Class Acts

President Starr inducted into American Philosophical Society

Portrait of President G. Gabrielle Starr

President G. Gabrielle Starr

Last fall Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr was inducted into the American Philosophical Society (APS) honoring her extraordinary accomplishments as a leader in higher education.

The APS is the oldest learned society in the United States, founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin. Past members include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein and Robert Frost. The society generally elects fewer than 30 resident members annually.

How An Exoneree Accomplished ‘The Impossible’

Ruben Piñuelas ’21

Ruben Piñuelas ’21

All Ruben Piñuelas ’21 wanted was a level playing field.

After being incarcerated for nearly 15 years—six of those wrongfully so—Piñuelas knew changing the trajectory of his life in his 40s would require overcoming biases society can put on people with such baggage.

“Pomona believed in me on day one,” he says, “and ushered me into this world of higher education.”

Ruben Piñuelas ’21

Ruben Piñuelas ’21

After running from the law as a young adult, Piñuelas now is a second-year law student at the University of Michigan who returned to Claremont to speak at the Athenaeum at Claremont McKenna.

“At one time society threw me away [and] told me I’ll never be good enough to be a scholar,” he says. “What I came back from—I’ve accomplished the impossible.”

Piñuelas started running with a gang in El Centro, California, in high school. In 1999, the then-20-year-old was sentenced to two years in prison for marijuana possession and erroneously placed with inmates serving life terms. He was later charged in connection with a prison riot—he says he was only defending himself in the fight, and was tricked into taking a deal to add seven years to his term.

In 2008, Piñuelas raised enough money to make bail on new conspiracy charges he was facing. While on parole, he helped local groups build houses and enrolled in night community college classes at Pierce College in Los Angeles.

Piñuelas was taken back into custody in 2010 for alleged parole violations and his alleged involvement in a 2007 prison incident involving people he says he never met. In 2011 he was convicted of conspiracy to murder, attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon on an inmate. He was given 60 years to life and sent to solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison in Crescent City.

While in solitary, Piñuelas began studying law, and advocated for his innocence. In 2013 a panel of California appellate justices overturned his conviction based on insufficient evidence. After his 2014 release he returned to Pierce to earn two associate degrees, qualifying for financial assistance to continue his studies at Pomona.

“Sixty [years] to life, 12 years in solitary, no one comes back from that,” Piñuelas says. “I was in a dark place, but I learned it’s not what’s been done to you, but what you do with it.”

Community college students comprise about two-thirds of Pomona’s yearly transfer cohort, and while most of that group comes from California, the Office of Admissions has bolstered outreach efforts nationwide. Admissions officers attend off-campus events, host open houses and connect with local community colleges for special campus tours and financial aid workshops.

Susanne Mahoney Filback, associate director of preprofessional programs and prelaw advisor at the Career Development Office (CDO), recalls Piñuelas emailing her the summer before his first semester at Pomona about his plan to pursue law. To get accustomed to Pomona he regularly met with her and showed up at CDO law events.

“He knew he wanted to make a difference and that was directly related to what he went through,” Filback says. “He had a thoughtful understanding of why he was here and how he was going to make the most of Pomona’s resources.”

As someone who felt life would always be an uphill battle, Piñuelas was blown away by how reassuring his professors were when he questioned whether he belonged at Pomona. “They always believed in me,” he says. “They gave me everything I needed to thrive, perform and be the student I needed to be.”

As a psychological science major, Piñuelas especially admired Eric Hurley, professor of psychological science and Africana studies. “It was refreshing to hear from someone I could identify with as a student of color,” he says. Piñuelas took Hurley’s Psychology of the Black Experience course and later became a course mentor in his Intro to Psychology class.

After graduating, Piñuelas continued his studies at the University of Michigan, with aspirations of becoming a trial attorney, a civil rights lawyer and California Supreme Court justice.

“I’m trying to maximize the time I have left,” he says. “A lot of time was stolen from me, but I don’t want to mope. I want to use it as a blessing, an opportunity for others to learn about what I’ve been able to gain from my experience, and to use it to better the world.”

A Voice for Early Detection: Rhoda Au ’82

Alzheimer’s disease may afflict more than 6 million people in the United States, but according to the Alzheimer’s Association, up to half of those living with the disease have not been diagnosed. Early diagnosis can lead to better health care options and improved quality of life for those who have the disease, which makes quick detection of Alzheimer’s critical.

Rhoda Au

Rhoda Au

Now, Rhoda Au ’82 has created a promising method for determining whether a person with low level cognitive impairment is likely to lapse into more severe dementia from Alzheimer’s, using just the sound of their voice. The discovery could help patients and families deal with the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s, and also assist clinicians in identifying the best candidates for new drug therapies being developed to curb the effects of the disease.

Au is a professor of anatomy and neurobiology at the Boston University Schools of Medicine & Public Health, and a principal investigator on the Framingham Heart Study team that performed the study. The findings were published in June in the Alzheimer’s & Dementia medical journal.

Au and her colleagues at Boston University, including Ioannis Paschalidis, a professor of engineering who led the data science side of the study, built an artificial intelligence algorithm that examined recordings of the speech of persons in the program who had exhibited some cognitive issues. The algorithm determined, with 78.5 percent accuracy, whether a particular person would move from lesser cognitive problems to severe dementia within the coming six years.

The research team trained the algorithm to examine the content and syntax of speech using a portion of the recordings of study participants. They then used the AI tool to analyze the speech of a separate group of 166 participants. “Speaking is a very cognitively complex task: when we speak, we are always emitting our cognitive capabilities,” Au says. “We actually do this in a common sense way all the time, interacting with friends or family members.”

What makes the results of the study particularly powerful is the gold standard nature of the data used. After analyzing early recordings of patients with the algorithmic tool, the researchers checked the algorithm’s predictions against the later cognitive conditions of the participants, and were thus able to clearly certify whether the algorithm had diagnosed an individual correctly.

The study was possible in large part due to Au’s early intuition. She had joined the Framingham Heart Study faculty in 1990, and in 2005 persuaded those managing the study to begin to record audio of interviews with the participants.

“One of the things that I’ve always been very concerned about is that the tools that we have for cognitive assessments are not sufficiently sensitive,” Au explains. For instance, Au noticed that during cognitive tests of study participants—a regular part of the study’s regimen—verbal responses to questions varied widely, but if a response was incorrect it was simply noted as such. This binary data entry, correct or not, left out a lot of information and nuance that Au was noticing in the interviews. “I was an early adopter of big data,” Au says. “I was fortunate enough to be collecting these audio recordings while I waited for the digital voice processing and AI capabilities to develop.”

As a result of the interview recordings, by the time Au and her colleagues began their study, they had a trove of patient audio going back almost two decades.

Au’s ultimate goal is to use new AI combined with the ease and ubiquity of smartphones to create monitors and tools that can improve brain health over the course of a lifetime, what she calls the precision brain health initiative. “We can change the trajectory of brain health altogether,” says Au. “You want people to die with the healthiest brain possible. That’s our goal.”

Puzzle head with missing elements on a blue background

Six Sagehens Set for Hall of Fame

Pomona-Pitzer Hall of Fame logoSix Sagehens will be inducted into the Pomona-Pitzer Athletics Hall of Fame this summer: Alyssa Corley ’11, Anders Crabo ’12, Annie Lydens ’13, Martha Marich ’12, Luke Sweeney ’13 and Kirk Jones, Head Athletic Trainer.

Corley (softball) remains the program leader in career home runs and runs batted in.

Crabo (track and field) was a two-time All-American.

Lydens (cross country/track and field) earned All-American honors in both sports.

Marich (lacrosse), the career leader in goals, points and draw controls, is the first women’s lacrosse player to be inducted.

Sweeney (football) holds the record for career rushing yards.

Jones, who has been at Pomona-Pitzer since 1980, is head athletic trainer, as well as a mentor and expert in injury prevention and rehabilitation.

The induction ceremony is scheduled for 6 p.m. on May 1 in Edmunds Ballroom.

The Pomona-Pitzer Athletics Hall of Fame was established in 1958 with three inductees: Robert Strehle (track and field), Earl Merritt (football, baseball, basketball and track) and John McColl (football, basketball, track and field). More than 300 Sagehens and two teams have been inducted in the years since.

Athletes must be 10 years or more removed from their final seasons of competition to be considered for induction. Sagehens also can earn induction as an honorary member, or for distinguished service.

For more information, visit Pomona-Pitzer Sports Hall of Fame.

Research by Yannai Kashtan ’20 Fuels Gas Stove Debate

Kashtan Yannai headshot

When you talk stoves, people listen,” says the Stanford Ph.D. student

While not the most exciting topic for a Ph.D. research project, years of studying the ubiquitous household appliance as a graduate student at Stanford University revealed to Yannai Kashtan ’20 that gas stoves may be contributing to premature deaths and cases of childhood asthma.

A study co-authored with peers at Stanford and Oakland-based research institute PSE Healthy Energy was published in May, and Kashtan was featured in a subsequent Los Angeles Times story about the conclusions.

“I didn’t think the outside world would think [stoves] are that interesting,” the 25-year-old Oakland native says. “It’s not sexy. It’s not shooting rockets off into space. But [the interest] makes sense. This is something that affects one out of three people in the U.S. It makes sense people want to know about the dangers [stoves] pose.”

Kashtan inside his lab at Stanford

Kashtan inside his lab at Stanford

Over the course of their research, Kashtan and his peers at Stanford found that gas stovetops release a high level of pollutants—carbon monoxide, formaldehyde and benzene—that can inflame the lungs when inhaled.

Since at least the early 20th century, Kashtan says, the gas industry knew of the dangers of gas stove pollution, and yet over the years, stoves became the only unvented gas appliance in homes. As conscious as folks are about what is being cooked over the flame, Kashtan adds, they should be doubly conscious about the pollution from the flame itself.

The L.A. Times was the latest media outlet to feature the Pomona alumnus, whose research and comments have been published by national and international organizations such as CNN, Newsweek and The Guardian.

In a March profile in The New York Times, Kashtan advocated against fossil fuel companies funding climate research and solutions. The article called Kashtan a young climate researcher, a title he isn’t quite sure fits.

“I see myself both as an air quality scientist and a communicator,” the researcher says. “Someone who can try to bring science into policy and into, maybe, public perception as well. I like the idea of creating knowledge and putting it into action as much as possible.”

While at Pomona, Kashtan, a chemistry and physics double major, was remarkable in class and “simply outstanding in the research lab,” Janice Hudgings, Seeley W. Mudd Professor of Physics, wrote in a letter about her student.

Kashtan’s expertise in a lab comes as no surprise.

As a boy, Kashtan ran a YouTube channel under the handle “elementguy27.” From a homemade lab inside his parents’ garage, Kashtan explained dozens of elements from the periodic table—beryllium, cobalt, barium, selenium, among the 92 videos on the channel.

“As long as I can remember, I loved learning,” Kashtan says.

Beyond working at an advanced level in Hudgings’ lab at Pomona, Kashtan was “a terrific team player, always ready to jump in and help one of his peers,” Hudgings wrote.

Kashtan routinely volunteered as a teaching assistant and helped younger students with their homework “simply because it’s important to him that his peers succeed, too,” Hudgings added.

As a senior, Kashtan became the first Pomona student to be awarded the Knight-Hennessy scholarship—a full ride to Stanford to pursue the graduate program of his choosing. Knight-Hennessy scholars are thought to be “rebellious minds and independent spirits” and “future global leaders,” according to the criteria.

After being homeschooled through high school and being welcomed at Pomona, Kashtan speaks highly of the College’s faculty.

“At Pomona,” he says, “I was taught by lots of professors who were dedicated to their pedagogy, focused on teaching first, and had decades of experience, and that was a huge privilege. That focus on education and teaching, it’s not to be taken for granted.”

His Ph.D. research project complete, Kashtan plans to take a break from exploring gas stoves for the time being, though he intends to stay in a similar line of work in the future.

“I’m motivated by science itself,” he says, “but also wanting to make sure that science is then turned into action.”

Advocating for Responsible AI Adoption

Okolo speaking on a Brookings Institution panel with the Michelle Donelan, the U.K.’s former secretary of state for science, innovation and technology (far left). Above, Okolo’s collection of awards and plaques in her Washington, D.C., office.

Okolo speaking on a Brookings Institution panel with the Michelle Donelan, the U.K.’s former secretary of state for science, innovation and technology (far left). Above, Okolo’s collection of awards and plaques in her Washington, D.C., office.

Centered on a shelf in her Washington, D.C., office is the plaque Chinasa T. Okolo ’18 received nearly a decade ago from the Office of Black Student Affairs of The Claremont Colleges.

“Recognizing Genius in Our Community,” her 2015 First-Year Student Award reads.

Okolo, a former computer science major by way of Kansas City, Missouri, holds dear her time at Pomona, crediting her liberal arts education and professors for igniting in her a desire to understand human-computer interaction.

Now an expert in artificial intelligence (AI) after years of postgraduate and professional research, Okolo recently landed on Time Magazine’s list of The 100 Most Influential People in AI.

“With the education I received at Pomona,” Okolo says, “I’ve been able to leverage my skills and understanding of how technology, particularly AI, can impact and is impacting marginalized populations in the U.S. and globally. A lot of times this kind of work doesn’t get too much attention, so I’m very grateful to have been included on the list.”

As a fellow for the Brookings Institution, Okolo advocates for responsible AI adoption and governance across the Global South. At Brookings, her research includes analyzing datafication and algorithmic marginalization in Africa.

In recent months, Okolo has been quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and she has appeared in segments on Voice of America, the country’s largest international broadcaster.

This summer, TechCrunch published a Q&A with Okolo as part of its “Women in AI” series on “remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution.”

“This AI boom has given me an opportunity to show the necessity of AI literacy,” Okolo says. “People are very enamored with the possibilities of AI, but don’t understand implications around bias and inequality.”

In addition to appearing in print and broadcast media, Okolo has been a guest speaker this year at international conferences and workshops in Senegal, South Africa, Brazil, Turkey, Belgium and the United Arab Emirates.

Well before she started trotting the globe, Okolo studied abroad in Hungary while at Pomona. Having never been out of the country before her semester away, Okolo says her maiden international trip “gave me the comfortability as a global citizen … and was a launching point to me visiting different countries throughout my career.”

Alexandra Papoutsaki, associate professor of computer science, met Okolo as a first-year professor in 2017 and found her inquisitive, methodical and thoughtful in how she approached researching human-computer interaction—and, particularly, the inclusivity issues certain technologies create for people of color.

Less than a decade later, Papoutsaki is astounded by—and proud of—Okolo’s rise.

“She’s been published very prolifically by some of the most competitive venues in our area,” Papoutsaki says. “She’s great at going out there and disseminating information publicly. She’s absolutely an emerging leader in tech in general, not just AI. She’s a person who’s able to build relationships with industry, NGOs and academia.”

In her first year as a Ph.D. student at Cornell, Okolo sent Papoutsaki a postcard from New York.

Papoutsaki still has it in her office.

“It’s remarkable that someone that young is able to do what she’s doing,” Papoutsaki says. “Chinasa is the absolute embodiment of how remarkable our students can be, how they can excel while at Pomona, but also take what we give them and do so much more once they graduate.”

Pomona’s 2024 Distinguished Staff Awards

This spring Pomona honored Building Attendant Joaquin Rios and Academic Coordinator Cynthia Madrigal with this year’s Distinguished Staff Awards.

Rios has worked in the Housekeeping Department at Pomona for 10 years, and was appreciated for his thoroughness. “He goes above and beyond to make sure everything is immaculate, organized and in order,” writes one nominator. Two people mention how Rios cares for their plants: “It took me months to realize that he’s been watering all my plants without me ever asking him.”

Beyond the work he does, many point to Rio’s kindness and friendliness. “Joaquin always has a smile on his face and a positive attitude. He greets everyone with a smile,” says one person. “My every interaction with him is positive, and I often see how he makes everyone’s days brighter,” says another.

Madrigal, meanwhile, is an 18-year employee of Pomona who manages the unique challenge of juggling the coordination of three different departments: Art History, Classics and Gender and Women’s Studies.

“She serves all three ably, covering the budgets and all the arrangements for all three departments,” says George Gorse, chair of art history. “She is a very hard worker who takes on massive amounts of responsibility with efficiency and grace.”

Another nominator concurs: “Providing support to three different programs is challenging in and of itself. Each entity has their own nuances and demands, and Cynthia provides assistance with grace, resilience and professionalism.”

Meet Three Student-Athletes Playing Fall Sports at Pomona

The fall brings fresh schedules for football, men’s and women’s cross country, women’s volleyball, men’s water polo and men’s and women’s soccer.

Three student-athletes currently in season reflect on what drew them to Pomona, how they balance schoolwork and athletic responsibilities, and what they plan to do when their playing days are over.

Women’s Volleyball: Savanna Cespedes ’26

Savanna Cespedes What fascinates Cespedes about the brain is its relationship to the body. As she recovers from major knee surgery, she’s seen firsthand how complex that relationship can be.

A neuroscience major from Rancho Cucamonga, she’s back in practice after tearing her ACL last October, and while she’s regained strength in her knee almost a year later, she says she’s still rebuilding the mind-to-muscle connection.

“I can tell my brain is reacting faster than my body,” she adds. “I’ll see certain things and my brain is telling me to move, but my body doesn’t want to.”

As one of four team captains, Cespedes shares responsibility for putting her teammates in the best position to succeed. She’s inching closer to returning to game action and credits Pomona’s trainers for helping her recover from her first major injury.

“The first month after surgery was one of the roughest months of my life,” she says. “Having my sense of independence stripped from me was something I really struggled with. But my parents, my friends and my team were my rocks.”

Cespedes got her EMT certification this summer as she recovered from surgery. She plans to pursue a master’s in physician assistant studies with the intent to become capable of providing life-saving support when called upon.

Men’s Cross Country: Joseph Cox ’25

Joseph CoxAs a distance runner, Cox sees the beauty of the world around him. As a 3D animator, he builds worlds for others to see.

“When doing documentary work, a lot of the time world-building begins once you have the footage,” Cox says. “But in 3D animation, every single item throughout the process has to be put in context because you make everything from scratch.”

A media studies major, Cox balances his curiosities in the classroom and responsibilities as a runner. During this past track season, the Austin, Texas, native was asked by a friend and fellow distance runner to animate an ichthyosaurus from photo scans with the help of Claremont McKenna College professor Lars Schmitz.

Over the summer, Cox not only animated the creature, but created an underwater environment with fluid simulations that accurately react to the ichthyosaurus entering and exiting the water.

As big a field as 3D animation is, Cox hopes to narrow his expertise to modeling, texturing or compositing. His strengths lie in modeling and texturing, and he can see himself creating detailed worlds in video games or movies.

“I’m not exactly sure where the 3D jobs will take me,” he says. “But I definitely want to do 3D animation in film or other types of media.”

Women’s Soccer: Anjali Nuggehalli ’26

Anjali NuggenhalliWhen Nuggehalli came to Pomona, she expected to grow close with her teammates on the pitch. She didn’t expect to do the same with colleagues in the Computer Science Department.

“Until I got to Pomona, I didn’t think a STEM department would have the opportunity for socialization and bonding,” says Nuggehalli, a computer science and politics double major. “When I talk to people at bigger schools, especially in STEM departments, it’s very much you go to lecture where there’s hundreds of kids, you do the assignments, turn them in and that’s that.”

Drawing inspiration from upperclassmen, Nuggehalli became a computer science liaison, fostering relationships with faculty and peers while playing for one of the preeminent Division III women’s soccer programs in the country.

In the summer she interned with the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee’s Business Innovation and Data Analytics division as a Women in Sports Tech fellow, where she analyzed fan engagement and built a model to predict medal counts. She also visited the Team USA training center in Colorado to rub elbows with top directors and athletes.

A native of Saratoga, California, Nuggehalli is enticed by a career in sports technology and hopes to continue exploring related avenues at Pomona.

“Everyone here is passionate for learning,” she says, “and that inspires me to not only go to class to get good grades, but to walk out and feel like a more well-rounded, educated person.”

Testing Climate Change Messaging Through Behavioral Science

Associate Professor of Psychological Science Adam Pearson.

Associate Professor of Psychological Science Adam Pearson.

How effective are different messaging styles aimed at boosting climate awareness and action?

Is a “doom and gloom” approach best? What about emphasizing scientific consensus on climate change? Or considering the consequences of climate change in one’s region?

Associate Professor of Psychological Science Adam Pearson recently was part of a global team of 250 behavioral scientists who tested a set of strategies on more than 59,000 participants in 63 countries—the largest experiment ever conducted on climate change behavior.

The main findings of the study were published in Science Advances in February.

“Scientists, journalists and advocacy groups often emphasize different facets of the problem—the dangers of climate change, its outsized effects on young people, the overwhelming scientific consensus that it’s human-caused,” Pearson says. “But what works on a global scale? What motivates people around the world to address a global problem like climate change? We don’t actually have an answer to that question.

“To understand what mobilizes people to address a problem like climate change, we really need to move beyond the United States and beyond Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic societies,” Pearson says.

To do that, the team tested 11 messages designed to boost people’s climate beliefs and behavior, conducting the study in more than 60 countries. The results included many surprises, allowing researchers to see what works—and for whom.

Perhaps one of the biggest takeaways from the study, not unexpectedly, is that different people respond differently to various climate messages, with responses varying across countries.

To share their findings, the research team created an open-access web app, which allows users to see the effects of the strategies along dimensions such as nationality, income level, political ideology, education and gender.

Pearson says he hopes tools like these can help practitioners tailor climate messages for different audiences, as well as spark additional research.

Pearson’s scholarly background is in the study of group dynamics as well as the psychology of inequality. About 10 years ago, he became interested in the social psychological research around climate change. “There’s a growing understanding that human behavior is at the root of this problem,” he says.

“We’ve been increasingly thinking about climate changes not as a problem of one climate but two climates: our physical climate and the social climate of any given area. We need to understand how those climates intersect. That’s where behavioral science comes into the equation,” he says.

“It’s a big collective action problem,” Pearson says, “and that requires coordination, including among researchers.”

A Letter to a Child

The most effective strategy globally for increasing support for climate policy was imagining writing a letter explaining one’s climate actions today to a child one knows who would receive the letter 25 years later. Similarly effective was imagining oneself in the future writing a letter to one’s current self, asking questions about what actions one took or what one was thinking at the time. “These messages shrink the time scale of climate change. They remind us that our actions today matter and will impact people we know, in our families and communities,” Pearson says.

Negative Messaging

“Doom and gloom” messaging, however, decreased people’s pro-environmental behavior. These stories were highly effective in getting people to share information about climate change on social media but backfired for climate skeptics, reducing their support for a range of climate policies.

A Pomona Seminar on International Issues, Taught Overseas

“Diplomats!”

Politics Associate Professor Mietek Boduszynski starts all his correspondence with students in this summer’s study abroad course with a salutation he knows well. He spent nearly 10 years as a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Department of State, gaining a storehouse of knowledge he shares with students on the Pomona campus and, in the summer of 2024, on location in Belgium and Morocco.

The four-week immersive seminar, Diplomacy and Human Rights in the Mediterranean, is the first of what Nicole Desjardins Gowdy, senior director of international and domestic programs, hopes will be annual study away programs led by Pomona faculty in a variety of disciplines. It’s part of an effort to make additional short-term, focused international experiences available to students, though she notes that Pomona has so far bucked the national trend toward compressed study abroad. By the time they graduate, about half of Sagehens have studied away from campus, usually for an entire semester, in one of the 67 programs offered in 37 countries. Boduszynski says that in this class, as many as half the students had never been abroad.

Students enrolled in Diplomacy and Human Rights will have an up-close, behind the scenes look at diplomacy in action in Brussels, Belgium, headquarters of the European Union, and Morocco, a southern Mediterranean nation that is, as Boduszynski explains, “at once Arab and African.” In Belgium, they will meet with leaders of organizations such as NATO, the European Union and Human Rights Watch. In Morocco, they will visit the U.S. Consulate General, meet with a leading novelist and a New York Times journalist, tour the Amal Center for Women and Single Mothers, and talk with a human rights activist.

Each day will immerse the students deeper into the process of “policymaking around human rights, which has to be balanced with other kinds of goals, like security, migration and economics,” says Boduszynski. “They will actually meet the people who make those policies right in the spaces where they make them.”

—Marilyn Thomsen