Pomona Names 2026 Alumni Award Honorees

Five outstanding Sagehens are being recognized for their professional achievements and longtime service to Pomona College by the Alumni Association Board.

This year, the Blaisdell Distinguished Alumni Award for high achievement in professional activities or community service will be awarded to Peter Caldwell ’61, Pamela Schaff ’76, Stephen Marc (Smith) ’76 and Woutrina Smith ’96. Guy Lohman ’71 will receive the Alumni Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his unheralded, selfless and direct service to Pomona.

“As educators, researchers, physicians and leaders across fields, this year’s honorees exemplify the reach and resonance of a Pomona education — advancing knowledge, serving communities and shaping a more thoughtful world,” says Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr. “These awards represent one of the College’s most meaningful recognitions of our alumni and we are proud to welcome them into an esteemed group of Sagehens.”

Blaisdell and Distinguished Service Award recipients are selected by a council of past presidents of the Alumni Association Board. This year’s honorees will be presented with their awards during Alumni Weekend, April 30-May 3. Alumni Weekend attendees will hear a special presentation featuring this year’s Blaisdell honorees on campus May 2. The Distinguished Service Award will be presented later that day during the Voices of Pomona program, featuring a State of the College address from President Starr. 

Blaisdell Distinguished Alumni Award

Peter Caldwell ’61 is a pediatrician and pediatric cardiologist whose life reflects deep commitments to medicine, service and storytelling. A graduate of the UCLA School of Medicine, he served three years in the U.S. Naval Reserve as a battalion surgeon with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam and Hawaii, before dedicating 32 years in medical practice. Caldwell volunteers with the Hawaii Medical Mission and serves as an admissions interviewer for the University of Hawaii School of Medicine. His mission work includes three trips to Vietnam and helping fund open-heart surgeries for Vietnamese children. An accomplished author and photographer, Caldwell has published multiple books documenting war, wilderness and Hawaiian culture, including “Bac-si: A Doctor Remembers Vietnam,” a personal reflection on his wartime experiences.

Stephen Marc (Smith) ’76 is an accomplished documentary and street photographer, digital montage artist and educator. Marc is an emeritus professor of photography in the Herberger Institute’s School of Art at Arizona State University, where he has taught since 1998, following two decades at Columbia College Chicago. Marc was named a Guggenheim Fellow in photography in 2021 and has been widely exhibited throughout his career at institutions, including the Smithsonian. Marc’s landmark project, “Passage on the Underground Railroad,” explored North America’s Underground Railway, which was published as a book, presented as a traveling exhibition and is registered as an Interpretative Program of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, a division of the National Park Service.

Pamela Schaff ’76 is a professor of medical education, family medicine and pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine (KSOM) of USC and director of the Humanities, Ethics, Art, and the Law (HEAL) Program and the MS in Narrative Medicine Program. An English literature major on the pre-med track at Pomona College, Schaff earned her medical degree from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, graduating first in her class and completing her residency at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. She later completed her doctorate in literature and creative writing from USC in 2020. A national leader in medical education, Schaff was among the pioneers of narrative medicine, launching the country’s second master’s program and helping advance the integration of the arts and humanities into physician training.

Woutrina Smith ’96 is associate dean for global programs and a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine, and was recently appointed executive director of the UC Davis One Health Institute. She earned her veterinary, master’s and doctorate degrees at UC Davis and has built a global career integrating animal, human and environmental health. Smith leads the multi‑campus UC Global Health Institute Planetary Health Center of Expertise and has spearheaded major international initiatives across Africa, Asia and California. Widely funded and recognized, she is a distinguished educator, mentor and global leader in planetary health and One Health, an interdisciplinary field that focuses on the interconnected health of animals, people and the environment.

Alumni Distinguished Service Award

Guy Lohman ’71 has been a dedicated Pomona College alumni volunteer for more than five decades, serving on numerous class reunion committees, from his 15th through 55th reunions, and co-chairing his 47th, 50th and 55th.He served on the Alumni Association Board and chair of the Peninsula chapter, a precursor of the Bay Area Regional Chapter. He also was an Alumni Admissions interviewer for 18 years and organized two 4/7 Day of Service events. Beyond Pomona, he spent 34 years at IBM, including 27 at the now-shuttered Almaden Research Center. Before joining IBM, Lohman worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he led a technology transfer team. He earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Pomona and his master’s and doctoral degrees in operations research from Cornell University. 

Learn more about Pomona College’s prestigious alumni awards.