Al Tarkington '64 Business Administration

Al Tarkington’s father and grandfather were engineers, so it was expected that he would be, too. The College of Engineering was a major reason Tarkington enrolled at Cal Poly Pomona. It turns out that an engineering career didn’t appeal to him, so he decided to major in business administration.

“Cal Poly Pomona’s learn-by-doing approach was an important part of my education,” Tarkington says. “The advanced accounting classes were exciting, and the instructors were outstanding. They were CPAs out in the field and came back to Cal Poly Pomona to teach. There was a lot of interaction with the students.”

He worked as an auditor for a Los Angeles accounting agency.

“I could see how different businesses operated,” he says. “Some were successful, some not.”

After earning a certified public accounting certificate, Tarkington moved to Del Mar, California and formed a busy and successful accounting partnership. He was elected to a four-year term on the Del Mar City Council, which included a year as the city’s mayor.

Tarkington and his wife donated the proceeds of an appreciated rental property sale to fund the Tarkington Family Fellowships for Entrepreneurs as part of the College of Business Administration’s program that fosters the creation of consumer products inspired by NASA technology.

“We wanted to support students to do something that goes beyond academics,” Tarkington says.

As a student, Tarkington was active on the swim team, the Rose Float and the Poly Post newspaper, all of which allowed him to interact with students of different majors. That paid off well in his first job, when he was the only accountant who could understand the unique problems of the agency’s agricultural clients.

He even met his wife Stephanie while working on his senior project, at a San Dimas park.

In the early ‘60s, “Cal Poly Pomona was very green and beautiful, and unlike anyplace else,” Tarkington says. “I owe a lot of my success to Cal Poly Pomona. It was a great start.”