Cal Poly Humboldt awarded Seal of Excelencia

In late September 2025, Cal Poly Humboldt was awarded the Seal of Excelencia from Excelencia in Education after three years of applying for the award. The Seal recognizes the intentional, data-backed efforts that a university or college has taken to support the success of its Latine students.

CPH now joins the fewer than 50 higher education institutions nationwide that have received the Seal.

At an event held on Oct. 2 at The Great Hall to celebrate receiving the award, Interim President Michael E. Spagna said, “There were only five that were selected nationwide for the seal [this year], and two of those were Cal State Universities, us, Cal Poly Humboldt and San Jose State University.”

Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Jenn Capps emphasized the difficulty of the certifications.

“This is hard to earn the seal. It isn’t a numbers count,” Capps said. “It’s a what impact are you having on the campus, and how are you demonstrating that you were supporting the success of Latinx students and all of our students.”

El Leñador asked students on campus for their thoughts on CPH receiving the award. The majority of the less than 10 students asked were unaware that the school had received the Seal or what the Seal meant.

Excelencia in Education examines six areas in the application process: enrollment, retention, transfer, financial support, institutional representation, and completion. To apply for the Seal of Excelencia, universities must submit five years’ worth of data for three programs that fall under each area, totalling 18 programs.

According to Excelencia in Education’s Vice President of Institutional Capacity Eyra Pérez, the final application is typically 70-75 pages long.

Pérez highlighted that institutions must be able to align all of the mentioned programs to present one cohesive strategy in support of Latine students.

“Sometimes when institutions first start to do the work, then they start piecing together the things, and that’s how it comes across, instead of one intentionally aligned,” Pérez said. “So not only do we ask institutions to be intentional, we ask them to align, to be one comprehensive effort.”

The lack of a single comprehensive plan is what prevented CPH from receiving the Seal in its previous two attempts.

“There was no way that we saw anything that we had seen in the previous two years in this last application; they’re doing the same thing they’ve always done. They’re just being more intentional, they’re measuring, they’re aligning the efforts,” Pérez said.

Dr. Rosamel Benevides-Garb, associate vice president and campus diversity officer at CPH, spoke about what the Seal means after multiple years of applying.

“It has been a long process, right? Three years to apply,” Benevidas-Garb said. “The seal becomes a kind of reaffirmation that the way in which our institution is serving our students, and particularly Latinx students, is the right way of doing it.”

Benevidas-Garb also noted that CPH’s commitment to support its Latine students predates the Seal of Excelencia’s application
process.

“These are not programs created for the seal. These are part of the ethos of our institution, the ethos of serviceness. We do that because it’s what our community
requires for our students to be successful,” Benevidas-Garb said.

For students who are unsure what the seal means for CPH, Pérez shared that it reflects a college or university’s commitment to its Latine students.

“Going to a seal-certified institution means that that institution is going to enroll you and get you to the finish line, and do everything possible to get you there,” Pérez said. “It’s an institution that is working very hard at ensuring that Latino [students] and all their students belong and are affirmed.”