We Did it First
We Do it Best
From the beginning Cal Poly’s Learn by Doing philosophy has forged a path for students to turn knowledge into action. Our students discover their passions, achieve their dreams and make a lasting impact on the world around them by pairing academics with real-world applications. Learn by Doing is why students choose Cal Poly and why top employers choose Cal Poly graduates. When you Learn by Doing, you’re ready for success from the start.
Top-Ranked for Innovation and Excellence
Learn By Doing Leads to Success
Graduate Success Stories
Our graduates make a difference
Learn by Doing in Space
From Cal Poly to the Moon
Alumnus and astronaut Victor Glover rocketed into history books as part of NASA’s Artemis II crew, the first humans to orbit the Moon in half a century. Glover’s record-shattering career began at Cal Poly, as an engineering student.
Founder of Los Altos Hacks and SLO Hacks
Major League Hacking Coach
Hackathons bring communities of coders together from around the world to collaborate on everything from A.I. and machine learning models to mobile apps and game design. Computer science student Selynna Sun chose Cal Poly because of Learn by Doing and because we lacked a nationally recognized collegiate hackathon. Not anymore.
Learn how Selynna went from high school coder to globe-trotting coach
Students Build Skills By Experiencing
Science Under the Sea
In a select cohort that meets over the summer, students utilize on a distinct blend of collaboration and self-reliance to complete 12 boundary-pushing dives in the name of science.
Student and Faculty Success Stories
Learn by Doing In the Classroom
Digging Beneath the Surface
See Their Discoveries
Putting Pedal to the Metal
Get in the Driver's Seat
Love of the Game
Learn About Gabe's Formula for SuccessShaping Careers, Communities and California
FOR THE BETTER
See how Learn by Doing impacts everything we do
more than 200,000 students, staff, alumni and faculty
Leaving a Legacy
Cultivating Tenderness
First-year Cal Poly fellows Isabella Jamner, Michael Hu and Kennedy Martin, connect local high school students to agriculture at City Farm SLO.
Highlighting Native Connections
A dedicated group of students collaborate on a new interactive tour to illustrate campus ties to Native culture and history.
Flower Power
Cal Poly students continue a 75-year tradition of building one of the Tournament of Roses Parade’s most iconic floats.
Vintage Venture
A new home, a need for furnishings and an entrepreneurial spirit led MBA student Adam Kemp to develop a thriving vintage furniture business.
It's Elementary
First-generation student Ramon Gutierrez found a mentor in his elementary school principal, and then again graduate school.
Cal Poly, Paris
Four Mustangs represent the USA, and the university, at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
A Renaissance Man
Rich Toyon has fought fires, spun records with Weird Al and designed sets, but it was design meeting for Steven Spielberg's yard that set him on his current path.
Wraparound Love
As Black Academic Excellence Center coordinator, interim coordinator for the Latinx Center for Academic Success and Achievement and much more, Christina Sholars Ortiz has a vision of a supportive and loving campus environment.
Filling Big Shoes
Biology student Genesis Glover was honored with the MLK Legacy Award. Glover is vice president of the Black Student Union and has ambitions to become a surgeon. She's also NASA astronaut Victor Glover's daughter.
legendary football coach and Emmy-winning broadcaster
John Madden, '59
"Some people learn by example and other people learn by participating. John learned by participating."
Virginia Madden (MA '61) remembering her husband, John
Demystifying Rattlesnakes
A faculty/student project to broadcast a livestream from a rattlesnake den provides insight into these often misunderstood reptiles.
Songs of the Sea
Students undertake a long-term research project that aims to expand current marine mammal monitoring along Californiaʼs Central Coast.
Lighting a Community
Students traveled to the Navajo Nation in Arizona to provide power, and the opportunities that come with it, to a community within the largest Navajo community in the US.
Resurrecting Lost Voices
A pair of students spent nearly two years researching and creating a historical exhibit which brings back the voices of women that were nearly lost to history.
African Californios
An interdisciplinary group of Cal Poly researchers is unearthing the largely untold history of settlers of African descent in early California.
Saying Yes to Childhood
Alumna Krista (Couch) Berger always had a soft spot for childlike imagination. That, and her Business Administration degreen from Cal Poly, led her to career marketing iconic childhood toys like Barbie including a role in the blockbuster film.
Cal Poly has given me so much opportunity, resources, and they’ve really given me the space to develop into the woman and the type of leader that I want to be.
Mega Black Holes
Physics professor Jodi Christiansen is studying very-high-energy photons, also known as gamma rays, connected with supermassive black holes.
Harvesting Cork
A rare cork harvest on campus draws a crowd of around 150 students for a rare glimpse of the most lucrative agricultural job in action.
Living the Built Environment
Around 400 students design a structure, build it, transport everything by hand to Poly Canyon and inhabit the creation for 48 hours in Cal Poly's annual Design Village.
Early Fire Warning
A new use for existing equipment, inspired by the destructive Camp Fire, ends in an early warning system and a collaboration between faculty and students.
Breakthrough Bond
An innovative, ecofriendly glue designed by a Cal Poly chemistry research team has potential to reduce landfill waste and positively impact the environment on a broad scale.
Views from the Hill
Engineering students competed in a NASA challenge to design, build and test a device that addresses a current challenge in space exploration.
Centrally located in California
Central to Global Industries
Tech and Humanity
During the pandemic, researchers developed a saliva-based testing technology to help combat COVID-19, as well as to address future viruses, improving healthcare technologies worldwide.
Food and Wine
Students are helping small-scale farmers in one of California’s most important industries — leafy greens — to overcome food safety issues related to barriers in language, education and resources.
Space
Faculty co-created CubeSat technology, a billion-dollar industry both expanding space exploration and research and leveraging the tech developments of California’s non-space industries; CP1, our first student-led CubeSat, launched in 2006.
Climate
Biology students are researching ways to use rare and understudied lichen as bioindicators for things like air pollution, mineral content in rocks or to assess an ecosystem’s health.
Built Environment
Interdisciplinary groups of students and faculty are researching more resilient methods of building to reduce wildfires at the most frequent source of declared disasters in California — where the natural and built environments meet.
Entrepreneurship
Students and faculty are driving economic development, launching more than 120 companies since 2010, creating over 1,000 jobs and raising more than $250 million through our Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
