Class Acts

Pomona College Academy for Youth Success

October 18, 2023 by Marilyn Thomsen Comments Off

Cesar Meza ‘16 is completing doctoral studies in mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis.

As a freshman at Fontana High School, Cesar Meza ’16 was suspicious of the offer to join the Pomona College Academy for Youth Success (PAYS), a college access program that aims to increase the pool of area students prepared to enter highly selective colleges and universities.

Go to a town called “Claremont”—an unfamiliar place even though it was less than 20 miles from home—move into a Pomona College residence hall for four weeks every summer, take rigorous classes to become more competitive for college, eat in the dining hall every day—and not pay a dime? “Too good to be true,” thought Meza, who planned to bolt the first time he was asked for money.

Three years later—not having paid a single penny for his three summers in the PAYS program—Meza moved into a college dorm again. This time it was as an enrolled first-year student at Pomona.

This past summer, Meza—now a doctoral student in mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis—returned to Pomona to again teach math in the PAYS program during its 21st summer. Aiming for a career as a professor, Meza says his goal is to make math come alive in the classroom, just as PAYS professors did for him a decade ago.

“Some students start out saying, ‘I’m not a math person,’” he says. “Or they say, ‘I didn’t think I’d be able to do these types of problems when the course started but by the end, I feel comfortable enough to try harder things next time.’ That’s one of the things that brings me joy.

“I have an opportunity to teach at PAYS and to give back to the program and help other students realize what an opportunity it is,” Meza says. And he knows from personal experience: “This is a life-changing thing.”

The PAYS program, founded in 2003, is highly selective. This year, there were 214 applicants for 30 available spots in the incoming cohort. Participants come from low-income or underrepresented groups in a five-county area of Southern California. The goal is to help them prepare for enrollment and success in college. Selected students commit to a three-year program that begins after their first year in high school and includes an annual four-week residential summer program, plus connections with Pomona College faculty and staff during each school year.

The summer program is challenging—nearly three hours of intensive math or critical inquiry reading in the morning, with elective classes and study sessions in the afternoon. Rising seniors conduct hands-on research with faculty—a group of 2022 PAYS students undertook a project using the revolutionary CRISPR gene-editing technology, a method co-discovered by 2020 Nobel Prize laureate Jennifer Doudna ’85.

At the annual closing ceremony on the Pomona campus, PAYS alumni who have just graduated from high school return to announce where they will be attending college. Six hundred students have completed the program since its inception, and every one of them has been accepted to a four-year college or university. Some have chosen Pomona or other members of The Claremont Colleges, while others selected UCs, CSUs or Stanford. Others have gone to Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Princeton or Yale.

Being part of a cohort for three years helps the students form a sense of community. As one PAYS scholar says, there is “academic rigor, but we are together.”

You’ve Got Mail

October 17, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

With the flow of letters down to a trickle, students now receive an email when they have a letter to pick up. The mailboxes below were removed last summer.

The days of unlocking your mailbox in anticipation of a letter from home or a high school crush are over.

In a sign of the times, the traditional mailboxes installed in Smith Campus Center when the building opened in 1999 have been removed due to lack of use.

With the widespread adoption of email in the 1990s followed by texting, smartphones and video calls, students now communicate by almost any method except the U.S. Postal Service.

“Students rarely receive letters anymore, but they receive lots and lots of packages,” says Glenn Gillespie, who leads the mail operation as assistant director of facilities and campus services. “This move is about giving us more space for the packages. That’s our business now.”

The new, larger mailroom is in the Pendleton Building, with the mailing address for students now 150 E. 8th St., Claremont, CA 91711.

About those packages: Pomona receives about 65,000 packages annually, or several dozen per student per year. Email notifications go out when a package arrives. Now, the same applies for letters.

“We’ve had a good 300 to 400 percent increase in the number of packages” over the last 20 years or so, Gillespie says. “In the meantime, the mail has decreased about 75 percent. What we’re trying to do is embrace that it’s a new age.”

As for the lovely old mailboxes, there’s an effort to preserve and repurpose some of them.

“So much nostalgia surrounds the mailboxes,” says Anne Stewart, associate director of advancement communications and events, who claimed about 200 of the 1,920 boxes. “I wanted to be sure we secured some for future use. For now, we will box them up and keep them safe until an opportunity presents itself.”

Home Page: Claremont Citrus Industry

October 15, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

The Claremont Colleges Library Special Collections’ citrus industry archives include the Oglesby Citrus Label Collection donated by the late Emeritus Professor of Biology Larry C. Oglesby and his wife, Alice. Special Collections also houses the David Boulé California Orange Collection, the Matt Garcia Papers on citrus and farm laborers, and the California Citrus Industry Collection, collected and gifted by Claremont Heritage.

Claremont Gold citrus label from the Oglesby collection

The heyday of Claremont’s citrus industry in the first half of the 20th century is long past, but vibrant examples of crate labels featuring local scenes endure. The 1908 Carnegie Building, depicted below, served as the library of both Pomona College and the city of Claremont until 1914. Today, it houses classrooms and offices for politics, international relations, public policy analysis and economics.

Carnegie Hall citrus label from the Oglesby collection

Mason Hall, (presented below), was completed in 1923 as a state-of-the-art chemistry facility, is 100 years old this year, as is Crookshank Hall, originally a zoology building.

Collegiate citrus label representing Mason Hall from the Oglesby collection

Today, Mason is home to classrooms and offices for history and languages, and Crookshank houses the English Department and media studies. In this view from what is now Stanley Academic Quad, Mason is at center and the building at left is Harwood Hall for Botany, built in 1915 and demolished in 1968. The displayed labels are from the Oglesby Citrus Label Collection. The late Professor of Biology Larry C. Oglesby, also known as “Doc O” to some, taught at Pomona for 30 years and was a mentor to several of the alumni featured in this issue, including Doug Bush’94, Cathy Corison ’75 and Kim Selkoe ’97.

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, celebrating its centennial this year, hosted its first varsity college football game on October 6, 1923, with the USC Trojans playing none other than the Sagehens of Pomona College. (See story) The citrus label commemorates the 1932 Olympic Games, with the Coliseum’s famous peristyle incorporated below.

Athlete citrus label from the Oglesby collection

As commercial art, labels weren’t signed by the artists and lacked descriptions, though some might not have represented actual scenes. The image below at first suggests Bridges Auditorium, built in 1931, but Bridges has five double-height arches on each side, among other differences.

Campus citrus label from the Oglesby collection

The idealized vision of the citrus industry and life in a college town depicted on crate labels was not the experience of everyone in Claremont and surrounding areas. The Matt Garcia Papers in The Claremont Colleges Library Special Collections include research materials such as photos, oral histories and newspaper clippings related to Garcia’s book A World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900-1970. This image of citrus pickers in San Dimas around 1930 from the Pomona Public Library collection is included in Garcia’s book and used as its cover image.

Photo courtesy of Frashers Fotos Collection/HJG

Alex Zylstra ’09 Plays Key Role in Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough

June 6, 2023 by Marilyn Thomsen Comments Off

The shot that took just a few billionths of a second was 60 years in the making, and Alex Zylstra ’09 played a key role in its success. Just after 1 a.m. on December 5, 2022, Zylstra and fellow scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) at last achieved fusion ignition. The energy produced by a controlled fusion reaction exceeded the amount required to fuel the process: 2.05 megajoules in, 3.15 megajoules out. For a tiny fraction of a second, they produced the brightest thing on Earth.

Fusion, as the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) describes it, occurs when “two light nuclei combine to form a single heavier nucleus, releasing a large amount of energy.” The NIF scientists achieved a breakthrough that could someday lead to limitless clean energy to power the world, using the same reaction as the sun and stars.

Zylstra was on the panel of experts at the DOE news conference in Washington to describe the successful experiment, which involved shooting 192 huge lasers at a target the size of a pea. The resulting temperature reached more than 100 million degrees. The pressure was more than double that at the center of the sun. The level of precision the experiment required was mind-boggling.

“We had a debate over a laser setting equivalent to five trillionths of a meter,” Zylstra said at the news conference. “We had a discussion with the laser science team over timing discrepancies of 25 trillionths of a second.”

In an email, Zylstra writes that he had been “eager to work on validating the results before we went public.” Outside experts also provided peer review before the successful experiment was announced. Still, “When I saw the early data start coming in after 1 a.m. on December 5th, I was incredibly excited,” he writes.

As principal experimentalist, Zylstra describes his role as twofold: “First, to be the primary scientist associated with executing a particular ‘shot,’ or experiment, and second, to guide a set of experiments to develop improvements or test hypotheses.” He describes the NIF as “a highly interdisciplinary endeavor,” and works closely with the other teams—computational, design, measurement, laser and target fabrication, and operations.

Dwight Whitaker, chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Pomona, was not surprised at Zylstra’s role in the groundbreaking experiment. Zylstra was in his junior year when Whitaker joined the Pomona College faculty and began setting up his lab. “I was trying to set up some difficult experiments and I was ecstatic when he joined the lab, because he was extraordinary,” Whitaker recalls. “Alex and I worked a lot of hours together. I used to turn knobs with him in the lab, and now he’s running one of the most complicated experiments ever created.”

Zylstra has focused on fusion since starting a doctoral program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology the fall after graduating from Pomona. As an undergraduate, he’d had the opportunity to see the NIF center being built and says that “it felt like a chance to work on something straight out of science fiction.”

Whitaker says fusion could “solve one of the biggest problems facing humanity right now—the climate crisis.” But fusion research, like most other areas of science, is a long and arduous process. Whitaker says that “probably the personality trait you need to have as a physicist is the ability to grind through very unrewarding times, because experimental physics is usually a lesson in failure. Ninety percent of the things we do don’t work,” he says. “But each time you fail, you learn. I think that’s what fusion has been—lots of incremental steps and failures.” And then, success.

2023 Wig Awards

June 5, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Each year, juniors and seniors vote for the Wig Distinguished Professor Awards for excellence in teaching—the highest honor bestowed on Pomona faculty—in recognition of exceptional teaching, concern for students and service to the College and the community. This year, William A. Johnson Professor of Government and Professor of Politics David Menefee-Libey was honored for the seventh time, tying the late Emerita Professor of English Martha Andresen Wilder for the most recognitions since the establishment of the award in 1955.

2023 Wig Award recipients, from left: Fred Krinsky Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religious Studies Oona Eisenstadt, Assistant Professor of Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies Arely Zimmerman, William A. Johnson Professor of Government and Professor of Politics David Menefee-Libey, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Jo Hardin ’95, Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Konrad Aguilar, Assistant Professor of Psychological Science Sara Masland. Not pictured: Henry G. Lee ’37 Professor of English Prageeta Sharma.

Scholars and Fellows

June 5, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

This year’s list of recipients of prestigious awards to study or conduct research at home or abroad includes two young women with striking achievements. Vera Berger ’23 was selected as both a Churchill Scholar and a National Science Foundation Fellow. She also was Pomona’s student body president as a senior. Alexandra Turvey ’24 was selected as both a Beckman Scholar and Goldwater Scholar. In addition, she is a multiple-time All-American swimmer for Pomona-Pitzer and received the NCAA’s Elite 90 Award from women’s swimming. The Elite 90 is presented to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade-point average participating at the finals site for each of the NCAA’s 90 championships.

Beckman Scholars

Santiago Serrano ’25
Alexandra Turvey ’24

Churchill Scholar

Vera Berger ’23

Downing Scholars

Mohammed Ahmed ’23
Rya Jetha ’23

Fulbright Scholars

Maggie Allegar ’23
Sophia Chanin ’23
Brittany Chen ’20
Peter Chong ’23
Kelly Ho ’22
Kaitlyn Lee ’23
Kyu Lee ’23
Calla Li ’22
Jacob Ligorria ’23
Delmy Ruiz ’23
Oliver Spivey ’23
Zachary Wakefield ’22
Nathaniel Wire ’23

Goldwater Scholars

Zoë Batterman ’24
Alexandra Turvey ’24

National Science Foundation Fellows

Vera Berger ’23
Zoe Haggard ’21
Joe Hesse-Withbroe ’21
Kirby Lam ’23
Rohan Lopez ’23
Adele Myers ’21
Gabrielle Ohlson ’21
Cody Pham ’21
Marie Tano ’21
Gabe Udell ’21
Clayton Ziemke ’18

Schwarzman Scholars

Solomon Olshin ’23
Qingjie “Bob” Zeng ’18

Senior Plans

June 1, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

As campus emptied after Commencement on May 14, new graduates from the Class of 2023 fanned out to jobs, graduate schools and other ventures across the U.S. and around the world. We asked some of them to share their plans and perhaps a thought about their time at Pomona.

Maddie Asch

International Relations
Associate Consultant
The Bridgespan Group
Boston

“My time at Pomona taught me that I want to work in a field where I’m constantly learning and can think critically about how to create positive social change. That’s why I’m so excited to work for a nonprofit consulting company whose clients are exclusively nonprofits and philanthropists.”

Vera Berger

Mathematics and Physics
Master’s of Philosophy in Scientific Computing
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, England

“The physics behind stellar flares is interesting and somewhat mysterious. I’m hoping to focus my research at Cambridge on simulations of plasma or magnetic activity similar to what we might see in flaring stars.”

Isabel Fajardo

Psychological Science
Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies Minor
Teach for America
Washington, D.C.

“I think it’s probably the most important job in the world to uplift the most vulnerable, which are children.”

Jordan Hoogsteden

Public Policy Analysis (Politics)
Harvard Law School
Cambridge, Massachusetts

“The Pomona community’s lively commitment to social justice helped me realize that I wanted to pursue a career in public interest. I hope to use my law degree to become a public defender.”

Alex Ker

Computer Science
Math and Philosophy Minors
Master’s in Computer Science
New York

“Pomona’s liberal arts environment helped refine my interests and deepen my skills, from founding an organization like P-ai.org (artificial intelligence incubator for projects and ideas) to participating in the Randall Lewis Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at CMC and teaching writing to area youth once a week. I feel prepared for graduate school and to build a startup in the artificial intelligence/machine learning space.”

Louie Kulber

Classics and Molecular Biology
M.D.-Ph.D.
Columbia University
New York

“The Pomona science classes do a particularly good job at cultivating scientific inquiry and making you really curious. An M.D.-Ph.D. is all about being curious and creative and thinking about new ways to solve problems, and Pomona really sets you up to do that.”

Sean Perez

Biology
Ph.D. in Genome Sciences
University of Washington
Seattle

“I will be attending graduate school in hope of earning my Ph.D. in genetics and bioinformatics with the long-term goal of returning to Pomona as a professor.”

Taylor Venenciano

Physics Scientist
Areté Associates
Northridge, California

“The Physics/Astro Department at Pomona has helped me to become passionate about and confident in trying to solve difficult problems. I’m hoping to continue to solve difficult problems at my first job and throughout my career.”

John West Jr.

Africana Studies
Ph.D. in Criminology, Law and Justice
University of Illinois Chicago
Chicago

“I chose UIC Criminology, Law and Justice so that I can continue my work as an educator and activist within my home city, Chicago. Pomona allowed me to build relationships with educators like Professor J Finley interested in my personal and intellectual growth.”

Sabrina Yu

Economics
Investment Banking Analyst
Jefferies Financial Group
New York

“I came to Pomona because I knew I loved learning but had no idea what I wanted to study. Four years later, I’m heading into finance thanks to all the clubs I was given the opportunity to be part of that allowed me to hone in on my interests (through lots of trial and error!). I’m excited to start my career in a field that’ll let me continue to explore my intellectual curiosity—a trait that has developed so much at Pomona.”

Instagram Highlights

Leading up to commencement, Class of 2023 were showcased weekly in a series called Senior Spotlight:

Marley Evans

Evans, who is from Dallas, double majored in economic psychology and dance.

One of her proudest accomplishments was having the opportunity to design her own major. With tremendous support from her special major committee, Economics Professor Eleanor Brown, Assistant Economics Professor Malte Dold, and Psychological Science and Asian American Studies Professor Sharon Goto, Evans was able to combine her interests in economics, psychology, consumer behavior, product development and human-centered design into an economic psychology major and, ultimately, her senior thesis. She is deeply grateful to her professors for the unique opportunity to create an area of study she is truly passionate about.

Evans was a part of the dance programs at Pomona and Scripps. She performed in the Pomona and Scripps “In the Works” concert as her last college dance show. As she danced her final pieces with fellow cast members and took a final bow, Evans realized what a true gift from God this art has been for her throughout her life but especially throughout college. She also was in Claremont Christian Fellowship (CCF), a loving community she is proud to have been a part of.

Evans plans to pursue a future in the realm of product development, product marketing and product management. She also is exploring how she can use her skills in an entrepreneurial career as well as finding needs, solving problems and providing support in various industries where she can lend a hand.

“As cliche as it is, everything happens for a reason. Not only did I get to fall more in love with my passion for dance and create a perfectly fitted major for my interests, but Pomona was also the place where I truly found myself and my faith through times of trial and through times of great joy. I don’t believe it all could’ve happened anywhere else,” she says.

Michael Hwang

Hwang is a molecular biology major from Ann Arbor, Michigan. During his time at Pomona College, Hwang helped transition the Music Mentors Program from a 5C club to an official program at the Draper Center. Mentors connect students at The Claremont Colleges with youth from surrounding underserved communities to provide free music lessons.

Hwang also had the opportunity to coordinate this year’s Alternabreak trip to Washington, D.C. Alternabreak is a program that provides students with the opportunity to leave campus and engage with the broader community during spring break. Despite the challenges of reviving and reshaping the program after a three-year hiatus, the experience was incredibly rewarding and Hwang is proud to have been a part of the effort in preserving the program’s legacy.

He says he has had the privilege of finding mentors who have had a significant impact on his personal and academic growth. Among them are Associate Professor of Biology Sara Olson, Dylan Worcester at the Quantitative Skills Center and Rita Shaw at the Draper Center. These people have helped him celebrate triumphs as well as work through several setbacks during his time at Pomona. Although he will miss the support system they provided, he is grateful to have formed meaningful relationships with them.

“In retrospect, I realize that one of the most valuable aspects of attending Pomona has been the opportunity to connect with people from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. Being able to see the world through so many different perspectives has been truly transformative and eye-opening,” he says.

After graduation, Hwang will be conducting clinical research in pediatric endocrinology through the 2023 NIDDK Distinguished Postbaccalaureate Scholars Program at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. He will work on clinical trials focused on treating diabetes, metabolic disorders and kidney diseases that disproportionately burden underserved communities.

Yutong Niu

A double major in economics and international relations, Niu will begin her career as an associate consultant for OC&C Strategy Consultants in New York.

“The strong alumni network that Pomona provides allowed me to learn about different fields and industries and build meaningful connections,” she says. “In the process of connecting with fellow alumni, I was truly humbled by their passion, achievements and dedication to helping current students succeed.”

Anvitha Reddy Pentaparthy

Pentaparthy is a media studies major from Hyderabad, India. She chose Pomona for its liberal arts experience to explore different areas of interest, build one-on-one relationships with professors and students, and to belong to a tight-knit community that is both diverse and welcoming.

Apart from the friends and relationships she has made here, Pentaparthy says she will miss the beautiful campus the most—the views of the snow-covered mountains and sunsets on Marston Quad are her absolute favorite.

One of her most meaningful projects at Pomona was her senior thesis. Her project included a gallery installation that documented how international students in Claremont, specifically from South Asia, have found a home away from home through Shaila Andrabi, who is the coordinator of Muslim Life at The Claremont Colleges. Pentaparthy’s project delved into the concepts of identity, community and hybridity—themes that represent the immigrant experience.

She also interned at Sony Pictures Entertainment on its global team. Breaking into entertainment, she says, is already difficult without being an international student and that it had been a dream to be able to work at a studio that has produced some of her favorite content.

Beyond Pomona, Pentaparthy plans to go to graduate school this fall and is excited to continue her career in entertainment, specifically within global content.

“I’m grateful to Pomona for teaching me that I can weather adversity and emerge stronger for it. My time here has given me confidence in myself—I can uproot myself, travel across the world, and still find a sense of home, community, and belonging no matter where I go. Moreover, I think Pomona has given me the immensely useful tool of critical thinking that I believe will be handy no matter what direction my future takes,” she says.

Delmy Ruiz

Ruiz is a public policy analysis major with a concentration in biology from Los Angeles. She chose Pomona because she wanted an institution conducive to her pursuit of a pre-med career path. In the last four years, she has participated in programs such as the Pomona Science Scholars and Prehealth Advising that have been integral in helping her find a community as she pursues a career in science.

During her time at Pomona, Ruiz has been a Draper Center Student Coordinator, a resident advisor for three years, a RAISE (Remote Alternative Independent Summer Experience) scholar, a Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholar, a Fulbright Fellow, and an NIH (National Institutes of Health) Research Fellow. One of Ruiz’s most meaningful experiences at Pomona College was being a volunteer with the Draper Center, which allowed her to give back to the surrounding community in efforts to promote health equity. As a volunteer, she interacts with and supports uninsured and underinsured patients who otherwise would have found it difficult to navigate the healthcare system on their own.

After graduating, Ruiz plans to move to the Washington, D.C., area for nine months to take a position in a lab focused on studying the immunopathogenesis of HIV. Afterward, she will be taking on a Fulbright fellowship in Brazil, where she will be researching healthcare innovations in northern and southern states. After two gap years, she hopes to matriculate in an M.D. program. She says she has been fortunate to have created a strong support system at Pomona.

“I am going to miss the people and the professors. I have met some of the most motivated students and some of my most inspiring mentors here,” she says.

Joshua David Suh

Suh is a mathematics major and music minor from Cypress, California. He chose Pomona College because of its intimate community and environment. He says he will miss the faculty on campus the most: “They really offered me such a wealth of information. I felt like with certain faculty I made such a genuine connection, and I’m definitely going to miss seeing them in my day-to-day life.”

Pomona taught him to explore what life has to offer and not be afraid to try new things, Suh says. Outside the classroom, he has tried ballroom dancing, mahjong, clarinet and classical voice, and was part of Pomona’s jazz, West African, and Afro-Cuban music ensembles. Suh also was part of the Mood Swing a cappella group and has taken voice lessons with Ursula Kleinceke, a lecturer in the Music Department, since his first year of college. Before Pomona, he had never sung before but learning from Kleinecke has given him confidence, the necessary technique and a genuine joy for performing.

Suh also has been awarded the art prize for Tabula Rasa, the 5C philosophy journal, for a piece he recorded called “Cat and Mouse,” an improvisational composition of piano and saxophone based on a paper written by Derek Li titled “Problems for a Platonic Idea of Logic.”

In addition, Suh was selected as a participant in a PreLaw Undergraduate Scholars (PLUS) Program with Boston University associated with the Law School Admissions Council. He plans to attend law school.

“I think Pomona College really made me a Renaissance man and instilled in me a desire to keep continually learning and exploring what this world has to offer,” he says. “Pomona definitely allowed me to blossom into the person that I feel I am and has given me the strength and confidence to tackle whatever life’s challenges come my way.”

Kristin Walters

A mathematics major from Coral Springs, Florida, Walters came to Pomona College as a Miami Posse Scholar.

She was involved in student government, serving as ASPC vice president of student affairs. Walters says she was passionate about working on student issues and cultivating traditions and values at Pomona. She also was a coordinator for the Draper Center, working with Sista-2-Sista and the Pomona College Academy for Youth Success (PAYS).

Walters says the most meaningful experience she had at Pomona was the very first summer she worked with the PAYS program: “It was the best summer ever and I learned a lot about who I am that summer.”

She also learned how to play the oboe and piano and worked with Spotlight Musical Theatre, a 5C student-run musical theatre organization, as a sound designer.

In the future, Walters wants to become a sound designer for animated superhero movies and plans to work with nonprofit organizations to continue giving back to her community.

She says the interdisciplinary experience at Pomona College taught her to think outside of the box. Most importantly, she learned that “just because something is hard does not mean it cannot be done.”

Luke Williams

Williams, originally from San Diego, transferred to Pomona his sophomore year because he saw how “active and engaged” students were here. “Pomona has so many resources,” he says. “As a transfer, I was especially grateful for these resources and was able to take advantage of many of them.”

Earlier this month, at the Undergraduate Conference on the European Union, he presented a paper he wrote for his Social Comparative Policy class titled “A Comparative Look at Spain and Italy’s paternity leave policies.”

“I’m really grateful to Pomona College because it’s provided me with a ton of research experience,” he says. “I was able to build connections with faculty as a student, a research assistant and as a teaching assistant. Professors helped me set up internships volunteering at local schools and encouraged me to continue research and apply to conferences.”

Outside of classes, he played for the varsity and club tennis teams, served as a college advisor for Pomona College Academy for Youth Success (PAYS) and was a member of the Bridge Club at The Claremont Colleges, earning second place at the national collegiate bowl.

A politics major and psychology minor, he discovered a passion for working with children while he was a TA for a child development class. After graduating, he is headed to the University of Washington for a combined masters and Ph.D. program in school psychology.

Grace Fan

Fan, who is from Irvine, California, majored in public policy analysis major and anthropology. During her time at Pomona, she had great opportunities through internships to learn more about federal and state legislatures at our nation’s and state’s capitols. Through Pomona’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP), she also conducted research with Politics Professor Sara Sadhwani on Asian American political representation.

Fan had the chance to interview established political players and write a piece that was published by ABC-CLIO, a publishing company for academic reference works and periodicals, primarily on topics such as history and social sciences. A student athlete at Pomona, she played volleyball for Pomona-Pitzer for four years.

Fan says she initially chose Pomona because of the classic appeal of a “small, liberal arts college in sunny SoCal.”

“But in retrospect, Pomona has been so much more—to find a community where everyone has a genuine love of learning at a school that celebrates cross-functional and interdisciplinary thinking is so rare,” she says. “I’ve actually never taken classes in my four years here that I didn’t enjoy—and that is definitely an extremely unique experience.”

Beyond Pomona, Fan plans to join a boutique consulting firm focused on corporate sustainability and ESG (Environmental Social and Governance) policies. In the longer term, she is considering pursuing a master’s of public policy or a J.D., and aims to do impactful policy-adjacent work at the federal level.

“Even though it was only 2.75 years in person, I’m infinitely grateful to have spent my college years here,” she says.

How To Teach a Robot

January 6, 2023 by Marilyn Thomsen Comments Off

Anthony Clark, assistant professor of computer science with soldering iron

Kenneth Gonzalez ’24, Simon Heck ’22 and Liz Johnson ’24 work with Anthony Clark, assistant professor of computer science.

Someday, when a storm downs trees and power lines on campus or elsewhere, emergency workers may turn to autonomous robots for help with immediate surveillance.

“Maybe you want a robot to roam around campus, because it’s safer for them than for a human,” says Anthony Clark, assistant professor of computer science. “Maybe you have 10 robots that can take pictures and report back, ‘Hey, there’s a tree down here, a limb fallen there, this looks like a power line that’s down,’” he says, and technicians can be dispatched immediately to the correct location.

That day may not be too far off, thanks to research being conducted by Clark and three Pomona computer science majors. Right now they are working on computer simulations, exploring how to train autonomous robots to navigate the campus using machine learning. By spring, they hope to test their methods in actual robots, prototypes of which are already under construction elsewhere in Clark’s lab.

The group scoured the campus last summer to find a building with an interior that would present challenges to the autonomous robots. They settled on the Oldenborg Center because it “was potentially confusing enough for a robot trying to drive around,” with one hallway, for instance, leading to stairs in one direction and a ramp in the other.

Machine learning, Clark explains, is a subset of artificial intelligence. “It is basically an automated system that makes some decisions, and those automated decisions are based on a bunch of training data.”

To generate the data, the team created an exquisitely detailed schematic of the Oldenborg interior, down to a water fountain in a hallway. Kenneth Gonzalez ’24 took 2,000 photos and used photogrammetry software to determine how many images the robot would need for correct decision-making. Liz Johnson ’24 created another model with the flexibility to change various elements—from carpet to wood or even grass on the floors, for example, or rocks on the ceiling. Simon Heck ’22 worked on the back-end coding.

“The reason why we want to modify the environment, like having different lighting and changing textures, is so the robot is able to generalize,” says Clark. “The dataset will have larger amounts of diverse environments. We don’t want it to get confused if it’s going down a hallway and all of a sudden there’s a new painting on the wall.”

Clark says that once the group has models that work in virtual environments and transfer well to the physical world, the team will make the tasks more challenging. One idea is to create autonomous robots that fly rather than roll. “It’s pretty much the same process,” Clark says, “but it’s a lot more complicated.”

The goal, Clark says, “is a better way to make machine learning models transfer to a real-world device. To me, that means it’s less likely to bump into walls, and it’s a lot safer and more energy efficient.”

What keeps him up at night is training a machine and then, for example, a person taller than those in the dataset enters the field. The robot mischaracterizes what they are and runs into them. “I’m hoping the big takeaway from this work is how do you automatically find things that you weren’t necessarily looking for?”

Geology Department Turns 100

January 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Founded in 1922 by A.O. Woodford, a 1913 graduate of the College better known as Woody, the Geology Department has marked its centennial year. So did Woodford, a one-man department for 30 years who died in 1990 at the age of 100. A great-nephew of Pomona co-founder Rev. James Harwood, Woodford majored in chemistry before earning a Ph.D. studying soil science at UC Berkeley. In addition to his research, Woodford was known for developing scientists. Among them was Roger Revelle ’29, an early predictor of global warming. UC San Diego’s Revelle College bears his name.

Artifact: The Last Champs

January 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

The object below is a game program from the crucial contest of Pomona’s 1955 season, the most recent time the Sagehens were part of a SCIAC football championship season.

Pitzer College, Pomona’s current partner in athletics, had not yet been founded. Pomona and what was then Claremont Men’s College—now rivals as Pomona-Pitzer and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps—played together on a combined team known as Pomona-Claremont that claimed the third of three titles in a row.

The title-clinching win was a dramatic 14-13 victory over Whittier College in the Poets’ homecoming game, where this program sold for 20 cents. The two met late in the season as the only SCIAC teams that remained undefeated in conference play.

The recently completed 2022 season marked a poignant milestone for Whittier. The college dropped its football program after 115 years, along with men’s lacrosse and men’s and women’s golf. The decision was primarily for financial reasons. Whittier had not won a game since the pandemic canceled the 2020 season, going 0-18 over the last two seasons.

Whittier’s coach in 1955 was George Allen, who went on to coach the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins. Pomona-Claremont was coached by Earl “Fuzz” Merritt ’25, for whom Pomona-Pitzer’s home field is named.

The Pomona-Claremont roster included end Bill Schultz ’56, tackle Ken Wedel ’56, halfback Herb Meyer ’57, guard/tackle Hugh Martin ’57, and halfback/quarterback Jim Lindblad ’58, all later inducted into the Pomona-Pitzer Athletics Hall of Fame. The name of a certain 165-pound sophomore end might also ring a bell.

Pomona-Claremont’s final game of the 1955 season was a 29-13 victory over rival Occidental in front of 6,000 fans in Claremont. Oxy’s standouts included quarterback Jack Kemp, who went on to play professional football and serve nine terms as a U.S. congressman. In 2020, Occidental announced it would discontinue its football program, ending the rivalry. Six remaining teams will compete for the 2023 SCIAC football title: Cal Lutheran, Chapman, CMS, La Verne, Pomona-Pitzer and Redlands.

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