Cassidy has been a member of the Women’s Rowing Team since 2020. When Cassidy first joined, the team had only 7 members. She had come from a background of outrigger canoe paddling in high school in Hawaii, but had never rowed before. By the end of her first year, she raced in the Varsity line-up and sustained that position as the team continued to build to now more than 20 members. In 2022, she was nominated by my teammates for the Golden Shim, the team’s award for the athlete that best embodies the values of teamwork and sportsmanship.

Brad arrived as a transfer student in Spring 2023, having decided that he could afford to complete his four-year degree at Cal Poly Humboldt -- with one caveat. To afford college, Brad had decided to live in a van that he'd purchased as transportation and as his home away from home. Brad began reporting for the student newspaper during his first semester here, doing university police department ride-alongs and writing about his experimental lifestyle -- living with about a dozen or more other students in the parking lots at Cal Poly Humboldt.

Autumn has been a highly committed student at Youth Educational Services (YES) during her undergraduate career. She joined YES as a student assistant by happy chance, and her involvement has expanded in countless ways ever since. Autumn began as a student assistant on the Front Desk team and proved to be the kind of employee that supervisors dream of hiring. For the past two years, Autumn has been an enthusiastic and dedicated YES volunteer and student leader, contributing 140 hours (and counting!) to volunteering in the local community.

For the last two years of his academic career in Humboldt County, as a student member of the INRSEP (Indian Natural Resources, Science and Engineering Program + Diversity in STEM (INRSEP+) at Cal Poly) and an indigenous person of the Americas and beyond, Aerin embodies the INRSEP+ house mission– to braid ancestors' wisdom with modern Western science techniques and cutting-edge technologies to produce well-balanced leaders and professionals poised to be stewards of our world's resources.