Signature Experiences

Students in a Play

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.

Advanced Applied Theatre Activity

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.

Alumni Night and Com Day

Brain Awareness Activity

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.

group of students in front of CA state building

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.

Bronco Advocacy in Sacramento

Students dancing for a performance

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.

Choreography

group of students in front of CA state building

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.

Creative Writing

students heading to cave

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.

Desert Studies

Production of a Theatre Play

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.

Design and Production Activity

solar panels harvesting energy

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).

Environment, Technology and Culture

Participants in Ethics Bowl

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. 

Ethics Bowl

Magazine Cover

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.

Harvest International

book, gavel, and statue holding a scale and a sword

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.

Judicial Internship

friendly Felicia with kids on a table

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.

Marriage & Family Therapy

pen and field notes notebook

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.

Methods of Anthropology

group of students in front of various flags

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 National Organization of American States

smiling professional students

Model United Nations

Model United Nations prepares select students to participate in a national simulation that takes place in New York each spring semester.

Model United Nations

group of students with the State Capitol behind them

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.

Panetta Internship

2 students looking at a laptop

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.

Social Work Internship Program

band performing

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).

Songwriter Showcase

Leibniz University Hanover

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

hand holding mobile phone

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.”

The Poly Post

Group of students standing

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.