Alumni Alumni Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes in the Pomona College Alumni Awards and why

The Pomona College Alumni Awards are not a shopper's ballot or a readers-choice poll. They are an honor bestowed by the Pomona College Alumni Association Board, and the people who take part are the college's own community: alumni, faculty, students and friends of the college in Claremont, California. Each year the board honors distinguished alumni and faculty with awards recognizing their exceptional achievements and outstanding service to Pomona College.

That shapes who has standing to nominate. A Sagehen who remembers a professor who changed their path, or a classmate whose career reflects credit on the college, is exactly the person the board wants to hear from. The nominations page speaks directly to that audience, asking supporters to nominate a Sagehen who deserves recognition. Where a business ballot draws its voters from a local market, this program draws its nominators from a shared college history, which is why the tone of a successful nomination leans on personal testimony rather than volume.

Although this page files the program under the best-of vertical, because it recognizes the best of a community, its mechanics are closer to an award nomination than a race. There is no leaderboard to climb during the window. The board collects nominations, announces recipients in April, and honors them during Alumni Weekend, April 30 through May 3. For supporters used to daily-vote contests, that difference matters: the effort goes into a strong nomination submitted before the deadline, not into repeated returns to a ballot.

Facts at a glance

The dated record for the Pomona College Alumni Awards

The program is annual. Confirmed editions cover 2024, 2025 and 2026, and the college's alumni pages describe the recognition as something the Alumni Association does each year. The 2026 cycle is the one currently documented, with its own nominations page live on pomona.edu, and a further edition should follow in 2027.

The dated facts for 2026 are specific. Nominations close Thursday, January 15. Award recipients will be announced in April. Honorees will be recognized during Alumni Weekend, April 30 through May 3. Those three markers give the cycle its shape: a winter nomination push, a spring announcement, and a campus celebration that closes the year's program.

What the board has not printed on the nominations page is just as relevant for anyone planning around the cycle. The exact day the nomination window opens is not stated, the named list of award categories for 2026 is not printed, and no per-person submission rule or eligibility text appears alongside the form; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The college's alumni services page does note that the association recognizes remarkable alumni with different awards each year, which suggests a small set of named honors, but the roster itself is a detail the board has left off the public page.

Because the program has run in 2024, 2025 and 2026, a supporter who misses the January deadline is not shut out permanently. The pattern to plan around is a mid-January cutoff followed by an April announcement, and the alumni awards section of pomona.edu is where each new cycle's page appears.

How a supporter nominates a Sagehen today

The mechanic for the 2026 cycle is a nomination form, not a click-to-vote ballot. A supporter visits the 2026 Award Nominations page on pomona.edu, reads the board's call for nominations, and submits the details of the alumnus or faculty member they believe deserves recognition. The form asks for the nominee's exceptional achievements and outstanding service to Pomona College, which is the standard the board applies.

Timing is the constraint that matters most. The deadline to submit nominations is Thursday, January 15, so a nomination written after that date waits for the following year's cycle. Once the window closes, the board reviews what it has received and announces recipients in April. The honorees are then celebrated during Alumni Weekend, April 30 through May 3, on the campus in Claremont, California.

Because the form lives on the college's own site, there is no third party account to create and no external platform between the supporter and the submission. The practical steps are simple: reach the alumni awards section of pomona.edu, open the current nominations page, prepare the case for your nominee, and submit before the January cutoff. What the form does not publish is any statement about how many nominations a single person may submit or who is eligible to nominate, so a supporter with an unusual situation should raise it with the alumni office rather than assume a rule. The board's own pages are the authority on every detail the nominations page leaves unstated.

How this ballot sits beside its California neighbours

On this site, the Pomona College Alumni Awards share a state with a family of reader-driven ballots, and the contrast is instructive. The siblings are Best of Central Valley Business, Best of Marin, Best of Orange County, Best of San Diego & Best Restaurants, Best of Silicon Valley and Best of North State Community's Choice Awards.

Those six are best-of contests in the classic shape: a market's businesses compete for public votes, often across many categories, and the tally decides the winners. The Pomona program inverts that. Its subject is people rather than businesses, its electorate is a college community rather than a geographic market, and its decision rests with the Alumni Association Board after nominations close rather than with a running vote count.

For a supporter, that means advice written for a readers-choice ballot transfers only partly. Daily voting habits, deadline surges and leaderboard watching, which matter enormously in a market like Orange County or Silicon Valley, have no equivalent here. What carries over is the community mobilization: the same instinct that gets a town behind a local shop is the instinct that gets a class behind a beloved professor. The difference is the destination. In Claremont the effort ends at a nomination form on pomona.edu, submitted before Thursday, January 15, and the board takes it from there.

Strengthening support for a Pomona nominee

Since the board decides from nominations, the strongest support is a well-evidenced case submitted early. Gather specific examples of your nominee's achievements and service to Pomona College, and invite classmates who can speak to the same history to file nominations of their own before Thursday, January 15. A nominee backed by several independent nominations from across the Sagehen community presents the board with a clearer picture than a single letter, however heartfelt.

The board has not published rules about organized outside help, so keep the effort personal and honest to the program's purpose. Tactics designed for public vote tallies, such as reminder schedules and get-out-the-vote pushes, belong to a different kind of ballot; the general guidance in our votes guide explains those mechanics for readers who also follow readers-choice contests. Here, the calendar is your friend: nominate in winter, watch for the April announcement, and plan to be part of Alumni Weekend, April 30 through May 3, when honorees are recognized in Claremont.