Staff Meeting
By Christopher Park
At its peak, Cal Poly Pomona hums with the energy of 30,000 students, faculty, and staff populating the campus. Of the 30,000, over 6,000 of them are engineering students. And for these 6,000 eager souls with aspirations to make engineering their trade, just over 40 staff in the College of Engineering help shepherd them on their way.
This staff is a diverse group of disciplines, offices, and programs, but they, like the university at large, share a common mission: student success. Here, are but a few of them who above all, care deeply for their students.
Resident Handyman
Mark Bailey (’73, electrical engineering) has worked at Cal Poly Pomona for 49 years and has never worked anywhere else.
Why?
“I’ve thought about this a little bit. You know, life’s been good to me,” says Bailey. “There are goal-oriented people and there are people who take what life brings their way. Me? I didn’t know what to do. Everyone thought I should go to college, so I went to college. I always liked playing with electrical stuff, so I thought I should be an electrical engineer. Next thing you know a position opens up and the department asks me to apply.”
“Life has always brought me something.”
“I love to see students sharing, learning, and working together in the spaces we’ve built,” - Mark Bailey (’73, Electrical Engineering), Engineering Technician
He and his team of nine technicians are the college’s principal builders—it’s what they do on and off the clock. Tables are made, wiring is installed, and labs are renovated and maintained. The college has 116 laboratory and instructional spaces that are cared for and maintained by people who love it.
Bailey alone is responsible for maintaining and upgrading a few dozen labs. When a student hurries into a lab, places their backpack on the desk, sits on a chair, and starts analyzing the results from an oscilloscope, Bailey and his crew had a hand in making all of that possible.
“I love to see students sharing, learning, and working together in the spaces we’ve built,” says Bailey. “I’ve enjoyed fixing the equipment. I like virtually all aspects of my job.”
At home, he’s renovating his backyard, refinishing his arbor, building a pipe and steel rack, and upgrading his workshop. Back at work, it’s the same thing—building, doing, upgrading. It’s hard to discern where his professional and personal lives begin and end. For Bailey, it’s one and the same—a hobby he gets to do all day.
He has no plans to leave. “I’ll die on the job first,” he jokes.
As he says, he’ll take what life brings his way. And according to him, life has brought him the good fortune of doing what he loves and playing a vital role in the education of all our students.
What Mark wants you to know: “My team is a fantastic group of guys who know and love what they’re doing for these students.”
Causing Ripples
Lita Patel’s something of a Swiss Army knife—she does a little bit of everything, and then some.
As the administrative support coordinator (ASC) for the mechanical engineering department, she’s essentially the department’s front desk. On most days, she’s addressing anxious lines of student inquiries. “Am I graduating this year!?” “Something’s wrong with my financial aid!” Or “I’m having trouble registering for my classes!” Her answers are as calming as they are informative. If she can’t help directly, she knows who can and will. Patel holds within her a complete understanding of the how the university operates, a kind of understanding that only comes with the 27 years she has worked at Cal Poly Pomona.
“I’ve had the good opportunity to help students pave their path." - Lita Patel, Administrative Support Coordinator
On other days, she’s a listener and advocate. She’ll listen to all sorts of worries and personal concerns before giving a reassuring response that they’re going to make it, which she means in earnest any time she says it.
“I’ve had the good opportunity to help students pave their path,” says Patel. “It really has been a fulfilling position for me. You know, it’s like throwing a rock into a pond. You cause ripples in the water—there’s a real effect. My hope is that the students I’m helping then become people who create their own ripples. That they become people who pay it forward and help guide someone else.”
It’s what all seven department ASCs do in the college, more or less—causing ripples in the pond. It’s a combination of administrative support and nurturing every new generation of students that enter the college and saying farewell to the seniors leaving it.
“I get sad in a way because it’s like ‘Wow, another group of kids are leaving but I’m very happy they’re going to the next chapter of their lives.’” says Patel. “But sometimes, they’ll come back to visit and it’s really amazing to see them again. Some come back married with kids. It’s just interesting and fun to hear about how they’ve grown up.”
Every year, hundreds of new students enter the department and hundreds earn their degrees and leave. Throughout this annual cycle, Patel continues her work diligently and lovingly, creating new ripples.
What Lita wants you to know: “The students are our main priority. They’re the one reason we’re all here. We serve them and get them through whatever it is.”
Good Advice
Kenneth Partner graduated with a degree in industrial technology and had just one job in the field. After that, he worked in insurance for three-and-a-half years. Professionally speaking, this wasn’t what Partner was expecting, but education always spoke to him.
“My major had an emphasis in technical education, so education was always on the back of my mind. I wanted to do something more holistic, more of a contribution to society,” he says. For Partner, cutting a check as a claims adjustor wasn’t that.
He went back to school at the age of 28 and earned a master’s in education. He began his new career as a coordinator for
Upward Bound, a federal program designed to help kids primarily from low-income families be the first in their lineage to attend and graduate college. Eventually, he became an advisor for the college's Engineering Advising Center (EAC) and has been there for the last seven years.
It’s at the EAC where engineering students come for a one-stop shop on all things degree progress. They come here to understand what courses to take, how to navigate university policies and procedures, and much more. And if the EAC can’t help directly, they get students in contact with people who can.
“You help students see the light at the end of tunnel. Whether they’re just starting or close to graduating, you give them a good idea of when they’ll graduate,” Partner says.
"Our students are successful not necessarily because of me, but because I help them reach their full potential. It drives me to be the best I can for the students.” - Kenneth Partner, Student Success Advisor
With a student population of over 6,000 in a busy semester, he’s responsible for about 800 of them. Of those 800, at least 75 percent of them will at some point ask Partner for help every semester.
But it’s much more than that. Sometimes, Partner’s lending an ear to a student who just needs someone to listen. Other times, it’s encouragement—the path to an engineering degree isn’t easy and Partner relates by sharing his own challenges when he was working towards his industrial technology degree. These conversations in-between the business of answering, “When will I graduate?” constitutes a non-trivial portion of the work they do.
Take it all together and it drives Partner, just like it does the six others who work alongside him at the EAC.
“My favorite part of the job is when you tell a student they’re done and ready to graduate and seeing the satisfaction on their face. Our students are successful not necessarily because of me, but because I help them reach their full potential. It drives me to be the best I can for the students.”
What Partner wants you to know: “We’re going to do the best for our students to be successful. Rest assured that we’re going to put our best foot forward when it comes to our students.”
Caption for group photo advisors: Kenneth Partner (center-back) with some of his advising collegues. Left to right: Alexandra Retana, Lorena Facio, Cindy Chavez, Monica Kays and Wendy Lopez. Not pictured: Porshe Gipson, Francisco Cornejo, and Evelyn Garcia.
Cultivating Belief
Here’s the thing about Scott Chang: he can sell.
Before Cal Poly Pomona, Chang worked in sales, listening to a client’s concerns and needs before offering a sales package that met their goals. Not every part of the job spoke to him, but it taught him enough about himself to direct him towards the work he does today.
“I discovered that I liked coaching and guiding clients to solutions that were tailor-made for them,” says Chang. “I’d consider all the different pieces of their situation in order to find them a package that was going to meet the needs of their circumstances.”
He translated his skills to higher education as our academic retention coordinator for the Maximizing Engineering Potential (MEP) program. It’s a program made to prepare historically disadvantaged students—low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented minorities chief among them—to graduate as capable, sought-after engineers. On any given semester, approximately 150 to 200 students are in the program.
“My favorite thing about the job is talking to students, finding out about their lives and through the course of conversation, I say something they didn’t know and see their brains expand and their eyes light up.” - Scott Chang, Academic Retention Coordinator
At MEP, Chang does a different kind of selling—he gets students to buy into themselves. It’s not uncommon for MEP students to either harbor a level of doubt in their own ability or not understand the full medley of resources and programs that can help them. Chang listens to these students and offers a set of solutions and ideas that gives them a level of self-belief they didn’t have before.
“My favorite thing about the job is talking to students, finding out about their lives and through the course of conversation, I say something they didn’t know and see their brains expand and their eyes light up,” says Chang. “That’s very cool.”
“Whether it’s education or sales, the underlying goal of offering a solution is the same. So it can be something like, ‘Hey, you’re having a hard time so what you can do is take this tutor in this supplemental instruction class and attend this workshop.’ You’re giving them these opportunities and ability to be able to walk through those doors.”
It’s these conversations that drive Chang the most. The course of conversation takes natural and surprising shapes, where students expecting a two-minute chat becomes a sprawling hour of newfound belief and understanding. It’s why he’s been here for seven years and why, just like others in this feature, have no plans to work anywhere else.
What Scott wants you to know: “Helping students see success is one of the greatest impacts we can possibly have on them. We do everything we can to help them have a bright future.”