Editor Larry Peña walks past the construction site of Cal Poly’s new Lynda and Stewart Resnick Student Success Center, scheduled to open in Fall 2027.

We don’t often do themed issues at Cal Poly Magazine, but if you take a look at the stories in this issue, you’ll definitely see a common thread: big changes.

As the 2026–27 school year begins, students face a very different Cal Poly experience than Mustangs of previous years. We’re integrating a whole new campus in the Bay Area focused on the seafaring careers of the future. Our football team has a new home in a building designed to transform the program, funded by the family of a sports legend. We’re opening new academic and residential facilities as our campus community continues to grow.

Perhaps most noticeably for our students, this is the year that Cal Poly officially moves from quarters to semesters — a transition that aligns us more closely with the broader world of higher education, but undeniably changes a distinctive part of our university culture.

It’s a change so big that we had to rename a whole section of the magazine. The recurring departments we used to collect into “The Quarterly” will now live in what we’re calling “The Range” — a word that means both a varied spectrum of things and a place where Mustangs roam.

I’ve worked in higher ed long enough to know that change can be difficult, whether you’re a student, a faculty or staff member, or an alum. All of these changes have taken a massive amount of effort and will continue to require significant adjustments from what has been to what can be.