Cal State Univ Maritime/Cal Maritime Academy --> Cal Poly, Solano Campus/Cal Poly Maritime Academy
At first glance, Cal Poly and Cal Maritime might seem like very different institutions—one a polytechnic university known for hands-on innovation, the other a small, specialized academy rooted in maritime training and tradition. But beneath those surface differences, we have something essential in common: a shared belief that education should be active, applied, and intellectually engaging.
That’s why we’re especially excited to join the Department of English at Cal Poly. As faculty from the Department of Culture and Communication at California State University Maritime Academy, we’ve spent years bringing experiential learning into humanities classrooms by creating courses that help students connect literature, writing, ethics, and the arts to the challenges they face in the world and in their professions.
Though our students at the Maritime Academy pursue technical and career-oriented degrees, we believe deeply that the humanities belong at the center of their education. Our courses (in Literature and Culture and in Communication) are designed not only to meet general education requirements, but to equip students with the habits of reflection, analysis, and ethical decision making that define thoughtful, capable individuals. With this in mind, we work to provide an education that is intellectually rigorous, culturally responsive, and professionally relevant. Across our curriculum, we emphasize effective communication, critical thinking, and ethical reasoning—precisely the attributes that employers, graduate programs, and leadership roles consistently demand. We believe that humanities learning is not a luxury but a necessity for students preparing to work in complex, global industries. In short, we’ve long been aligned with Cal Poly’s “learn by doing” ethos—even before we knew we’d one day be part of it.
That philosophy comes to life in courses like “Project-Based Writing for Science,” where students in oceanography and marine science develop fieldwork-based writing projects modeled on real-world tasks expected of scientists and policymakers in the oceans and waterways sector. 
In “Maritime Culture,” students explore themes of seafarer representation and identity while producing original creative projects . . .
. . .while “Maritime Arts” engages students with the aesthetic traditions of Pacific coastal communities, integrating visual art, ethnography, and cultural history with hands-on experience creating their own works of oceanic art.Our classes have often ventured off campus for daylong visits to places like the San Francisco Maritime Museum and the San Francisco Bar Pilots, and many of us hold class outdoors along the shores of San Pablo Bay, taking advantage of our unique waterfront setting. These aren’t just enrichment activities; they are core to how we teach and what we value.
Our award-winning faculty bring a mix of teaching excellence and scholarly engagement. We’ve taught across literature, ethics, creative writing, speech, film, and the arts, and our research includes work in British and American literature, oceanic and postcolonial studies, media studies, visual culture, and the environmental humanities. We’ve participated in initiatives funded by the NEH, the Mellon Foundation, and the Teagle Foundation, and many of us have ongoing collaborations with researchers and institutions around the world.
You can find more of our department projects and priorities of recent years in the archived pages of the Cal Maritime Legacy Website; links below. We’re especially proud of the activities collected under “Videos and Public Events” that show some on-campus and external projects conducted with our colleagues in the San Francisco Bay Area. We’re proud of what we built as a department, and we’re excited to continue this work as part of Cal Poly English. Though the histories of our institutions are different, our educational goals are remarkably aligned: to offer students an education that’s alive, relevant, and deeply grounded in humanistic inquiry.
Legacy Website |
| Department of Culture and Communication |
| School of Letters and Sciences |
| Cal Maritime Academy |