U Club programs and meetings are now in-person.

In-Person Meetings

Doubletree Inn, Claremont

11:30 am: social time * 12:00 noon: lunch * 1:00 pm: speaker Lunch is $20 for members and guests (subsidized by the Club)

March 2025 Programs

March 11

“The Justice Education Initiative for the Claremont Colleges”

Speaker – Romarilyn Ralston, Senior Director of the Justice Education Center

Romarilyn Ralston

The trail-blazing Justice Education Center at the Claremont Colleges provides transformative educational pathways, policy advocacy, and reintegration support for incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and non-incarcerated students. Through the Inside-Out model, interdisciplinary curriculum, arts/humanities programming, and community partnerships, the Center challenges racial injustice, reduces recidivism, increases awareness of mass incarceration’s impacts, and promotes human dignity across all backgrounds.

Romarilyn Ralston is Senior Director of the Justice Education Center for Claremont Colleges and the former executive director of Project Rebound at California State Fullerton. After serving 23 years in prison, she earned a bachelor’s degree with Honors in Gender & Feminist Studies from Pitzer College, then went on to achieve a master’s degree in liberal arts from Washington University in St. Louis. She completed many fellowships and received numerous social justice awards. In 2022 she received a Gubernatorial Pardon. She is a Ph.D. student in Executive Management at the Claremont Graduate University’s Drucker School of Business.

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 $20 for members and guests (subsidized by the Club)

March 25

“Flora of the Sacatar Trail Wilderness”

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

Kim Pivetti

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.