“I think it’s brilliant,” Christine Haas, budget analyst for the mechanical engineering department, said. “We didn’t receive any funding to run these shops. The idea of having companies coming in and paying for these shops is great.”
Allison Royal
Special to Mustang News
Within the next four years, mechanical engineering department chair Andrew Davol plans to create a public-private partnership where labs are completely self-funded with a unique “earn by doing” concept, along with donations from alumni and student tuition.
“Earn by doing” is a concept where a company pays to hire a student to work in the Cal Poly engineering shops, saving the school money, giving the student a job, giving the company an opportunity to promote itself and assuring the shops remain open for the entire student body to use.
“This way, the cost gets off of our books, students get a great job, which looks great on a résumé, the student wears the logo so (the) company wins and all of Cal Poly students win because we can keep the shops open,” Davol said. “We call it win-win-win-win.”
The College of Engineering, whose student project machine shops are used 65 percent of the time by mechanical engineering students alone, has not received new money since 2008, according to Davol.
“It’s alums. It’s industry. It’s creating this ability to keep what’s special about Cal Poly even though we know the state’s not going to keep paying for it,” Davol said. “We need to get the operating process of the shops off the books.”
As the mechanical engineering department continues to pioneer “earn by doing,” the philosophy of public-private partnerships could spread throughout the campus.
“The whole university is looking at this now,” Davol said.
If this continues, it could serve as part of the solution for budget cuts and a lack of funding from the state in recent years.
Mechanical engineering junior Brett Johnson is a shop technician sponsored by Solar Turbines, a company based in San Diego.
“I think it’s an all-around good program,” Johnson said. “The companies get their name on a go-getter in the mechanical engineering department, and the shop gets more money to spend on machines and tools.”
The program is an opportunity for developing engineering companies to contribute to the education of Cal Poly students and publicize their company.
“It looks good on their part because they know they’re sponsoring a student that, when he or she comes out of Cal Poly, they’re going to be above and beyond just being hands-on,” Johnson said. “They’ll be a leader that teaches other students, so it looks good for the company to sponsor a student shop tech because we’re some of the most visual people here.”
Johnson said the “earn by doing” philosophy “makes the shops better for everybody,” and the program is expected to grow.
“I think we’re up to 15 or so techs that are sponsored by companies,” Johnson said. “The goal is every tech has a sponsor on their shirt and no money has to be taken out of the mechanical engineering department to pay for that student’s salary.”
The financial challenges for the shops and other programs came from a lack of recognition by the College of Engineering that the mechanical engineering department needed more funding, department budget analyst Christine Haas said.
“Earn by doing” is helping to fix the problem.
“I think it’s brilliant,” Haas said. “We didn’t receive any funding to run these shops. The idea of having companies coming in and paying for these shops is great.”
She said she hopes to one day see every technician and supervisor in the Cal Poly shops with a company logo on their shirt.
Davol graduated from Cal Poly in 1987, and after his experience as both a student and leader in the mechanical engineering department, he insists depending on the State of California for adequate funding is unrealistic.
It costs approximately $6 million dollars to run the mechanical engineering department every year, but only $5 million currently comes from the state. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to run the shops safely. From water turbines, to gas turbines, to hiring shop technicians, the costs of running the program add up. Paying for equipment and technicians alone costs approximately $150,000 annually.
Despite being named by U.S. News as a top undergraduate engineering school, the mechanical engineering department has received its computers as hand-me-downs from the civil engineering department, the Robert E. Kennedy Library and the Recreation Center since 2008.
Though this concept of “earn by doing” is just taking off, Cal Poly has maintained relationships with alumni for years as another way to bring in money.
But according to Davol, one issue with receiving donations is Cal Poly might not connect with their alumni as well as private schools do. Additionally, alumni might believe their contributions are unnecessary because state dollars keep flowing to the school.
“There’s sometimes this mindset where they think that ‘It’s a state school … I don’t need to give back to my alma mater because the state of California pays for it,’” Davol said.
Today, however, students are paying for more than half of Cal Poly’s budget through tuition.
“When I went here, it was $700 a year,” Davol said.
Despite the financial troubles the department has encountered, Haas remains optimistic.
“We’re finally getting assistance,” she said. “It’s slowly turning around. It’s nowhere near we want or need it to be, but we’re getting there.”