Cal State’s newest polytechnic campus hopes a rebranding will bring enrollment gains

Data science major Jonathan Juarez at IdeaFest in May 2026 at Cal Poly Humboldt. Juarez’s project used spatial data to analyze wildfire risk in Humboldt County.

Credit: Cal Poly Humboldt / Kellie Brown

Jonathan Juarez was working in Los Angeles to help support his parents and brother when he decided it was time to finish his bachelor’s degree. Rather than stay local, the 30-year-old enrolled at the California State University’s northernmost campus roughly 700 miles away, drawn by a brand-new major at a university in the midst of reinvention.

“I love being able to look back to where I came from, to where I am today,” said Juarez, who will graduate from Cal Poly Humboldt in 2027 with a degree in polytechnic data science. “I told myself, ‘I need to go back. I want it. I really want to see if I can finish this.’ And I fell in love with academia again.”

After more than a century as Cal State Humboldt, the picturesque campus on California’s North Coast became a polytechnic university in 2022 — making it the third in the system after Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly Pomona. Since the name change, the university has launched new interdisciplinary programs that emphasize applied learning and combined disciplines. 

The polytech designation is less of a transformation for the campus and more of a rebranding, aimed at boosting enrollment by putting a finer point on what the university offers.

“That should help boost enrollment,” said Shawna Young, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs, “because those who are interested in seeking that kind of job and career and workforce readiness will think of us.”

Since the new designation, Cal Poly Humboldt has seen slight gains in enrollment, growing more than 7% from 5,858 students in 2022 to 6,276 in 2025. The university aims to enroll more than 11,600 students by 2035. 

But, like all educational institutions across the nation, the campus faces the “demographic cliff” of decreasing enrollment. Campus leaders say the new designation gives Cal Poly Humboldt a competitive edge with applicants that Cal State Humboldt didn’t have.

“We have looked at it as a recognition,” said Chrissy Holliday, vice president for enrollment management and student success. “The hope was to carve out a differentiation of what makes Cal Poly Humboldt unique, so our pitch becomes less about pretty pictures and more about the value we’re offering students.”

CSU leaders asked Cal State Humboldt to apply for polytechnic status in 2020, citing the campus’s “many distinct strengths in the sciences,” and the sciences have benefited from the designation. A new engineering and technology building is expected to be completed in 2027, when the first cohort of students who applied to the new Cal Poly will graduate. 

Funded with a one-time state investment of $433 million, the $100 million building will house a new mechanical engineering bachelor’s, an engineering and community practice master’s and, by 2029, bachelor’s programs in forest engineering and regenerative engineering and design technology. 

Also funded with the state investment is a two-building housing complex located half a mile from campus. The state Legislature approved an additional annual allocation of $25 million to pay for the rollout of polytech course programs through 2029. 

The data science program is a direct result of the polytech transition, said Kamila Larripa, an associate professor of mathematical biology. 

“That investment allowed some of these new programs to fully form and not just be an idea,” she said. 

Transitioning to polytech

The rebranding has also brought casualties. Last year, the university closed the religious studies department and, instead, added a history of religions concentration to the history degree program. Campus officials also shifted the economics major to a business degree concentration.

The changes alarmed faculty and staff at other universities pursuing polytech status. As Central Connecticut State University explores the designation, some who oppose the idea argue it is being rushed through, might shutter humanities programs and could threaten the university’s gender balance.

For Nicole Jean Hill, who is chair of the art and film department at Cal Poly Humboldt, the transition made sense. People have asked Hill whether the polytech rebrand made her and other arts faculty nervous. 

“I’m not worried at all,” she said, “because we totally align with what that is in our field.”

Students in art and film engage in hands-on learning every day, she said. Beyond that, Hill said the relationship between STEM and art fields “doesn’t feel competitive or ominous” at Cal Poly Humboldt. 

“I think a lot of the STEM faculty recognize the importance of arts as well,” she said. “I really love teaching students that are from the STEM fields. It’s my favorite thing about working here.”

One of Hill’s art students benefited directly from the polytech transition. A fine arts major, Jack Conti was more interested in video and animation than traditional media like ceramics and painting. But, with just a few semesters to go until graduation, he was prepared to stick it out with studio art and finish his degree.

Then Hill told Conti that a new interdisciplinary media arts major was about to launch, combining art, film and digital technology. Conti could take a few more courses, apply his earlier graphic design credits from community college and finish two semesters early with a degree that better aligned with his career interests.

“I realized that I had a lot of the credits needed to be one of the first people to do the media arts program,” said Conti, who plans to get a master’s degree in media arts. “So I shifted course and started taking more design and digital art classes, and it just pretty much worked out perfectly.”

Other faculty also saw an opportunity to connect humanities courses to post-college outcomes. As chair of the new applied humanities department, history professor Sara Hart spent last spring and summer researching how to align the new major and its focus areas in health, technology and social responsibility with workforce needs.

Hart interviewed industry leaders in Silicon Valley, New York City, Boston and Washington, D.C. about what they want to see in future employees. Two major themes emerged: employees need to be more flexible and communicate better. Then, she worked with a team to build a curriculum rooted in the liberal arts but tied to workforce applications.

A class called Applied Storytelling is designed to strengthen professional communication. In another, called Navigating Change, students read the Stoics, a set of ancient Greco-Roman philosophical beliefs, alongside contemporary classics in change management, Hart said. The major also requires 300 hours of service work and includes a career curriculum.

“Our goal is to make sure that students have access to a strong, multidisciplinary humanities curriculum that prepares them for their own chosen professional futures,” she said.