A Record-Setting Year, An Astronaut and Mortal Kombat: Fun Facts About Commencement
This weekend, hundreds of new Cal Poly graduates will walk across the stage at Spanos Stadium and on to the next chapter of their lives.
It’s a joyous occasion full of pomp and circumstance — and some interesting history. Here are six fun facts about commencement.
The Mace
During the opening academic procession, ahead of the throng of college banners and robed dignitaries, you’ll spy someone carrying a club-like artifact that would look more at home in a museum. It’s a ceremonial mace: a symbol of authority, university bona fides and gravitas.
Cal Poly has had two maces over the last 119 years. The first one was designed by faculty member Thomas Johnston, built by the College of Engineering’s Manufacturing Processes Department and used in commencements from 1968 to 2000. It now lives in University Archives, where many first-time visitors look and wonder at what Kennedy Library archivist Laura Sorvetti describes as that “interesting-shaped item.” Common guesses include giant head massager and musical device, she said.
Professor Crissa Hewitt, now an emeritus professor, was selected to create “a more contemporary design” for the university’s centennial in 2001, which is the mace still used today. Hewitt’s mace features a stylized club, roughly the shape of a big-barrel T-ball bat, made of sterling silver, gold, teak and rosewood. The Cal Poly colors of green and gold are also part of the mace, with green malachite chip inlays in the handle and a cast gold flame element at the top.
The Voices Behind the Names
In 2016, two trained, professional name readers were added to the commencement ceremony to ensure that each graduate’s name is heard loudly and proudly.
David Markus, a prolific voice actor since he was a teenager, has been a reader at Cal Poly for nine years. He is an in-demand voice performer for commercials and podcasts as well as acting roles in television series, video games and animation.
On the other side of the stage is Jamieson Price, an actor who’s worked on stage, screen and microphone. He began announcing the names of graduates at Cal State Long Beach commencement ceremonies over 20 years ago, and now serves Chapman University and Cal Poly during graduation season.
Price has appeared in films like “The Patriot” and “The Secret Kingdom,” and on TV in “Without a Trace,” “Westworld,” “Frasier.” His voice is especially iconic for video game fans: He was the announcer in the game Mortal Kombat, delivering the brutal command, “Finish him!"
Price takes his work as a name reader seriously, knowing that every name belongs to an individual and is special. A few years ago his daughter graduated from Long Beach State, and he was able to read her name as she glided across the stage.
“It’s a very proud moment,” he said. “It’s a real moment of accomplishment and achievement for the students and a rite of passage in some ways. They enter college still as kids, kind of, and they come out of it like you are in the real world now. And it’s an exciting thing to have your name said like that.”
The Tassel is Worth the Hassle
In 1968, controversy broke out ahead of commencement, as faculty members begged then-president Robert E. Kennedy to do something about a serious issue of student decorum: decorations on their mortarboard caps.
To alleviate the crisis, Kennedy proposed official color-coded tassels to give the students some individuality based on their majors — a tradition that lives on to this day, even though decorations are no longer frowned upon.
Here’s a guide to the meanings behind the rainbow of tassels you’ll see at this year’s commencement ceremony.
Maize – All College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences degrees
Blue-Violet – Architecture
Orange — Architectural Engineering
Brown — All other architecture degrees
Sapphire Blue — Industrial Technology
Drab — All other Orfalea College of Business degrees
Orange — All College of Engineering degrees
White — All College of Liberal Arts degrees, Extended Education
Light Blue — Master of Arts in Education
Sage Green — Kinesiology
Golden Yellow — All other Bailey College of Science and Math degrees
One more tassel tip: Bachelor’s candidates wear tassels on right side of their caps until their degrees are conferred, then move to the left; graduate students wear them on the left from the beginning.
Honored Alumni
This year, Cal Poly will award honorary degrees to two individuals: bestselling author and technology pioneer John Couch and Cal Poly alumnus, NASA astronaut and decorated test pilot Victor Jerome Glover II.
Glover will receive an honorary Doctor of Science during the College of Engineering ceremony at 4:30 p.m. June 15. Glover was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2013 while serving as a legislative fellow in the U.S. Senate. A veteran naval aviator and test pilot, Glover has flown more than 3,500 hours in over 40 aircraft, completed 400 carrier landings and served in both combat and peacetime deployments. He also earned multiple advanced degrees in engineering and military operations and was designated a test pilot in 2007.
Captain Glover piloted the historic SpaceX Crew-1 mission aboard Resilience in 2020. He made history as the first Black astronaut to live on the International Space Station as part of a long-duration mission, spending 168 days aboard the station. Glover completed four spacewalks and supported critical scientific and outreach activities. He later served in several NASA leadership roles, including crew representative for the human landing systems program. In 2023, Glover was named pilot of NASA’s planned Artemis II mission, the first crewed flight around the moon in over 50 years. His awards include the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal and Cal Poly’s Service to the Community Award.
John Couch will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters on June 14, during the Orfalea College of Business ceremony at 8:30 a.m. Couch holds a bachelor's degree in computer science and a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was named a distinguished alumnus in 2000.
A former instructor at the University of California, Berkeley, and San José State University, he co-authored "Compiler Construction: Theory and Practice," "Rewiring Education" and "My Life at Apple and the Steve I Knew." Couch began his career at Hewlett-Packard in 1972 before joining Apple in 1978 as its 54th employee. He served as Apple’s first VP of software and later led the Lisa division, developing Apple’s first GUI computer. In 1985, he shifted to education, transforming Santa Fe Christian Schools through innovative technology use. Before returning to Apple in 2002, Couch was CEO of genomics company DoubleTwist and an executive in residence at Mayfield Fund. At Steve Jobs' request, he rejoined Apple as its first vice president of education, growing its education business to $10 billion and launching iTunes U.
The Fateful Eight
Though Cal Poly was founded in 1901, the first graduation ceremony was held June 15, 1906, just three years after classes started at the polytechnic vocational school — not a college or university then.
Just eight students — an even match of girls and boys — made up the Class of 1906. That first class successfully completed the Agriculture, Mechanics, and Household Arts programs — the only programs offered at the time.
The three main campus buildings they knew no longer exist: the original main administration building and boys’ dormitory were leveled in the early 1940s to make room for a modern administration building and clock tower, while the Science Building was demolished in 1974 to create space for the Architecture Building.
Those eight grads left behind two gifts: a “class tree,” a valley oak that still stands tall on California Boulevard; and the commemorative spade they used to plant it that in turn was used for decades of class tree plantings, and now lives in University Archives. The students of 1906 penned a history of their class, left a class will and offered a class prophecy. See more in the Polytechnic Journal, via University Archives.
By the Numbers
The 2025 commencement celebration will be held at 8:30 a.m., 12:30 and 4:30 p.m. each weekend day in Spanos Stadium on June 14 and 15. Cal Poly will celebrate a record-setting 6,821 students who are eligible to graduate at the university’s commencement ceremonies. More than 53,000 guests are expected across all the ceremonies.
The Class of 2025 will join more than 230,000 Cal Poly Proud alumni making an impact in their communities, in California and across the nation and the world. The College of Engineering will have the largest number of total undergraduate and graduate students at commencement, while business administration in the Orfalea College of Business is the largest program. The College of Architecture and Environmental Design, while the smallest college at commencement, nevertheless has two of this year’s 10 most popular programs.
Colleges by Total Graduates
1. College of Engineering: 1,956
2. College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences: 1,203
3. College of Liberal Arts: 1,164
4. Orfalea College of Business: 1,125
5. Bailey College of Science and Mathematics: 851
6. College of Architecture: 522
Most Popular Undergraduate Majors
1. Business Administration (OCOB): 832
2. Mechanical Engineering (CENG): 353
3. Computer Science (CENG): 303
4. Biological Sciences: (BCSM): 181
5. Psychology (CLA): 164
6. Agricultural Business (CAFES): 164
7. Architecture (CAED): 163
8. Civil Engineering (CENG): 158
9. Animal Science (CAFES): 152
10. Construction Management (CAED): 144
Most Popular Graduate Degrees
1. Electrical Engineering (CENG): 62
2. Mechanical Engineering (CENG): 58
3. Business Analytics (OCOB): 57
4. Civil and Environmental Engineering (CENG): 53
5. Computer Science (CENG): 51
6. Biomedical Engineering (CENG): 46
7. Business Administration (OCOB): 42
8. Agricultural Education (CAFES): 38
9. Environmental Sciences and Management (CAFES): 31
10. Engineering Management (CENG): 29
This story is an update to a similar piece from Commencement 2023.
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