College of the Pacific

College Alumni

For the last six generations our graduates have discovered that they have a lifelong relationship to the College, to each other, to those who preceded them, and to those who will follow because of how they changed here.

For over 150 years the College has served as a catalyst, preparing and inspiring young people to exercise responsible roles in their communities. A few, like Janet Leigh, Jamie Leigh Curtis, and Chris Isaak have become celebrities, but nearly all have become valued and respected for their contributions to their communities, organizations, clubs, for their contributions to the professions they enter, and for the example their lives give to others.

Six quick examples:

• 1887 graduate Henry Meade Bland, who became California’s “poet laureate”—whose poem on the College reflected on our inspiring campus surroundings with  the question “what dreams were heightened in your quiet shade?”;
• Stephen Kistler, who in 1931 invented aerojel, the lightest substance known to man and the original nanomaterial;
• Dennis Warren, who as a junior in the College initiated a national movement in 1969 that resulted in passage of the 26th Amendment to the Constitution lowering the voting age to 18;
• Sovanna Koert, recently named California Woman of the Year for founding and directing APSARA, a non-profit agency in Stockton that provides services such as housing, education, job training, language training, and cultural events for East Asian refugees;
• Ron Loveridge, Mayor of Riverside, CA for the past thirteen years, one of seven alumni who several years ago simultaneously served as mayors of California cities,
• Sakena Yacoobi, founder and president of the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), an organization focused on providing education, health care and human rights training to more than 350,000 Afghan women and children, both inside Afghanistan and in refugee camps in Pakistan, recognized by the National Endowment for Democracy and by Oxford University and the Robert Skol Foundation as one of the world’s leading “social entrepreneurs.”

As these examples indicate, alumni from College of the Pacific are citizen leaders, lifelong learners, and careful thinkers who have made the most of our close faculty-student working relationships and hands-on learning opportunities to prepare themselves not just for their future careers, but for satisfying lives as individuals, family members, and community champions.