Recent News
Cal Poly Music Department to Present Multiple Virtual Shows This Month
May 31, 2021
This month, Cal Poly’s Music Department will put on at least three virtual concerts before the end of spring quarter.
Cal Poly Choirs to Present ‘Ubis Caritas’ Concert Virtually on Saturday, June 5
First, the Cal Poly Choirs will present a virtual concert titled “Ubi Caritas” at 8 p.m. Saturday, June 5.
“Ubi Caritas” will feature a variety of selections on the themes of charity and love.
Cal Poly’s Chamber Choir will present three 20th century settings of the Latin text “Ubi Caritas,” all loosely based on the ancient chant melody. This portion will feature works by Maurice Duruflé, Ola Gjeilo and Luke Mayernik. The group will also perform several Italian and French secular works.
The Cal Poly Women’s Chorus will present “Someone Will Remember Us” by Jocelyn Hagen. The choir will be accompanied by animal science major Hana AbdulCader on harp, plus a string trio of Music Department faculty members Emily Lanzone, Michael Whitson and Laura Gaynon.
PolyPhonics, Cal Poly’s premier ensemble, will perform music by Carlos Guastavino and Joseph Rheinberger, as well as a special comical selection.
Lastly, the University Singers will present music by J.S. Bach and R. Scott Coulter, among others.
Tickets to the virtual event are $10 and can be purchased online from the Performing Arts Center.
Cal Poly Wind Bands to Present Virtual ‘Voices in the Wind’ Concert on Sunday, June 6
The same weekend, Cal Poly’s Wind Ensemble and Wind Orchestra will present a virtual concert titled “Voices in the Wind” at 3 p.m. Sunday, June 6.
Most of the works on the program were composed within the last decade, including “A Mother of a Revolution!” by Omar Thomas, which was inspired by the Stonewall uprising of 1969 and brought to national attention the systemic oppression of the LGBTQ community in New York City.
Faculty oboist Heidi Butterfield will perform “Hidden Currents” for oboe and wind ensemble by Katherine Bergman. Cal Poly is among several universities involved in supporting this new work and is presenting the West Coast premiere.
The piece depicts the seasonal changes along the northernmost stretch of the Mississippi River.
Travis Cross’ “Let the Amen Sound” will conclude the concert. Cross uses the 17th-century hymn “Lobe den Herren” as the musical material to build a work that evokes the playful exuberance of childhood, the sentimental dance of youth, and the triumphant celebration of lives well lived.
Chamber performances by small ensembles from the Wind Bands will be included in the program.
The concert will be recorded in Miossi Hall of the Performing Arts Center’s Christopher Cohan Center.
Director of Bands Christopher J. Woodruff and Associate Director of Bands Nicholas P. Waldron will conduct the concert. A live Q&A session with the conductors and some of the performers will be held following the concert.
Tickets to the virtual event are $5 and can be purchased online from the Performing Arts Center.
Cal Poly Symphony to Present ‘Voices Past and Present’ Virtually on Friday, June 11
Finally, the Cal Poly Symphony will present its season finale, “Voices Past and Present,” virtually at 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 11.
The program will include music for winds and brass, music for string orchestra and music for everyone together. The winds and brass will conclude their yearlong exploration of Gordon Jacob’s “Old Wine in New Bottles,” a set of pieces based on old English folk songs.
The orchestra’s string section will perform Chicago-based composer Stacy Garrop’s “Lo Yisa Goy,” an instrumental setting of the Jewish prayer for peace.
Everyone will come together to play two works: Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “English Folk Song Suite,” orchestrated by Jacob, and Nkeiru Okoye’s “Voices Shouting Out,” written in response to the events of 9/11.
The Cal Poly orchestra has rehearsed and recorded as a hybrid ensemble since the fall. This included an inside in-person string ensemble meeting, an outside in-person wind and brass musicians meeting, and other student musicians joining remotely from home. The combined efforts of these three methods of performing will make up the presentation.
A live Q&A session with conductor and music Professor David Arrivée and students will follow the recorded performance.
Tickets to the virtual event are $5 and can be purchased online from the Performing Arts Center.
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Political Science Student Wins First Place at CSU Research Competition
May 24, 2021
By Sophia Lincoln
Isabella Abelgas
Political science senior Isabella Abelgas won first place for the Business, Economics and Hospitality Management category of this year’s California State University (CSU) Systemwide Student Research Competition.
According to Abelgas, the competition is tiered and starts within the individual California universities. There are multiple different categories for the competition, which tend to be split up by college and major. Ultimately, two winners were chosen from each of Cal Poly’s six colleges, Abelgas being one of two from the College of Liberal Arts.
For the Business, Economics and Hospitality Management category, Abelgas submitted a presentation on the impact of export cash crops on developing countries.
“The countries are no longer able to provide domestic food security for their people, and instead, their economies are geared toward these cash crops that disproportionately positively affect the United States,” Abelgas said. “Because of these export cash crops, there’s a lot of labor exploitation.”
Abelgas said she first started studying this topic in her Technology and International Development class (POLS 452). After submitting a similar paper on the topic for a class assignment, Abelgas said her professor told her to submit the paper to the CSU Research Competition.
The submission itself includes an essay along with a pre-recorded video wherein the students present their research. At the competition, which was held virtually this year, the videos are played live for the judges, who can then ask follow-up questions.
The competition includes both graduate and undergraduate students from all 23 CSU campuses. The first-place winners are awarded a $500 cash prize, and the second-place winners are awarded a $250 cash prize.
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Cal Poly’s Mustang Media Group wins 37 national and state awards at CCMA and CMBAM ceremonies
May 12, 2021
By Sophia Lincoln
MMG Staff at CMBAM Virtual Ceremony
Mustang Media Group (MMG) won a total of 37 national and state awards at this year’s College Media Business and Advertising (CMBAM) and California Collegiate Media Association (CCMA) virtual ceremonies.
The student-run media organization won third place for Best Newspaper, third place for Best Newspaper Website and first place for Best College Media Sales and Marketing Program.
The group also took home a variety of individual awards including Best Social Justice Coverage, which was received by recent MMG graduates Aidan McGloin, Austin Linthicum and Kailey O’Connell and journalism junior Diego Rivera.
MMG Places 3rd For Best Website
MMG Advisor and CCMA Board Member Pat Howe said this award is particularly impressive.
“If you think about it, this contest included news organizations who are based in places where the [social justice] riots were really happening, where the protests were much larger, where the conflict was much greater than what we saw here,” Howe said. “I think that one is probably one that we should be proud of.”
MMG Wins Best Social Justice Coverage
MMG also won first place for Best COVID-19 Response Plan in the Nation, which Editor in Chief Sabrina Pascua said is very rewarding.
“I think just having that recognition of things that were produced, while we've been doing this work remotely was extremely validating,” Pascua said. “It just goes to show how much people really pushed continue to push themselves during these times.”
According to CCMA Vice President for Conference and Cal Poly Journalism Chair Brady Teufel, MMG was one of more than 60 organizations at the CCMA awards show.
Teufel said that more than 90 participants attended the virtual event for a one-hour show that featured all of the award-winning work, videos from winners and new award categories.
Teufel said that MMG’s ranking so highly among acclaimed journalism schools including University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley is a testament to Cal Poly’s media organization.
“These are schools with long, storied histories of producing excellent student journalism,” Teufel said.
MMG also took first place for Best News Series for their coverage of the controversial hiring of Paulette Granberry Russel.
Teufel said this is “especially commendable when you consider it was published during the summer when students are not working for Mustang News in any official capacity.”
MMG Wins Best News Series
Pascua also said that the summer coverage “shows how committed people on staff are to making sure that we are keeping our audience informed.”
The media organization covers a diverse range of topics over a variety of platforms including print, web, TV and radio.
For a complete list of their awards, see the Journalism Department’s website.
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Sociology professor develops new course based on epigenetic research
May 3, 2021
By Sophia Lincoln
Martine Lappé
Over the past year, more data has arisen regarding how genomics might play a role in a person’s susceptibility to different diseases and illnesses, most notably in terms of the Coronavirus.
Various research and findings have revealed that both nature and nurture can affect a person’s health and in fact, environmental factors that result from the systematic inequities between races seems to have a large impact on health and immunity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sociology professor Martine Lappé has been studying this phenomenon since she was first introduced to it during her undergraduate education at University of California, San Diego.
“That really got me interested in questions about not only the social environment, and the way it shapes our experiences, but also they ways in which particular areas of scientific investigation can impact the way that we experience our lives,” Lappé said.
In addition to teaching courses on the issue at Cal Poly, Lappé is also involved in her own epigenetics research, recently co-authoring an article analyzing the ethics in using new technology like epigenetic clocks.
“I had the underlying questions about equity, the underlying questions about social implications, the underlying questions about ethics,” Lappé said.
During the spring of 2020, Lappé launched a new Cal Poly course based on her research.
The course is on the sociology of health and illness and focuses on “the ways in which race, class and gender, as well as sexuality and other axes of oppression, influence both experiences of health as well as our conceptualizations of health or disease,” according to Lappé.
Since the course started right during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lappé said the experience was very unique and provided an important opportunity to discuss the broader questions of health equity.
“Each week, we would address core readings in sociology, but also readings in the popular press about the pandemic, so that we could wear this question about how do we understand health and illness as these sociological experiences with what we were actively seeing unfold and experiencing in relationship to the pandemic,” Lappé said.
While Lappé’s research initially grew out of curiosity about epigenetics and its social impacts, she has become more focused on the issues of racial equality, gender equality and the role intersectionality in health and specifically, the Coronavirus pandemic.
“Now, I would say one of the goals of the project is to really bring the findings and the collaborations that I’ve been able to establish across different disciplines, into the moment that we’re experiencing now, and to create opportunities for conversation, but also some critical engagement with the kinds of impacts that science and my findings about it might have going forward,” Lappé said.
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Cal Poly Child Development Students and Alumni Overcome Challenges Amid Virtual Learning
Mar 17, 2021
By Sophia Lincoln
Sheighlin MacAskill
It is 8:15 in the morning and Miss MacAskill’s kindergarten class is beginning on Zoom. Various children in various different environments continue to emerge in the little squares on the computer screen.
A little dark-haired boy sniffs loudly. “You got a sniffly nose?” Miss MacAskill asks him. He nods animatedly.
One girl unmutes herself and starts to tell Miss MacAskill about her wiggly tooth that was bleeding yesterday.
After a few minutes of interacting with her students, Miss MacAskill shares her computer screen on the Zoom. A computer-animated illustration, or “bitmoji”, of Miss MacAskill appears on the screen. The students call the animation “Flat Miss MacAskill”.
Sheighlin MacAskill has been teaching at Moreland School District in San Jose since she graduated from Cal Poly with a bachelor’s in child development in 2014. Like many other recent graduates who are currently starting their careers in education, MacAskill has faced many challenges learning how to teach virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic.
MacAskill said when the pandemic first started to hit our country in March of 2020, she didn’t expect it to last nearly as long as it has.
“We were all hearing whispers about how [the virus] was spreading, and that certain countries were starting to close down and take all these crazy precautions,” MacAskill said. “But we weren’t really doing anything on our end yet, because it hadn’t really gotten to us at that point.”
While Moreland School District had initially planned to close for only three weeks in March, MacAskill said they have been doing virtual learning for nearly a year now.
According to MacAskill, the school’s methods for virtual learning have bettered since they first halted in-person learning and the children have since gotten the hang of it.
“It reminded me that kids are far more resilient than adults are in this situation,” MacAskill said. “They’re all just really adapting to what we’re doing right now, which I think was probably harder for teachers than it was for especially the younger students.”
Still, MacAskill said it has been challenging for her to teach certain skills that tend to require physical interaction with people and materials.
While MacAskill had the benefit of in-person teaching experience prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, others are starting their careers in child development right now. For many though, career options in education are very limited at the moment, according to some Cal Poly seniors entering the field.
Ana Bernardo is a child development senior and psychology minor at Cal Poly. Bernardo is currently interning for Transitions Mental Health Association as her field study for her child development major.
Bernardo works as a call handler at the Central Coast Hotline, which is part of Transitions Mental Health Association.
“Mainly, we deal with people who deal with mental health issues,” Bernardo said. “We get a lot of crisis calls, whether that’s suicidal intervention, panic attacks or even third-party concerns about people who have mental health problems and are needing resources in the San Luis Obispo area.”
Bernardo said she ultimately hopes to use her child development and psychology education to go into marriage and family therapy, specifically focusing on child and family dynamics.
Part of the pandemic’s effect on this industry is the resulting lack of options for those starting out in the field, as many organizations are no longer recruiting interns, Bernardo said.
“I wanted to work for like a family care network, but they actually weren’t accepting anybody just because all of those are supposed to be in person,” Bernardo said. “It just almost got to a point where you just can take what you get and unfortunately, that can sometimes not directly align with what you want to do.”
While her internship at Transitions Mental Health Association doesn’t exactly correspond with her child development major and future career goals though, Bernardo said she is very glad she ended up there and that she is learning a lot.
“I think maybe it was like a hidden gem. I honestly learned so much from the process,” Bernardo said. “I think it has really prepared me for [post-graduate] and just like an insight into what the mental health community will look like.”
Similar to Bernardo’s experience, psychology senior and child development minor Adian Alseth started his field study during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adian Alseth works remotely
Alseth is currently working as an intern with the Men and Masculinity Program at Cal Poly to raise awareness and educate on masculine roles within society in order to counteract sexual, social and power based violence against women.
“Most recently, we’ve been working toward creating community inclusivity for men of color on campus, since they are a highly impacted group, they have the highest rates of loss retention, so most likely not to complete a degree at Cal Poly,” Alseth said.
Like Bernardo, Alseth struggled with the limited options for field studies near the start of the pandemic.
“I think the limitations that were originally set made it difficult to find exactly what I was looking for, in terms of what I was hoping to do,” Alseth said.
Unlike Bernardo though, Alseth is not entirely certain of what he would like to do with his psychology and child development education. Though he said he would like to do “something along the route of mental health and mental awareness” as we start to see the effects that the pandemic has had on mental health, particularly in children.
Though Alseth values his current work with the Men and Masculinity Program, he is a bit concerned about finding work post-graduation.
“I wasn’t expecting to graduate in such an unstable economy,” Alseth said.
Additionally, Alseth said that the experience of working virtually has had some drawbacks in terms of preparing him for a future career.
“It was really unexpected to do this internship, or this part of my coursework, remote,” Alseth said. “You definitely lose the interpersonal connection you have when you’re in person with people.”
Despite how different his experience is from what he might have imagined, Alseth is grateful to have had this opportunity with the Men and Masculinity Program.
“The skills I’ve been developing are certainly applicable to a wide range [of careers],” Alseth said.
According to child development junior Tami Amer, the options for field study and internships have become even more limited since last year when Bernardo and Alseth started their field studies.
“Especially being a junior and this being one of the most important times to have field work and that kind of stuff, I’m just really scared for the future and reflecting if not having experience directly in the field will affect my later career,” Amer said.
Amer even had to take the Preschool Learning Lab class online last quarter, which she said also makes her nervous about not having enough experience.
“Not that I didn’t get any experience out of it, but it just definitely wasn’t as fulfilling as it would have been in person,” Amer said. “Not being able to physically interact with the kids and see them face to face, but kind of just over Zoom talking to them.”
According to Amer, she and other child development students in her year are worried that they might not be able to graduate on time next year due to the current lack of opportunities for field study, which is a requirement of the major.
Amer hopes to use her child development education to ultimately become a speech therapist for children.
As teachers are beginning to get vaccinated and we enter what seems to be the beginning of the end of this pandemic, some schools are moving back to in-person learning while others will remain virtual for some time.
The same is true for other careers related to the child development major, including those which Bernardo, Alseth and Amer are interested in.
MacAskill's district will remain virtual for the time being. In the meantime, it is up to her to keep her kindergartners as engaged as possible over Zoom.
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Brady Teufel appointed new Journalism Chair and Christy Chand appointed new Theatre and Dance Chair
Mar 17, 2021
By Sophia Lincoln
Brady Teufel
On March 1, it was announced that Brady Teufel was appointed as the new chair of the Journalism Department and Christy Chand was appointed as the new chair of the Theatre and Dance Department.
Teufel, who will be replacing former Journalism Chair Mary Glick, teaches courses in multimedia journalism and is the advisor for Cal Poly’s award-winning student-run newspaper, Mustang News.
Teufel was also awarded the Journalism Educator of the Year award by the California Journalism and Media Affiliates in 2018.
Chand started a position as interim chair of the Theatre and Dance Department in January. In September, she will begin her position as the official chair.
Christy Chand
Chand is also the director of Cal Poly Orchesis Dance Company and she has directed numerous Cal Poly dance productions, including the most recent virtual show, Floor Plan.
Both chairs will start their three-year terms this September.
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Cal Poly Theatre and Dance puts on two virtual shows this quarter
Mar 3, 2021
By Sophia Lincoln
The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting limitations have hit the performing arts industry pretty hard. But while other theatre and dance companies struggle to create productions using online platforms such as Zoom, Cal Poly’s theatre and dance department is using the stay-at-home order to their advantage.
Both productions this quarter, Shelter and Floor Plan, have themes that are based around the environment that many have been confined to during the pandemic: home.
Shelter
Shelter
Shelter is an original audio play written and produced entirely by its cast of Cal Poly students and faculty. Acting professor and director of the production Karin Hendricks said she came up with the initial idea of doing a play about homes as living characters at the start of the pandemic, which also happened to be during the time that she was moving houses.
“The title Shelter really is kind of play on the idea of the shelter-at-home order that went out,” Hendricks said. “We really in the show break that down and talk about what it really means to have a shelter, to have home, to have a place where you live and the relationships and experiences that happen within that.”
Theatre senior Bella Ramirez is one of the cast members in Shelter. Having performed in three live productions pre-pandemic as well as acting in Cal Poly’s virtual production of An Iliad last fall, Ramirez said that Shelter was very different than any other production she has performed in.
“It was so different than just being handed a script and being like ‘this is your character, perform it’ versus actually writing things that are so truthful to yourself and then recording those as you and putting them out into the world,” Ramirez said. “I just am very grateful that I was able to have this experience.”
Not only were cast members in charge of writing their own scripts, but each member also had to base their script on their own personal experiences. Comparing it to verbatim theatre, Hendricks said that it was somewhat inspired by personal story podcasts like The Moth.
According to Hendricks, the individual audio stories that will come together to create Shelter range from poems and monologues told from the point of view of household appliances to stories about what home means to individual actors.
“We developed this piece from nothing except for of course the experiences of the actors,” Hendricks said.
Now that all of the actors’ audio stories have been recorded, the sound design team is working to put it all together adding sound effects and composing original music, Hendricks said.
Additionally, since Shelter is an audio play, the costume team and scenic design team had to get creative with how to contribute.
According to Hendricks, the scenic design team has created 20 unique art installations which will be distributed around downtown San Luis Obispo. Each installation is a plexiglass box displaying different aspects of the show. On each box, there is also a QR code that links to the Shelter webpage, as well as a map showing where the other 19 boxes are located.
Hendricks also said that the costume design team is creating a larger piece of art as well as a quilt-style dress with each quilt square representing a different story from the play.
“It’s kind of interesting that constraint has led to this creativity of stuff that we’ve never done before but that I think is going to be really, really exciting for our community and for everybody who decides to engage,” Hendricks said.
Floor Plan
Floor Plan
Consistent with the theme of home, Floor Plan features an imagined house, which in reality is made up of different rooms in the various different houses of the dancers. According to dance professor Christy Chand, the idea was conceived as a result of social distancing limitations and the necessity for dancers to remain in their own homes.
“I wanted to think more about how could dance embrace this space that we’re all stuck in right now,” Chand said.
According to Chand, in order to create the imagined house in Floor Plan, Cal Poly architecture alumnus Evan Ricaurté designed an actual, physical floor plan of a house. Then, individual dancers were assigned to different types of rooms (one to a kitchen, one to a backyard and so on), which they filmed in their own houses and apartments. Finally, Ricaurte and others worked to put all of the individual clips of the dancers in varying rooms in their respective living spaces together, adding hallway transitions and editing them to make it appear as though they are all part of one floor plan.
“We also made it a true house,” Chand said. “It’s not like an eight-bedroom, one bath house. It’s a two-bedroom, two bath, there’s hallways, there’s a garage, there’s a driveway, there’s closets there’s a kitchen – you know, all of the things that you would normally have in a house. It’s just that there’s going to be a dance happening in every single one of those spaces.”
English senior and dance minor Brianna Barnes is one of the dancers as well as one of the choreographers for Floor Plan. Barnes said that something she enjoyed most about this process was the one-on-one time that choreographers and dancers were able to spend together.
“Instead of having like ten group pieces or so, everyone has a solo,” Barnes said. “That’s been really cool as a choreographer and a dancer to work one-on-one and really tailor our pieces to the people that are going to be performing them.”
Chand said that while she and Orchesis would rather perform live on a stage as they typically would, she is still very excited about about what they were able to come up with.
“We’re not expert dance filmmakers, we’re just trying to do something with what we have,” Chand said. “We’re trying to make the most of it and still have it be something that is artistically fulfilling for everyone involved and I think that we have done that.”
Both productions will be made available online through the Performing Arts Center website and are free to all, though donations may also be made via the website. Shelter can be accessed on the PAC website from March 6 through March 13, after which it will still be available on the Theatre and Dance website. Floor Plan can be accessed on the PAC website from March 13 through March 20, after which it will also be available on the Theatre and Dance website.
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Journalism Senior Project Turns into Philanthropic Organization Helping Provide Bicycles to Kenyan Orphans
Feb 17, 2021
By Sophia Lincoln
Everjourney Photo by Luke Bender, SLO local
For his senior project in 2018, Cal Poly journalism alumnus and avid cyclist Sean Bird created Everjourney. Initially just a creative outlet to merge his major with his favorite pastime, throughout Bird’s collegiate experience, Everjourney grew from a casual blog to his senior project and ultimately, to a full-fledged philanthropic organization.
In addition to being a blog, now Everjourney also functions as an online shop where users can purchase Everjourney’s custom apparel including bike jerseys and shorts, stickers, hats and more. According to Bird, all of the profits from apparel sales are donated to One Bicycle Foundation, a non-profit organization that purchases and provides bicycles to an orphanage in Kenya, as well as to youth in other developing nations.
One Bicycle Foundation, formerly Bikes 4 Orphans, was co-founded by a former high school classmate of Bird, he said. According to their website, One Bicycle Foundation’s mission is to “change lives through bicycle empowerment”, as bicycles can provide transportation and access to education, jobs and more to those in regions where lack of access can lead to a continuous cycle of poverty.
“I was looking for an outlet, with sales from t-shirts, hats, socks, water bottles, to take those profits – whether it was a small amount, $100, or something that could be much larger – and just give it to an organization that could do a much greater good with that money considering that I didn’t have the largest need for it,” Bird said. “I was just looking for a way to give back to the cycling industry and other youth around the world.”
Everjourney also sells cycling kits, though those sales go to the organization itself in order to help fund manufacturing of merchandise and other costs of running the organization. Bird also holds a full-time job with Canyon Bicycles U.S.A., where he works in project management and business intelligence.
Since Everjourney has always been a supplemental creative endeavor for Bird, as opposed to a full-time occupation, Bird said that the amount of time and energy he spends on it varies depending on how busy he is at different times.
“It has continued to be a platform that just has a standard baseline in terms of new products coming in [and] the interest in focusing on that creative outlook to create new products,” Bird said.
According to Bird, his education at Cal Poly is part of what has allowed him to grow Everjourney as an organization.
“It has certainly been eye-opening to me that regardless of the type of business that anyone goes into, there is always a need for great communicators, which is something that I am grateful to have learned quite a bit about during my time at Cal Poly,” Bird said.
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Psychology Alumnus William Thompson Co-Founds Business to Help People with Parkinson’s Disease
Feb 16, 2021
By Sophia Lincoln
William Thompson
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2012, Cal Poly Liberal Arts alumnus William Thompson returned to campus to pursue a master’s degree in business administration. During his graduate education, Thompson found his calling when he was introduced to De Oro Devices, a biomedical startup founded by Cal Poly biomedical engineering alumna Sidney Collin.
According to Thompson, Collin originally created the company as a project within Cal Poly’s Quality of Life Plus Student Association (QL+). After graduating and receiving local support for the startup, she decided to recruit help by presenting her product to a Cal Poly graduate entrepreneurship class that Thompson happened to be in.
The particular product that Collin designed, called NexStride, is a mobility device aimed to assist people with Parkinson’s Disease who may experience festination, or “freezing of gait”, a motor deficit symptom of the disease that inhibits one from walking.
NexStride Device
The device is designed to attach to its user’s cane, walker or walking pole. It allows the user to activate the audio cue, visual cue or both and adjust it to their preferred speed and distance so that they are able to “press on” through the freezing of gait, according to the website.
In hearing about the product in his entrepreneurship class, the company’s mission resonated with Thompson, he said, as it reminded him of the emerging technologies that have helped his mother handle her diabetes.
“Seeing what a technology or what a device can do to make [someone like his mother’s] life easier and better – it was really that idea that is what resonated with me,” Thompson said.
After getting in touch with Collin, Thompson was able to help grow the business using his business administration education and ultimately became the co-founder of De Oro Devices.
“We basically hit the ground running,” Thompson said. “I brought the business side of things, whereas [Collin] was the engineer and had a great vision for what the product should be, how to design a product, how to make a product, how to get it manufactured, that sort of thing.”
Collin and Thompson also took advantage of Cal Poly’s HotHouse Startup Accelerator program where they were given access to mentorship, workshops and funding for their new business. After presenting their startup at the Cal Poly program’s “Demo Day”, they were also able to acquire donations and investors and by the fall of 2018, they officially founded the company.
After spending some time on product development, the company launched in the spring of 2020 and has taken off since. De Oro Devices also received some recognition in 2019 when the company won the BIOMEDevice San Jose 2019 Startup Showcase Pitch Competition.
According to Thompson, the product has been manufactured in California and they are also planning to move to Texas. Additionally, De Oro Devices is now an approved vendor through the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and they are currently pursuing research opportunities in stroke rehabilitation as well as establishing partnerships with partner foundations and groups.
While he was originally introduced to NexStride during his graduate education in business administration, Thompson said that his undergraduate education in psychology was also very useful in growing his business.
“I definitely attribute a lot of my career growth to my background in psychology,” Thompson said. “Having a foundation in psychology has really given me a lot of people skills, it has taught me how to listen, it has taught me people better which really lends itself to anything.” .
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CLA Hosts Fifth Annual Social Justice Teach In On February 11
Feb 10, 2021
BY ROBYN KONTRA TANNER
Black and Indigenous futurity. Unruly women. Activist art. Disability allyship. Multiple minority stress among trans people of color.
These are just a few of the topics the campus community, graduates and Central Coast neighbors can explore during Cal Poly’s Social Justice Teach In on Thursday, February 11.
Hosted by the College of Liberal Arts, the free, daylong event is made up of dozens of virtual talks and workshops centered around equity and social justice led by faculty, staff and students from across campus. This year’s virtual format builds on previous years of community outreach by welcoming more local residents and Cal Poly alumni to join the conversations.
The event’s founders say that the growing slate of presentations and audience members fulfills the original vision for the Teach In.
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“It is a quintessential representation of the best of what the academy can do and what higher ed is called to do,” says Denise Isom, chair of the Ethnic Studies Department, Interim Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, and Chief Diversity Officer. “To use scholarship, passion, research to have analytical, engaged discussions about this moment in the world, and then move that conversation to, ‘What then do we want to do about it?’”
Nearly 50 sessions make up this year’s slate of programming — the widest range of presentations in the event’s five-year history — representing the breadth of the university’s equity-focused scholarship. Everything from climate change to homelessness, social justice in engineering and diversity in construction industries are covered in Teach In events.
This year’s keynote session features Dr. Andrew Jolivétte, professor and chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at UC San Diego. His presentation, “Black Lives, Indigenous Lives: From Mattering to Thriving,” will examine the cultural and historic convergence of Black and Indigenous communities and explore how contemporary movements, including Black Lives Matter and Idle No More, ignite progress toward kinship, self-determination and joy.
This year’s event features four tracks for attendees who want to explore specific themes like racism, media and technology from different angles and get to know the depth of Cal Poly expertise in certain areas. One track focusing on public health inequities is particularly timely considering how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the health of different communities.
“COVID has revealed a lot of inequities I think that we knew existed, but it's brought them to light in a new way,” says Jennifer Teramoto Pedrotti, associate dean for Diversity and Curriculum in the College of Liberal Arts and one of the event’s organizers. “There are quite a few faculty who study that particular topic at Cal Poly, and so to have their expertise brought to this stage, I think is really, really exciting.”
Cal Poly faculty who recently joined the university through its cluster hiring programs are slated to lead several sessions. These educators focus their teaching and research on diversity and inclusion in their field, and their impact on campus continues to grow.
“I think that that really speaks to some of the efforts that the university has been working toward as a whole to bring expertise to us,” says Teramoto Pedrotti of the cluster hire effort. “That expertise is now coming back to us in wonderful ways.”
Central Coast residents might take particular interest in several sessions that focus on the broader local community’s well-being, including “The City of SLO's Diversity Taskforce: Town/Gown Joint Diversity Efforts,” “Restrictions Apply: a short documentary on racism and the Happiest City in North America,” and “Introducing ‘Mi Gente, Nuestra Salud:’ A People’s Movement for Health in Santa Maria, CA.” Those sessions are presented in partnership with community organizations and local leaders.
A few presenters have also nimbly adapted their sessions to tackle current events that continue to shape the national conversation on social justice, including one session titled, “Georgia Elections, The Riot, and Race: An Exam of the Events of January 6, 2021,” presented by Isom and two other Cal Poly faculty members.
“We are in a moment of movements,” says Isom, “but it’s also part of what teach ins were always about — it was education to action.”
Organizers also developed a discussion guide and reflection questions to deepen the conversations attendees have after the sessions, especially as community members and groups of Cal Poly colleagues attend together. The tools are aimed at helping attendees and presenters reach beyond the formal instruction model to learn together and to think about how to make change in their own organizations.
“It represents the opportunity for community building and co-learning,” says Kari Mansager, one of the Teach In’s founders and Cal Poly’s Interim Director of Wellbeing. She feels the event encourages all students, faculty, staff and community to lead and learn alongside one another. “The event has an ability to address really important and hard topics around social justice and equity, but in a way that really capitalizes on our power on a college campus.”
The Teach In held its first sessions in 2017, and several of its founders see some parallels to this year. At that time, the nation had just experienced a divisive election and saw new activist movements organize across the country.
“I think part of what we were hoping to do with the Teach In wasn't just to inform and to bring people together to critically engage the moment,” Isom says, recalling the inaugural event. “It was also to be a time of gathering so that there would be healing, that people would not feel alone, that people would feel empowered to face the moment, and that they would see that as part of their academic, professional and personal growth.”
Since that first event, the Teach In has grown exponentially from a small series of discussions originally focused in one college to a hallmark of winter quarter and an ever-evolving display of the social justice expertise rooted in Cal Poly’s programs. Organizers are already optimistic about an even bigger event next year when more Mustangs are hopefully able to learn and work on campus.
But no matter the format, organizers hope to preserve a space where people can slow down, focus and reflect.
“The Teach In is a day where many people across campus just stop for a minute and focus with intentionality on these topics,” says Teramoto Pedrotti. “We feel like it's such a day of inspiration and solidarity.
“If we just stop for a second and take the time to learn about each other and learn about experiences that are different from our own, particularly at this time in our nation, it’s something that I'm really happy to see.”
Teach In sessions are free and open to all. Registration is required for each session. See a full schedule and register at cla.calpoly.edu/teach-in.
Story originally appeared in Cal Poly News