Cal Poly Alumni: Carrying On a Tradition of Excellence
The CSU has more than 2 million alumni living across the country and around the world. They include 130,000 Cal Poly alumni living and working in areas as diverse as New York, Washington, D.C., Wisconsin, Idaho and Hawaii.
Cal Poly’s statewide educational mission is reflected in its alumni. Geographically, the greater San Francisco Bay Area has the largest concentration of Cal Poly alumni (more than 25,000), followed by the Central Coast (more than 20,000) and the greater Los Angeles area (roughly 20,000).
Prominent Cal Poly alumni include:
- Robert “Hoot” Gibson, retired chief, NASA astronaut office; piloted five space shuttle missions, including the first docking with the Russian space station Mir
- George Ramos, Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times reporter and columnist
- John Madden, retired pro football coach and current television sports commentator, Fox Broadcasting Company
- James W. Boswell, president, the J.G. Boswell Company
- Monty Roberts, author of the best-seller "The Man Who Listens to Horses" and owner, Flag Is Up Farms
- Ernesto Vasquez, president, MV&P, an international architecture firm
- Laura Diaz, KABC-TV news anchor
- Alvin Trivelpiece, retired, former director, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; former president, Lockheed Martin Energy Research Corporation; former director, U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Research
- Kathleen Holmgren, vice president, Sun Microsystems
- Keith Uncapher, associate dean for Information Services (emeritus), USC School of Engineering; senior vice president, Corporation for National Research Initiatives
- Austin Hearst, vice president, special projects, Hearst Entertainment
- Burt Rutan, president, Scaled Composites, pioneering designer of Voyager, the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling
- Al Montna, owner, Montna Farms; chair, Farmers Rice Cooperative
- “Weird Al” Yankovic, Grammy-winning rock parodist and entertainer
- Walter Wilson, president, Solectron Corporation
- Frederick W. "Rick" Sturckow, Lieutenant Colonel, USMC, NASA astronaut, participated in the first International Space Station assembly mission aboard the shuttle Endeavour (1998) and 11th mission to the International Space Station aboard the shuttle Discovery (2001)
- Peter King, Los Angeles Times columnist
- Tom Ferguson, 1977 rodeo champion
- Mike Krukow, retired pitcher, Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants; current broadcast sports analyst with the Giants
- Bobby Beathard, former general manager of the Washington Redskins and San Diego Chargers
- Richard Bergquist, CTO, Peoplesoft
- Gary Bloom, CEO, Veritas
- Bill Swanson, President, Raytheon Co.
- Joseph Cotchett, anti-trust attorney, Cotchett, Pitre & Simon, named one of the nation’s 100 most influential lawyers for the past 10 years.
“Cal Poly emphasizes educating the mind and learning by doing. Both are invaluable to architects, enabling us both to design and build.”
- Kenneth Rodrigues
President, Kenneth Rodrigues & Partners
Cal Poly Class of 1976
“My years at Cal Poly shaped my life and my career.”
- “Ozzie” Smith
Former St. Louis Cardinal, Baseball Hall of Fame member, honorary co-chair, Cal Poly’s capital campaign for Athletics
Cal Poly Class of 1977
“It’s awfully difficult to say that I don’t have a special place in my heart for Cal Poly. Cal Poly’s reputation for excellence is legendary.”
- Jim Considine
Senior Vice President, Ryder Stilwell, Inc., Former Chair, CSU Board of Trustees
Cal Poly Class of 1968