San Luis Obispo – In a move to enhance diversity on campus and to better understand worldwide interests in graphic communication, Cal Poly's Graphic Communication Department has reached out to the international community to bring scholars, researchers, professors and students to campus for extended stays.

There are currently five international visitors in the department for periods ranging from three months to two years at no expense to Cal Poly. All are being full subsidized by their governments or sponsoring organizations.

Manabu Yamakoshi is a senior researcher at the Research Institute of the National Printing Bureau in Kanagawa, Japan, and came to Cal Poly to further his research on security printing and anti-counterfeiting techniques using laser sparkle (an area in which he is also pursuing a doctorate in Japan). He is at Cal Poly for two years. Yamakoshi is being mentored by Cal Poly's Xiaoying Rong.

Bilge Altay is an instructor at Kadir Has University, School of Social Sciences, in Istanbul, Turkey. She is also employed by Kodak subsidiary, Dereli Graphic Matbaa Malzemeleri San. ve Tic. A.?. in Istanbul. Additionally, Atlay is a graduate student at Marmara University's Institute for Graduate Studies in Pure and Applied Sciences in Istanbul, where she is pursuing a master's degree in Printing and Technical Teaching. She came to Cal Poly to do her thesis research focusing on "Determining of Substrate Materials' Effects on Color Gamut Used in Digital Printing System" and "Preparing 30 Pantone Colors by Using the GretagMacbeth Spectrophotometer Ink Formulation Program." She will be at Cal Poly for one year. Her Cal Poly mentors are Brian Lawler and Penny Bennett.

Aurelie Massabie and Cyrielle Brunet are undergraduate students at the University Institute of Technology in Belfort-Montbeliard, France. They are majoring in Communication Services and Networking and spending three months at Cal Poly as part of an internship to study design reproduction technology. Both are studying under the tutelage of Cal Poly's Lorraine Donegan.

Ping Zhou is an instructor at the Shanghai Publishing and Printing College in Shanghai, China. She is spending six months at Cal Poly working with Xiaoying Rong on a project exploring 2D barcode identification. She is also studying in the areas of web and digital media, digital printing, graphic communication marketing, packaging and sheetfed printing. Rong is her Cal Poly mentor.

"We are committed to expose our students to the richest education possible and to make them aware that the industry they are studying and preparing for is not provincial but very much cosmopolitan with influences from around the world," said Harvey Levenson, head of Cal Poly's Graphic Communication Department. "Bringing visitors from abroad for extended stays provides the opportunity for students and faculty to learn and discuss firsthand issues of graphic communication worldwide."

Cal Poly has set campus diversity as a priority through initiatives that bring international thinking to its programs. Cal Poly also has programs in which students and faculty travel abroad to contribute knowledge to other nations and to learn and bring back information vital to enhancing teaching here. Over the past few years, Cal Poly Graphic Communication faculty have participated in programs in England, Germany, China, Russia, Bahrain, Italy and Brazil, as well as Puerto Rico.