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Students engaged in the PolyX should be mentored “intensely” by faculty, staff, industry mentors, and/or peers. “Intense” mentoring is intentional, regular, invasive, in-depth, and sustained. It involves referral to resources for appropriate student populations and mentoring the whole student. It is tailored to the needs of students, understands the environment in which students function and pairs resources and support to issues that students face.

The results of this project should be published, presented, or publicly accessible in one form or another. In the event that the data of the project is of a sensitive or proprietary nature, the publication may be in a redacted form in Bronco Scholar, and presentations to small groups of selected professionals from the partnering corporate body are acceptable.

Preferably, the project invites and encourages participation from a variety of disciplines.

The project should engage in some way with an identifiable community.

• On-campus communities such as:
  • A specific group within a discipline
  • A specific club or organization
  • An identified subset of Cal Poly Pomona’s students, faculty or staff
  • The campus as a whole
• Off-campus constituencies such as:
  • Specific non-profit organizations
  • Specific corporate partners
  • An identified group or organization
  • A municipal, state or national government

Potential benefits or drawbacks of the project to that community should be considered and explicitly stated at the outset.

While faculty oversight and mentorship play a key role in the project, it should be primarily a student-led effort. Students should participate in generating questions or topics of study, developing answers, defining roles and responsibilities for team members, finding resources, setting schedules and deadlines and asking follow-up questions.

The project should have reflection exercises integrated into it in some way. Through these exercises, the student participants pause to consider what they are learning, how they might need to alter their project’s scope, course or focus and analyze the effectiveness of the methods they are pursuing. The goal of the reflection should also include heightening students’ awareness of the PolyX and the skills they have developed as a result of participating in the PolyX. This should support students’ ability to articulate the PolyX experience.