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NEW FACULTY SPOTLIGHT:
PROFESSOR KEVIN LIN

By Anna Bach (RPTA ’17), Co-Editor

The RPTA Department is pleased to welcome Professor Kevin Lin to the family! Lin moved from Pennsylvania to Atascadero in June 2014. Since then, he and his wife, Autumn, have adjusted to life in California and at Cal Poly.

Lin hit the ground running, teaching a popular RPTA course, Convention and Meeting Management, which draws from his wide range of experiences and expertise in large-scale conventions. He updated the course to include a stronger focus on business expositions rather than hospitality, giving RPTA students a wider breadth of content. Starting next year, Lin will teach two or three classes in the Event Management concentration.

Lin brought with him several research projects from graduate school at Penn State and is working on publishing articles from his dissertation, which focused on aspects of trade show performance and evaluation methods. He is also working with professors in the Netherlands to study how positive human emotions may change during a vacation. Trade shows and conventions and the psychology and experience of positive emotions are Lin’s two primary research areas, and he looks forward to working with students who chose to study either of these areas for their senior project.

Lin is impressed with the faculty and staff at Cal Poly. He is grateful to the staff for being helpful when he has questions and for recommending places to eat and shop in the area. He also said that students at Cal Poly have exceeded his expectations. He thinks Cal Poly students are much more active in the classroom then were his students in courses he taught during his graduate studies. Cal Poly students seem eager to learn, always ask good questions and participate in group discussions. He also observed that Cal Poly students have a great deal of experience in the field and are always interested in learning about up-to-date news and practices from the event management industry.

Several aspects of the San Luis Obispo area have surprised Lin, such as the dry, yellow terrain – a result of the ongoing drought. He was also surprised at the lack of international students and good Chinese restaurants. As someone who typically does most of his shopping in Chinese supermarkets, he said it is strange to drive have to three hours to eat Chinese cuisine in San Francisco.

Although he still has a lot to learn, Lin is happy to be teaching at Cal Poly, and the department is very lucky to have him!

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