Each year, to celebrate commencement, Cal Poly highlights a group of “Great Grads”: a student from each of the six colleges who are completing an outstanding academic journey and moving on to the next phase of their lives. Olivia Madrigal is our Great Grad from the College of Engineering.

Olivia Madrigal traveled quite a distance to attend Cal Poly. Born in Los Angeles, she was raised in Chevy Chase, Maryland, nearly 2,800 miles to the east of the Poly P. 

Now with degree soon in hand, she is that many miles closer to her goal of becoming an engineer and fighting some of the world’s greatest challenges. 

“My career goal is to do everything in my power to stop the climate crisis,” the 22-year-old said. “In high school I spent my free time cleaning up parks and streams with my friends. When it came time to apply to colleges, I realized my first step was to learn everything possible about science and engineering so I could assess different technologies for myself and decide what was feasible, what wasn't, what was a good idea, what wasn't — because I knew that technology is going to be a huge part of whatever solutions need to exist.” 

Madrigal first had to evaluate university engineering programs. “No one in my family is an engineer, and we had no friends who were engineers,” she said. “I did not know the difference between a screwdriver and a wrench, so it was all super new. 

“So I thought to myself: ‘What does an engineer do? They weld, right?’ So I asked every school ‘When would I be able to weld?’ to assess how hands-on it is, how much I could learn, where I could get to. Some schools said, ‘Welding is a thing that you do in your third year.’” 

Not so at Cal Poly: “I welded my second week,” she said. 

Madrigal is a materials engineering major, where students learn to evaluate what materials should be used to create products and, if the materials don’t yet exist, how to develop them.  

But she thinks beyond the discipline as well and supplemented her main coursework with mechanical engineering classes that focus on the design, analysis and manufacturing of machines, systems and processes. And away from the classroom she “minored” in extracurriculars to put her learning into action. She also looked to fellow students for guidance and made up for lack of practical experience with unbridled enthusiasm. 

“I asked a girl who was in my major: ‘What’s the largest interdisciplinary engineering club on campus?” Madrigal said. “And she said: ‘That would be Cal Poly Racing, which is the racing car club.’"

The club builds two cars each year. Within a year of joining, Madrigal rose to the lead of the chassis team, a role that dovetailed with her studies because of the lightweight materials needed to create each car’s carbon fiber monocoque chassis and knowledge of mechanical structures that accompanied it. 

She was active in other activities: a short stint with a CubeSat team under contract to launch an educational spacecraft for interactive learning; a photochemistry summer research group; and driving endurance for the Solar Regatta Club that developed an award-winning boat with a solar-powered propulsion system.  

In her final year, she helped develop a rocket engine that earned kudos in an international competition. Cal Poly’s SLO Propulsion Technologies group became the first team in the world to complete the Collegiate Propulsive Lander Challenge’s throttle milestone. The team demonstrated controlled thrust vectoring of their 800 pound-force engine and has completed the build of a self-landing rocket the group hopes will be the first of its weight class in the world to be flown by a student team. 

Madrigal gained political experience by being elected to the ASI Board of Directors. As a representative of the College of Engineering, she was in the right place and time to make a difference. During a committee meeting with a university administrator to discuss all-gender restroom facilities, she pointed out that the lack of a women’s restroom in the Aero Hangar — which had male and all-gender facilities — was a source of frustration among females while doing project work in that machine shop.  

“There was no sign that said ‘Women,’ but there was one that said ‘Men,’ right?” she said. “And I just remember saying to someone my freshman year I’m going to change that.” The university quickly made the change. 

By the end of her first year, the same Madrigal who had come to Cal Poly not knowing how to use a wrench, was hired as a shop tech at the two student machine shops — Mustang ’60 and Aero Hanger — where she shares with other students her love of working on projects and knowledge of tools and machines. 

Learn by Doing was also an important boost to her studies and knowledge. 

“The biggest effect was it changed my mind set and how I approach problems,” Madrigal said. “I want to take things apart and understand how they work. And I have a lot less hesitation to just get in there and figure it out.” 

After graduation, she plans to continue her education through professional learning experiences that offer practical, meaningful work. 

“I'm going to spend a year doing internships across different startups where I think they have good ideas,” she said, “to just see for myself how things might sound good on paper and investigate what challenges they are facing. Or I may look for internships in places or industries that I haven’t done before — like agriculture and waking up on a field and learning what challenges farmers are facing.” 

This mirrors her approach throughout her time at Cal Poly. 

“I went into college, and my goal was to just learn as much as possible,” Madrigal said. “I feel like Cal Poly has really made that possible with what I’ve been able to do in the machine shops and the access I’ve been able to get — really anyone is able to get if they just have initiative and have ideas and projects. I don’t think enough people who go to this school appreciate how much we are able to do that no one else is able to do.”