Recent News
Students Hone Research Skills with Help from College Librarians
Jun 16, 2017
Kennedy Library offers a variety of resources for students to use, including the one-on-one guidance from expert librarians.
Three CLA Start-ups Accepted to SLO HotHouse Accelerator Program
Jun 9, 2017
Cal Poly’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) has accepted seven startup companies into this year’s SLO HotHouse Summer Accelerator program, three of which were developed by students and graduates from the College of Liberal Arts.
Communication Studies Lecturer Receives Effective Practice Award
Jun 9, 2017
Martin Mehl, senior lecturer in communications studies, along with Dr. Luanne Fose from the Cal Poly Center for Teaching, Learning & Technology, were officially recognized with the Online Learning Consortium’s (OLC) 2017 Effective Practice Award for their digital mentorship pedagogy. They received their awards and shared their research during a post keynote breakout session at the OLC Innovate/HBCU Affordable Learning Summit in New Orleans in April.
Cal Poly Students Participate in Model UN Conferences
Jun 8, 2017
Nine Cal Poly students participated in Model United Nations conferences across the country and abroad in 2017. Model United Nations (MUN) is an extra-curricular activity where qualified students role play as United Nations delegates and simulate UN committees.
Art and Design Adjunct Professor Receives Davyd Whaley Art Grant
Jun 8, 2017
Adjunct art and design professor Laura Krifka received the 2017 Artist-Teacher grant from the Davyd Whaley Foundation. The Davyd Whaley Foundation is dedicated to supporting artists of the LA area, and grants are given to artists to "fulfill their vision."
Mustang Media Group Earns Numerous Awards at National Contests
May 31, 2017
Mustang Media Group (MMG), the Journalism Department's student-run news organization, has had a very successful last few months. MMG won numerous awards at both the College Media Business and Advertising Managers Annual Content and the Midwinter National College Media Convention.
English Grad Student Wins Cal Poly’s Academy of American Poets Prize
May 17, 2017
Cal Poly Master in English student Marissa Ahmadkhani won the university’s Academy of American Poets (AAP) contest for her poem “Only Half,” which investigates her Iranian heritage expressed metaphorically through the complexity of pomegranates.
Political Science Major is Cal Poly’s 2017 Panetta Representative
May 17, 2017
Political Science junior, Maryam Quasto, was accepted into the 2017 Panetta Institute's Congressional Internship Program.
English Grad Student Wins Cal Poly’s Academy of American Poets Prize
May 15, 2017
English Master's student Marissa Ahmadkhani (Gilroy, Calif.) won Cal Poly’s Academy of American Poets Contest for her poem “Only Half,” which investigates her Iranian heritage. Ahmadkhani will receive a $100 award from the Academy.
Marissa Ahmadkhani
“Through precise description and gentle repetition, Marissa Ahmadkhani has made a deeply moving poem of origins,” said Maggie Anderson, nationally recognized poet and judge for this year’s contest. “The delicate fruit of the pomegranate (apple of many seeds) is a brilliantly realized metaphor for the poet’s half-heritage.”
Cal Poly English professor Mira Rosenthal said, “In Marissa’s finely tuned short poems, I hear the sorrow of strained relationship, but always tempered by the individual’s belief in connection, as much with others as with the self.”
First honorable mention goes to English major Morgan Condict from Paso Robles, Calif. for “The Shimmer of the Turning Rabbit,” a poem that renders our own mortality through the metaphor of a rabbit turning on a spit over an open flame. Anderson said that Condict’s poem “creates a strange and somewhat unsettling atmosphere. The image is of a rabbit cooking over a campfire; yet, when the poet enters the poem, we are led skillfully from that image to a surprising metaphor for our own ‘mortal’ (and ‘axial’) coil.”
Second honorable mention goes to Jacob Lopez from Huntington Beach, Calif. for his poem “Light on Breathing,” depicting the experience of exploring underwater reefs. “What I admire in this poem,” said the judge, “is the music created by its internal rhyme, alliteration, and phrasing that vividly recreates the act of breathing underwater.”
The Cal Poly English Department and the Academy of American Poets (AAP) sponsored the contest. AAP was founded in 1934 to support American poets at all stages of their careers and to foster the appreciation of contemporary poetry. The University and College Poetry Prize program began with ten schools in 1955 and now sponsors more than 200 annual poetry prizes at U.S. colleges and universities. Ahmadkhani is one of the nearly ten thousand prize-winning student poets since the program’s inception.
Contest entries were judged by nationally renowned poet Maggie Anderson, author of four books of poetry, including Windfall: New and Selected Poems, A Space Filled with Moving, and Cold Comfort. Her awards include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, fellowships from the Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania Councils on the Arts, and the Ohioana Library Award for contributions to the literary arts in Ohio. The founding director of the Wick Poetry Center and of the Wick Poetry Series of the Kent State University Press, Anderson is Professor Emerita of English at Kent State University.
Marissa Ahmadkhani
Academy of American Poets Prize Winner—Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo
Only Half
Pomegranates are native to Iran.
Much like my father—
who peeled them on our kitchen counter,
liquid pooling, thinner than
the blood-
red you’d expect.
Much like my blood—
half-steeped in that same soil
and somehow not thick enough.
And I run my fingers through
my coarse hair, half-curly,
and I think about those pomegranate trees.
How they
dig those deep roots,
how I half-cling to those
thin branches.
Read the most recent stories in The Link
English Master's Student Wins Prestigious Fellowship
May 15, 2017
English Master's student Ian Fetters (English, '15) has been awarded the S.T. Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship to study the literature of horror-fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft.