Our Founding Your Future

Since 1901, Cal Poly and Learn by Doing have been inextricably linked. Combining rigorous academics and real-world applications, Learn by Doing has guided and inspired hundreds of thousands of our students toward successful careers for well over a century — and can do the same for you well into your future.

Explore Learn by Doing

See Yourself Here

Whether you're considering applying or you’ve already been admitted, we invite you to learn about all that the university and Central Coast have to offer.

Let’s go

Students deploy tide and wave gauges on a pier

California Impact

Learn by Doing ensures you play an active role in helping solve some of California’s — and the world’s — most complex challenges: climate change, tech and humanity, space, the built environment, food and wine, and entrepreneurship, to name just a few. It also helps to ensure that when you graduate, both you and employers will agree with us that you are ready.

Image Stephan’s Quintet galaxies taken by the JWST. Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI.

Peering into Our Past

Physics professor Vardha Bennert uses the James Webb Space Telescope to study supermassive black holes and the universe’s rate of expansion.

Time travel with her

A student researcher wearing a mask holds a yellow reptile during a field study.

Confronting Climate Change

Two students leverage National Science Foundation fellowships to research changes to plants and animals in California environments.

Meet Annie and Savannah

Three student leaders introduce sea animals in touch tanks to a group of high school students at the Cal Poly Pier.

Getting Their Feet Wet

Students spend their summer mentoring historically underrepresented high schoolers on higher ed opportunities and Learn by Doing experiences.

Take a deeper dive

Learn by Doing Leads the way

Cal Poly’s six academic colleges offer more than 150 undergraduate majors and minors, as well as over 50 graduate programs. Learn by Doing unifies our colleges and animates the curriculum of each — because no matter the field of study, the best way to build new knowledge is to try it out for yourself.