Saghens by the Bay

With a rich and diverse cultural center like San Francisco to draw upon, the Pomona College Bay Area Regional Community has a lot to offer alumni. Since 1999 and the renaming of Pomona’s alumni chapters as regional communities, the Bay Area Regional Community has offered such events as musical productions and concerts, theatre, faculty visits and lectures, outdoor events like hikes and garden tours, community service events, and social gatherings such as happy hours and winter break parties.

Starting with what their volunteers are interested in, the Bay Area Regional Community has put on activities that range from as few as five participants — such as career connection events— to cultural events that brought in crowds of almost 170. This past year, regional community Co-chair Avery Sheffield ’97 helped to plan an event that featured the screening of a documentary, “A Year in Japan,” by her classmate, Dan Bernstein ’97. The sold-out event gave alumni a chance to discuss their thoughts on documentary film production and travel.

“By doing different types of activities,” says Co-chair Michelle Cooke ’90, “we draw people with different interests from a broad array of ages and a broad cultural spectrum.” To Sheffield it’s the community service events that give alumni a unique opportunity to connect with each other as well as their local community. “With all the time you spend together, you definitely get to know Pomona alumni you wouldn’t know otherwise.”

In her second year serving as the Alumni Association’s Regional Support Coordinator, Cooke has an intimate understanding of what makes a good regional alumni event.
“I don’t consider the ‘best’ events the ones that draw the biggest numbers,” she says. Instead she believes the best events are those that give alumni the best sense of the Pomona community.

“Our alumni want a broader knowledge of what people do, and what they are, after Pomona.”