Breadcrumb
College of Natural Resources & Sciences
Get Your Hands Dirty Studying Science on California’s North Coast
There’s no better place to study science than at Cal Poly Humboldt. Our community is a living laboratory with the Pacific Ocean, ancient redwoods, and other diverse ecosystems for you to explore.
The College of Natural Resources & Sciences boasts a wide variety of science-focused areas of study, from biochemistry to zoology. Our multiple fieldwork opportunities, Place-Based Learning Communities, and extensive research faculties paired with our stellar faculty and staff create an environment for you to feel inspired, challenged, and engaged with the science all around you.
Undergraduate Research
Many universities reserve research experience for graduate students. At Cal Poly Humboldt, you may conduct your own research or assist professors with their projects as early as your freshman year. Either way, you’ll put theory into practice, building a fundamental understanding of concepts and methodologies. With opportunities to present at local and national conferences, you’ll learn how to explain your findings, too. Experiences like these offer a glimpse of what it’s like to be a professional scientist and will help you discover your passion.
Fieldwork
Located on the North Coast of California, Humboldt is surrounded by ancient redwoods and close to the Pacific Ocean, mountains, and rivers. You’ll find the region’s natural environment is the perfect outdoor classroom where learning happens through real-world experience. Track elk, hike through forests to measure redwoods, or take water samples from California’s second largest river—Humboldt provides a wide range of opportunities for fieldwork, which helps develop critical thinking and collaboration skills, and a passion for learning that will take you far in life.
Personal Attention
College is a time to expand your horizons and find out who you really are, and our attentive faculty are here to support you every step of the way. From the moment you begin your program, you won’t be just another face in the crowd. You’ll be part of a community as you get to know your professors. They’ll challenge you, but they’re accessible, too. Whether through mentoring or one-on-one feedback, they’ll help you build the knowledge and skills to be successful at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Undergraduate Programs
Cal Poly Humboldt offers a wide array of science majors and programs, led by highly skilled faculty who foster a supportive environment. You will develop the critical thinking skills needed to solve complex problems in science, engineering, and natural resources, leaving you well-prepared for professional careers and higher levels of study.
Graduate Programs
Cal Poly Humboldt has an established reputation for its graduate programs in the biological, environmental, engineering, and natural resources sciences, which provide the knowledge and experience necessary to address today’s scientific problems.
Equipped for Excellence
Cal Poly Humboldt has a diverse range of research facilities, labs, and special collections as essential tools for conducting research and gaining real-world experience. Utilizing a renewable energy technology research center, a marine laboratory, and the largest botanical collection in the CSU system, you will actively engage with research during your undergraduate years.
Place-Based Learning Communities
Learning goes beyond the classroom at Humboldt—we learn from the environment we are in. Our Place-Based Learning Communities provide you with a tight-knit community of like minded peers before classes even start.
We start right away—you’ll be immersed in major-related fieldwork, seminars, and classes with students like you before the semester even begins. These connections will help you navigate college life, gain confidence, succeed academically, and gain a sense of belonging within the Humboldt community.
Alumni Updates
James David Ackerman
Biological Sciences, 1973, 1976
After graduating with a B.A. (1973) and M.A. (1976) in Biology, James ventured to the Deep South for his Ph.D. at Florida State University in Tallahassee, a cultural challenge without a doubt. With a predoctoral fellowship from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, he studied the interactions of orchids and orchid bees in Panama. This was parlayed into a Ph.D. (1981) and a job at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, where I have been teaching and studying ever since, making a career primarily of orchid biology and biological invasions. In 2024, the University bestowed upon him the title of Distinguished Professor, a rare honor for which he is grateful to the people of Puerto Rico, and perhaps interrupted the fossilization of an aspiring academic dinosaur.
Paul Sheppard
Forestry & Wildland Resources, 1982
Paul Sheppard ('82 Forestry) representing the Old College Try Barbershop quartet, which formed up at HSU in 1981 and sang on campus for a year or two, would like to share that since graduating from HSU, the quartet has been meeting up every now and then to sing and bird, and reminisce about Humboldt.
They even "met" online in 2020 to sing the Humboldt Alma Mater virtually, the way choirs and ensembles did to wait out the pandemic with music.
They just met up this year in the Mojave Desert, Southern California, and put up a video of their 2025 reunion:
Exactly 10 minutes long.
Joseph Caminiti
Environmental Resources Engineering, 2018
Joseph has been working with CALTRANS District 1 for almost 6 years now, and he highly recommends it for many reasons, such as great benefits, fantastic work-life balance, great staff, multitude of disciplines including planning, safety, hydraulics, electrical, and the list goes on!
Achievements
Find out what our students, faculty, and staff are being recognized for.
Sayra Montesinos, Sean Ruzicka, Roland Carter and Zander Leigh
Environmental Resources Engineering
For at least 25 years, students from the School of Engineering have successfully participated in the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications (COMAP) annual Mathematical Modeling Contest (MCM) and Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM). The contest begins on a Thursday afternoon and ends on the following Monday evening. This year the competition started on January 23, 2025 and over 27,000 teams of up to three students from thousands of universities around the world produced a report summarizing their solution to one of six possible problems.
This year, two Environmental Resources Engineering (ERE) student teams of two students each from the Cal Poly Humboldt School of Engineering entered in the competition. Both teams selected an ICM problem focused on constructing a model to track habitat change from forest-to-farm over time as the ecosystem evolves along with accompanying agricultural choices. The analysis was required to include both natural processes as well as human decisions.
Competing against over 6,000 teams that selected this problem, the ERE team of Sayra Montesinos and Sean Ruzicka was awarded the score of Honorable Mention, with less than 10% of the 6,000 teams receiving a higher score. The ERE team of Roland Carter and Zander Leigh was awarded the score of Finalist, with less than 1% of the 6000 teams earning a higher score. Congratulations to Sayra, Sean, Roland and Zander for their achievement in this extremely competitive event. We appreciate your efforts which bring recognition to the School of Engineering at Cal Poly Humboldt!
Lily Yassemi
Computer Science
Award Winner: Lily Yassemi
Co-Curricular: Outstanding Student of the Year
Lily Yassemi was nominated by Michelle Gledhill and Victoria Petrillo for the Outstanding Student of the Year award in the co-curricular category.
Lily is the Founder and President of the Society of Women in STEM Humboldt organization and has been the President of the Computer Science Club at Cal Poly Humboldt. Lily is a trailblazer at Cal Poly Humboldt, demonstrating an exceptional balance between academic excellence, leadership, and extracurricular involvement.
It both clubs she raises funds through grassroots efforts and has produced rapid growth in club membership. In Society of Women in STEM club Lily has built a supportive community with resources and networking. For Computer Science club, Lily has organized industry talks, developed and led technical workshops, and facilitated networking opportunities that have helped students round out their education and build professional connections. She also brings an exciting and engaging mix of activities to the club’s meetings like workshops where students learn how to make their own apps.
She led the club’s participation in the prestigious International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), a globally recognized competition, where Cal Poly Humboldt achieved a top-10 placement—the first time the university has appeared on the ICPC global leaderboard. Lily also spearheaded the development of Hackathon for Social Good, an ambitious event that will bring students together to solve real-world challenges proposed by local non-profits.
Lily pours an extraordinary amount of time and energy into her work. Between leading two STEM-focused academic organizations, organizing high-impact events, and ensuring meaningful opportunities for students, she has made a lasting impact on both the campus and the broader community.
Congratulations Lily!
Cheyenne Ty
Computer Science
Award Winner: Cheyenne Ty
Academics & Research: Outstanding Student of the Year
Cheyenne Ty was nominated by Sharon Tuttle and Kamila Larripa for the Outstanding Student of the Year award in the academics & research category.
Kami invited Cheyenne in Fall 2023 to join her National Science Foundation-funded project using mathematical models to investigate the impact of dysfunctional immune cells in the brain. A colleague gave her a very high recommendation after she took a mathematical proofs course with him.
Cheyenne has been the most outstanding undergraduate researcher I have worked with. She quickly came up to speed, devouring large volumes of peer-reviewed biological papers without a background in biology, learned a new coding language and became the expert coder in the group, and contributed a great deal to writing a manuscript, making figures, and overall project management in the first year together. She represented our group by presenting our project at the CSU Research Competition in April 2024. We published a paper from this work, and Cheyenne was with me every step of the way in terms of contributions, writing, revising and organizing supplemental material to be in line with best practices in reproducible research. She is the first author on this paper due to her excellent work.
We are in our second year together of the same project, and have welcomed three new students into the lab group. Cheyenne has stepped into a mentorship role, and continues to push the project ahead with her independence and self-motivation. She is able to explain the necessary biology to our new lab members as well as I can. We are now adding metabolic pathways to our model, and Cheyenne again is delving into the biology and translating mechanisms into code and running simulations. She is a wonderful role model for more junior lab members, and someone I can absolutely count on to contribute to the project with both her work ethic and scientific insights.
Cheyenne has two peer-reviewed publications (one as a first author) and has presented at multiple scientific conferences. This level of activity is quite extraordinary for an undergraduate student.
Her contribution to research projects in the areas of literature review, machine learning experiments, statistical and computational analysis, and programming has been exceptional. As a diligent student with a passion for both mathematics and computer science, her professionalism that surpasses her peers.
Congratulations Cheyenne!!