Since 1924

Engaging Speakers • Engrossing Topics • Great Conversations • Delicious Lunches • Close Friendships

University Club meetings and programs are now in-person.

The Club President and Members Welcome You

The University Club of Claremont has just celebrated its hundredth anniversary. While our club has changed greatly over the past century, it’s original goals are mostly the same: to promote friendship, intellectual curiosity, and education in the Claremont area.

We invite you to attend our lunch meetings to learn from a wide variety of programs and to meet people who value education.

David Sonner, President 2025-2026
E Mail : david_sonner@verizon.net

UClub first-time guest

We invite you to be our guest at any upcoming luncheon meeting of the University Club of Claremont, held the second and fourth Tuesdays of most months (first two Tuesdays of November and December), at the Doubletree Hotel in Claremont. We gather at 11:30, have a good lunch at 12:00, and enjoy an intellectually stimulating program before adjourning about 1:30. The current lunch price is $25, but you will be our first-time guest by bringing or referring to this ticket.

In order to be included in our lunch count, we need your RSVP to secretary@universityclubofclaremont.org by noon of the Saturday before the luncheon through December 2024. We look forward to welcoming you soon.

June 2025 Programs

June 10

“Flora of the Sacatar Trail Wilderness”

Speaker – Kim Pivetti, Botany M.S. student, CalBG/Claremont Graduate University

The Sacatar Trail Wilderness (STW) area covers 90 square miles of the southeastern Sierra Nevada, from desert scrub habitat at 3,000 feet elevation to montane peaks at almost 9,000 feet. Very few plants had been collected from this area prior to 2022. Over the course of two years, Kim spent 77 days in the STW and collected over 1,500 plant specimens. Temperature data logging devices were installed across the study area’s steep elevation gradient, and vegetation surveys were conducted to better understand the variety of plant communities throughout the study area. Now there is baseline ecological data for the STW area, and a floristic inventory of over 500 plant taxa including some rare and potentially undescribed species!

Kim Pivetti will soon be earning her M.S. degree in Botany at California Botanic Garden (CalBG) and Claremont Graduate University. Kim has loved nature, hiking, and wildflowers ever since she was a little girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest. Kim moved to SoCal to attend California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where she received her B.S. degree in Biology with an emphasis in Botany in 2018. Kim worked as an Invasive Plant Technician and then as a Seed Conservation Technician at California Botanic Garden before joining their graduate program in 2021. Kim is planning to pursue a Ph.D. in Plant Ecology and become a research professor specializing in desert ecosystems.

In-Person Meeting!

Held in the Sycamore Room, Doubletree Inn, 555 W Foothill Blvd, Claremont

11:30 am: social time * 12:00 am: lunch * 1:00 pm: speaker
Lunch is $25 for members and guests (subsidized by the Club)

June 24

“Memory, Cognition, and the Maintenance of Knowledge Across the Lifespan”

Speaker – Mary McCollum, lab manager, Umanath Memory and Aging Lab at CMC

How does our prior knowledge influence memory as we age? We rely on our memories of information and past experiences to navigate the world around us. With healthy aging, these processes change in complex ways. This seminar will explore how memory is defined in the field of cognitive aging, the different types of memory, and the processes behind forgetting. Attendees will learn how memory changes as we age — including why older adults are considered knowledge experts — and what to expect as a part of healthy aging.

The audience will then be introduced to one of the Umanath Memory and Aging Lab’s recent research projects, which explores how manipulating the number of options in a multiple-choice test affects semantic memory performance across the lifespan. This research advances our understanding of how the number of multiple-choice options may uniquely affect the recovery and maintenance of prior knowledge in younger and older adults.

May McCollum is the Lab Manager of the Umanath Memory and Aging (UMA) Lab at Claremont McKenna College’s Department of Psychology. The UMA Lab explores how pre-existing knowledge influences memory retrieval as we age and is currently engaged in a project aimed at stabilizing accessibility to marginal knowledge across the lifespan, supported by the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program and James S. McDonnell Foundation.