On Facebook this fall, we asked alums to share about a Pomona memento that they still have, that gives them a little mood-boost whenever they see it. Roughly 80 of you posted comments and ideas on the thread. Here are a few of the highlights!
Discover more on our Pomona Facebook group.
“I just earned my 3rd degree black belt in taekwondo. I really have to focus, but I also have to ‘let go’ to some extent. It’s a real connection to Self, and to others.”
—Debbie (Pieper) Fulmer ’93
“I enjoy dancing Filipino dances with my daughter. I enjoy teaching my culture to the next generation.”
—Janelle Tangonan Anderson ’93
“I finished my first Ironman with Eunice Kim Moon ’91! (Why is she showered and changed while I’m sweaty and gross? Because she finished waaay ahead of me.)”
—Sam Thomas ’91
“Escape rooms! They’re all about immersion – the story, sets, challenges, hands-on elements, surprises, communication, and time pressure all keep me fully immersed and focused.”
—Krista Jones ’99
“Birdwatching gets me out of the house and away from screens. I came to it from photography, and as I gravitated towards it, I found so much more than just getting that ‘perfect shot’: when you want to find birds, listening is at least as important as seeing them.”
—Jeremy Frank ’90
For me, what’s most immersive about oil painting is getting into the details with the contours of human heads and bodies, and especially the intense colors that are at my disposal.
—Phil Freyder II, ’68
On Facebook, we asked alums about their favorite photo they ever took of something on campus. Here were a few of the responses!
A shot atop a tree on Marston Quad, by Samuel Breslow ’18
In the fall of 2024, Pomona launched a minor in data science. To commemorate the new concentration, let’s look back at some of the College’s milestones in computer science and technology.
1958: Bendix G-15
1958: Five years after first offering “computer classes” for word processing, Pomona opens Millikan Laboratory, its first computer lab, which included a Heathkit analog computer and the Bendix G-15 digital computer. One of about 400 manufactured globally, the Bendix was the size of a refrigerator, required punched paper tape to load instructions and data, and had “memory” in the form of a rotating drum the size of a wastebasket.
1964: As part of the launch of the Seaver North science building, Pomona is one of the first U.S. schools to buy an IBM System/360 computer, which eager Assembly- and Fortran-learning undergrads used for work in chemistry, economics, geology and math. The Student Life newspaper marveled at how a unit the size of a cigar box could contain the computer’s entire memory of 16,000 bytes; today’s smartphones are roughly 16,000,000 times more robust.
1967: Programmer Bea Cooley in the Millikan Lab. Image courtesy Honnold Mudd Library
1971: The Mudd-Blaisdell residence hall is outfitted with a PDP-10 mainframe, immediately sparking the interest of first-year Don Daglow ’74, who used the computer to create several early video games, including what’s widely regarded as the world’s first “role-playing game,” which was a text-based game adapted from the then-new “Dungeons & Dragons” tabletop game.
1971 Daglow coding in his Mudd-Blaisdell dorm room
1980: Five years after purchasing IBM’s second-ever 5100 minicomputer, Pomona becomes the first educational institution to own and operate an IBM 4331, which opened students up to being able to use email.
1988: VAX 6310
1988: The Mudd Science Library installs a VAX 6310, which permits the linking of computers to the other 5Cs, thereby introducing students to resources such as the internet. That same year Pomona and several other schools launched the Science, Technology and Society program.
1991: The first two computer science majors graduate from Pomona. Computer science split off from math to become a separate department in 2006, and is now one of the College’s most popular majors.
2000: Pomona launches the Andrew Science Hall for Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science—the first time there was a dedicated space for computer science as an academic discipline. By 1997, Pomona also had become one of the first colleges to hook up every single bedroom in its dormitories to a 56K network connection for internet use.
2014: Pomona is named the country’s “most wired college” by the higher-education review platform Unigo, which previously cited Pomona’s innovation in being one of the country’s first colleges to provide Wi-Fi connectivity to all of its dorms.
Estella Laboratory Courtyard
1924: With the greater Claremont population close to doubling, Pomona’s board sets up a committee to consider expansion by way of other institutions
President James A. Blaisdell in 1925
Spring 1925: President Blaisdell gives the committee “A Preliminary Statement for Consideration by the Committee on Future Organization”
Fall 1925: Articles of incorporation are filed in Sacramento by Robert J. Bernard, on the 38th anniversary of the College’s founding. Claremont Graduate School (CGS) is incorporated on the same day.
1926: Scripps College is founded
1927: CGS opens
1931: Construction finishes on Bridges Auditorium
Bridges Auditorium
Construction, 1931
Honnold Library
1946: Claremont Men’s College founded (renamed Claremont McKenna in 1981)
1952: Honnold Library dedicated
1954: Claremont becomes the new home of what’s now the California Botanic Garden, the state’s largest garden of native plants (70,000+)
Featured in the May 1954 Pomona College Bulletin: “NEW SIGNS have been placed at the entrances to the city of Claremont…”
1957: Harvey Mudd College opens
1963: Pitzer College is founded
1997: Keck Graduate Institute established
2000: CGS becomes a separate entity within the consortium and is re-named Claremont Graduate University (CGU)
2025: 7C enrollment hits roughly 9,000 students, with combined alumni of around 100,000
Fun fact (via Rachel Paterno-Mahler ’07):
“Having a Smiley 2000s today would be the equivalent of having Smiley 80s when those of us that graduated in the 2000s were at Pomona.”
#1 Harwood Halloween
#2 Smiley 80s
#3 Ski-Beach Day
Other popular events include Death by Chocolate, Freshman Dance, Middle School Dance
Join the conversation on Facebook if you haven’t already.
A 13-foot sailboat effortlessly floats from the rafters of Frary Dining Hall.
One of two doors into the mathematics department magically disappears overnight, leaving only a seamless stretch of blank wall in its place.
A safe containing student grades literally vanishes from Holmes Hall, discovered weeks later underneath the building’s creaking floorboards.
Pranks have played a storied role over the years at Pomona. One of the most ambitious took place 50 years ago, with the pranksters only claiming credit 37 years later. The dossier they back-channeled to Pomona College Magazine resulted in a 2012 story finally solving one of Pomona’s most enduring mysteries: Who replaced Chopin with a bust of Frank Zappa in the frieze on the face of Big Bridges?
John Irvine ’76 works on the Zappa frieze
John Irvine ’76 and Greg Johnson ’76—juniors at the time of the prank—told PCM clandestinely that they “weren’t huge Zappa fans at the time,” even though he had lived in Claremont for a while. They dreamed up the prank when they learned the Mothers of Invention rocker was coming to play Bridges in April of 1975.
“We were looking up at the front of Big Bridges and said, ‘Well, gosh, he should have his name up there,’” Irvine recalled. They envisioned Zappa right alongside other greats—Bach, Beethoven, Wagner and Schubert—over the front entrance. Chopin, they decided, was dispensable. “I’m not big on the Romantics,” Irvine explained.
Pulling off the prank took two intensive weeks of preparation. Obstacle one: how to get onto the roof of Bridges Auditorium? Johnson calculated they could lay a ladder between (long gone) Renwick Gym and Big Bridges and, perched more than 30 feet above the ground, crawl four feet across from one roof to the other. “Being young college students, we were stupid enough to do that,” Irvine told PCM.
Johnson and Irvine measured the space they would need to fill: a whopping 15 feet in length and five feet in height. Which led to obstacle two: how to make a replacement frieze light enough to hoist into position, but heavy enough to stay in place. Their answer was Styrofoam in an aluminum frame, with a papier-mâché bust of Zappa anchoring one end and a marijuana leaf the other. (Zappa was against drugs, but, the pair admitted to PCM, “Hey, we know, but it was the ’70s.”) They built it in a dorm room and were putting it together late at night in the Wash—when it began to rain. A quick move to the Mudd-Blaisdell trash room was almost a disaster. The next morning was trash day.
To overcome obstacle three—getting caught—Irvine and Johnson recruited the help of the Statpack, a group of fellow math and statistics students. They modeled the movement of Campus Security patrols in the wee hours of the morning to find the optimal time for evasion. Sometime between 2 and 3 in the morning, the 60- to 70-pound frieze was installed on the front of the building. The statistical modeling must have been sound, because until they finally took credit via PCM in 2012, the prankers’ identities went (almost) undetected. As PCM noted, “Frank Zappa was now shoulder to shoulder with Beethoven and Bach on the campus’s most imposing edifice. Chopin had been shown up, and the two math majors had succeeded in pulling off a highly visible prank.”
Just one miscalculation: Zappa’s bust joined the roster of the greats a week after his concert at Big Bridges. “We kind of got an incomplete,” Johnson told PCM. “We weren’t quite ready in time.”
This year marks the publication of the second edition of Pomona College: Reflections on a Campus, a campus history authored by professor emeritus Marjorie Harth, co-creator of Pomona’s archives program with former director of donor relations Don Pattison.
First published in 2007 in conjunction with the efforts of many colleagues, the book aims to chronicle Pomona’s campus not simply as a collection of buildings and open spaces but as a carefully designed learning and living environment for Pomona students. We spoke with Harth about the project.
How would you summarize this new second edition?
This version updates the history of Pomona’s campus, adding the many new and recently renovated buildings during the 17 years between editions. Physical changes reflect shifting pedagogies, societal priorities and a host of other cultural factors. I recommend Professor George Gorse’s essay on Myron Hunt, our founding architect; Scott Smith, long-time planning consultant, contributed a new chapter on landscape architect Ralph Cornell who worked hand in hand with Hunt. These give us insight into campus planning, how it has changed and how integrally related the two disciplines—architecture and landscape architecture—should be.
What would you like readers to take away from Reflections?
I hope they will take away an awareness of how rich the history of this College and its campus are and how much we can learn from and take pride in them. I hope readers will begin to register the way our environments—buildings, grounds, classrooms, public spaces—affect the quality of our lives.
We all know this on some level, I believe, but we don’t always focus on it when we’re creating or inhabiting spaces for various purposes, especially, in this case, a place for learning, intellectual growth and experimentation. So, this book offers what we hope is a fresh way of understanding the College and the lives lived within it.
Photo courtesy of Nava Mau ’14
This summer Nava Mau ’14 became the first-ever trans female to be nominated as best supporting actress in a limited or anthology series or movie. Mau played Teri in the hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer.
“For trans actors we just don’t get a lot of opportunities to develop our craft, grow as artists, and to be recognized for all that we are and all that we can be,” she told Deadline magazine this summer. “We can see that when trans people are given the opportunity, we will grow into it and so far beyond any expectation.”
A Historical Emmy Nod for Baby Reindeer and Nava Mau ’14
When the Studio Art Hall opened in October 2014, it brought together under one roof art making, art appreciation and art interaction at the College. Housed in the building is the 1,500-square-foot Chan Gallery, made possible by Trustee Emeritus and art major Bernard Charnwut Chan ’88. This fall the Art Department celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the Studio Art Hall with “Lush Matter,” a Chan Gallery exhibition that served as a spotlight of alumni artwork inspired by nature.
Drenk’s “Compression 13”
Jessica Drenk ’02 traces her “Compression 13” piece back to her time at Pomona. One of her first projects for Professor Michael O’Malley involved transforming books into rich, unusual tunnel-like structures by removing their covers and tearing holes through them. “Books have become part of my repertoire, so that class was the beginning of my art career,” she says.
Falby’s “Peregrine”
Dan Falby ’12 sent the show four abstract ceramic sculptures that involved dropping and tossing clay slabs, relying on gravity to do its work. He says he strives to make art that has “a similar elemental happenstance” as natural phenomena. Falby was a visiting artist at the American Museum of Ceramic Art, then served as a ceramics instructor in Los Angeles before relocating to the Northeast in 2021.
Gewirtzman’s
“Black Velvet Canyon, Red Rocks”
Aliyana Gewirtzman ’12 submitted four pieces, including “Indifferent Earth,” a 40-inch-by-30-inch oil painting, and two ink drawings of Red Rock Canyon and Joshua Tree. She worked in New York for 10 years before leaving to travel the country in a camper van. She currently works as a full-time artist in Colorado, including teaching drawing and color theory courses remotely at the New York School of Interior Design.
Becca Lofchie ’10 (left), returned to the College to give a gallery talk earlier this month. She and classmates view her collection of ceramic vases. Photo by: Daniel Klein ’26
Becca Lofchie ’10 had a collection of ceramic vases on display in the show. While working professionally as a book designer, Lofchie took up ceramics a few years ago “as a way to do something with my hands,” she says. A design teacher at California State University, Los Angeles, Lofchie returned to the College earlier this month to give a gallery talk. Lofchie’s graphic design work clearly influences her ceramics, with an affinity for ’80s Memphis design that shows up in her bright color palettes and bold patterns.
Marsh’s “Untitled Mirror“
Tristan Louis Marsh ’18, an L.A.-based visual artist and designer, contributed four pieces: a pendant, mirror, chair and pair of candleholders. Creating works from wood and resin using a CNC machine and 3D printer, Marsh focuses on sculptural furniture and lighting that derive their form from biological structures and natural occurring phenomena. This summer Dezeen Magazine named Marsh’s studio one of “10 scene-setting independent design studios in Los Angeles.”
Yonten’s “Untitled (still life)”
Ugen Yonten ’22 is a second-year graduate student at the Yale School of Architecture, and contributed a still-life painting that he created at Pomona. The piece was a way for him to reflect on the pandemic and “the stillness of being back at home.” Tricia Avant, who serves as academic coordinator and gallery manager of art at Pomona, credits Yonten for his strong sense of artistic direction. “For just about any subject that he would tackle, he has his own aesthetic sensibility about it,” she says.