From left: Vera Berger ’23, Sofia Dartnell ’22, Mohammed Ahmed ’23 and Rya Jetha ’23. Photographed by Jean-Luc Benazet

Cambridge is waking up slowly on a crisp Sunday morning. The shadows of the scientists and other thinkers who have walked this ancient English university town seem to play across the cobblestone streets connecting the 31 colleges that call it home. Long before the apple dropped—or didn’t drop—on Isaac Newton’s head, his education in Cambridge prepared him to outline the foundations of modern physics. Alumnus Charles Darwin’s curiosity about a professor’s botanical work eventually bore fruit in the theory of evolution. And less than a mile away from where a group of Sagehens are getting their caffeine for the day is the Eagle Pub, where 71 years ago Francis Crick announced that he and James Watson had “discovered the secret of life”—the structure of DNA.

Moments of “Am I really here?” abound for four recent Pomona alumni pursuing graduate degrees at the University of Cambridge, all with full scholarships their small liberal arts college in California helped them land. Vera Berger ’23 is a Churchill Scholar, enrolled in a master of philosophy program in scientific computing before she starts a Ph.D. in physics at MIT in the coming year. “I had a pinch-me moment while attending a lunchtime astronomy talk on exoplanet atmospheres,” she says. “I stood in the back of the room by a professor who at the end of the talk asked a thought-provoking question. I looked over and realized he was the person who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the first exoplanet.”

Fellows’ rooms as seen from First Court, Jesus College. Courtesy of Jean-Luc Benazet.

‘A Museum Unto Itself’

“The city of Cambridge is a museum unto itself with so much fascinating history,” says Downing-Pomona Scholar Rya Jetha ’23, a master of philosophy student in world history. “I was astounded to learn when I first got here that one of the libraries at Cambridge—Trinity College’s Wren Library—has original manuscripts of Shakespeare’s plays, Isaac Newton’s annotated copy of the Principia Mathematica and the original texts of Winnie-the-Pooh.” Sitting in a library writing an essay about historian J. R. Seeley and his foundational work on the British empire’s spatiality, Jetha suddenly realized that he had been a Cambridge professor—“and right then I was sitting in the Seeley Library named after him!”

Some commonly used inventions have had odd beginnings within these walls. Sofia Dartnell ’22 is a Gates Cambridge Scholar and Ph.D. student in zoology at Darwin College whose research focuses on bumblebee conservation by studying their parasites. She learned from a professor in her department how the webcam that makes Zoom meetings possible had its origin near her lab. “It was originally built by caffeinated scientists who wanted to know whether there was coffee brewing in the building’s coffee pot before making their walk over,” she says. “The original coffee room in question is where I drink tea every morning.”

“When I think about me conducting scientific research at Cambridge, I remember the big names and am always shocked that I am here now in the same institution.” —Mohammed Ahmed ’23

Mohammed Ahmed ’23 remembers the moment he saw the email telling him he was, like Jetha, a Downing-Pomona Scholar. The award pays all expenses at Downing College for a year of master’s-level study in any discipline taught at Cambridge. Pomona graduates have been studying at Downing as part of the program for the past 30 years. “I was in shock,” Ahmed recalls. “I called my parents, then my brother, then friends. And finally just sat to take it in.” Though he’d never visited Cambridge, he says he “imagined it would be grand. I knew it was old and had history but did not know it was founded in 1209.”

Making Their Own Marks

Surrounded by eight centuries of history, the four Pomona alums are making their own marks in their chosen disciplines. Ahmed is researching neurodegenerative disease through the lens of physical chemistry. He describes his work as “probing the efficacy of computationally designed binders and naturally occurring chaperones on inhibiting Tau aggregation, and exploring the mechanisms by which these binders function.” It will, he hopes, “give insight into how we can therapeutically target misfolding diseases on the molecular level.”

“I was astounded to learn when I first got here that one of the libraries at Cambridge—Trinity College’s Wren Library—has original manuscripts of Shakespeare’s plays, Isaac Newton’s annotated copy of the ‘Principia Mathematica’ and the original texts of ‘Winnie-the-Pooh.’” —Rya Jetha ’23

Jetha’s research on the Indian Ocean region, where she grew up, “continues to blow my mind,” she says. Jetha is part of a group of historians at Cambridge who are studying big, global processes from small places. “Islands as sites of intimate and intensive colonial encounter are undertheorized and understudied, so I’m working on a history of two small but powerful islands—Bombay and Zanzibar—during the 19th century,” Jetha says. The historic oceanic connections between these two islands have been neglected in favor of land-based nationalist histories, she says, adding that “there is so much to study beyond the limiting frame of the nation-state.”

Sofia Dartnell ’22 raises bumblebees to use in her research. Wild queens are caught and provided pollen, nectar and a warm environment to encourage them to lay eggs. They are kept in the dark to mimic their natural nesting conditions underground, and checked in red light the bees can’t see.

When the cuckoo bumblebees are active in England’s warmer months, Dartnell can be found outdoors with her two-meter insect net catching queen bees to rear in the lab. Most of the time, the bees she studies live underground in a dark hole, unable to see each other. “The bees can recognize each other within the colony based on smell,” she notes. “I’m currently running choice experiments in the lab to figure out how accurate their sense of smell is.” So far, she’s found that it is spot-on. One wrinkle about the cuckoo bees—they are masters of disguise, a skill that has evolved since they cannot produce their own workers in their colonies. “They can pick up the scent profile of a colony they are invading and convince the worker bees to work for them using pheromones,” Dartnell explains. Cuckoos are an apex species that could be a “canary in a coal mine” for populations of pollinators facing threats of pesticides and habitat change. Ultimately, Dartnell hopes her research will help farmers modify their landscapes to support bee populations, which also could improve their crop yields.

“Extending the residential college structure to postgraduate education has allowed me to build a strong community with postgrads across the academic spectrum.” —Vera Berger ’23

During her undergrad years at Pomona, Berger became fascinated with stellar flares and “how flares may contribute to the creation or destruction of life on other planets.” She developed a keen interest in learning how stars evolve and explode. In her Cambridge program, she is gaining computational skills useful “to model anything that can be thought of as fluid—liquids, plasmas and even solid materials that can squish or bend,” she says. After spending much of the year in coursework, she is excited to now be involved in a research lab exploring magnetic reconnection in plasma that produces these stellar flares. In future doctoral work, Berger says, she is “planning to study highly energetic astrophysical objects as probes of some of the most extreme physics in the universe.”

Opening Up Opportunities

The tradition of Pomona graduates winning scholarships to the renowned British university is well established, says Jason Jeffrey, assistant director of fellowships and career advising in the Career Development Office. In the past five years, three Pomona graduates have been offered Gates Cambridge Scholarships and three have been named Churchill Scholars. Through an agreement with Downing College, two Pomona alumni each year can study at the college in Cambridge and a Downing College student can enroll at Pomona.

“Our students are exceptional and well rounded, and many have studied abroad or have intercultural experience, so there’s no doubt about them being thriving members of the Cambridge community,” says Jeffrey. Students who pursue these scholarships “often have compelling reasons for studying in the U.K. It can be a vital steppingstone in their career.”

Each of the Sagehens attributes their current academic opportunities to encouragement from faculty, staff and friends at Pomona. During Dartnell’s freshman year, her advisor, Associate Professor of Biology Sara Olson, told her, “If you keep going like this, Sofia, you could apply for fellowships,” naming some of the major ones. “I know it’s early,” Olson said. “Just putting it on your radar.” The early encouragement paid dividends. Midway through her senior year, Dartnell got word that she had won a prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship. It covers all expenses for an entire Ph.D. program at the university, and recipients become lifetime members of an active and supportive community of scholars.

Jetha, who was raised in Mumbai, found her research direction as a freshman in a history class, Indian Ocean World, taught by Professor Arash Khazeni. The topic inspired her senior thesis as a history major, but she lacked access to important primary sources that were housed in the U.K. and not digitized.

Punting on the River Cam is a quintessential Cambridge activity. Rya Jetha ’23 rows the punt with passenger Sofia Dartnell ’22.

“Professor Khazeni encouraged me to apply for the Downing Scholarship to continue my research in Cambridge,” she says. “I’d be a one-hour train ride away from a treasure trove of archives in London.” Since arriving in Cambridge, Jetha has become very familiar with the route to the British Library, where Charles Dickens, Karl Marx and Virginia Woolf also hung out. “Really, there’s nothing more exciting for a historian than spending the day looking at government records, letters, maps and other primary sources in the archives,” she says.

Beyond the Classroom

Sofia Dartnell ’22 displays her research on bumblebees.

Just as they did at Pomona, the Sagehens are branching out far beyond academics. When Dartnell is not training and measuring the behavior of her cuckoo bumblebees—and yes, she’s heard all the jokes about studying cuckoos—she unwinds with trivia and salsa dancing in town. She also sings in a band with other Ph.D. students in Darwin College.

Both Ahmed and Jetha joined the Downing College rowing team and have spent scores of hours training and competing on the River Cam, which winds past colleges established by Edward II, Henry VIII and his grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. “The most exciting experience was rowing camp in Banyoles, Spain, in January,” says Jetha. “The camp was physically exhausting—we rowed over 90 kilometers [56 miles] over the five days. But by the end we were all really good rowers and ready to conquer the Cam!” Ahmed also uses his arm strength to throw javelin for Cambridge athletics.

While she was at Pomona, Berger chose to focus her time outside of class on student government—she was president of the Associated Students of Pomona College her senior year and chair of the Judicial Council. Now, as a graduate student, she is trying new things. “I learned to operate the telescope that sits steps from Churchill College with the Cambridge Astronomical Society and joined the local roller derby team,” she says matter-of-factly, as if the combination doesn’t seem at all unusual.

Berger and her fellow alumni also are learning to slow down, and, of course, to drink tea. “In the astronomy department, they have tea breaks twice a day and everyone shows up,” says Berger. “A lot of times it turns into brainstorming, idea-bouncing time.” The same holds true in Dartnell’s area. “The Department of Zoology is situated in the same complex as the incredible David Attenborough Building, which is home to numerous conservation-based NGOs [non-governmental organizations],” she says. “Everyone in the department goes to 11 a.m. coffee, giving us the opportunity to connect and network with conservation leaders throughout the department and external organizations.”

Slowing down may seem surprising for high-achieving Sagehens in a historic university. In reality, though, it may be what helps them to successfully pursue their dreams while enjoying a balanced life. They find time for weekly chats at Bould Brothers Coffee in town or late-night scoops at Jack’s Gelato, a place in the city center that is so popular, the line frequently extends out the door. All four enjoy the renowned traditional Cambridge formal dinners the colleges host and where Berger says there is “eye-opening conversation” and Jetha adds that “people just sit and chat for the sake of it. You’re socializing and you’re not expected to do anything else. The setting is beautiful. That’s quintessentially Cambridge for me.”

‘Living English’

For Ahmed, Berger and Jetha, graduation this spring will wrap up their “year of living English.” They’ll move back to the right side of the sidewalk again—Ahmed was startled to discover that in the U.K. people not only drive on the left but also walk on that side as well. They’ll eventually return to calling a “flat” an “apartment,” throwing trash in a garbage “can” instead of a “bin” and driving cars that have “hoods” and “trunks” instead of “bonnets” and “boots.” A “jumper” will transform magically once again into a “sweater.” And perhaps not everything will be “dodgy” or “brilliant.”

Their paths will diverge as they build their futures. Ahmed plans to enroll in an M.D.-Ph.D. program and continue medical research to help patients overcome disease. Jetha, who worked on the staff of The Student Life newspaper during her college years, has accepted a position as a journalist in San Francisco. Berger is aiming for an academic career, hoping to teach in a liberal arts college after she completes her doctoral work.

Dartnell is settling in as she nears the halfway point of what she anticipates will be a four-year Ph.D. program. She’s excited to be generating research data and she is getting valuable experience leading weekly small-group discussion and debate sessions for clusters of undergraduates enrolled in conservation science courses. “I’m passionate about undergraduate teaching,” she says. “I hope to follow my passions for insect conservation and teaching to a career as a professor, ideally in an undergraduate-focused institution similar to Pomona.”

Kitchen Bridge, St. John’s College. Since the 13th century, the River Cam has provided an idyllic backdrop for learning at the University of Cambridge. Courtesy of Jean-Luc Benazet.

But for a little while longer, Cambridge life beckons. On this April morning, the dark of winter—when the sun sets as early as 3:46 in the afternoon—has given way to glorious blue skies. Dartnell sits on an outdoor bench near Regent Street, soaking up the sunshine and “getting some vitamin D.” For these four Sagehens in Cambridge, their Pomona experiences have set them up for success. Their futures, like the tulips and flowering trees around them, are beginning to bloom.

Esther Brimmer, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, addresses the opening session of the high-level segment of the Human Rights Council. In her statement to the Council, Ms. Brimmer emphasized, among other themes, the protection of freedom of expression, the fight against negative stereotyping, and affirmed the United States’ commitment to the Council.

In the fall of 1981, her junior year at Pomona College, Esther Brimmer ’83 arrived in Switzerland for a semester of graduate-level study in international affairs at what is now the Geneva Graduate Institute.

To say the experience was transformative is an understatement.

Esther Brimmer, then assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, at 2009 news conference. Courtesy of U.S. Mission Geneva

Brimmer couldn’t have imagined her return to Geneva in 2009—one of many in her career—for what she called “my proudest moment as a diplomat.”

As assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs under President Barack Obama, Brimmer gave the first speech on behalf of the United States as an elected member of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

“We recognize that the United States’ record on human rights is imperfect,” Brimmer said in part. “Our history includes lapses and setbacks, and there remains a great deal of work to be done.

“But our history is a story of progress. Indeed, my presence here today is a testament to that progress, as is the administration I serve. It is the president’s hope and my own that we can continue that momentum at home and around the world.”

An International Career

That semester in Geneva was a springboard to an extraordinary career. Brimmer, now the James H. Binger senior fellow in global governance at the Council on Foreign Relations, has served three appointments within the U.S. Department of State, including her tenure as assistant secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. She also has held numerous other positions in government, academia and non-governmental organization leadership. And as testament to her belief in the value of international study, from 2017 to 2022 Brimmer was executive director and CEO of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, a professional association dedicated to international education with some 10,000 members in more than 160 countries.

Acquiring a broader global view has value beyond career preparation, she says, and a college student doesn’t necessarily have to cross a border to gain it.

“There are many different ways in which students can engage in international education—studying abroad, studying international issues at home, getting to know international students,” Brimmer says.

“But one of the important things in being able to study outside of one’s home country is to be able to get insight into how other people around the world view the important aspects of life—being a human being and the important aspects of the world around us, what the issues are and how they look different from different parts of the world. That information can inform all sorts of activities in life. You do not have to just specialize in international relations as a career—much as I would advocate people doing that—in order to benefit from international education.”

A Common Language

Arriving in Geneva, Brimmer at first mixed mainly with other students from Pomona or in the same program. Then she began classes with graduate students from around the world. The French she had studied at Pomona was not only one of the four national languages of Switzerland, she discovered, it was also a lingua franca—a common language that could be spoken among people who did not speak each other’s first languages or who easily switched among multiple languages.

Geneva, the second-largest city in Switzerland, is the European headquarters of the United Nations and the international headquarters of the Red Cross.

“The professor might be replying to you in French, but you could ask your question in English or French,” she recalls. “It was impressive to see the range of languages that the students had already studied by the time they got there. Their facility with multiple languages was quite eye-opening. For some, French and English were their second or third languages.”

The agility Brimmer developed in French—once known as “the language of diplomacy” and still an official language of many international bodies despite France’s decline as a superpower—has been an asset throughout her career.

“I used to remind students that, let’s say you’re interested in security issues and you want to go work for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, you actually have to have French as well as English in order to be on the international staff at NATO,” she says. “It’s true in the United Nations system, but it’s also true about other places as well, where languages are going to help get you the job. International language ability can be quite useful, even if that’s not your specialty, because you’re able to work with colleagues from other countries.”

Brimmer has watched with dismay as some colleges and universities have eliminated foreign language requirements altogether and others have modest standards. For instance, in some University of California and Cal State University programs, students can fulfill a requirement without taking language in college—simply by completing three or four years of a foreign language in high school with a C- or better.

“It is absolutely crucial to understanding other societies,” Brimmer says. “We as human beings express our ideas, thoughts and feelings through language. And then in order to understand these ideas, we need to understand them in their own languages. I’ve been deeply disappointed to see institutions—recognizing they may have their own challenges—but institutions making a short-term economic calculation and missing the long-term implications of what they’re doing. I would want to see language study expand in the United States.”

Strolling the streets of Geneva, Brimmer began to see the news of the world through a new prism.

“One of the things was reading newspapers and numerous news magazines from a different perspective: Remember, the Cold War was still in existence,” she says. “And I remember walking down the street and we saw a television in a window and I thought, oh, something’s going on. Seeing international events from other perspectives was important.”

Basking in Geneva’s café culture, Brimmer discussed issues of the day with older, more worldly graduate students. “They were probably in their mid-20s. And that also helped give me a better sense of the perspectives of students in different places, but also just the perspective on debates. I wasn’t a big coffee drinker, but the opportunity to discuss things from another point of view was interesting. As an American, people always want to give you their view of American foreign policy. Irrespective of whether you say, ‘I’m not personally responsible for it,’ everyone’s giving you an earful. But it’s important that you get that earful and that you begin to explain your views and where you agree and disagree.”

Our Interconnected World

Being exposed to the tutorial system in Geneva—teaching based not on lectures but on deep conversations among very small groups of students and an expert on the subject—also contributed to Brimmer’s decision to go to Oxford University in England after graduating from Pomona. She earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in international relations at Oxford, completing her work in 1989.

Geneva—home to more international organizations than any city in the world and the headquarters of many agencies of the U.N.—has remained special to Brimmer throughout her career.

Esther Brimmer ’83 received an honorary degree and gave a Commencement speech at Pomona in 2019.

In 2000, she returned for several weeks as a member of the U.S. delegation helping to negotiate a U.N. resolution on democracy as a fundamental human right. Instead of arriving as a college student, she arrived with her husband and 3-year-old son.

Later, as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, the U.S. mission to U.N. organizations in Geneva was her bureau’s largest post.

In addition to government roles, Brimmer has had an extensive academic career as a professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and as the first deputy director and director of research at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

In her role at the Council on Foreign Relations, which she has been a member of since 1991, she is writing a book about the necessity of better governance mechanisms to manage expanding human activities in outer space. She also coordinates the work of the Council of Councils, which brings together international affairs research organizations from 24 countries for policy analysis and discussion.

At the State Department, in addition to her role as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, Brimmer served on the policy planning staff from 1999 to 2001 and on the staff of the undersecretary for political affairs from 1993 to 1995.

The world she studied as a college student is much different than the one we live and work in now, she says. So many more industries and professions than ever before are interlocked with global concerns.

“It has been striking to realize how much more our lives intersect and interact compared to 40 or 50 years ago—or even 30 years ago,” she says. “Whatever products we use, there’s a good chance that they come from somewhere else in the world. The food we eat, some comes from our own countries and some from the rest of the world. On a daily basis, we depend on not only the trade of goods but also the trade in services, and we benefit from worldwide supply chains. The rapid movement of communications and technology are part of the impact of technology on our daily life. And that means that we are aware of what’s going on in the rest of the world, and the rest of the world actually affects us.

“Students will find that they may have jobs—even if they’re working in the United States—where the companies they work for are part of global companies or receive crucial components for what they’re producing from elsewhere, and that has all intensified over the past 30 years. To understand our daily lives, we do have to have that deep understanding of the world beyond our shores.”

Studying abroad has inspired many a student to pursue an international career, sometimes as a foreign service officer.
Here are just two examples among Pomona’s increasing number of prominent career diplomats.

David Holmes ’97, then posted in Ukraine, arrives for questioning as part of the 2019 impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. REUTERS/Yara Nardi

 

I had never been abroad at all; it was my first time traveling outside the United States, ever. And it got me interested in foreign affairs for the first time.

David Holmes ’97
Deputy Chief of Mission
U.S. Embassy in Budapest, Hungary

Studied Abroad at University College in Oxford, England

Ambassador Eric Kneedler, right, greets former President Bill Clinton in Rwanda.

 

I first learned about the Foreign Service during that semester and became very intrigued by the idea of a career that would allow me to serve my country and see the world. I don’t think there is any way I would have become a diplomat without that experience.

Eric Kneedler ’95
U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Rwanda
U.S. Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda

Studied abroad in Strasbourg, France

For Vidusshi Hingad ’25, the idea of being the first in her family to leave India for college abroad was nothing short of exhilarating—and daunting. But Pomona has proven to be a home away from home for the Mumbai native.

Vidusshi Hingad ’25

“From the moment that I landed in LAX, I have been exposed to a world of growth, inclusivity and, most importantly, genuine community,” says Hingad, who has participated in the mock trial program and served on the Associated Students of Pomona College’s Senate. “I have come to know that at Pomona, people are everything,” she says.

At the beginning of this century, international students were a modest presence at Pomona College, making up only about 2% of the student body. Fast forward to today and that percentage has soared, with 12.89% of students at Pomona during the past academic year from other countries, hailing from nearly 60 nations. The growth in international enrollment has enhanced Pomona’s campus culture, creating a vibrant array of backgrounds and perspectives.

Living and studying with students from other countries provides an educational experience for U.S. students as well, says Esther Brimmer ’83, a foreign affairs expert who formerly was executive director and CEO of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, the largest nonprofit professional association devoted to international education.

“It’s extremely important for students in the United States to have the opportunity to study with students from around the world,” Brimmer says. “Many students will not be able to travel internationally. But it is a wonderful opportunity for students across the United States to benefit from learning from their colleagues in the classroom, their friends in the dorm, their friends on the sports team. It’s a great way for students to be able to get to know people from other parts of the world even if they do not or are not able to travel.”

Arriving Sight Unseen

International students sometimes arrive to begin their college careers without having so much as a campus tour or attending Admitted Students Day. Shortly after coming to Pomona as a first-year student, Hingad reached out to Assistant Vice President and Director of Admissions Adam Sapp to finally meet him in person after initially being drawn to Pomona after an older student from her high school, Rya Jetha ’23, chose it.

“I remember going home and searching it up, and suddenly everything began to click,” Hingad says. “I remember reading the statement, ‘the promise is in the place,’ and that is exactly why I applied—from small class sizes to warm weather (and people). I applied Early Decision without even visiting the campus.”

In that first face-to-face encounter with Sapp, a person she was only familiar with from afar, Hingad says she became an admirer of the way he described Pomona’s interdisciplinary education, explaining how the liberal arts approach allows knowledge to build on itself.

“What he said challenged me to think of knowledge in a way that everything just clicked,” says Hingad, explaining that the educational system in India is more rigid and requires a narrower area of focus. “Where I come from, people have their future set up from the 10th grade.”

Sapp is used to explaining the different approach at Pomona and many other U.S. colleges.

“For many [international] families, this might be the first time they hear words like liberal arts, interdisciplinary studies or guaranteed housing,” he says. “Often, we recruit in places where the higher education system works very differently from ours, so we are not just introducing a new philosophy of education, we are literally speaking a whole new language.”

Finding Talented Students

International students gathering in front of Bridges Auditorium.

Recruiting international students starts earlier for some of those reasons. Pomona often will begin to connect with students as early as ninth or 10th grade. Admissions officers traveling to other countries not only visit what are known as international schools—which generally have multinational students and multilingual instruction—but also public high schools, which typically offer that country’s national curriculum.

In addition, Pomona engages with government initiatives like EducationUSA, a U.S. State Department network of international student advising centers in more than 170 countries, as well as international nonprofits and foundations like the Davis Foundation and its United World College Scholars Program, the Grew Bancroft Foundation, the Sutton Trust and Bridge2Rwanda, among others. As an example of the effectiveness of those partnerships, Sapp says that every student admitted to Pomona’s Class of 2028 from Argentina, Uruguay, Egypt or Vietnam had a direct link to a global nonprofit partner.

“It’s important to us that we do work beyond traditional international high schools,” Sapp says. “There’s so much talent in the local high schools, and some of these high schools we just couldn’t access without the local outreach of our partners.”

Among Pomona’s longstanding partners is the Davis United World Colleges Scholars Program, which is linked to 18 United World College high schools around the world welcoming students from 160 countries. Their scholars study at almost 100 college and university partners across the U.S., including all five Claremont Colleges. During 2024-25, the foundation contributed more than $125,000 in scholarship support to Davis United World College scholars attending Pomona.

One marked difference between the international admissions process and that for U.S.-based domestic students is financial aid. For international students applying from outside the U.S., Pomona’s admissions process is what is called need-aware. Unlike the need-blind admissions policy employed for domestic applicants, for international students applying from abroad, the student’s or family’s ability to pay tuition is considered. Once admitted, however, all students receive the same type of aid package: 100% of demonstrated need is met with a package that includes a combination of Pomona grants and student work and, just like the packages for domestic students, does not include loans. In all, slightly more than half of international students at Pomona receive financial aid. By comparison, most U.S. colleges and universities do not offer significant need-based aid to international undergraduates.

“We’re incredibly lucky to have policies in place that ensure international students from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds have access to a Pomona education,” Sapp says.

Nationally, colleges suffered a “pandemic slump” in international student recruitment but those numbers have rebounded, in part because of a 35% increase in students from India, according to a recent Open Doors report sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

The top countries that sent students to Pomona for the past academic year were China (29 students), India (20), Japan (12), Greece and Kenya (11 each) and Canada (nine).

In total, 59 countries were represented by Pomona’s F-1 visa-holding students. (An F-1 visa allows a nonimmigrant to study in the U.S. as long as they are a full-time student enrolled in an approved academic program and are proficient in English, among other criteria.)

Student Support Services

Once an international student enrolls at Pomona, the College’s International Student and Scholar Services Office steps in to help with the F-1 visa process. Kathy Quispe, assistant director of international student and scholar services, notes that while her office directly supports students holding F-1 visas during their four years at Pomona, it also provides support to students who are U.S. citizens but grew up abroad. All international students, regardless of immigration status, are invited to the international student orientation. And all international students have the option of being paired with an International Student Mentorship Program (ISMP) mentor who will help them adjust to life at Pomona as well as life in the U.S.

Young Seo Kim ’26

While F-1 visa students share similarities with U.S. citizens who were born and/or raised abroad, they face a burden unique to them: hurdles of paperwork. The paperwork continues throughout their four years at Pomona. If they want to work on campus, that requires applying for a Social Security number. If they want an off-campus internship, that will require specific authorization to avoid being in violation of their F-1 visa status.

In addition, F-1 status has a big impact on an international student’s academic and career choices. “F-1 visa-holding students can work in the U.S. up to a year after graduation, as long as the job relates to their major, but for STEM majors it goes up to two years,” says Quispe. “This year, of our 33 graduating seniors, 27 are graduating in STEM.” Quispe adds that this makes Pomona a place for international students who major in STEM to still enjoy the full offerings of a liberal arts education.

Beyond helping students navigate government requirements, staff in the International Student and Scholar Services Office are fine-tuned to news affecting different parts of the world.

International students gathering for their end-of-year dinner in April 2023 to say a farewell to graduating seniors.

“While many of our students have connections to all parts of the world, our international students tend to be more impacted when there are world crises,” says Carolina De la Rosa Bustamante, director of the Oldenborg Center, Pomona’s language-focused residence hall, dining hall and center for other internationally oriented programs. “When there are geopolitical tensions or natural disasters, international students are the first population that we think of.”

When news of a recent attempted coup in Guatemala reached Quispe, she sought out Young Seo Kim ’26, an international student born and raised in Guatemala to Korean parents, to ask if she was OK.

“It was a very small action, but it was so considerate,” Kim says, describing the different types of support and help that she has received. “She made sure I was doing OK mentally and physically. She was making sure that I knew I had her support in case I needed to leave the college for an emergency,” she adds. “International students are far away from home, so having someone who understands your story and helps you no matter what we need at times is important.

“Obviously, you’re going to be homesick,” says Kim, who appreciates the special events organized by Pomona and ISMP during key times of the school year like fall break and spring break when many students leave campus—but others, like her, stay behind and tend to miss their families more during those times.

Kim recalls spending Thanksgiving on Pomona’s campus among international friends for an ISMP-hosted dinner. “They had different cuisines so people could feel like they’re back home,” says Kim, remembering how the Salvadoran and Chinese foods at one dinner included pupusas and other dishes that were similar to Guatemalan and Korean cuisines. “They had tortillas and fajitas and you could make your own small taco and that really reminded me of home.”

Hingad recalls her first year when she performed spoken-word poetry at an open-mic event on campus. Two years later, a lot has changed, but that feeling remains the same. Her work, titled “Home,” resonated deeply with many people. “The piece was about small impacts that people make and how they compound to make 91711 [Pomona’s ZIP code] a home,” she says. “It’s the shared experience of different people coming from different backgrounds with one thing in common: good parts of humanity.”

Like Hingad, many international students are making a choice that no one else in their families has made.

“Everyone knows we have a lot of students at Pomona who are trailblazers, but for our international students, I think they deserve just a little bit of extra credit,” Sapp says. “To travel five, six, sometimes even 7,000 miles away from home to pursue an education that might be totally different than what is offered in their home country—it astonishes me to think about how much bravery that requires. It’s also a vote of confidence in the Pomona education. We know how transformative this place can be, so working hard to open doors to talent around the world and educate the next generation of global leaders makes total sense.”

The center will be a place where disciplines are interwoven in surprising ways, problems are confronted from fresh angles and people from all over the world come together to ask big questions and discover new answers. The center will facilitate and strengthen ties between our faculty and students—through academic inquiry, research and creative endeavors—as well as to communities both close to home and around the globe.

The Center for Global Engagement will connect our campus community in Southern California to the world. Encompassing a residence hall, a dining hall, language study and flexible academic spaces, the newly imagined center will enhance learning across languages, cultures and disciplines. It will be located where the Oldenborg Center for Modern Languages, built in the 1960s, now stands—but the project represents far more than simply swapping out one building for a newer one. The new center will be a completely novel living, breathing liberal arts laboratory.

With a fundraising goal of $50 million, the 111,000-square-foot global center will be one of the most ambitious and complex construction projects at Pomona in many decades, and the College is taking the time and effort to get it right. Once key steps in planning, design and fundraising are met, construction is scheduled to begin in summer 2026.

The center will support the College’s larger effort to ensure that every Pomona student will meaningfully engage with global learning, whether from abroad or here in the U.S.

For more information, preview the Center for Global Engagement, follow the links for the full video and additional details on planning and design, as well as the larger effort of the Global Pomona Project.

Sam Glick ’04

PCM: You’ve served 16 years on the board, with four more years ahead. What’s the most significant change you’ve seen for the College during that time? And why is it important?

Glick: For many years, and many generations, we talked about a liberal arts education as being this almost kind of monastic pursuit. It was a way to study, and a way to examine the world, where you went away for four years and you learned how to adopt a new lens, learned how to look at the world in a different way. Pomona taught you skills, and you would then be launched out into the world, ready to make a difference. The shift I’ve seen in my time on the board is that Pomona is now very much part of the world. The proverbial Pomona bubble has been popped. I think it’s been popped from the inside and from the outside. I don’t know which one came first, but we’ve long known that the liberal arts are contemporary and relevant to all of the issues that the world is facing; now engaging directly with those issues is fully part of a Pomona education, not something that comes afterwards.

Look at our faculty, from their diverse backgrounds before coming to Pomona to the kinds of research they do now—much of which deals directly with real-world challenges related to the environment, social policy, healthcare, global politics, artificial intelligence and more. Look at the Draper Center, which is an extraordinary resource that allows us to bring the talents of Pomona people to the communities around us. Look at the kinds of speakers we bring to campus. We are taking the power of the liberal arts and using it to influence the world while we make the issues of the world front and center on our campus. That’s truly compelling.

PCM: How has the bubble popped, as you put it, from the inside?

Glick: I think the greatest internal change is a far greater appreciation for the shadow that Pomona casts. When I was a student, it was almost a joke: We had the “Harvard: The Pomona College of the East” T-shirts in the Coop Store. All your friends thought you went to Cal Poly Pomona. We were proud of Pomona being this sort of secret that it was. But first under David Oxtoby and, now under President [G. Gabrielle] Starr, we have become far more confident in our role in the world. We have said to ourselves that we may only educate 1,700 or so students at a given time, but we can have an influence on the course of higher education in ways far greater than that. Whether through the kind of thought leadership that President Starr has been doing, or the STEM cohort programs that have served as models for other colleges, or the amazing Benton Museum [of Art] that really is a regional resource, Pomona is not a secret anymore. We’re still appropriately modest, and I don’t ever want us to lose that. But we really do have a big impact on the world, well beyond the amazing students we launch. And to me that’s incredibly exciting.

PCM: Reflecting on your own time at Pomona, how did our version of the liberal arts shape your life?

Glick: Oh, in so many ways. I grew up in Southern California. We lived in the low desert; my family was in the citrus nursery business in Thermal, about halfway between Palm Springs and the Salton Sea. I went to a big public high school and the whole junior class took the ASVAB [the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery]. We had four counselors for the whole 2,000 or so of us. If you were a good student, you got handed a UC [University of California] application, and off you went.

I had an English teacher whose husband had gone to one of The Claremont Colleges and she said to my best friend and me, “You know, you should take a look at those schools in Claremont.” We were 17 and you got a free day off school if you were on a college tour, which was all the incentive we needed. And so we drove to Claremont.

When I toured Pomona, it was fundamentally different than any place I had ever seen before. The campus was gorgeous; it looked like the nicest golf courses in the desert where I grew up. I sat in on a class, and I met students who were talking about all sorts of ideas I hadn’t even imagined. And so I applied Early Decision, as did my best friend. We both got in and never looked back.

Until I arrived at Pomona, I thought the liberal arts were invented in Claremont, California; I didn’t even know this was a category of school, honest to goodness. I would have gone to UC Riverside otherwise. I had toured the Citrus Experiment Station there, since citrus was the family business. And I would have done perfectly well, but I wouldn’t be the person I am today. Pomona College taught me to write and communicate and analyze and think and be creative in ways that I just hadn’t considered before.

I came to Pomona, as many high school students do, thinking there was a right and a wrong way to do things and as long as you were right, that was all that mattered. Pomona taught me the art of taking multiple perspectives, of persuasion, of immersing yourself in a different way of thinking. You still need to know what the facts are; that’s critical. But so much of what I do is taking others’ perspectives, bouncing them up against my own and communicating in ways that hopefully allow both of those perspectives to evolve. And frankly, that’s how I’ve led the board for nine years. It’s come full circle in that way.

PCM: You have a compelling Pomona story. At the same time, there’s deep and growing skepticism about higher education. Why do you think that is? And how can Pomona play a role in addressing that?

Glick: Frankly, some of that skepticism is warranted. You know, we have—and by “we” I mean not just Pomona College but higher education broadly, or at least elite higher education—for the vast majority of our history been more exclusive than inclusive. Elite colleges and universities are probably the only charitable organizations in the country that brag about how few people we serve. If you went to a hospital or a soup kitchen and they said, “Isn’t it amazing, we turned away more than 90% of the people who could benefit from us,” you’d think that was absurd. But when we have elite higher ed publishing admissions rates that are in the single digits, that’s fundamentally what we’re saying, right?

I think higher education needs to tackle how we become more inclusive. How do we become more accessible? How do we become more affordable? How do we make it so more people can benefit from the wonderful things that we do? Those are real challenges that we should take seriously.

Some of the skepticism, however, is more about the nature of higher education as an enterprise—a nature that shouldn’t change. The students we attract are not fully formed; we are part of that formation as students try on different ideas and test the boundaries on all sorts of issues. Similarly, the best faculty are bold and provocative, engaging in the major issues of the day. And they should be. We stand for excellence and for progress and for academic freedom. Sometimes that makes people uncomfortable. That’s the nature of it. What’s changed in recent years is that, due to the internet and social media, the broader public has hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute exposure to the messiness that makes college campuses what they are. The boundaries between our community and broader society are blurring. That’s one of the downsides to the bubble popping.

At Pomona, we are doing many things that are amazing. Our commitment to financial aid is second to none. We have made great strides in terms of not just attracting a diverse student body, but creating an environment where every student can thrive. Our faculty are extraordinary, and our students learn from them and work on research with them shoulder-to-shoulder. I have, in my role as board chair, probably talked to hundreds if not thousands of alumni. And the most common reason people feel connected to Pomona is because some faculty member changed their lives. Very few schools can say all of this. We must continue to lead in these areas.

I also believe liberal arts colleges, and Pomona specifically, are more important than ever. When we talk about the skills of the liberal arts, we often refer to analyzing and writing; perhaps presenting or speaking as well. In today’s society, I’d add listening to that. Listening may be the most important skill of the liberal arts. Taking someone else’s perspective requires training and practice. At our best, we are a place designed for dialogue, designed for people to understand each other as humans, not in positional kinds of ways. We must lead on that.

PCM: President Starr has often alluded to the underrepresentation of students from the middle-income spectrum in the U.S., and we’ve launched an initiative to attract and enroll more middle-income students. Why is this important?

Glick: I’m a huge supporter of where President Starr is going in terms of increasing the number of middle-income students who have access to the life-changing education we offer. We have made great strides in terms of racial and ethnic diversity, gender diversity, bringing in international students, you name it. But like most institutions like us, we skew towards those students with high incomes at least by national standards, with a meaningful but smaller number of students of very modest means. Someone described it to me as a “whale” distribution. If you imagine what the silhouette of a whale looks like, that’s about right.

When you have that kind of “whale” distribution, it changes the environment on campus, in that it creates a polarized environment of haves and have-nots. And I think that’s important to address. It also means that the people who grow up as the children of teachers and nurses and accountants are largely being served by a different class of school, which is mostly state institutions. They’re not even considering Pomona College, and we see that. Those state institutions are perfectly good. But they’re not providing the kind of liberal arts experience that you and I were just talking about, and I think everybody deserves access to it. So it’s an issue we have to take on in the years ahead.

PCM: The past academic year brought significant protest movements to campus, with many students and faculty pushing for steps such as divestment from—and/or an academic boycott of—Israel. Other people were opposed and concerned about the climate on campus for different viewpoints. How do you respond to this?

Glick: I try to start from a human place, before I remind myself of my responsibilities as board chair. The current war continues to take an immense human toll, and as we speak today people are starving and dying and living in fear in ways most of us who are privileged enough to live in the U.S. can’t even imagine. We need to acknowledge that Pomona is not isolated from that world; we are part of that world, and many of our students, our staff, our faculty and our alumni are sad and angry and frustrated. We need to make Pomona an environment in which people can express those feelings and can channel their anger and their hurt and their disappointment into productive, ethical activism to make the world a better place. We have a long tradition of activism at Pomona College. It is not lost on me that the epicenter of the activities of the past year has been Marston Quad, which is mere steps from where some of the archives of Myrlie Evers-Williams [Class of 1968], the great civil rights icon, are kept.

At the same time, we also need to make Pomona a place where everybody feels welcome, safe and free to express themselves, regardless of their identity or worldview. And this particular conflict, perhaps more so than almost any conflict, has political, religious and racial dimensions we can’t ignore. Even if there happen to be views that a majority of people on campus hold, those aren’t institutional views. And I think that’s one of the really important things I have learned as board chair: The role of the board is to provide resources and ensure the conditions exist for meaningful, productive, inclusive analysis and debate, but not to take sides in those debates. Sometimes that role can be frustrating for trustees, all of whom hold their own personal views, too. But it’s a critical one as we lead Pomona for the long term.

PCM: As we close, what do you see as the most urgent issue on the horizon for Pomona College?

Glick: Pomona College is in a very good place. One of the things I’ve gotten to do in this role as board chair is to learn about the higher education landscape more generally. And it’s clear that there are institutions that are struggling with attracting enough students. They are struggling to attract faculty, and to pay those faculty. They have facilities that are in bad shape. We don’t have those issues at Pomona, and I’m very grateful to the generations of trustees and donors before me who have made that the case.

There are two big challenges for Pomona. The first is that we not get too comfortable. It would be easy for Pomona just to keep being what we are today while the world changes around us. And it’s part of why I’m so proud that we recruited President Starr to come here. She challenges us every day. We can’t be complacent. We can’t say that we’ve just always done things a particular way and be satisfied.

The other challenge for Pomona is countering the polarization of society. We have seen the effects of polarization on campus in this past year with the war in the Middle East. What we do as a liberal arts institution does not work if we can’t listen and talk to each other, if we can’t take each other’s perspectives and genuinely get inside each other’s minds. We must continue to produce students who are both broad-minded and open-minded. To me, that’s critical.