California Polytechnic State University
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California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
| Motto | Discere Faciendo (Latin: "Learn by Doing") |
|---|---|
| Established | 1901 |
| School Type | Public |
| President | Warren J. Baker |
| Location | San Luis Obispo, California, USA |
| Enrollment | 17,669 |
| Full-Time Faculty | 1,182 |
| Endowment | US$2.7 Million |
| Campus | Suburban, 9,678 acres (39 km²) |
| Student Newspaper | Cal Poly News |
| Sports Teams | Mustang |
| Website | www.calpoly.edu |
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, popularly known as Cal Poly, is a public coeducational university located in San Luis Obispo, California. The university offers a full spectrum of degrees, but is best known for its technical and business programs. Cal Poly is part of the 23-campus California State University system.
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History
Overview
Cal Poly was established in 1901 when Governor Henry T. Gage signed the California Polytechnic School Bill. The California Polytechnic School was built in San Luis Obispo and held its first classes on September 30, 1903, offering secondary (high school) courses of study. The first incoming class was 20 students. The school continued to grow steadily, except during a period from the mid 1910s to the early 1920s when World War I led to drops in enrollment and drastic budget cuts forced fewer class offerings.
In 1924, Cal Poly was placed under the control of the California State Board of Education. In 1933, the Board of Education changed Cal Poly into a two year technical and vocational school. The institution began to offer Bachelor of Arts degrees in 1940, and was renamed the California State Polytechnic College in 1947 to better reflect its higher education offerings. In 1960, control of Cal Poly and all other state colleges was transferred from the State Board of Education to an independent Board of Trustees, which later became the California State University system.
The college was authorized to offer Master of Science degrees in 1967. From 1967 to 1970, the school’s curriculum was reorganized into different units (such as the School of Science and Math, the School of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and the School of Architecture, which was created in 1968). The state legislature changed the school’s official name again in 1971 to California Polytechnic State University. Since the 1970s, the University has seen steady enrollment growth and the construction of many significant buildings on campus. Cal Poly celebrated its centennial in 2001, and kicked off a $225 million fundraising campaign, the largest fund raising effort ever undertaken in CSU history. The Centennial Campaign raised over $264 million dollars from over 81,000 donors, more than tripling the university’s endowment from $43 million to $140 million. Cal Poly’s endowment is in the top 10% of higher education endowments nationwide.
Cal Poly Pomona relationship
Cal Poly Pomona began as a satellite campus in 1938 when a completely equipped school and farm were donated by Charles Voorhis of Pasadena, and his son, Jerry Voorhis. The satellite campus was initially called the Voorhis Unit. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation donated an 812 acre (3.3 km²) horse ranch in Pomona, California to Cal Poly in 1949. Located about one mile from the Voorhis campus, the two became known as the Kellogg-Voorhis unit. The Kellogg-Voorhis unit broke off in 1966, becoming the fully independent Cal Poly Pomona University. Since 1949, the San Luis Obispo and Pomona universities have cooperated on creating a float for the Rose Parade. The float program is one of the longest consecutive running self-built entries in the parade, as well as the only "self built" floats designed and constructed entirely by students year-round on both campuses.
Female admissions
Cal Poly opened as a coeducational school and had 40 men and 12 women in its incoming class of 1904. In 1930, females were barred from the entire school. Female students were again admitted in 1956, 27 years later, and the university remains coeducational today.
Football team plane crash
On October 29, 1960 a chartered plane carrying the Cal Poly football team, hours removed from a loss to Bowling Green, crashed on takeoff at the Toledo, Ohio airport. Twenty-two of the forty-eight people on board were killed, including sixteen players, the team’s student manager, and a Cal Poly football booster. Cal Poly alumnus John Madden’s fear of flying is commonly attributed to the crash. Madden, who played football for Cal Poly from 1957-58 and was coaching at a nearby junior college (Allan Hancock College) at the time of the crash, knew many former teammates aboard the plane. Among the survivors were quarterback Ted Tollner, who went on to become head football coach of the University of Southern California and is the current offensive coordinator for the NFL's Detroit Lions.</br> On Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 1961, LA County Supervisor Warren Dorn and Bob Hope provided a "Mercy Bowl" in LA Memorial Colisem between Fresno State and Bowling Green State to raise a Memorial Fund for the survivors and bereaved families. Along with a special Southern Pacific Train for San Luis Obispo residents, the one time event attracted a crowd of 33,145.</br> Memorial plaques are at Mott Gym, the Mustang horse statue, the peristyle end of the Coliseum at the end of the 1961 Mercy Bowl game, and the foot of the flagpole in Mustang Stadium. </br> Under renovation today, the new football stadium will be dedicated "Memorial Stadium" to the 1960 Football Team, as well as adding a memorial plaza.</br> From book "Cal Poly: The First Hundred Years". </br>
Alma Mater
All Hail, Green and Gold,</br> May your praises e'er be told!</br> Of friendship, and of courage, </br> And of stalwart sons of old! </br> All Hail, Green and Gold, </br> In your name we shall prevail, </br> So to California Polytechnic, </br> Hail! Hail! Hail! </br> - Harold P. Davidson</br>
Fight Song
Ride high you Mustangs, </br> Kick the frost out, burn the breeze;</br> Ride high you Mustangs, </br> Those bow-wows we'll knock to their knees.</br> Hi! Ki! Yi! </br> Ride high you Mustangs,</br> Chin the moon and do it right;</br> Ride high and cut a rusty, </br> Fight! Fight! Fight! </br> - Harold P. Davidson</br>
What does it mean?</br> "frost out": warm up by running</br> "burn the breeze": run fast</br> "bow-wows": Fresno State Bulldogs, former football rival for the Victory Bell</br> "Chin the moon": rear up, as a horse</br> "cut a rusty": go a-courtin'</br> From: http://www.cpmaniacs.com/cms.php?node=FightSongMeaning</br>
Academics
Programs and degrees
Image:Calpoly agsci bldg.jpg
The university currently offers BA, BS, BAR, BLA, BFA, and Masters Degrees in seven colleges:
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Ranking
Image:Calpoly arch bldg.jpg Image:Calpoly engineering west.jpg According to U.S. News & World Report, Cal Poly is ranked the top public, largely undergraduate university in the western United States. Among the highest-regarded engineering schools, it is number 2 and 3 (for schools whose highest degree is a bachelor's or master's) in the nation for its Computer and Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering programs respectively.
In a 2002 poll conducted by the leading architecture and engineering journal DesignIntelligence, Cal Poly was voted the number 2 architecture school in the nation.
Admissions
Students are required to choose a major when they apply and each candidate is judged against others applying to that major. Because of this, there is a large disparity between what type of student is admitted in different majors. However, the number of applicants in all majors exceeds the number of spaces available. The architecture science majors and some liberal arts majors are particularly difficult to get into. The agricultural majors are the easiest. To prevent students from applying for an easy to get into major and then transferring to another, the transfer process has been made extremely difficult. In some majors it is all but impossible.
In Fall 2004, 27,063 students applied to Cal Poly, and only 9,880 were accepted (an acceptance rate of about 37%). Of those accepted, 3,836 (38%) enrolled. The average GPA of freshmen admitted was 3.77, but even higher in some majors. In Fall 2004, 9,043 (57%) men and 6,784 (43%) women were enrolled in Cal Poly. As with everything else, the number of men and women is skewed by major. Liberal arts majors are dominated by women, while engineering, physics and architecture students are mostly male. It is not unusual for upper division classes in these majors to have few members of the opposite sex.
Tuition
As of September, 2005, tuition for the average student is $1415 per quarter. Tuition has increased rapidly in the past several years. In 1997, tuition was only about $700. Some of the increases were to make up for the budget cuts in education by the state of California. The others were made to hire additional teachers and to improve campus facilities.
Campus
Image:Christopher Cohan Center.jpg
Cal Poly owns more land than any other California university, with the exception of UC Berkeley. There are 9,678 acres (39 km²) in total. The lands are used for student education, mainly agriculture. The lands include the main campus, two nearby agricultural lands and two properties in Santa Cruz county. Image:Calpoly rec center.jpg
Parking
Parking on campus is a perennial problem, eliciting strong emotions in students and nearby residents. A large portion of students live off campus and commute to Cal Poly, in spite of the very high rents. Many choose to live off campus because of the campus-wide ban on alcohol, the long walk to downtown San Luis Obispo and the additional freedoms of off-campus living. Cal Poly has responded by building additional dorms and trying to make living on campus more enjoyable. The measures have been at least partially successful. A more direct approach to the parking crisis was the building of parking structures. However, the completion of the first parking structure was delayed for years, and the others aren't scheduled to start for several additional years. The parking situation has been made worse by the closure of one of the largest and most convenient parking lots on campus. The parking lot has since been cleared to make way for additional engineering buildings. Parking will undoubtedly remain a problem for years to come. Use of bicycles, while not as popular as one would expect, would likely alleviate parking woes for many students. Additionally, the city's bus system provides mostly adequate service to-and-from campus. It can be riden for free by students since part of the students' tuition goes toward funding the buses.
Although parking can be a frequent concern of enrolled students and university faculty, on-campus parking is plentiful compared to parking issues that plague some large American cities.
Similarly, housing costs in the city of San Luis Obispo, as in many California locations, are sometimes considered expensive. These costs, however, are not at all bad when compared to many other, more expensive California locations.
Cal Poly Foundation
The Cal Poly Foundation is a separate non-profit 501(c) corporation operating in concert with the University. Its primary role is to furnish all non-academic services on the campus, including cafeteria/dining, retail services (bookstores, clothing, etc.), publishing, and other programs on the Cal Poly Campus. This arrangement is relatively common at many CSU’s and UC’s.
In recent history the Foundation has not enjoyed a very popular reputation on the Cal Poly Campus. Most regard the Foundation’s products and services sub-par and overpriced when compared to what is readily available outside the campus. This is mainly attributed to the fact that the Foundation has a chartered monopoly on nearly all services on the campus and thus does not face any substantial competitive pressures. The Foundation has severely limited the presence of outside fast food chains and other retailers when compared to other CSU and UC campuses, limiting diversity. Student input into the Foundation’s leadership is very limited and many feel that it has grown detached from the needs of the student body it services.
As of February 1, 2006, Cal Poly Foundation has changed their name to the Cal Poly Corporation.
Foundation Operations
- El Corral Bookstore
- Campus Dining
- Gift and Endowment Administration
- Sponsored Programs
- Educational Web Services Web application development, consulting, and hosting provider for the CSU
Notable alumni
- Gary Bloom, CEO of VERITAS Software
- Robert L. Gibson, retired chief, NASA astronaut office; piloted five space shuttle missions, including the first docking with the Russian space station Mir
- Kathleen Holmgren, Senior Vice President, Sun Microsystems Network Storage Solutions
- Mike Krukow, MLB baseball pitcher, radio and television announcer for the San Francisco Giants
- Mark Lucovsky, software architect known for being a part of the team that designed and built the Windows NT operating system for Microsoft.
- Chuck Liddell, Light Heavyweight champion of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
- John Madden, sports broadcaster and former American football coach for the Oakland Raiders, who led his team to a win Super Bowl XI during the 1976-1977 season.
- Abel Maldonado, California State Senator (Since 2004)
- Bruce McPherson, California Secretary of State (Since 2005)
- Farzad Nazem , Chief Technical Officer of Yahoo
- Scott Peterson, convicted of killing his pregnant wife Laci Peterson who was also an alumna.
- Burt Rutan, designer of SpaceShipOne which won the ten million dollar Ansari X Prize
- Kristin Smart, went missing while attending in 1996.
- Ozzie Smith, retired Major League Baseball player and Hall of Fame inductee (2002)
- William H. Swanson, Chairman and CEO of Raytheon
- "Weird Al" Yankovic, pop music singer known for his parodies
- Jordan Beck, NFL linebacker for the Atlanta Falcons, taken in the third round of the 2005 NFL draft.
- Monty Roberts - internationally-renowned horse trainer and author
- Lee Pitts - newspaper columnist and California Ag producer
- Nathan S. Pezzotti, CEO of Maxim Health, Inc.
- Aldo M. Reyes, noted science fiction writer
- Isaac Azcarraga, American soap opera actor
- David W. Chong, Top pancake chef, AKA Mr. Pancake
- Orin Moran, UFC amateur fighter
- Micheal M. Becerra, Hispanic Adult film director
- Mario Villanueva, arrested in the Enron scandal. Currently residing in San Luis Obispo Men's Colony
- Borna Jabbarpour, Farsi translator for the Oakland Raiders
- Joe Thomas, also known to locals as Hurricane Joe, who is known for his legendary walk from the Cayucos Tavern in Cayucos to Cuesta College (roughly 13.64 miles)in the middle of the night after attending a party and not finding a ride home or place to stay for the remainder of the evening.
- Nicholas Wilby, Current National Leader of the Fight for Men's Rights Organization
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