History of Major

Ethnic Studies (ES) became a department in 1994, and the Academic Senate approved the minor in Ethnic Studies on January 18 of that same year—making Cal Poly the last campus in the CSU system to have an ES minor. The Comparative Ethnic Studies major was created November 2005, after the department proposed the major and it was reviewed and recommended at various levels of the university and approved by the Chancellor’s Office. The first internal transfer students for the major were accepted during Winter 2005, and the first new first-year and upper-division transfer class of majors enrolled in Fall 2006. Read more about the Proposal Highlights for the Comparative Ethnic Studies Major (2005)

As the student protests during Spring 2018 reminded us, student activism has long been foundational to the development of Ethnic Studies and our department. In response to a member of a Cal Poly fraternity wearing blackface, in particular during PolyCultural Weekend (April 2018), students protested the incident, the University’s response, and its history of creating conditions where racist acts continue to take place. The Drylongso Collective put forth student demands, compiled from online submissions by students, for addressing this specific incident and the university climate more broadly. Their demands reiterate the demands made in earlier periods of student protests against institutionalized racism at Cal Poly—for culturally relevant education, for campus demographics that reflect the state’s demographics, and for improving campus climate. It was student protests in 1968 that led to the creation of the first Ethnic Studies program at Cal Poly. And it was student protests in the early 1990s that led to the revival of the Ethnic Studies department (it had disappeared in the 1980s) and to the creation of the ES minor and USCP requirement.

Ethnic Studies, both as an intellectual project and a social movement, arose from the Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. The first academic programs were established at California State University, Los Angeles (Mexican American Studies) in 1968 and at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University) and UC Berkeley in 1969, following student protests and strikes advocating for a way to give voice to underrepresented individuals and groups of this nation.

Within this same moment, students of color at Cal Poly—namely the Black Students Union, United Mexican-American Students Union, and Third World—advocated for an ethnic studies curriculum. The University, under President Robert E. Kennedy, created the Campus Wide Committee on Ethnic Studies, which included faculty members from departments throughout the School of Applied Arts. The Ethnic Studies Program was created in 1969, with the first coordinator Richard A. Martínez, who was also the first Director of the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), hired in Fall 1969. Ethnic Studies courses were taught by faculty in other departments in School of Applied Arts and School of Applied Sciences. The first courses with specifically an Ethnic Studies prefix—Eth S 105 (Introduction to Ethnic Studies) and Eth S 114 (Racism in American Culture)—appear in the 1972-73 Cal Poly Catalog. In the 1971-72 Catalog, the Ethnic Studies department is listed with David J. Sánchez as the chair; later David J. Sánchez would be the long-serving chair/coordinator of the department/program, which was in the School of Human Development and Education along with Child Development, Education, Home Economics, Physical Education, and Psychology departments. Then in 1990, Ethnic Studies moved to the School (now College) of Liberal Arts with Robert Gish serving as the Director.

In addition to the Comparative Ethnic Studies major and minor, Ethnic Studies also offers many of the courses that fulfill the University’s USCP (U.S. Cultural Pluralism) requirement for the baccalaureate degree, which was passed by the Academic Senate in 1992 as a part of the same movement that created the ES minor and department. It also offers courses mandated by Assembly Bill 1460 (2020), which requires students graduating from any CSU to take a course in Ethnic Studies. Fifty years after its founding, the department continues to remain rooted in critical analysis and community building centered on social justice and equity.

For more on the history of the department, check out the exhibit, Here for a Reason: 1969-2019, Fifty Years of Ethnic Studies at Cal Poly. 

See photos and timeline from celebrating 50 years of Ethnic Studies at Cal Poly. 

Mustang Daily (Feb. 17, 2005)