Letter from the Chair
By Lola Berber-Jimenez
Finally, a regular academic year! 2022-2023 brought a little bit of normality to our work, and students are enjoying their classes in person as well as their interactions with each other and with faculty. This is a good last academic year on campus for me, as I will be retiring at the end of the summer! It has been a privilege working with our faculty and Liberal Studies students for 13 years.
We are excited that we continue to have a very dedicated staff and faculty for our LS students. Our new-ish (starting in 2020-21) tenure track lines in Social Foundations of Education and Science Education are in their third year and doing fantastic. They have helped us elevate our degree and we can pursue additional resources and opportunities for all our students. All our joint, affiliated, and LS faculty continue to make significant impacts in the students' educational trajectories and love for learning. We continue to offer many paths and rich experiences that will endure with our plans for semesters; our course program, concentrations, and course proposals will be completed this academic year and we will start offering our degree in semesters in 2026.
Our program is also ready for universal pre-school, coming to California in 2025. If you ever heard me talk, kindergarten (and now TK!) are among the hardest grades to teach. Not only do you need to know everything, but you also need to know a lot more about children's development and well-being as well as have patience, energy, and love for your job. Our students interested in these grades are taking additional courses in their concentration to add the Early Childhood Education authorization. They will also be great candidates for the new TK-3 credential with an excellent foundation in all the subjects.
In conjunction with CESAME, our faculty has been devoted to STEM integration in our curriculum. Our student body is now truly diverse, and we continue to emphasize the love for learning. We are happy to see many working in the summer in research with our faculty. Our students have a new LS room (finally!). Come to 38-120 to visit. Our many events help us continue building a strong, caring community of future professionals. Thanks to donations that supplement our teaching (field trips to Montaña de Oro), IRA activities (visits to museums in urban cities) help us bring additional activities to enrich students’ experiences while at Cal Poly.
Looking at our list of 2022-203 LS graduates, many started in the Fall of 2019 and got two years of pandemic learning. Judging from the fact that most of them have been admitted into a variety of prestigious credential programs, I can say that despite the challenges of the past few years, these students were affected in a positive way by their time at Cal Poly — but they also had a positive impact on all of us who work with them. I am excited to hear about their plans and trajectories and the beneficial impacts they make in turn on their future students. I will miss my job and know that our newly elected chair, Seth Bush, will be fantastic to our program, students, faculty, and our community.