About the College of Liberal Arts
Welcome!
Cal Poly's College of Liberal Arts (CLA) infuses a liberal arts education with meaningful, hands-on learning opportunities through laboratories, project-based and service-learning activities, and internships. Additionally, CLA’s leadership in interdisciplinary endeavors and its entrepreneurial spirit gives students unique opportunities to push boundaries and innovate through multidisciplinary projects and teams.
With its deep roots in creative thinking, human understanding and innovative action, CLA gives all Cal Poly students the tools to thrive in a complex, multicultural world.
Liberal Arts "Sin Fronteras"
The College of Liberal Arts is continuing former Dean Philip Williams' aspirational vision of providing a liberal arts education sin fronteras for every student: without borders, without boundaries and without barriers.
WITHOUT BORDERS — a liberal arts education that opens the world to all of our students by actively addressing equity gaps with an emphasis on access and inclusion through international educational opportunities (both virtual exchange and study abroad), coursework and co-curricular activities.
WITHOUT BOUNDARIES — a liberal arts education that prepares all of our students for an increasingly interconnected world and exposes them to interdisciplinary collaboration and approaches.
WITHOUT BARRIERS — a liberal arts education that advances a culture of belonging – one in which Cal Poly’s opportunities are equitably available to students from different races, genders, sexual orientations, documentation statuses and other social identities.
Both data-driven, and vetted by members of our diversity community, the CLA's Diversity Action Plan will guide us for the next five years as we work toward creating a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive college across several fronts.
View the CLA Diversity Action Plan
Cal Poly sits on the traditional lands of the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe of San Luis Obispo County and Region. The yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini have a documented presence in this area for over 10,000 years. The tiłhini peoples have stewarded their ancestral and unceded homelands which include all of the cities, communities, federal and state open spaces within the San Luis Obispo County region. These homelands extend East into the Carrizo Plains toward Kern County, South to the Santa Maria River, North to Ragged Point, and West beyond the ocean’s shoreline in an unbroken chain of lineage, kinship, and culture.