By Taylor Jaseph, Apr. 12, 2022
Cal Poly Pomona President Soraya Coley approved the renaming of the College of the Extended University’s name to the College of Professional and Global Education during a signing ceremony on March 24.
This change stems from the College of the Extended University name not being descriptive of the programs the college offers. Beginning the process in August 2020, administrators held several meetings, not only to develop a new name, but to create a new vision to help people understand what the college does.
Laura Pohopien, a lecturer in the College of Business Administration, participated in a small design team tasked with finding similar concepts in the meetings with stakeholders to help narrow down what the college’s new vision would be.
“In the past, there was not a real understanding of what the CEU did,” Pohopien said. “But it is part of a global network of education and reskilling and recertifying. Just an amazing population of people that we had no idea about in the community of the university.”
Erik Rolland, dean of the College of Business Administration and interim dean of the College of Professional and Global Education, oversaw the process. He brought together invested administrators, professors, students and external organizations to contribute ideas in the revisioning meetings.
Through these meetings, they found that the College of the Extended University had four elements it needed to consider for the new vision.
The first element was the global campus, which is all the international programs both inbound and outbound. Second, the college boasts industry connections that provide certifications needed to work in specific industries. Third, is the CPP+ Gateway which is for people switching careers and needing new training. The final element was that people were unaware of what the extended university is.
“You can’t have just a couple people in a back room coming up with a vision,” Rolland said. “It needs to be driven by the people who are working with the organization, within the organization, partnering with the organization, and collectively this is what they came up with.”
According to Pohopien, the name change was the final step. During the revisioning, the team focused on exploring where the college could go.
The name went through different iterations throughout the year, but it quickly became clear there was a similar idea among the stakeholders on what should be included in the new name showcasing the college.
“Different names came up that were considered, but one of the keywords that seemed to keep coming up was ‘global,’” said Teresa Taylor, director of business operations for the College of Professional and Global Education. “A lot of the work we do really does support the campus partnerships with global partners, and so, it just made sense that that would become part of the name.”
The elements discovered by the revisioning meetings helped develop the final name. The college wanted to focus on the global aspect, but also on the adult learners in their professional lives.
The college offers certifications and training for people needing to reskill throughout their careers. This offer isn’t just for Cal Poly Pomona students, but alumni and outside professionals.
The design team created a vision map in the shape of a roundabout to encapsulate the process of finding the new name. Taylor explained the graphic using a metaphor that everyone drives on different highways in their life. The roundabout is what connects them and navigates them in the right direction.
“That’s kind of the concept behind it (the vision map) is, we help people stay connected but keep them on track to get where they’re trying to go,” Taylor said.
The college believes the new name will help students better understand what the College of Professional and Global Education provides. Rolland wants the college to be a solution for current students, past students and those who aren’t even students who are facing challenges in their careers.
“We want to be the lifelong partner for our students and our alumni and our community in the lifelong learning journey that we all go through,” Taylor said.
An open house is scheduled for May 10 to formally welcome the College of Professional and Global Education to the Cal Poly Pomona campus.
