Message from the Chair

Announcing the Social Sciences Learn by Doing Fund

Thanks to a substantial donation this summer from an anonymous alumnus, the department is establishing the Social Sciences Learn by Doing Fund, which will be used to support research, travel and other hands-on experiences for students. The department is very excited about this new fund, and we are looking forward to receiving additional donations to sustain it in perpetuity. 

The donor shared the following:

"Cal Poly’s Social Sciences Department was an ideal career foundation for me. Its multi-disciplinary perspective gave me the breadth of knowledge to respond to a wide range of professional challenges. Also, thanks to Cal Poly’s Learn by Doing approach, I was grounded with the technical skills for my first job after graduation, as well as with the humanistic competencies for the jobs I held five years after graduation and throughout my career."

The aim of the Social Sciences Learn by Doing Fund is to enable students to challenge themselves by engaging in projects they would not otherwise have been able to undertake and to widely disseminate the results of their work. I hope other friends of Cal Poly Social Sciences will join me in supporting the fund. Learn by Doing is more critical than ever to students in today’s world.

We are so pleased to receive that type of feedback along with the generous donation. The College of Liberal Arts will be reaching out to other alumni in the coming year to see if they might be interested in contributing to this campaign.

You might also hear from us this year to assist with Program Review — a two-year process of review dictated by the CSU system to evaluate the efficacy of degree programs. It includes visits and evaluations by scholars from other campuses and polls of current students and recent graduates. Certainly some of the communications we are receiving from recent graduates (see “Letters from the Field” in this issue) suggest that our graduates are going on to successful post-graduation employment, but we also know that improvements are always needed to keep our degrees in sync with the rapid changes in today’s global economy. This will be our first opportunity to take stock of the new majors in anthropology-geography and sociology that we launched in 2010.

I hope that you can find the time to respond to our survey when you receive it via email. Your comments, suggestions and concerns will be taken seriously. 

As always we are looking forward to a busy, productive year. Thank you for your continuing support. Please keep us updated on all your endeavors.

Best,

Terry Jones, Ph.D.
Chair