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The Fearless Campus project is the outcome of an 11- year journey that began in 2011 with two USDA Hispanic Serving Institution Education awards ($435K).  The main goal was to train underrepresented minority undergraduate students in 21st century leadership skills and qualities, focused on non-violent communication, teamwork, and presentation skills. 

The need for these projects was supported by extensive research that identified a misalignment between the training students receive to succeed in school and the skills employers require for graduates to be prepared for the workforce. The projects were called “Focus on the Future.”

The success of these projects, combined with student comments that faculty should have similar training and Cal Poly Pomona President Coley’s desire to scale the project to a larger audience and vision to institutionalize the project, led to the creation of a general education elective course in 2018 within the Huntley College of Agriculture available to all students.

Since 2019, more than 500 students drawn from 50 majors and all eight colleges on the campus have been enrolled in Focus on the Future classes, creating highly diverse classroom communities. The student voices from diverse majors validated the impact of the course:

Throughout the entire school year, every time I had attended the class, it did not feel as though I was expected to be there, I wanted to be there to listen to the next lecture. Overall, my experience in the class opened my eyes to new life lessons, that I will carry on in life. (Kinesiology Student)

It’s astonishing to believe that I could learn invaluable life lessons in just fifteen weeks. (Computer Science Student)

Throughout this course, I learned a lot that will directly contribute to my academic and, in the future, my professional career. (Visual Communication Student)

Out of all the courses I took this semester this was the most beneficial and I’m glad to have had a professor with such care and prowess. Ultimately the main lesson I learned was how to be a better person. To those that I love, to those that I’m not too fond of, and for those that I have yet to meet.

I would recommend this class to every other student. (College of Business Student)

In late 2019, the project leadership became aware of the Google Oxygen and Aristotle projects that found the most important skills and qualities were associated with psychological safety more than technical skills. In looking into the research related to these projects, the project leaders became aware of Dr. Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety as an enabler for organizational performance and retention.

Further research revealed a body of literature supporting how the elimination of fear within organizations can improve organization, team, and individual performance, motivation, innovation, and retention.  It became clear that the Focus on the Future projects and course curriculum were in fact training in psychological safety and could be transferable beyond the classroom to affect a culture shift in organizational settings.

The concept of the fearless classroom emerged: emphasizing the 5 Pillars of trust, respect, empathy, compassion, and humility, not only as important leadership skills/qualities for students, but also for faculty to be able to create a psychologically safe learning environment that enabled student success and retention, all important objectives of an academic institution. The students were right that faculty should have similar training, it just was not clear at the time why this was important. The journey started to become a movement.

The confluence of these events informed the idea to create the Fearless Campus project as an umbrella concept, initially focusing on student facing experiences. With the support of Associate Provost S. Terri Gomez (now Provost) and the Office of Student Success, the Fearless Classroom became the pilot activity training faculty to create psychologically safe classroom communities.

In November 2019 the first Fearless Classroom workshop was held, with participants implementing concepts in the following spring 2020 semester. Despite the disruption caused by the Covid 19 pandemic, the project persisted. As of May 2025, more than 300 faculty participated in Fearless Classroom workshops implementing concepts in more than 400 Fearless Classroom courses across all 8 colleges, involving more than 54,000 students. As of academic year-end 2025, 92% of students agreed their instructor created a comfortable (fearless) learning environment that supported their ability to succeed in the course (n=11,513). This has been accomplished with a cost of $2.50 per student from the funding received from 2019-2025.

The movement continues to evolve toward a Fearless Campus with fearless faculty, fearless, student, fearless staff, and fearless advising training.