Good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for coming this morning on Founders Day to my first State of the College in quite a long time. It's wonderful to be here with you and to start off by celebrating the fact that we can be together and that we are together at an extraordinary place.
One of the peculiarities of our Founders Day traditions is that we are part of a College that's constantly reinventing itself, yet is also really proud of the traditions and places we have individually and collectively come from. It's great to be together to think about that and where we are right now.
In 1887, when we first began, it was hard to get this place started. When you see a success, you imagine it was always meant to be a success, when in fact this was a jump ball for quite some time. Within six months of the articles of incorporation for the College being filed with the state, the railroad boom, which had fueled western expansion and is the reason for Claremont being where it is, had completely gone bust.
All of the pledges of financial support for the College's future lay uncollected, and Charles Sumner, for whom Sumner Hall is named, was given the brief of saving the College the first time around — which he did — and that's the reason that Sumner Hall, perhaps our oldest and most distinctive building on campus, is what it is. And it welcomes every student who comes in person to see our campus. More than 25,000 alumni since Charles Burt Sumner can be glad that this jump ball in fact succeeded.
When we opened in September 1888 in the city of Pomona, there were just three college freshmen. But what I didn't know until recently was in addition to those three freshmen, there were 52 prep school students showing an interest even then in what the pipeline to college looked like; and 55 music students putting art at the center of what it is that we do together. An incredible future lay ahead for those students and this College, but none of them could have foreseen what it would be.
And right now, when we fast forward, we are at a College that took root in a town with no paved streets, and became one of the most highly regarded colleges in the nation. And an interesting fact about that is of all the schools founded since the Civil War that have entered the top 10 in the United States, all of them were from Claremont. The reason for that is not necessarily that Claremont is magical, though sometimes, especially when it rains and the air smells fresh like the eucalyptus, you can just get that scent…it feels magical.
But the real reason is that we have extraordinary people who felt something in those first years. And every time we draw new people into campus, they continue to feel that sense of something extraordinary. From those humble beginnings, we've gotten a Nobel Prize winner and leaders in business and the arts.
What also makes us special is that we never rest on our laurels. We always look higher to who we can become and what we can do. And that means it's crucial for all of us here to remember that the acts we carry out today, the things we're doing now, lay the foundation for a future.
It can be very easy at times to talk about Pomona in the third person—as an it or a they. But in fact, Pomona is a we, and it's a we that does all kinds of things. We argue with each other, we disagree, we learn, we care about each other an extraordinary amount. We chirp together, we plan for the future, and we do things that are consequential on this campus.
And when we are in our classrooms with our students or we're in our offices with them or walking around campus, we know that what they do here is setting the foundation for the rest of their lives. It’s a pretty special privilege that we share: helping them to truly bear their added riches in trust for all who follow.
Now, the umbrella under which we've been doing this for the past five years has been our strategic vision, which was put together by a group of faculty, students, staff, alumni and trustees starting in 2018. We spent two years identifying three essential elements of what it is that we currently do on campus that we needed to recommit to and expand. Any idea of our future has to begin with who we can attract to our campus—students to begin with, but also faculty and staff.
And this past year, you really see what the scale of that means. We had 12,989 students apply to Pomona, which I mention not because I think the number in and of itself is something significant, but because it illustrates the scale of a challenge we have. If our students are in many ways the most precious part of who and what we are, being able to identify the kinds of talent and the kinds of people who can enrich our lives, can help each other learn and move on to do great things in the world—that's a huge task.
So, our first strategic pillar, equity and access, really is meant to get at this. We have to cast a wide net, especially in the world that we are in now.
The wider the net we cast, the more we can be confident we are reaching the most talented people from across the entire axiom of talent. Intellectual talent is spread pretty uniformly across humankind. It's not something that exists only in the privileged. We have to be active in going out to find it. So, this year, our admissions team visited 514 schools in 21 countries and 37 states to find students. More than 5,500 students couldn't make it to campus, so they met them online. And more than 6,700 prospective students came here to campus. I see the tour guides walking backwards and it puts my heart in my throat every time they step off a curb!
I want to thank the folks in admissions for that commitment, because you bring us 400-plus presents every year. This year, 24% of the students we brought to campus were first in their families to go to college, which is an immense achievement for each one of those students and their families…and makes me feel extraordinary. That's a new record for us. We have fewer international students than we have had in the recent past, in part because of the changes to policies around immigration. We have 25 QuestBridge match students and 19 Posse scholars, and their interests cover the gamut—the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, as well as the interdisciplinary programs that we offer.
There are a lot of schools that'll talk about this valedictorian and that valedictorian as a member of the senior class—that would get boring after a while at Pomona. So, the only one I'm going to mention is a student named Audie O'Neal, who is a juggler, and in his application wrote that he had taught 47 students to juggle at his high school. That was definitely a distinguishing factor in that application!
We want to find the best students, and best doesn't look just one way, right? If we wanted to fill our class with people who had perfect scores on a standardized test, we could do that. But that wouldn't be a Pomona class because they wouldn't be varied in their interests; they wouldn't think in all sorts of different ways. They would've been really well prepared to pass tests. But every day in a Pomona classroom is not taking a test, and every day in the rest of their lives is not doing a problem set. We have the long view in mind when we work with these extraordinary young people.
So, we have to find them, and we have to help them come. Starting in the 1970s, that’s when Pomona first went need-blind in admissions, which meant we did not have to, as many schools still do, consider whether or not a student could afford to pay before we let them in. Because when you think about it, it's a false promise. "I'll let you in, but too bad, sorry, I know you can't pay." Schools that aren't need-blind, I don't fault them. It's about being able to be responsible, and pay the costs that it takes to run an institution. But there's also a degree of awareness as to what the price of college really means. We started need-blind admissions in the 1970s, but we could not afford to go full-need until the 2000s, when we finally had raised enough money to take the next step. People talk about Pomona as being a very wealthy institution, but it took us nearly 100 years to get to the point where we could afford to have the neediest students not have to pay.
But that was only one step. We know, based on admissions information, that students from many middle-income families don't even apply to Pomona at the rate in which they're represented in the high school graduating population. They screen themselves out, feeling that they're never going to be able to pay what it costs, and they don't even want to ask their parents to consider it. What we're trying to do in our strategic plan right now is to raise the funds to make sure middle-income families know that Pomona is within their reach. With really good financial aid, in fact, it can be far less expensive to go to Pomona than to go to a flagship state college. And they're going to be more likely to graduate within four years and to graduate debt-free. That's the promise we want to expand on so that our dreams of having equitable access to this institution can go that next step and become that much more real.
So far in our capital campaign, which is moving along, we've had some extraordinary gifts to help us get there. Two of our alumni, Sam and Emily Glick, both of the class of 2004, met in an econ class—and I’m looking right now at the faculty member who officiated at their wedding. Sam is our former board chair, and (he and Emily) gave a very special gift of $2,474,747.47 to help us launch a pilot to make Pomona more affordable to middle-income students. Sam and Emily, thank you.
Our strategic vision begins with expanding the view of who can come to our college. And it then goes on to what happens while those students are here. Our second pillar is transformative knowledge and creativity.
The landscape of knowledge has changed significantly since 1887, and our faculty along with it. Our strategic vision includes a commitment to expand the size of our faculty as well as to broaden the range of knowledge with which we engage…and to cross some new frontiers in what we discover and create. This year, we have 15 new colleagues who are joining us, which is superb. They're teaching in 13 different departments, and I'm looking at one of them right now who is a new faculty member, but also an old new faculty member who came back to Pomona. Their expertise ranges from digital media technology and surveillance and their impact on democracy, to how to make AI more energy efficient—a huge question, how to better understand what makes real brains computationally adept, and even how to run a little farther and be a lot healthier through Sagehen Athletics.
That matters, not because of magic ratios of students to faculty. It matters because Pomona faculty inspire our students through the intimate, close interconnections we're able to build. I read about this every year when we do our Wig Distinguished faculty awards. Students say things, literally, like, "Can he teach me everything for the rest of my life?" And 20 or 30 years later, alumni still recall the impact of their mentors. I was reading a tribute written by our alumna Meredith Course about our beloved neuroscience colleague and friend Karl Johnson, whom we lost this summer. He not only introduced Meredith to her husband during office hours, but he even officiated at their wedding. And she wrote, "Professor Johnson had the superpowers of both seeing generously who we could become and knowing how to help us get there.” Karl, we miss you every day.
At Pomona, we continue to find new ways to connect across generations because that's what education really is. One of the ways in which we're doing this is the Return to Pomona program. It brings talented alumni back to campus to contribute their deep knowledge and lived wisdom in the classroom and beyond. This year we have three alumni whom I'd like you to keep a lookout for: Alfredo Romero, class of '91, Scott Lisbin, class of '77, and Amaru Tejeda, class of '13. They're teaching courses and offering lectures around campus. So, look out for ways to interact with them this year.
The world that we're preparing our students for is increasingly interconnected. As we move forward in the strategic vision, our approach to education is becoming more globally focused and more interested in lifting up these new kinds of interconnections. You undoubtedly heard about, and I know many of you have contributed to, the Global Pomona Project, which is capably guided now by Kara Godwin, our Chief Global Officer. It's about answering a vital question: how do we prepare Pomona graduates to lead in a world of problems whose scale and complexity make them define whole generations?
Students preparing for impactful careers obviously need more than a narrow or parochial perspective. And this is the revolutionary idea that Dietrich Oldenborg started here more than 60 years ago when he endowed the Oldenborg Center. Certainly, our students need to be fluent in languages and cultures, but they need to learn more than just how to speak to one another and listen to each other. They need to learn how to work together, how to collaborate across divides and think deeply and creatively across borders and across disciplines.
As part of this, we've launched new faculty-led study abroad opportunities in the past several years. There’s Global Gateways, where faculty have taken students to Belgium, Morocco, Mexico and Hawaii to tackle issues of migration, labor, conservation and culture, alongside community partners who have unmatched local expertise so they can put the liberal arts to work in collaboration with others around the world.
We want to foster broader and deeper thinking about the challenges our world faces, and the new Center for Global Engagement is going to be the hub for this. If everything goes as planned—and we are making really good progress—construction will begin this summer with a move-in date of fall 2028. This new center is going to be a significant building project. It's 100,000 square feet. It will have living space for 200 students along with dining and event spaces, classrooms and outdoor environments. I can't wait to see it take shape.
The final pillar of our strategic vision is flourishing and inclusion. And here, I want to take a moment to acknowledge how hard the last two years on our campus have really been. The devastation of the war in Israel and Palestine brought sorrow, anger and activism to our campus. And at the same time that this was going on here, the rise in Islamophobia and antisemitism across the globe broke many of our hearts.
But then, as protests about Gaza gripped our own campus and escalated to the occupation of Carnegie, the feelings of isolation and loneliness of many members of our community grew ever more intense. The fact that we could not talk to one another, but seemed only to be able to shout at one another…and that we couldn't listen to each other's pain—that made the pain a lot worse. No one wanted to believe that our beautiful college could be a place where antisemitism could be real. Many of us felt that that was long ago and somebody else's problem. But there were moments on this campus we didn't live up to our ideals.
And so, for the past 11 months, Pomona has been in a mediation that includes some of our own students as well as the Anti-Defamation League of the U.S. and the Brandeis Center. I hope that we can resolve this soon and come to an agreement that protects our students and supports the freedom of all to speak, teach and learn; one that lifts up all of our voices and gives confidence to everyone that hatred, whether of Jews, of Israelis, of Palestinians, of Muslims — hatred, full stop — has no place on our campus.
This means we have to commit alongside one another to make our campus better. And we'll do it together. And I'm proud to do it with you because I know of no place better suited to the task of showing each other that we care about making room for all of us on our campus. That's deeply embedded in the Pomona way of life. We try to reach for that in everything that we do. If we're going to live up to our promise overall, our whole community needs to feel that we're part of one place.
We need to feel our best. We need to feel physically and mentally healthy. We've made strides toward that. Hamilton Health Box has become a valued resource for faculty and staff who can now get free medical attention on campus without the time or stress of juggling work and personal obligations. We've seen an uptick in visits. Shout out to nurse Stephanie. If you haven't gone over to see her to get your flu shot, go for it.
We're also working with other members of the consortium on developing housing solutions for faculty and staff. Jeff Roth and I will be sharing more about that soon, we hope.
There are also two ways we're supporting flourishing and inclusion in academics. The first is the Institute for Inclusive Excellence, which focuses attention on teaching and mentoring strategies for all students. Their work on inclusive pedagogy is at the heart of our efforts to create an environment where every student feels they belong.
We know that success in the classroom means that you can actually get access to the course materials you need — an issue that some of our students struggle with. Textbooks aren't cheap, and some courses require expensive additional materials. That's where an initiative led by our own Associate Professor of Psychological Science Sara Masland fits in. Currently running as a pilot across 38 courses, the College is providing books and course materials at no cost for students, which helps level the playing field so everyone can fully engage in their coursework.
A few great comments about this pilot program from a faculty member: "Thank you, thank you, thank you for including my course. It's been transformative. Every student has the books. They're all reading the books, and class is going so much better."
And a student's perspective: "Buying books for college is whack." I’m with you there!
And from another student: "This program is incredible. I can't express how grateful I was to save 300 bucks this semester. I hope Pomona administrators are smart enough to implement this system into all classes going into the future." We’re working on it. We're raising the money for that right now.
I couldn't be more grateful for the energy and professionalism of our incredible advancement team. They just concluded a fiscal year that broke all of our fundraising records—the most recent by 44%. We raised $82.8 million from more than 7,900 donors. I'm really grateful to those individuals for the faith they've placed in us to carry out our mission.
Fundraising here supports everything: scholarships, endowed professorships, capital projects, lectures, internships, and research. Virtually every area of campus life is funded by philanthropy. And it's not just about asking for money. It's about matching passions to opportunities.
If you were able to look around campus two weeks ago at the research fair on Stover Walk, that's when you see those passions light up and run wild. And if you missed it — the Intensive Summer Experience Symposium — mark your calendars for October of next year. You never know what you'll see. There was a student dressed up in a suit of armor — and that can make your day!
I want you to know that Pomona College is thriving. But it would be an incomplete picture of this place if I didn't mention some of the things that are challenging us as we move forward — and a lot of it has to do with higher education as a whole. I'm really optimistic in my best moments because we are facing none of this alone. We think about the blows to research funding in the U.S., everything from the NSF to the NEH. We can be stronger together by joining forces. I just signed on to the AAC&U statement around the higher ed compact, for example. And I'm grateful that we are able to redeploy funds that had gone to the endowment tax towards things like research.
But we're going to feel the sting, because I don't think the threats to higher education that we're seeing now are going to stop anytime soon. We all need to be prepared for emergent challenges to come at us over the next several years. So, I'm spending time talking with other college presidents and thinking about ways that we can meet the challenges together, how we can, for example, band together to maintain a competitive research landscape that's free of political interference. That is a major priority for me. But we have to recognize the moment that we're in and the work that's required to meet it.
We've faced uncertain, difficult times before as a College, and we've come through them. At some point today, if you get a chance, walk over to Carnegie Hall, on the south side of the building. The red sandstone hunk that is on a small pedestal was the cornerstone of the College's first building, which was never completed at its original location. It was hijacked by a group of students in the class of ’95 — that’s 1895. In secret, they carved their class numerals on it, and in Greek their motto, "Not to live but to live well." I'm looking at the College's ancient Greek historian who can verify this for us. They unveiled it on their class day.
I'd like to say thank you to the founders of Pomona College for laying a strong foundation for us. Thank you to the present faculty and staff of Pomona College for their incredible work to teach our students, lift them up, house them, feed them, help them grow, keep them healthy. Together, let’s continue that work.
Know that I deeply appreciate the work that you do. I'm so happy to be able to see you here today. We are serving another generation of students who will go forth from this place our founders built, ready to bear their added riches in trust for humankind.
The extraterrestrials, I will add, are on their own.
Chirp chirp.