Cal Poly Pomona’s Identity: Polytechnic and Beyond

Cal Poly Pomona’s Relationships with Larger Communit(ies)

An Analytic Model Contrasting "Dominance and Mutuality"

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A common thread among the New Directions is outreach to the community and to industry. As a polytechnic university, Cal Poly Pomona involves itself in outreach efforts for a variety of purposes (cf. Report of the President’s Ad Hoc Committee on Community and Economic Development, Chair Dean Eduardo Ochoa, Annex E2):

• To recruit students and obtain visibility for its work
• To assist the community by sharing its expertise, including its unique polytechnic resources.
• To cooperate with the community in cultural and technical endeavors.
• To seek advice for its educational programs, and to learn and gain perspective from "the community".
• To develop financial support.
• To secure additional future opportunities for mutual assistance and partnerships.

Above and beyond all of this, the university seeks to partner with the greater world beyond its borders, so students can "learn by doing" and experience the validation of working with others to bring about beneficial change. In this chapter of the self-study, we build on the findings of Theme Two (to wit, that Cal Poly Pomona has excellent academic programs requiring in some cases more ingenious forms of collaborative management across divisions and disciplines) to propose concerted cooperative coordination of non-traditional programs based on an expanded consciousness of our polytechnic nature.

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Reconfigurations and ongoing projects of disciplinary and interdisciplinary praxis coincide with on-campus discussions of what a "polytechnic" identity means. Traditionally, polytechnic has signified a campus with an emphasis on applied arts and sciences. Thus people often mention departments of engineering or computer science as central to this identity, with their technological products as embodiments of polytechnic aims or measures of its vitality. However, since some other member campuses of the California State University system, such as Cal State L.A., have lively schools and departments of engineering and computer science of a size that is similar to ours, some have raised questions about what is particular to our campus that might distinguish it from any other. Others have pointed to our departments of architecture and agriculture to show a connecting identity to our sister campus, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. The university worked through this definition during its recent strategic planning efforts. Ultimately, President Suzuki argued that "applied" is not necessarily technical, but that it includes applied philosophy or intellectual work applied to life, and most of the university community has accepted this. This approach assumes a coexistence and collaboration amongst diverse disciplines and backgrounds; however, it also can underline considerations of how knowledge is constituted through application, and how theory is derived (in the field, in the laboratory, on site, in the workshop, and in the performance).

What the Steering Committee has heard, time and again, in discussions with colleagues in the technical colleges, is the importance they place on the broadening, enlightening power of the education their graduates receive at Cal Poly Pomona, including general education and non-major support work at all levels. This is what distinguishes our graduates in engineering, business, hospitality, and so on, from technicians emerging from proprietary institutions, certificate programs, and technical schools. We heard the corollary of this emphasis from colleagues in the liberal arts and sciences: they value the applied, technical, community-based, hands-on exposure their students receive, which does not diminish the theoretical potency of their preparation or narrow them as scholars. This is a unique and positive quality of our educational program, and it can become a vision for the future, a point of convergence, and a source of mutual support for the entire community.

An Analytic Model Contrasting "Dominance and Mutuality"

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The Steering Committee proposes reviewing the programs covered here from a theoretical perspective usually identified with post-colonialism, critical theory, and cultural studies, to see where the activities might be located along two axes within an overall model contrasting "Dominance" with Mutuality" in Cal Poly Pomona’s outreach relationships. These two axes — illustrated in Figure 31 — posit two sets of extremes: "Colonial" vs. Post-colonial" behaviors and attitudes, and "Extraction" vs. "Critical Appropriation." It is not our intention here to engage in a polemic on the subject of cultural imperialism, global capitalism, or any other features of the post-colonial landscape that some of us may find reprehensible; merely, we approach the issue of outreach from this perspective as a kind of thought experiment, in the belief that it will yield possible assessment approaches. (See also Annex E6.)

We found from discussion with consultants such as Riane Eisler and perusal of the literature that scholars interested in internationalization and multiculturalism are searching for models that can accommodate the variety of goals and processes of education today but resist the pressure on higher education to become a branch of global business. While the furor over deconstruction and post-colonial/critical theory seems to have abated somewhat, the importance of the issues raised by these inquiries, particularly in the areas of community and international outreach (and all new directions and relations) has grown.

The Committee believes a fruitful interaction between on-the-ground practitioners (whether from the business, technical, or social science disciplines) and activist theoreticians is eminently possible, and in fact already exists at our university. Both sub-cultures can be enlightened by experiencing the other. Students learn directly and indirectly from the exchange. That is the ultimate objective of the ‘test’ embodied in the model. What we suggest is an adaptation of this or a similar descriptive approach to measuring the degree of agreement between the business or technical component and the philosophical or theoretical component of a given ‘new direction’.

(derived from Clifford’s adaptation of Greimas’ "semiotic square, Clifford 1988:223)