orangecounty58

*prospective students, i was taught better at pomona.

jayandbutton

for years some have tried, unsuccessfully, to argue that pomona no longer can compete with the bigger cal states like fullerton, san diego, san jose, and long beach. we're just way too far behind. there are so many holes in the dike--facilities, athletics (they're all DI), achievements, entering GPAs, etc.--that every time you try to fix one you get flooded elsewhere and never catch up. perhaps that explains why so many deans and provosts have checked out and as a result there hasn't been a stable leadership team on campus in a decade.

fifteen years or so ago long beach state was behind us. then president maxson began to cultivate high schools in the area and particularly their valedictorians. his dynamic leadership (perhaps combined with winning Division I sports in things like baseball and volleyball) helped transform that campus into one of choice for better students. i am told they turn away more than they take, while san diego state REALLY has become a pick of the litter school.

my recommendation was to abandon the "me too" philosophy that is lame and lacking vision for establishing centers of excellence via niche programs that are cutting edge and forward looking, tied to the polytechnic mission and technology. for the most part the idea was ignored and we fumble along. in fact, many of the hands on classes we once had have either been cut back or eliminated in favor of more emphasis on copycat theory classes of little interest to students and even less value to employers.

the university is seventy years old this year, older than most other cal states, yet it has squandered many chances to be a leader, preferring rather to be a follower. in one recent year one college lost its only PhDs from Harvard and Yale. in the next year its most distinguished professor left for Woodbury (?), and in the following year its most promising young professor left for San Diego State after only one year. in another department four of the five best teachers left within a three year period. this week its longest serving department chair also departs for a university overseas, and many other faculty are taking early retirements simply because the university is moribund yet awash in delusions of grandeur as will once again be exemplified within fall conference speeches that have become emperor has no clothes laughable.

local newspapers latched on to the debacle this past year when the students and science faculty stormed the president's mansion to protest the slashing of more than 100 classes while the prez was hosting a fat cat fundraiser (that probably flopped given the noise outside), but the university threw a spin on the matter as a tiny administrative issue with no real substance and the heat and light subsided. it will take a old fashioned muckraking journalist with lots of sources on the inside to uncover the depths of the malaise in an era when news staffs are being cut back and newspapers folding. i wonder now if the head of the capital campaign was there, saw a sign of the mess, and then promptly, and quietly, resigned.

steering a university is akin to turning HMS TITANIC--it takes a decade to show much direction to either the port or starboard side. and unless all hands vacate and a radical new crew is assigned on deck i see almost no hope for this institution to do much other than list to either side while SS CHAPMAN, SS AZUSA PACIFIC, and yes, even SS CAL STATE ANYWHERE ELSE steam by at various speeds forward, flush with tens of millions of dollars in private funding.

meanwhile, cal poly pomona brags about its accomplishments of being climate neutral (whatever that means) and eliminating trays from the school cafeteria in order to save money.

xiaoxue

i spent five years at cal poly pomona, a year longer than they promised, just so i could get classes to graduate. what i saw in those years was overenrolled classes (many students sitting on the floor because nice faculty let them), broken down facilities (can you imagine a place where nasty rags take the place of erasers?), sports teams playing schools you never heard of on fields worse than high school (notre dame de namur?), and many students who had no business being in college, many of whom who simply could not even understand English. try having a couple of those on a team project where you do almost everything yourself...and then they get credit for it.

i missed the riot at the president's mansion but am not surprised at all. you could see it coming.

i had planned to stay on for an MBA but the program deteriorated from a global one with programs on almost every continent to a shell of about 150 students. when i was there the graduate director who built all that stuff was fired and replaced by a secretary who was utterly clueless. but it saved money. luckily, i got into the program at cal state fullerton. as a result, i can see first hand direct comparisons.

call it dirty money if you like, but students at fullerton are treated to first class facilities including interactive labs that are 21st century, sports teams that are competing for Division I titles against the best in the nation, and campus leaders and faculty who have made a commitment to stay for the duration of their careers. president gordon is considered one of the best in the cal state system.

i could care less what the polls say. what matters is how students are treated. on the pomona campus you are abused. we may not have a national championship football team like USC at fullerton but there is a certain spirit on campus you probably will never see at pomona.

am i being less than loyal to my alma mater? all i got was a watered down degree for an extra year of tuition money and now persistent donation calls from current students who don't even have their facts straight. the last call talked about the new business building that they said was under construction. anybody want to post a picture of it here?

PL28

I agree with Jay, the university needs to be more focus on the way it spends it's funding and what programs they should pay special attention to, especially with limited state budget these days.

Last year, we had a university wide survey on what priorities are important. However even with some clear direction from the students and faculties, the announcement about “visions” from the administration still lacks focus. Of course we want to be good at everything but in today's competitive environment, I don't believe this is possible.

orangecounty58

i still dont think many programs will prepare you better then csupomona does in engineering. of course you have SC, UCLA, Cal Tech, Harvey Mudd, Davis, Berkley, SLO...

as far as other departments, you get departments fighting for money. for instance departments have to switch qtrs on who is going to teach the soc/psy requirement for the engineering program. they would fight for the money. long beach state offers a PhD in Engineering. I hate seeing schools who have no business being on the same level catching up and passing us. i'd hate for pomona to become a "one trick pony", just a good engineering school or a good architecture school. instead of Eddy Hardenstein taking the job as publisher of L.A. Times, they should have handed him the keys to Pomona.

X you seem a bit perturbed. you seem like the person who had the "A-to-B" car which got you to around town without huge problems. You took care of the car, respected the car and happy you had the car. you then get into a brand new shiny car and the old car instantly became "a piece of junk". CSUF did okay in basketball last year and usually have a good baseball team, other then that they are not very good in sports. They are improving in many areas.

things were not perfect at pomona, but i still have Bronco pride. to claim "abuse" would be just plain nonsense.

xiaoxue

not abused?

let me see.

first, i have to spend how many thousand dollars extra because not enough classes are offered and we can't graduate on time?

and then i have to sit on the floor because there aren't enough desks for everybody?

what do you call that?

yeah, i was happy as a freshman. but by senior year everything had changed. so most of us were unhappy well before we left.

who has the picture of the new building?

orangecounty58

all you described is not abuse. it could be considered poor management/planning/coordination and unfortunate circumstances, but abuse? abuse is a professor telling you: "I hold the power of your grade in my hands" , "I'm taking your desk and chair, and you can stand in the middle of the class for the rest of the course", or even "we just bait-and-switched you with this poor substandard teacher". plus thousands of dollars extra? A) your education is already supplemented by the state/taxpayers B) the average person now graduates in five years C) ive dealt with shortage of classes since ive been going to school, including community college D) depending on the course (many complained about even about courses like stats and other general education courses) you could have taken the class elsewhere. E) the cost of education at cpp is cheap, even the parking was nothing compared to other campuses. F) courses in the EE department were standing room only until everyone who didnt belong in the class (or trying to add) were booted/left. When an extra few students were added, the class was uprooted and planted into another room. Our department was HUGE on Fire Codes.



it took me about a year to get into a certain course in the EE department and a few quarters for others. many courses are only offered once a year or every other year. i didn't moan. i just fit the courses in when they were available. the real issue was that of students manipulating the registration system, which later I helped to correct via a professor in the EE department who was in charge of such matters.


in any case are you smarter then when you started? did you have good memories? are you prepared to handle your MBA studies? if you are doing okay, where is the abuse?

jayandbutton

the x man has been frequently viewed as one of the fuss buttons of this board for some time. we've had many "interesting" chats about sports teams, mostly basketball, over the years and while he may be right much of the time the tone sometimes comes across a bit shrill.

i think you have to take all of this with a dash of humor and not take all of it too seriously. heck, this place never will be a top university and it appears that most are satisfied with mediocrity. so be it.

a quick memory note. when i interviewed for a job on campus i was shown a model of the new business building that soon was to be completed. that was around 1985. some five or six models, and more than two decades, later we're still looking for it. but xiaoxue if you want a picture there's a newer model in building six and a billboard showing a sketch of it along university drive.

orangecounty58

i dont get offended by 99% of online content. if i did, i would be one sheltered individual or a person in need of emotional help. in all honesty i thought X was a female, my apologies xiaxue.

i dont think teahers are okay with mediocrity, but I do think they are uninspired after years of fighting with management. probably hard enough to try and improve your own department let alone an entire school and university. simple philosophy/logic states if you do the best you can (do your job well), many/most will benefit. if this isnt the case, then there seems to be conflicting ideas on what "doing a good job" entails. still constructing an email, trying to find some addresses to cc the blasted thing to.

xiaoxue

you start calling people names, jaybutt, and you will need to get ready to get some thrown back at you dude.

oc, you pay for a seat in a class and you are told to sit on the floor and that's not abuse? okay, let's call it extreme neglect and incompetence. how can such a "great" university be unable to count the number of chairs in a room and then match it to students enrolling in a class? duh.............

i think the cal poly teachers that i knew for the most part gave up on the institutional level but didn't give up at the classroom level. they realized that the students were getting screwed even worse than they are so for the most part they gave us a decent teach. many of them would tell us to get out as soon as possible as things were getting worse. but then the ditsy administators would not schedule classes so we could. guess it cost too much money to do that. but they sure weren't spending it on classroom desks or erasers but rather executive salary raises. a secretary once told me that the president's raise for a christmas bonus was more than she made for the ENTIRE YEAR!

uninspired is a good way to call it, oc. one professor told me that back in the day entire departments would be around all day, counseling students and running student clubs who would compete head to head with big schools for national awards. now it's hard to find even one of them around one extra minute. the apathy by all was very real and growing. i guess that's what you mean by lack of leadership, jay?

jayandbutton

i remember those days, x man. one popular professor who left many years before he had planned, was advisor to three or four student clubs at the same time and every one of them regularly won national awards, giving cal poly pomona extraordinary national visibility and publicity.

now every one his clubs has folded. none of the new faculty was interested in doing mundane advising stuff. rather, they were into their things, notably lucrative consulting jobs paying big bucks.

and so faculty office doors are closed and usually locked. and students lose. very sad.

that's quite a story how the president's holiday chump change is more than what many staff make in a whole year. the rich keep getting richer, don't they?

orangecounty58

the not enough chair thing is up to the department. like i said, that kind of stuff happened all the time. it is up to the instructor/dept to go and uproot the class into a bigger planter. ive been noticing many other schools have had to tell students they could not attend and/or tell them they had to wait a year. my cousin got her spot at CSUF after some waiting. last year and the year before they flat out told students who had been accepted they had no idea when they were going to be allowed to start taking classes. some schools are getting help from outside sources. the CSUF business donation was very much debated, but there was no way the school was going to turn down that amount of money. thank god for people with big egos who want their names on the side of buildings. in the end a greater good is the fact students get a great building. now i wouldnt go out and start whoring out the school, but a new revenue stream needs to be carved out. it is my strong belief only through the strong pride of the alumni is anything going to change. if you look on myspace, im attempting to get feedback from current students about what they feel. campus buildings are getting improved, would be interested in seeing the cost involved.

cdsanchez

I'm an incoming first time freshman and I chose CPP over UCR and CSUF (only applied to local schools) because of their respected engineering department. I have to admit that I knew about some of those negative aspects that xiaoxue mentioned but I still chose CPP despite that. While this may sound naive, I'm hoping the school will start going to back to it's roots as one of the better engineering schools in the west during my stay.

I'm a Computer Science major and I plan to stay one... the Computer Science Department as CPP looks solid at a glance, but I can't say anything concrete as I won't start classes until next week. Plus, I heard they also added a new CS lab this year..

Just one question.. why is Computer Science in the science department? Almost every other school has their CS department in Engineering..

jayandbutton

sanchez,
taking an engineering degree within a strong college but at a university with major units in freefall is a bit of a gamble but that's a better bet than choosing a weak program at a better university. after all, it's the training YOU personally get that is most important.

computer science location is a by product of academic politics from way back in the day. i agree your degree would be worth much more from engineering than science, which is now best known for the 100+ classes being cancelled last year leading to a near riot at the president's mansion and follow on woes in science.

cal poly pomona is akin to the opening of a famous charles dickens book, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times...." engineering, architecture and hospitality management are exemplars of doing things mostly right and getting acclaim, while the humanities and the lame excuse we have left of a business college are a few notches below dickens' sense of "worst."

i only hope you don't experience the kind of early exodus of experienced faculty that has characterized the past several years on campus. the brain drain has been unprecedented.

xiaoxue

i was there when the best teacher in finance, the best teacher in accounting, the best teacher in management, and the best three teachers in marketing all left campus prematurely within one year and went to other schools in disgust. and the replacements could barely speak english. one professor told her classes she knew absolutely nothing about her assigned subjects! it was a total disaster. and then the MBA director was fired by the new dean who was about to be fired when he left unexpectedly in the middle of the year.

so if you can't cut it in computer science do not under any circumstances switch over to computer information systems in the business college. i'd try devry first.

i like that story about seeing a model of the new business building almost 25 years ago. and best i know nobody still has broken ground a quarter century later. that's real progress, baby. meanwhile, we've moved into our palace at fullerton, and my family and i are contributing to make the place better.

orangecounty58

the computer science department is in the science department like jay said. depending on who you talk to, they believe it belongs or doesnt belong. i think you'd be better off getting a computer engineering. besides a couple people in the computer science department, they are tyrants. for example, try writing up code for a complicated problem without the book or notes for reference. most sensible teachers, within a scientific field, will let you use notes or a book. not some of these guys just out to give students a bad time. in any case you have people in the Engineering Department (all departments) that could write code around some of these professors in the CS department who at times openly talk smack on the EE/CS and other engineering departments. if you cant beat them, talk smack on them. Salloum in the CS was a good instructor.

X if he wanted to do CIS, he could have gone to UCI or probably CSUF. The truth is he IS AT CPP. X you should really let it go and heal. you sound like a disgruntled ex-girlfriend, and boy do I know how those act. they never stop, even years after you no longer with them and they themselves have seen other people. Congratulations, you are in love, you are a now an Elephant, umm I mean Titan, but talking to Broncos (still one deep down, or angry/jealous/envious we still have pride for some reason). I have cousins who graduated from CSUF, and one on the way. They don't talk about the school, like a freshman at their new high school, who just got a locker of their very own. They enjoyed CSUF, enjoy a solid education, enjoyed a diverse student body and enjoyed the price. It isn't cal tech, mit, cal, stanford, etc, it's CSUF. Besides Architecture/Environmental Design. Hospitality Mgmt. , Physics, Engineering, Chemistry, things at CPP can be suspect. Again, it isn't UCLA, SC or another school with mass amounts of cash flowing in from alumni or rich people who want a name on a building.

odd how X mentioned how both he and his family are making it a better campus. just makes you go hmmm.

like you wanting to make CSUF a better place, myself and the other on here are trying to make CPP a better place.

xiaoxue

you sound like a very smart person, 58, and that's what the cal poly engineering does, it has great alumni who were well prepared. meanwhile, other places on campus are selling fraudulent goods and it's up to responsible alumni to call them on it.

yeah, my family is giving money and big time. my dad has made a ton importing stuff from china and probably would have given big bucks to cal poly if he hadn't seen what a total mess the business college is and has been for the past several years. that's why the new building promised to jay and other oldtimers 25 years ago never happened and current students keeping getting screwed by the lies while millions are coming in just down the 57 freeway. our brand new classrooms are like spaceships with state of the art controls everywhere. at poly the teachers get nasty rags for erasers and students get tiny uncomfortable grade school chairs that look like they were recycled from ganesha high back in the 1950s.

so poly's loss is fullerton's gain. our family believes in education and giving back. but education has to give something too. trust me, it's like night and day comparing fullerton to pomona in business. but you're right 58 it's a whole nother story in engineering, architecture, and hospitality studies. that's why your major you choose is very important when you decide on a university.

orangecounty58

that's unfortunate to hear X; in fact it's disheartening. i'm a bit flustered here sitting back and thinking. one can not fault a school for using the instruments/tools they had at their disposal. the EE/Physics/Biology/etc departments don't have the best equipment in world, nor do they have the best facilities in the world. despite the shortfalls, they succeed. The architecture, chemistry, engineering (other then EE) has not had state of the art facilities for very long; yet they were still respected despite the formerly said fact. Money is raised and put for into what is deemed to be needed, or as deemed a priority. I'm glad to see the library looking very nice. If you graduate from CSUF, when you look in the mirror with your robe and hat and are you going to say: "I graduated despite going to Cal Poly", or ,"I graduated because of Cal Poly", or quite possibly, " I graduated out of spite for Cal Poly".

I've complained about not getting classes, which prompted the closing of loop holes. I've sat in older smaller desks. I've bought circuit boards, components, software, computers, microcontrollers and ton of other items for my major. It wasn't cheap, but just part of the program. I've used o-scopes/curve tracers/benches older then me and printed with printers from the 80's; yet I didn't complain once. Classes where held to a bare minimum at times, I was frustrated...I wasn't angered. You learn to live with certain nuances and succeed despite the circumstances. I'm thankful for the conditions at times, it made you understand the material more, and made one appreciate the equipment I now own and equipment used in the real world.

There was no parking structure when I attended CPP. When I could not afford to wait for a tram, I walked with a full back back up the hill to the engineering or science building with a slipped disc, shaking as I got there, but I never complained about the parking.

We can always complain about things we do not have. There probably has been complaining since before CPP became an independent school. Parking lots, cost of school, facilities, class offering, teachers, difficulty of coursework, budgets, etc, etc, etc. The truth is the vast majority came out "okay".

X, you don't seem like a unintelligible person. You are even correct with some of the points you make. Teachers have left, money has been cut, there has been a sever mismanagement of the campus as a whole. I believe you are wrong in the way you present the school and actions since you have left the school.

Going to the school you want...fine.
Enjoying the school you want...fine.
Promoting the school you want...fine.
I'm even fine with boasting about facilities/teachers.

Acting as if you are the only person to have difficulties...not fine.
Acting as if you are entitled to environments of perfection...not fine.
Being too proud or angered to give credit/thanks to someone/thing that has helped you grow as an individual...not fine.

Coming up here and telling people about money (money that isnt even yours) going to one place, over another just out of spite with a "see-what-you-could-of had attitude" is just utterly shameful.

Giving money is great, especially when its from a good place. The business building at CSUF is nice, but again it was a "Look what I'm doing. See how much money I'm giving. You better put my name on the building" display of charity. It will help a lot of students, but it will always be seen as previously mentioned. Your dad/family might have been coming from a good place giving money, but you are going to need a big shovel and a fire truck size hose to uncover and clean what you just did to the sentiment. At least in my eyes and maybe most people on this board.

jayandbutton

when management is even around to have their heads in awkward positions.

this summer many of them were conspicuously MIA.

but today all are back to launch fall conference with more speeches about how great we are. highly intelligent and perceptive people like you OC know better, and that's the prevailing view of the donor community as well.

xiaoxue

hey, county dude it's amazing how you like to judge things when you know little about the topic. i have many good memories of cal poly pomona and made friends with many students and faculty. i am very grateful to at least a dozen professors who helped get me and others to another level and i keep in touch with several even now. but what is incredible is that almost all of them left the university and went elsewhere and as such the next generations of students were deprived of their knowledge and mentoring. while some are too classy to admit it my guess is that almost all of them just got disgusted.

where do you get perfection out of sitting on the floor? nobody was expecting wood paneling but a decent chair and desk might be the least we should have. the riot held on campus last year had nothing to do with me or even the business college. it helps to prove that many areas of the university are flat broke. who is facing up to these things? does anybody have any courage and admit there are problems? never.

as for the money issue nobody is bragging about that. my family have been anonymous donors because education is about learning not having named buildings and seminar rooms. but cal poly had first shot and blew it, treated students, staff and faculty badly not just me. i think the post above about all the bragging speeches says it all. they come from the big shots not from me.

students wish they had a football team like you had even if it were bush league. we don't have a football team at fullerton either but we do have college world series baseball teams. and students still walk a country mile to get to classes. the cal poly parking garage is a mile to many classrooms on the other side of campus so things haven't changed much, just the morale of the people who go there.