Fresh from the Lab
See what Learn by Doing looks like in a trio of CLA labs across disciplines.
Uncovering the Past
The late-morning sun streams over the hills at the Diablo Canyon Lands, more than 12,000 acres of pristine coastal lands located about 15 miles from the Cal Poly campus. Small archaeological teams of Cal Poly students, alumni and faculty are carefully unearthing artifacts from a homestead built nearly a century ago. The Yoshida family lived on the undeveloped section of this coastline with their 10 children from 1928 until February 1942, when they were forcibly removed and sent to a Japanese internment camp. While the original family members were unable to return, their descendants recently gathered from all over California to honor their family history and uncover pieces of their past.
Anthropology Professor Terry Jones and Geography Associate Professor G. Andrew Fricker co-led an archaeological excavation with current students and alumni as part of the Archaeological Field Methods Lab (ANT 310).
“We know the names of the people that lived at this site and the events that surrounded their lives. This is what we call historical archaeology, or text-aided archaeology,” Jones said. “The historic record tends to record the activities of the big players, major advances and the upper classes. Historical archaeology aims to flesh out the lives of people whose paths aren’t that well documented. History consists of what happened to them too. Our task is to look at the small things they left behind and what they say about their daily lives. And then you can place their daily lives against the backdrop of these bigger events in history.”
While archaeology students were working in the field, Fricker was mapping the site with a drone and GPS and recording the found artifacts.
“On the one hand, students were digging and recovering artifacts in a traditional way, but we were recording them all with state-of-the-art technology,” Jones said. “That added another tremendously important dimension to the quality of experience. I know from recent graduates that our students are getting jobs because they know this technology from being exposed to it. Graduates from other programs elsewhere in California don’t get this kind of hands-on exposure to these technologies.”
Jones enlisted the help of local recent anthropology alumni as “crew chiefs” to lead small groups of student excavators and give them individual instruction on excavation methods.
“They like to come back,” he said. “They get a little break from the work that they’re doing and more experience supervising. Students get to learn from people who have acquired experience and to network. They get to find out firsthand what people think are the important things that they need to know if they’re going to seek employment in this field.”
In the spring of 2025, Jones is planning to work with three senior projects and an alumna’s master’s thesis using the cataloged artifacts from the successful excavation. By studying the remains of trash left by the family, the team learned about the Yoshidas’ daily life. These findings help fill in the details of their experiences, including dietary preferences, particularly a strong preference for abalone and turban snails, and their collection of fine Japanese pottery.
“I feel very strongly that if you’re going to be a cultural resources manager/archaeologist, you need to understand the realities of what the record looks like, how to investigate it, and all the people who are connected,” Jones said. “You can’t do archaeology only from books.”
Thirty Yoshida family descendants from multiple generations traveled from all over California to honor their family’s history at the site. “They had brought 12 smooth stones, each painted with one of the names of their relatives that had lived at the site—Japanese on one side and English on the other,” Jones said. “We placed the stones in the site as a tribute, and it was a very powerful moment. I’ll be honest, I wiped away a tear. It was one of the most impactful moments in my 45 years of doing archaeology.”
Visualizing Brain Waves
A basketball fan watches the big game, eagerly waiting to see whether a gambling bet will pay off. A college student listens to quiet sounds while asleep, hoping that the association with what they studied yesterday will help their memory tomorrow.
What do these two people have in common? Both are research participants in the new electroencephalography (EEG) lab run by Associate Professor Kelly Bennion and Assistant Professor James Antony from the Psychology and Child Development Department. EEG uses sensors placed on the scalp to measure the brain’s electrical activity and record changes in real time. “Getting our EEG lab up and running has confirmed that it is an excellent technique and methodology for undergraduate students,” Bennion said. “EEG provides a student-friendly way to look at neural signals and tie them to behavior.”
Student researchers use EEG to observe participants’ reactions to specific stimuli in various settings. In one study, sports fans watch a basketball game while making occasional bets on whether a team will score, and their success rate determines how much research compensation they receive. “Prior studies have found neural signals related to high engagement, and we predict that we will see these signals more strongly while participants watch plays that they bet on,” Antony said. In another study, Bennion, Antony and student researchers are studying how targeted memory reactivation can improve memory formation during sleep.
“We can strengthen memories during sleep by linking learning with specific sounds and then softly playing those sounds back to participants while they sleep,” Antony said. “This has been shown most often for simple associations, but in the real world, so many things we learn are connected in a more complex way (for example, think of the number of things that are related to the concept of World War II). In this latest study, we’re asking whether we can reactivate more complex networks of associations during sleep. We’re predicting that more complex memories can be reactivated, but only when we encourage people to integrate information during learning. An example of this is if we asked you to try to recall all the information related to some event, so the memories are all bound together, so to speak.”
By putting research methods into practice, students gain a better understanding of the existing scholarly literature and develop essential skills to pursue graduate degrees and enhance their careers.
“We discuss EEG as a method in every class we teach, so having students learn how to collect and analyze EEG data gives them an even clearer picture of how the studies they’re reading about in their classes truly come to life,” Bennion said. “We have many students eager to eventually get their Ph.D., in which prior research experience is essential for being admitted. However, even if students do not end up going to graduate school, interning in the lab can help enhance many skills, such as teamwork, critical thinking, ability to read and critique scientific literature, data analysis, and more.”
Graduate student researcher An Huynh (Psychology, ’24) cites her work in the lab as a key motivator for furthering her work in the field.
“Dr. Bennion and Dr. Antony were the ones who inspired me to continue pursuing psychology and discover why people behave the way they do,” said Huynh, who is pursuing a master’s at Cal Poly in business analytics. “We are currently aiming to publish a study that investigates how daydreaming affects memory! Moving on in the future, I am looking forward to continuing research on cognition and putting what I learned into application.”
Building Connections
Santa Barbara locals are accustomed to seeing dozens of large offshore oil platforms, but fewer have seen how the structures are teeming with marine life below the surface. Artificial reefs have formed on the towers over the years, providing an unexpected habitat for many underwater ecosystems. The oil wells are scheduled to be decommissioned within the next 10 years, but there is debate about whether to remove the platforms entirely or leave them behind as human-made habitats.
Ocean Site One is a series of research projects spanning disciplines and campuses. Faculty and students are creating a virtual reality experience to educate the public about how marine life thrives in unexpected places and how removing the oil platforms could have unintended negative consequences. Eventually, the experience will be developed into a traveling museum exhibit to educate broader audiences.
“The Ocean Sight One experience is designed to function through a virtual reality headset with immersive video and audio that takes the participant on the dive down the underwater length of the oil platform structure, so the participant can see and interact with the vibrant marine life all around,” said David Gillette, codirector of the Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies (LAES) program and an English professor. “This experience is accompanied by the voices of scientists and community members who have been studying this marine life for years. When the project travels the state of California, the VR experience will also be accompanied by an inviting, interactive gateway structure constructed over and around the entrance to the room where the VR is being presented.”
Over winter and spring quarters of 2024, LAES students collaborated with architecture, engineering and business students from Birmingham City University (BCU), a landlocked university located a 2-1/2 hour drive northwest of London. Working across continents, the teams designed and built the interactive entrance to the Ocean Site One VR experience. After five months of work, Cal Poly graduate Bella Slosberg (Journalism, ’24), who is seeking a master’s in environmental sciences and management, and LAES student Madelyn Cruz, who is working on a master’s in engineering management, traveled to Birmingham with Gillette. There, they presented the final working design at BCU’s Innovation Festival—a research showcase where students can network with industry professionals. Meanwhile, LAES Codirector Michael Haungs hosted a live-streamed viewing of the BCU presentation in Cal Poly’s Expressive Technology Studios in the Frost Center for Research and Innovation so both teams could take part.
“Collaborative engineering and design work continues to expand around the globe, with more diverse work groups coordinating their efforts across time zones, languages and national boundaries,” Gillette said. “To more effectively prepare students for professional work in this kind of environment, project-based learning with a real-world project has proven to provide a faster, more comprehensive and lasting understanding of the benefits of this kind of collaboration. This also better prepares students for the kind of work they are likely to encounter as soon as they enter the workplace.”
Student teams from both campuses worked together through the project’s entire development process. Shorter design exercises taught them design and user experience principles through hands-on iterative trial and error. The teams then applied everything they had learned to the final design for the physical gateway entrance. Along the way, they also learned how to collaborate across great distances using an academic version of Agile project management software that allows an iterative approach to delivering a project throughout its life cycle. Faculty interested in increasing collaboration between the two institutions were testing methods for effective and efficient project coordination.
“I have always been impressed by how quickly students of the same age and same general interests are so willing to dive into complex collaborative projects that cross oceans and national divisions, especially if that project involves a central goal of improving how we interact with different communities and with our natural environments,” Gillette said. “When our projects focus on sustainability and respect for and celebration of difference, the physical distance between students seems to dissolve as they quickly realize and appreciate how we need to be working together to solve the complex, world-spanning problems that confront all of us.”