Signature Experiences
Advanced Applied Theatre Activity
Each semester students in this PolyX course collaborate across multiple disciplines as actors, designers, directors, and managers to cultivate and execute a theatrical production. Students synthesize the training and experiences from other courses working as generative and facilitative artists under the mentorship of faculty advisors. Through their own research and exploration, students deepen their craft and nurture the community of CPP through the presentation of great plays.
Alumni Night and COM Day
The Communication Department Event Planning class organizes two annual events each academic year, alumni night in the fall, and COM Day in the Spring. At alumni night, Communication alums have the opportunity to network with fellow alums, find out what the Department is currently doing and stay connected with the Department. At COM Day, students attend speaker series and seminars on relevant topics in our discipline as well as network with industry professionals and alums. COM Day is open to the entire CPP campus community.
CPP Brain Awareness Week: Bronco Brain Day and Brain Day Jr.
Brain Awareness Week is an international campaign to promote interest in brain health and neuroscience. At CPP, we are establishing Brain Awareness Week as a signature event on campus. We will create two brain awareness-themed science and activity fairs: Bronco Brain Day for the campus community, and Brain Day Jr. where we bring local area students to our campus. These events will be organized by students under the supervision of Robert Blumenfeld, a Cognitive Neuroscientist and Professor in the Psychology Department. The Brain Awareness Program embodies CPP’s mission and vision.
CPP Brain Awareness Week: Bronco Brain Day and Brain Day Jr.
Bronco Advocacy in Sacramento
This spring semester course helps students learn the history of advocacy in shaping public policy and laws, while also preparing students to take a trip to the State Capitol in Sacramento to make elevator-style pitches to state lawmakers on a variety of higher education issues from housing insecurity to immigration to the need for more financial support.
Choreography
Creating an original dance piece is a challenging artistic endeavor that requires artistic integrity, technique, and developing an aesthetic or visual “language.” In DAN4300/L Choreography, students develop work that uses these skills to evoke meaning for a diverse audience. Pieces may draw from topics personal to the artists, to a breadth of global issues that we all contend with. Choreographers display leadership, collaboration, and must learn to communicate effectively with a multi-disciplinary production team to bring their artistic ideas to life.
Creative Writing in Spanish for a Global World
Conducted as a Creative Writing workshop, this class emphasizes creativity and the writing process. The students are able to learn the essential techniques of contemporary fiction and non-fiction. During the semester, there are two kinds of outputs that allow students to present their words to the world. First, are the writing publications in several forms (literary magazines, zines, a web page created by the same students, etc.), and second, a Podcast hosted in the course's YouTube channel.
Desert Studies
Students can conduct undergraduate field classwork and engage in field experiences in the surrounding diverse habitats, geology and geography, landscape features, and history of the Mojave Desert while staying at the CSU Desert Studies Center.
Design and Production Activity
Theatrical Design is an interdisciplinary artistic skillset that can prepare students to work in a variety of fields including game design, themed entertainment, and live TV. In this advanced class, students develop designs for scenery, costumes, sound and/or lighting for shows produced by the Department of Theatre & New Dance. They collaborate with professional staff, faculty, and nationally renowned guest artists to see their designs all the way from concept to full production for a paying audience.
Environment, Technology and Culture
Environment, Technology and Culture takes an applied anthropological approach to confronting the climate crisis and achieving sustainability goals. This course engages students in community-based action research projects in partnership with service-learning partners, including CHERP Locally Grown Power (LGP).
Ethics Bowl
Ethics Bowl is a team-based oral presentation competition where students respond to questions about contemporary ethical controversies and defend their answers before their opponents and expert judges. Ethics Bowl is a valuable activity for any student interested in ethics, as well for students interested in careers in policy, government, or law. Cal Poly Pomona has competed in the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl for a decade with great success, including California regional championships and appearances in the national Ethics Bowl semifinals and quarterfinals.
Harvest International
Cal Poly’s flagship student-run literary publication returned in 2018 with a renewed vision and mission. Since fall 2018, student editors have been able to enroll in ENG 4401A, Journal Publishing Activity, in order to solicit, select, edit, and publish literary works from Cal Poly students, faculty, and staff. Students in the class sponsor events, publish Zines and letter-press journals, and contribute to the campus literary culture.
Judicial Internship
The Judicial Internship allows student the experience to visit and observe court sessions at the LA Superior Courthouse in Pomona, and meet with judges and lawyers.
Marriage & Family Therapy
This two-part practicum course begins in the fall and provides graduate students training in different modalities to address mental health issues impacting children, adolescents, and their families. The spring course consists of graduate students providing psycho-educational services alongside a licensed mental health worker throughout the Pomona Unified School District Student and Family Support Services.
Methods of Anthropology
Students learn how to carry out ethnographic research from the development of a research question to a final conference presentation and ethnographic research article. Projects are health related and carried out in partnership with the Center for Health Disparities Research at UC Riverside’s School of Medicine.
Model National Organization of American States
The Model National Organization of American States (Model OAS) selects students participate in a national simulation in Washington D.C. each spring in which members address different political, economic and social issues in the Western Hemisphere.
Model United Nations
Model United Nations prepares select students to participate in a national simulation that takes place in New York each spring semester.
Panetta Internship
The Panetta Congressional Internship Program is a nonpartisan center for the study of public policy hosted in the fall. Nominated students will start the internship in Monterey, CA for two weeks and then head to Washington, D.C.
Social Work Internship Program
Students enrolled in the program participate in an educationally directed field experience under the supervision of a field supervisor in a social service agency for one or two semesters. Students must complete 70 clock hours of field practicum in the agency per semester which is designed to help students integrate their field experiences with what they have learned in the classroom. This experience will make a profound impact on their educational experience and professional development.
Songwriter Showcase
Songwriters throughout the university perform original songs accompanied by producers, musicians and vocalists from the music department. Students may participate as songwriters, vocalists, musicians, and technicians (audio, lighting, and/or stage).
Student Exchange between Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH) and Cal Poly Pomona
This program allows Cal Poly Students to study and earn CPP credit in Germany during the summer, and German Students to come to study at Cal Poly in the Fall. Students examine economics, business, and culture of the respective countries. Cal Poly students will learn about the European Union as well as Germany. Instruction is in English.
Student Exchange between Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH) and Cal Poly Pomona
The PolyPost
The Poly Post is Cal Poly Pomona’s independent, student-run newspaper since 1940. The Poly Post provides coverage of the campus and local community to a student body of more than 29,000 and over 2,000 faculty and staff members. In addition to serving as a valuable news source for the university, The Poly Post is a learning lab for students in the fields of print journalism, photojournalism and multimedia journalism. This follows the university’s polytechnic approach, “learn by doing.”
URCAS – Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Showcase
URCAS is an annual showcase of the creative and research projects by EML undergraduates. Students from all the disciplines represented in the department share their creative and scholarly work: poetry, creative fiction and non-fiction, linguistic and pedagogical projects, and material objects created in classes (codices, maps, videos). The showcase is multilingual, reflecting the nature and culture of our department.