On the starting line of a school year unlike any other, the campus community is busy preparing to reunite at 1 Grand Avenue. On the other side of the fanfare of Move-In, Week of Welcome, and Campus Comeback events, in-person instruction will return to many classrooms with a host of health and safety practices in place. Cal Poly News asked winners of the 2020-2021 Distinguished Teaching Award — one of the highest honors for educators at Cal Poly — to reflect on the opportunity fall quarter brings.

Jenn Yost

Associate Professor of Biology, Director of the Hoover Herbarium

Teaching at Cal Poly for 7 years

What is the best part about working with Cal Poly students?

I find that Cal Poly students, in general, are so willing to engage in the process of growth. They want to be challenged. They want to work hard. They want to have meaningful experiences. Cal Poly’s educational model allows for a special kind of relationship between teachers and students where we actually have time to get to know each other. I meet them as freshmen and graduate them as seniors, and in that time, my job is to help them grow into reasonable people. Biology is an excellent avenue to inspire curiosity and intrigue in them. 

What are you looking forward to this year?

After having been away from the campus and the students for so much of the last year, I am looking forward to coming back. I think everyone has a new found appreciation for the simple joys, like getting to run into someone in the hall. Things that were taken for granted are not any longer. When I taught my in-person labs in winter and spring of last year, everyone was just so happy to be together. There was much greater appreciation for little things like using a microscope. I’m looking forward to more people feeling that.

What advice do you have to Cal Poly students this fall?

My advice for students this year is to erase all your social media accounts and start fresh. Give yourself a clean slate — mentally and emotionally. Don’t be so emotionally attached to causes or topics that you only have a surface level understanding of. Adopt a scout mindset and ask more questions about everything. You are here to learn.

Francisco Fernflores

Professor of Philosophy

Teaching at Cal Poly for 21 years

What is the best part about working with Cal Poly students?

In my experience, the best part about working with Cal Poly students is their willingness to learn not only from our successes, but also from our failures. Increasingly, the vast majority of Cal Poly students display, through their words and actions, and regardless of their major, a desire to learn about and to respect different ways of living, knowing, and doing.

What are you looking forward to this year?

I'm excited about completing the research I've been conducting with philosophy major Luca Simplicio this summer on Mexican and Chicanx philosophy. I am even more excited about the course I'll be offering winter 2022 on Latin American, Latinx, and Chicanx philosophy, in which I will be discussing some of the findings of our research. I am particularly interested in understanding how science is valued, relative to other forms of knowledge, in the philosophies of influential Mexican, Chicanx, and Latinx philosophers. I'm looking forward to many thoughtful philosophical discussions with the insightful young adults we call our students. 

What advice do you have to Cal Poly students this fall?

Use all the resources Cal Poly has to offer. Even if you feel you understand the material in a course very well, talk to your professors about the philosophical foundations of their field and the connections between courses and areas in which you have an interest. Professors typically reflect deeply about the foundations and limits of their chosen specialty, and it is those reflections that inform how they approach the way they teach. There are also many non-academic resources that Cal Poly has organized to help each of you be successful.

Brad Campbell

Associate Professor of English

Teaching at Cal Poly for 15 years

What is the best part about working with Cal Poly students?

I have always been so very impressed by how reliably intelligent and gracious our students are. This latter quality has been especially apparent and abundant during our pandemic quarters, and I am deeply heartened by (and grateful for) the way our students so readily adapted to radically new modes of learning.  In extraordinarily trying times, they have demonstrated remarkable patience, and in the face of daunting disruptions and frustrations, they have afforded us unwavering goodwill.  

What are you looking forward to this year?

My teaching schedule for the year ahead is, without exception, full of courses that, at every level — GE, major, and graduate — promise uninterrupted delight. We will be studying and discussing some of the most remarkable poems, plays, and stories ever written, and I cannot wait to hear what my students think about them.

Want to see how the start of fall quarter is taking shape on campus? Check out scenes from Week of Welcome.

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