Recent News
'We're Just Going to Keep Making Music.' Choir Performance Comes Together Online
Jun 24, 2020
Cal Poly Choirs
When Cal Poly took its classes virtual this spring and canceled all live campus events, Assistant Professor and Director of Choral Activities Scott Glysson figured that there would be no choir this quarter. Who would sign up for an ensemble that couldn’t meet?
To Glysson’s surprise, more than 100 students signed up anyway.
“It’s fewer than we usually get, but way more than I was expecting,” he said. “Apparently our choral singers really needed that sense of community and creative outlet.”
On June 8, the music department will stream the result of that community effort: Cal Poly’s first virtual choir performance. The concert features PolyPhonics, the University Singers and the Women’s Chorus, and includes “If Ye Love Me” by Thomas Tallis, selections from Mozart’s “Requiem in D Minor,” and “Sleep” by composer Eric Whitacre, a pioneer in virtual choir performance.
To prepare for the concert, Glysson had to record videos for each vocal part of each song, showing himself directing each part and a lead performance by each of the choral section leaders. Each performer then followed the direction to record their own part.
From there, Glysson worked individually with all 110 singers to give feedback and refine their performances to fit in with the rest of the ensemble — a vastly different process compared to a traditional choral experience.
“Under normal circumstances, some of the individual problems you hear in a group naturally work themselves out as you give feedback to the whole ensemble,” he said. “Having to give feedback individually to more than 100 people is incredibly tedious.”
When the individual performances were finally ready, adjunct music faculty members Laura Kramer and Dave Becker edited the final performance video.
Despite the challenges, the format change ended up yielding some unexpected benefits and learning opportunities as well.
“As an ensemble director, I usually work with more than 200 singers but almost never get to hear them sing individually,” he said. “Working in this format has pushed me to have to do more listening to individual singers.”
While it’s impossible to perfectly replicate the experience of a traditional choir performance, Glysson says that he ultimately sees the virtual performance as a win.
“The only other option was to give up, and we were just not going to do that,” he said. Whatever the challenges are, we’re just going to keep making music.”
The concert streamed live on Monday, June 8 and was followed by a series of Q&A talks with the directors and performers.
This story, written by Larry Peña, originally appeared on Cal Poly News.
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Ask an Expert: What is Juneteenth?
Jun 24, 2020
A scene from the 2019 Juneteenth Parade
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
On June 19, 1865 — two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, six months after passage of the 13th Amendment, and two months after the surrender of the Confederacy — General George Granger, accompanied by thousands of federal troops including many Black soldiers, arrived in Galveston, Texas, and issued General Order No. 3, proclaiming that slavery had been outlawed across the nation and all slaves were now free.
Every June 19, Black communities around the U.S — along with a growing number of cities, states and organizations — commemorate that moment with a holiday known as Juneteenth. Cal Poly history professor Thanayi Jackson, who specializes in the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, met with Cal Poly News to talk about the history of this holiday and what it means for the continuing fight for equality.
Professor Thanayi Jackson
What does Juneteenth celebrate? Once a law is passed, you then have to go through the long process of implementing that law, and during that period, anything can happen. Part of that is getting word to people that this is now what’s legal or not legal. So Juneteenth celebrates when people who were enslaved in Texas, which was the last place where this happened, learned that emancipation was the law and that slavery was now illegal. It’s not so much about the legal implementation of the law on paper, and you could argue that it took even after Juneteenth for enslaved people to truly be free, but Juneteenth celebrates the moment that law was actualized by enslaved people themselves.
What are some of the ways Juneteenth has historically been observed as a holiday? In Black communities Emancipation Day holidays have been celebrated since emancipation. After the Civil War, during reconstruction, when Black people sometimes comprised majorities of city and state legislatures in the South, you would see large state-sponsored participation in something like Juneteenth. The first celebrations occurred in 1866, on the one-year anniversary of General Order No. 3. Then, as Reconstruction started to be countered and Black people lost political power, certain state and local governments tried to end Juneteenth celebrations, leading Black citizens to purchase private Juneteenth Parks. For example, Emancipation Park in Houston, Texas was the first of these in 1872.
In some ways, that Juneteenth is the longest nationally celebrated holiday in the U.S. without official state or federal recognition is telling. At the same time, state and federally recognized holidays have not always existed in the way we think of them. That starts sometime around the 1870s and really picks up as a patriotic thing to do in the mid-20th century. In that context of recognizing holidays, the first state to recognize Juneteenth was, of course, Texas in 1979 as a clear result of the Civil Rights movement and the attempt to write African American victories into the national fabric.
What are some of the ways Juneteenth is observed in different communities now? Juneteenth is about remembering the history of emancipation, achieved by Black people fighting for emancipation from the ground up. Even though the law was passed, there was nothing to force it being implemented other than the sometimes word-of-mouth transference of information. So the transference of information seems to be something that most Juneteenth celebrations have in common — some sort of reading, some sort of call to current activism, and a recognition of the struggle for racial equity are always a part of it. There is also art, culture, food, concerts, speakers — it’s definitely also a celebration. And it is almost always produced and carried out by local organizations working together. And of course, family! I think that’s true of most holidays. But one feature of early emancipation celebrations and Juneteenth was the reuniting of family. After emancipation, the most prevalent action was searching for lost family. That became a part of the celebration.
I think my family missed the BBQ and being together in person most this year. But I celebrated virtually last weekend with my hometown community in the South Bay area. We had a day of education the day before on the 12th, started celebration day with yoga in the morning, and had a full day of presentations that included everything from a “becoming homeowners” workshop to live activist art by school-age children to music.
In the last few days and weeks, there have been a lot of companies adopting Juneteenth, and more states saying that they’re going to start treating it as an official paid state holiday. What does that mean to you and how do you see those developments shaping how Juneteenth is commemorated going forward? I mean, yes! I’m on board! I don’t see any negatives to people celebrating and learning about Juneteenth. But there are also some important policy discussions to be had as well. I would hope that state and corporate sponsorship of Juneteenth will have the effect of also changing policies and bolstering the economies of communities that have traditionally celebrated Juneteenth. That would be amazing.
What does Juneteenth represent in ongoing civil rights work in the country right now? It’s the ultimate activist story. You actually had to get out the word that people were free. It was not just something they came and gave you. Black people did this. We walked off the plantations. We forced our freedom onto the agenda of the Civil War. People leaving slavery en masse was such a thorn in the sides of traveling armies that Union leaders had to go up the chain of command to find out what to do about them, and that forced the slavery question into the national conversation. They got together to actually push for a policy, which led to the Emancipation Proclamation, and eventually grew into the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. And then the real work starts. You have to get the word out to make sure that people in practice are actually free. And that call to action is what Juneteenth is all about.
This story, written by Larry Peña, originally appeared on Cal Poly News.
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Cal Poly’s ‘RSVP XXV: Call and Response’ to be Presented in Virtual Episodes
May 29, 2020
Scene from last year's RSVP production
The Cal Poly Music Department’s student production ensemble RSVP will present “RSVP XXV: Call and Response” in three video episodes starting at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, June 4-6.
This year marks not only the 25th anniversary of RSVP but also the departure of its founder and artistic director, Antonio G. Barata, who is retiring from full-time teaching at Cal Poly after 35 years.
This year the transmedia series picks up where last year’s left off: in a combination of music, costume, dance and video editing. The story of heavy metal shredder Peter Estrella continues, with the focus on his mysterious disappearance and otherworldly reconciliation.
“This production challenges our attachment to normalcy,” Barata said. “The show embraces the unexpected and examines how both humans and non-humans connect from afar. Based on our current society, this show is incredibly timely as it forces us to grapple with reality and uphold the will to be creative during unusual times. Simultaneously the story seamlessly carries over themes showcased in its preceding installment, such as inspiration and darkness.”
The composition, performance, soundscape and costuming combine the creativity of students in Barata’s Sound Design classes with choreography by Cal Poly students Evan Ricaurté, Lindsay Eklund and Justine Teoh, plus several dancers from past productions.
The students have been especially creative this year due to the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders.
“I believe that the virtual setting, while it has its own unique challenges, also comes with its unique opportunities,” said Teoh, an architectural engineering major. “By going virtual, we will be able to do things no traditional RSVP has been able to do — and perhaps will never be able to do again.
“For example, we can reach out further and wider through online viewing, no longer limited by theater space. Through video presentations we open ourselves to all the possibilities and tools video editing has to offer. Overall, I believe that this will be an amazing and memorable production, fitting of the 25th show.”
Links to the YouTube videos will be posted to the RSVP calendar page. Donations can be made to support future RSVP productions.
The performances are sponsored by Cal Poly’s Music Department, College of Liberal Arts and Instructionally Related Activities program. For more information, visit the department’s calendar website or email music@calpoly.edu.
Story originally appeared in the Music Department spring 2020 events calendar
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The Show Must Go On: More Than 100 Students Create a Virtual Spring Dance Concert
May 29, 2020
Two months ago, preparation for the Theatre and Dance Department’s annual Spring Dance Concert was in full swing. Directors and choreographers were selected, dancers were cast and plans to fill an auditorium were underway.
But when the COVID-19 pandemic began to intensify in the U.S., and classes were moved to a virtual format, the directors and advisors had put their minds together to find a new way to move forward with the show — and those efforts are culminating in a virtual concert, called "Vitalis."
The show, which will stream on Vimeo from May 20 through May 22, consists of choreographed dance films created by a cast of more than 100 students, edited together by student directors Alyssa Gatan, Evan Ricaurté and Lindsay Eklund.
“When you’re in the dance studio rehearsing, you can feed off the energy of your dancers. Trying to navigate through this without being in person, it’s challenging and different,” Gatan said. “I’ve tried to figure out how to surpass that and keep working and problem-solving on my own.”
While the student directors expressed disappointment that they would not have a live performance, they adapted: learning skills such as filming and editing in preparation for the virtual show.
By the time shelter-in-place orders had been put into effect, choreographers had already created dance pieces designed for in-person performances. Dance professors Diana Stanton and Christy McNeil Chand encouraged choreographers to stick to the original pieces and adapt them for the virtual format.
The Vitalis dance cast rehearses indvidually for the video.
Stanton said that one unique aspect of a video format in dance is having control over what the viewer sees. For example, at an in-person performance, the viewer can choose which dancer to focus on, like a friend they may have come to watch. However, in a virtual format, the choreographer can direct the viewer’s eye.
“In this format, you are really looking at these dances from the choreographer’s eyes rather than our own eyes,” Stanton said.
Choreographers had to decide the best way to teach their dancers virtually.
Some created video tutorials, and others held Zoom meetings with dancers. Each week, individual dancers submitted rehearsal videos to the choreographers, who then edited together the videos and submitted drafts for the directors and advisors.
Stanton said she was impressed week after week with how the videos were overlaid to create a collective effect.
“It looks like they’re dancing together,” Stanton said.
Stanton said that while most dancers would prefer gathering in person for a performance, this format provides a unique learning opportunity for the student dancers.
“In the arts, we have what we call restriction studies. You restrict something, and sometimes that makes you explore deeper in places that you can,” Stanton said. “That’s essentially what these dancers have done. They have the most unique camera angles and effects. They are really doing storytelling through movement.”
Gatan agreed. Though she may not be able perform her last show as a senior on a stage, she dances anywhere she can.
“I get to dance in places I never thought I would. I go to the park and dance, I dance in my yard,” she said. “I think it’s so great because dance is something you can do wherever you want, and it’s an emotional and mental break from everything going on.”
And that is the primary purpose of this year’s show: to provide a creative outlet for the students during these difficult circumstances.
Stanton said that throughout the process, she has emphasized process over product. Gatan said this advice has helped her focus on the movement.
“I knew it would be challenging, but we were ready to take it on because we knew we had to preserve something so special, which is being able to dance as a community,” Gatan said.
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Cal Poly Choirs to Present Virtual Concert on June 8
May 15, 2020
The Cal Poly Choirs will present a virtual concert that will include a special set to recognize graduating seniors at 7 p.m. Monday, June 8.
The choirs will perform selections they have been working on through online rehearsals this quarter and works they were going to perform at the Winter Concert, which was canceled due to the shelter-in-place order. There will also be a post-concert talk.
PolyPhonics and the University Singers will present three works as a combined virtual choir: “If Ye Love Me” by Thomas Tallis; the infamous “Confutatis” and “Lacrimosa” from Mozart’s “Requiem in D Minor,” K.626; and “Sleep” by the famous modern composer Eric Whitacre. Choir members will have an opportunity to interact virtually with Whitacre in the coming weeks.
The video recordings of PolyPhonics from last quarter are the thrilling “Lamentations of Jeremiah” by Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera, and “My God is a Rock” by Stacey Gibbs.
The Women’s Chorus will sing a movement from “Winter Cantata” by Vincent Persichetti and a portion of “Songs of Sanctuary” by Karl Jenkins.
“This quarter the members of the choirs have been working on a brief survey of the development of choral music spanning the last 500 years,” said Scott Glysson, director of choral activities. “The June 8 concert is a result of the students learning about different eras of music history through presentations and lectures, and of course virtual rehearsals for the first time in the choral program’s history.”
Those who attend the concert are also invited to a post-concert talk and will be able to interact with students and faculty members. The session will include interviews with a student panel, a talk by faculty member Laura Kramer on the process of rehearsing and putting together a virtual choir, and notes from Glysson.
Paul Woodring is the accompanist for the choirs. The choirs are conducted by Glysson.
Tickets to the concert are $5. A $10 backstage pass ticket includes both the concert and the post-concert session. Tickets are sold through FeelitLive.
The concert is sponsored by Cal Poly’s Music Department, College of Liberal Arts and Instructionally Related Activities program. For more information, call the Music Department at 805-756-2406 or visit its calendar website.
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'We're Doing What The Pros Are Doing.' Student Media Endures in Face of COVID-19
May 15, 2020
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in mid-March, Cal Poly’s student media leadership knew they had to find a way to keep operating and serving the community.
The students, with the help of their advisors, got creative: KCPR staff are transmitting remotely to keep their hour-long daily newscast going and the music playing.
Mustang News is navigating the process of putting out news without a print product on campus, as students learn to report stories and work together remotely — an experience that mirrors that of many professional newsrooms.
“This is Learn by Doing in action,” said business administration senior Austin Linthicum, Editor in Chief of Mustang News. “All newsrooms around the country are working remotely at this point. We’re doing what the pros are doing, not just locally but at places like the New York Times.”
Linthicum said that more than half of Mustang News’ staff is no longer in San Luis Obispo, and the staff isn’t conducting any in-person interviews for safety reasons. Student journalists coordinate with their editors via Zoom calls and other remote options.
Despite the challenges, Mustang News has continued to break news and expand their coverage beyond campus into the city of San Luis Obispo.
“One of our goals this year was to step into covering the community of SLO and this was a great experiment to see if we really can play a bigger role in covering the city,” Linthicum said.
Austin Linthicum, center, speaks at a Mustang News meeting in 2019.
Mustang News was also able to host a virtual ASI presidential debate via Zoom with help from Thomas Morales, the Journalism Department’s broadcast engineer.
On the lighter side of things, Mustang News adapted their Poly Picks contest, which encourages students to vote on the best restaurants and businesses in SLO, into an online format.
“This hardship has paved the way for some interesting innovation,” Linthicum said. “It’s not easy when you’re remote and have no contact with people, but the editors have really kept their teams together and at the top of their game.”
Patrick Howe, one of Mustang News’ advisors, praised the students for rising to the challenge of covering their community during a crisis.
“They’ve stepped up like champs,” Howe said. “Our highest goal and aspiration is that students use Mustang News as a laboratory to learn the skills that will serve them professionally, and they are. They will emerge from the other side of this as more flexible and adept journalists.”
Maya McGregor poses at her home studio in San Luis Obispo.
For KCPR’s operations, Morales safely set up a broadcast studio in the home of journalism junior Maya MacGregor, the station’s News Director. It serves as the local, distanced control room for the radio station.
MacGregor oversees a team of 16 reporters, and six of them are on deck for any newscast, according to a schedule she creates. The newscast also provides a platform for students in a broadcast journalism course as well as a senior journalism practicum to get experience being on the air.
The reporters use a product called CleanFeed to transmit their audio stories from their different locations. MacGregor mixes everything for the broadcast, which goes live daily at 9 a.m. Monday through Friday. She then transmits the broadcast via the remote KCPR unit back to the studio in Graphic Arts using a Verizon 4G modem.
“This has been a huge learning experience for me. It’s a whole new setup and it’s completely different from the studio setup,” MacGregor said. “If we didn’t have Thomas, none of this would have worked.”
Morales said the KCPR team was able to go remote through the advent of CleanFeed, as well as creatively using equipment the station already had.
“By redeploying equipment already contained within the department and the station, spiffing up some old laptops and just using what we had, we were able to make it work,” Morales said. “Our investments and gradual improvements year after year in the facilities gave us foundational-level capabilities to be able to expand into areas we never imagined.”
One of the challenges of a remote broadcast format is that KCPR’s team of student DJs isn’t currently able to broadcast, though finding a way for them to do so is a high priority, Morales said. For the time being, the station’s music director and programming director are programming and curating music remotely.
“We’ll keep on trucking,” said business administration senior Max Motley, KCPR’s General Manager. “We’re trying to do whatever we can to keep entertaining and serving the community and adapt to this time.”
Max Motley, right, laughs with DJs in the KCPR studio.
Motley added that he’s remodeled KCPR’s Spotify and added new playlists, hoping to engage some of KCPR’s listeners there. The playlists he put up a few weeks ago now have hundreds of followers, he said.
“It’s really shown a lot about our media organizations during this time, when a lot of us can’t do our jobs the same way, we have found ways to contribute and to keep our media organizations relevant,” Motley said. “Even though we can’t go into the newsroom, it’s positive to see how devoted our staff is to providing entertainment and news to the community.”
This story originally appeared on the Cal Poly News webpage.
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LAES Students Travel to Seattle as Finalists in Boeing Innovation Challenge
May 8, 2020
Boeing Innovation Challenge participants
In January, a group of students flew to Seattle as finalists in the Boeing Innovation Challenge. Their mission? To bring innovative design ideas to commercial flights.
Boeing, the world’s largest plane manufacturing company, invited Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies (LAES) students Zach Cushing-Murray and Emma George and architecture student Chloe Regan to Seattle to pitch their project proposals to the Boeing team. While their design details are confidential, the students were able to share highlights from their experience designing and traveling to the Boeing headquarters.
The project proposal started as an assignment in LAES 302: Advanced Project-Based Learning in Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies. During the first week of class, students worked in groups to make designs for the competition.
“This project really highlights that special view and skill set that LAES brings to engineering problems,” said LAES co-director and computer science professor Michael Haungs. “It was a nationwide competition with tons of universities that even had more submissions than we did. It was really great to see that the Cal Poly team’s ideas made it to the next stage.”
The Innovation Challenge had three categories: Simplifying Commercial Airplanes, Creating Efficient, Adaptable, and Flexible Airplane Cabins, and Cross-Industry Aircraft Innovation. In Seattle, the students had the opportunity to work with Boeing subject matter experts to further develop and refine their design ideas. Working with Boeing professionals to enhance their proposals was one of Cushing-Murray’s most valuable takeaways from the experience.
“They’re all incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about what they work on,” Cushing-Murray said.
The team also traveled out of the city to Everett, where they were given a tour of Boeing’s Everett factory, the world’s largest building by volume.
Cushing-Murray said his LAES major introduced him to this opportunity and helped him with his pitching skills. The LAES curriculum combines engineering studies with arts and humanities to prepare students for interdisciplinary projects like the Boeing student innovation project.
“My liberal arts concentration is philosophy, and I took a debate class that really helped me with presentation skills and making pitches during our project,” Cushing-Murray said.
Haungs said he plans to keep fostering a partnership between Boeing and the Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies Department.
“Having that external customer was awesome,” Haungs said. “Hopefully we can work with them more in the future.”
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Cal Poly Alumni Serve AmeriCorps to Support Volunteer Work in the SLO Community (Q+A)
Apr 30, 2020
While some Cal Poly alumni move away to start their careers after they graduate, others choose to stay in San Luis Obispo and serve the community that shaped them.
Meet two alumni who graduated from Cal Poly in 2019 and joined AmeriCorps, a civil society program that engages adults in public service work. Although their work is different, both graduates serve AmeriCorps to support volunteer work in the San Luis Obispo community.
Oscar Velasco (History ’19), Boys and Girls Club
What do you do for AmeriCorps?
I work for the Boys and Girls Club in San Luis Obispo County, helping pair mentors with youth in the community.
How have you and your organization adjusted to the COVID-19 pandemic and shelter at home mandates?
My role with AmeriCorps has been impacted by the shelter in place. I am still working remotely but will be moved to work on the field and have a direct response with local communities that are affected by the pandemic. Right now, I have mobilized a group of volunteers to help me create a temporary food distribution in South SLO County to provide food items and essential supplies to families and our youth.
Why did you want to get involved with AmeriCorps?
It started with my experience here as a Cal Poly student. I was a history major, and that shaped me into wanting to work in education and become a mentor myself. I wanted to work with young people and help them as much as possible.
Why is mentorship important to you?
I think it really started when I was a youth myself. Growing up, I saw other people who might not have had the same opportunities as I did. And I realized I had those opportunities because of mentors I had. My coaches, my teachers, people in my community really invested in me and guided me to the right path. Because of those mentors who advocated to me, I had the opportunity to go to an institution like Cal Poly. But I realized that not a lot of young people have those mentors who can advocate and guide them to make good choices. I want young people to have the same opportunity I had.
How did your education at Cal Poly prepare you for the job?
I think being a student here, I got introduced to people who were involved in civil service and social justice work. It inspired me to pursue social activism. My senior project looked at the school to prison pipeline. I studied policies that treated young people unfairly and pushed them out of education and made them vulnerable to incarceration. That inspired me to do the type of prevention and interventional work that I do for the Boys and Girls Club — advocating and fighting for young people in low income and marginalized communities. Now, I’ve been given a platform for social justice, providing young people access to education and mentors and resources that will help them become healthy adults.
Christian Laubacher (Journalism ’19), Cal Poly Alumni Association
What do you do for AmeriCorps?
I serve at the Cal Poly Alumni Association, so I work to create sustainable volunteer infrastructure for the various alumni chapters all across the country.
How have you and your organization adjusted to the COVID-19 pandemic and shelter at home mandates?
I’m still able to help out at the Alumni office! The nature of alumni engagement has been pretty reliant on in-person interaction. Since that’s not able to happen right now, we’re shifting to find ways to engage and support our alumni virtually. We’re also taking this time to reflect and strengthen internal structures and procedures.
Why did you want to get involved?
I love Cal Poly and knew that four years just wasn’t enough for me, so I saw this as a super cool way to get involved with a different side of the university. (I was pretty involved within different student affairs departments on campus, so I wanted to try something new!) Starting just three months after graduation, I thought I could offer a really valuable perspective as a fresh alumni.
How did your education at Cal Poly prepare you for the job?
I had no experience working with alumni or in the development field prior to this. I’ve really had to “Learn by Doing” in this role and just hit the ground running. Being a student in CLA at Cal Poly affords you so many transferrable skills that you could apply to such a broad range of fields. In the journalism curriculum, you dip your toes into every aspect of the journalism world. This includes reporting and writing, but also includes video production, public relations, graphic design, public speaking, communication to diverse audiences, and many more skills. It requires you to be adaptable and well rounded. I think this ability to adapt, when coupled with the skills I learned to think critically, problem solve and work collaboratively have prepared me tremendously for this role and beyond.
What’s your favorite part about the job?
I love when I get to interact with alumni. It seems that wherever you go, Cal Poly alumni can’t wait to connect with you and share stories of their time as a Mustang. All of the volunteers are involved with their chapters because they want to meet other alumni, better their local community, and/or give back to Cal Poly. This passion that bonds Cal Poly alumni is something that’s really special to be a part of. For me, the heart of the Cal Poly Alumni Association’s mission is to help make Cal Poly a place where all alumni and students feel welcome and connected with one another. Any role I can play towards making that a reality is why I’m so happy and proud to do this work.
What are some of your career goals moving forward?
I’m going to grad school next year to get a master’s degree in higher education and student affairs! I love working on a college campus, specifically with students, so I’m excited to take what I’ve learned throughout my time with AmeriCorps and apply it to future endeavors.
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Anthropology and Geography Professor and Alumnus Travel to Easter Island to Record Famous Historical Sites
Apr 24, 2020
In 2010, anthropology and geography professor Terry Jones took a group of students to northeastern Nevada, where they had the opportunity to work as archaeologists for the first time. Ten years later, one of those students took him to Easter Island to help record some of the island’s famous statues.
Terry Jones and Kacey Hadick on Easter Island
Kacey Hadick (Anthropology and Geography, ’13) is the director of project development at CyArk, a nonprofit organization that uses innovative technology to digitally record and archive world-famous cultural heritage sites. CyArk’s high-tech 3D mapping helps preserve sites and makes them accessible to explore online. CyArk recently completed a project on Easter Island, where some of the famous sites are threatened by coastal erosion.
“A lot of the famous statues are right on the edge of coastal bluffs, and they’re falling into the ocean,” Hadick said. “There’s not enough funding to stabilize the sites, so they’re essentially trying to get a really good record of what’s there now. This 3D mapping is the most detailed recording you can do at an archaeological site.”
Hadick’s team traveled to Easter Island in 2017 and used laser scanning and photogrammetry to capture detailed three-dimensional records of the island’s sculptures and platforms. In February 2020, the team returned to the island to record the sites again. With both recordings of the same site three years apart, CyArk was able to see what has changed in the sculptures and platforms over the years due to coastal erosion.
“Because the recordings are so precise and accurate, you can tell exactly how the cliff has eroded over time,” Hadick said.
This detailed record helps groups on the island understand how coastal erosion is affecting the sculptures. They provide an accurate record that can help local groups make decisions that will help protect them.
Professor Terry Jones using a drone on Easter Island
When Hadick learned that CyArk needed an extra hand at Easter Island, Jones — his professor and mentor who took him on his first archaeological excursion — came to mind.
“It’s funny, Terry took me to my first archeological field school 10 years ago in 2010,” Hadick said. “It was nice 10 years later to be able to take him on one of my projects.”
Hadick said he gained the confidence to pursue a career in archaeology on that first excursion he took with Jones as a student ten years ago.
“Learn by Doing is the motto, and it really was that for me,” Hadick said. “I got my hands dirty — literally — as an archaeologist. From that experience, I gained the confidence to get a job in archaeology and to pursue it as a career.”
As Jones and Hadick moved from professor and student to colleagues over the years, the two kept in touch and even wrote articles together. Jones jumped at the opportunity to go to Easter Island and use CyArk’s innovative technology to record the sites.
“Terry is super knowledgeable,” Hadick said. “It was great to have him in the field; he was an asset. We were able to do some exciting work together.”
Jones was able to share his knowledge and expertise with CyArk, and the CyArk team was able to show Jones new technology at play in the field.
“Every day, I saw or learned something that trumped what I had seen or learned the day before,” Jones said. “Every day there was something more mind-boggling.”
Years ago, Jones had written a book about the possibility of prehistoric contact between Easter Island and South America. While archaeologists have considered this possibility, others are skeptical — including Jones himself prior to his trip, he said. But when he saw the stonework in one particular site on the island, he said he was stunned by its resemblance to Incan stonework.
“You can read about the statues, and you can see pictures of them, but to be able to see them in person was an unforgettable experience,” Jones said. “You get a much better understanding of the sites. You just can’t get that from books.”
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Join the Cal Poly Debate Team
Apr 23, 2020
From Debate Team Director John F. Patrick:
Our Debate Team is the longest standing competitive team at Cal Poly. The program has historically followed the trends in academic debating, beginning with direct challenge scrimmages and progressing through various tournament circuit debate styles as their relevance has waxed and waned. Today, while we still compete in tournament circuit events, the Cal Poly Debate Team is now focused on Civic Debate Conference events.
These events treat collegiate debaters as legitimate scholars whose research merits being shared not just between debaters, but with the wider academic and professional communities that are in need of debates. We are also very excited to have expanded our program to include a Spanish Language Division that is truly bilingual, with students debating in both Spanish and English.
An example of Cal Poly students debating against French military officers for diplomats and policy experts at the French Embassy in Washington D.C. for the 2019 Lafayette Debates can be found at https://tinyurl.com/yawtdgz7
Academic debating generally correlates to ongoing professional success after graduation, with our debaters reporting that their involvement with debate distinguished them from their peers on the job market and in their applications to graduate studies. Students majoring in political science, identity and cultural studies, history, philosophy, sociology, psychology, economics, business, sociology, engineering and the sciences have found that our events intersect with their areas of interest and expose them to a wider range of ideas outside their ares of study than if they had not joined the team.
If you are interested in how the Cal Poly debate team can ground and energize your academic experience, please reach out to our program directors, John Patrick (jopatric@calpoly.edu) and Chris Skiles (cskiles@calpoly.edu).