Provost Communication, Wednesday, May 8, 2024

Hello everyone,

I hope your Wednesday is off to a reasonable start. I wanted to start by acknowledging the Senate meeting yesterday which lasted 3.5 hours and contained an hour of agendized business which closed out important work championed by faculty, staff and students including accessibility actions and the University Resources and Planning Committee (URPC) budget recommendation for next year. Thank you to all who contributed to that work. We also spent 2.5 hours hearing from students, faculty, staff, and community members about their experiences, concerns, questions, and calls for action related to the campus events over the last two weeks. I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who attended the meeting and in particular those who courageously spoke and those who carefully listened. I also wanted to thank members of Senex, our ombuds folx Suzanne Pastor and John Meyer and Patrick Malloy for supporting the meeting. I don’t quite have the words to process all that I heard but please know I take to heart every voice that I heard and will carefully evaluate how I can support healing on our campus. 

As it continues to be a very painful and challenging time and I hear from many that morale is at a low point, I wanted to use the remainder of my provost communication today to acknowledge some positive things that have occurred recently in hopes of recognizing the wonderful efforts of our faculty, staff, students, administrators, and community members. 

ideaFest 2024 

On May 3rd, 2024, Cal Poly Humboldt proudly hosted the 11th Annual ideaFest research & creative activities symposium. The Arcata Community Center buzzed with energy as over 200 students, staff, and faculty presented their posters & shared, with 400+ people in attendance. The afternoon was enriched with live performances by our talented music students and a kick-off by the Marching Lumberjacks. Congratulations to all the presenters, and immense gratitude to the Office of Research & Sponsored Programs, Marketing & Communications, and the Library staff for orchestrating this remarkable event. Plus, extra extra read all about it... the latest volume ideaFest Journal is now available for download at: https://press.humboldt.edu/

College Corps 

Well done to the College Corps team, who hosted CA's Chief Service Officer Josh Fryday last week. The College Corps team showcased a sampling of some of our Fellows’ contributions to community partners with site visits to Potawot, Arcata Veterans Hall, and Arcata High School.

CSU Student Research Competition 

The Office of Research & Sponsored Programs Foundation was extremely proud to have been able to support our students at the annual CSU Student Research Competition in San Luis Obispo. Congratulations to Sahil Barot, Abraham Castrejon, Nicholas Woronchuck, Amanda Case, and Cheyenne Ty for their hard work and excellent presentations. Next year the 39th CSU Student Research Competition will be hosted by Cal Poly Humboldt for the first time in the competition's history on April 25-26, 2025.

Student Shout Out

Cal Poly Humboldt undergraduate Tanya Taghavi-Dinani has been awarded a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. The US Department of State's Gilman Scholarship provides resources to talented American undergraduates who might not otherwise participate in study abroad due to financial constraints. Tanya will participate in the USAC Thailand program at Khon Kaen University and will focus her studies on business, marketing, journalism, and Thai culture in Fall 2024. Congratulations, Tanya!

The Press at Cal Poly Humboldt

The Press at Cal Poly Humboldt and Digital Commons @ Cal Poly Humboldt hosts over 14K works, and has had over 1.1M downloads since starting in 2015, and has 310,638 downloads this past year.

Welcome

Please join me in welcoming Patrick Burkhart to the Academic Personnel Services (APS) team. Patrick was most recently a professor at Texas A&M and will be drawing on that experience as they lead efforts to increase support for faculty undergoing retention, tenure, and promotion processes at Cal Poly Humboldt. Patrick's first day with APS will be Monday, May 13th, 2024.

Thank you

It is with a mix of excitement and sadness that I share the retirement of the Associate Dean for Marine Operations and Professor of Biology, Dr. Rick Zechman. Rick has served this campus and this college tirelessly since 2012, and he has decided that the time is right to move on to his next adventure later this summer. Thank you, Rick!

Take good care,

Jenn Capps

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Jenn Capps, PhD 

Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs 

Cal Poly Humboldt