By Alexis Alvarez, April 22, 2025
Cal Poly Pomona will offer two new civil engineering and psychology courses in the 2025-2025 academic year in an effort to allow students an opportunity to learn about evolving fields in their careers.
The new courses — CE 4282, Sustainable Operations and Practices for Green Stormwater Infrastructure and PSY 3388, Positive Psychology: The Science of the Good Life — are set to begin in the upcoming fall semester. There are also courses still in the processing stage, such as the Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Fashion Entrepreneurship and Communicating Biology.
According to Laura Massa, the associate vice president of the Office of Academic Programs, adding new courses happens often at CPP, and they originate from faculty.
“As the world evolves, as science evolves, as new disciplinary scholarship evolves, we need to offer you classes that prepare you for meeting the standards of that discipline and being prepared for life after college,” Massa said.
Kazem Majid Sadeghi, a civil engineering professor who works in the stormwater field, will be teaching the graduate level course CE 4282 in the fall. CPP will be one of the first universities in the country to teach low-impact development and stormwater infrastructure, according to Sadeghi.
The use and treatment of stormwater is a new and growing field, which can increase job opportunities for students in civil engineering and lead to the likelihood of promotions, according to Sadeghi. The course will go over capturing stormwater that comes off buildings, roads and sidewalks from the rain to utilize by either infiltrating or reusing the water.
“It’s a good resource,” Sadeghi said. “Otherwise, all that water just runs into the river, goes to the ocean and becomes salty.”
Sadeghi said capturing stormwater is vital for water resources in the United States because of droughts and climate change.
The other new course offered, Positive Psychology: The Science of the Good Life, was proposed by Viviane Seyranian, a psychology professor, in 2018. She will be teaching the course this summer while Rachel Baumsteiger, also a psychology professor, will be teaching the course in the fall.
The course will dive into the study of well-being and ways to increase one’s well-being. Seyranian believes anybody at CPP can benefit from the course.
“One thing that we’re finding is that students’ well-being levels or happiness levels are either the same, which means that you don’t get that usual dip at the end of the semester, which is pretty incredible,”Seyranian said.
Research has been shown that students who take a positive psychology course see positive well-being effects, according to Seyranian.
Throughout the course, students will work to increase their own well-being through positive psychological interventions each week, such as hiking or rekindling a lost connection. As students participate in these activities, Seyranian will participate along with them, as she’ll obtain the same benefits.
Seyranian said the course is also in the works to be added as a major requirement for the Department of Psychology since many psychology students go into counseling and other helping careers and because the course serves students throughout the stressful university experience.
Featured image courtesy of Kazem Majid Sadeghi
