to our attention.

Now Checking in For Pomona: The Cottrell Sisters!

April 4, 2025 by Staff Comments Off

The Cottrell sisters may be far from home at Pomona, but on campus, a piece of home is always near.

Elsa Cottrell ’28 followed her older sister, Sydney, from Portland, Oregon, to Claremont to play for the Sagehens women’s basketball team. The Cottrells grew up avid sports fans, and in eighth grade, Sydney Cottrell ’26 began taking stats for Elsa’s middle school basketball team—the Sellwood Kangaroos.

The Cottrells, Sydney ’26 and Elsa ’28

All these years later, Sydney remains a core part of Elsa’s playing career as a statistician and game-day announcer for Sagehens women’s basketball.

“As soon as Elsa made the decision to come to Pomona,” Sydney says, “I knew I had to do everything in my power to call her games, even if only to sneak in an embarrassing story or two while on air.”

Elsa, a 5-foot-11 guard, was one of seven first-year players on a young Sagehens team that exceeded preseason expectations. As a newcomer, Elsa found the team culture “positive and so encouraging, a rarity in competitive sports.”

In her first season, Elsa averaged 13 minutes a game, and until leaving for Germany in the winter to study abroad for a semester, Sydney sat courtside calling all the action.

“As an announcer, I think there is an expectation that you maintain a neutral tone and call the game as it is, providing insights where necessary,” Sydney says. “Thus, it’s kind of surreal having my sister out there, someone who I’ve been cheering for my whole life and who I know better than anyone.”

Objective as she was, Sydney says she couldn’t help but smile calling Elsa’s name and number.

In the fall, the Cottrell sisters settled into routines—Monday lunches, library study sessions—and embraced the novelty of having a sibling on campus. As Sydney was at her home games, Elsa was a regular at Sydney’s choir and a cappella group productions.

“Originally, I didn’t want to go to the same school as my sister because we’ve done everything the same our whole lives,” Elsa says. “But now that I’m here, it’s really nice to have her here.”

Adds Sydney: “At first I did have to tell her once or twice that she can’t keep calling me while I’m in class, but I am so grateful to have a shared college experience with her.”

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