The email arrived Monday evening, from the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs. The subject line: Death of Student Sofia Padoan.
The notification reached campus community members—students, faculty, alumni and parents of students. On the Cal Poly Facebook parent page, an administrator reposted the email, prompting hundreds of messages expressing sympathy and shock.
But Sofia’s younger sister, now-Cal Poly sophomore Giulia Padoan, knew all 318 words of the email weeks before the university hit send.
The dean of students at the time, Joy Pedersen, called the Padoan family to draft the message about eight hours after Sofia’s passing, according to Giulia. Following their first conversation, the family and Pedersen continued to correspond over email and phone calls.
“[Pedersen] expressed her condolences and then she verified the cause of death and ran by us anything that we wanted to send out to Cal Poly and community,” Giulia said.
According to the mission statement of Cal Poly’s student death procedures, when a student dies, “it is incumbent upon the university to respond in a sensitive and caring manner, recognizing that individuals respond to death in different ways.”
While the university’s policy primarily focuses on logistical procedures, including account closures and class withdrawals, Pedersen emphasized that their approach centers on supporting the family’s wishes.
These campuswide messages are just one aspect of Cal Poly’s student death procedures, which, according to its mission statement, aim to balance administrative requirements with compassionate outreach.
Cal Poly has navigated this process 17 times in the past ten years, according to records from the university. Seven of those emails came this academic year.
‘A little cog in a difficult time’
Luke Soulie experienced the process firsthand when he lost his brother, James Soulie-Washburn, in December. The two brothers, both transfer students to Cal Poly, moved into an off-campus apartment together.
During their first quarter, James would play his guitar while Luke made dinner for the two of them—James was the creative older brother, fluent in three languages and played seven instruments.
The apartment, once filled with music, fell silent in December when James took his own life.
“I was the first one to know,” Luke said.
The weeks that followed his brother’s death were a blur, he recounted.
In the immediate aftermath of his brother’s death, Soulie worked with the Cal Poly Campus Assessment, Response & Education (CARE) team. One of his first interactions with CARE involved temporary housing in a Poly Canyon apartment.
Reports of a student death first go to the Cal Poly Police Department to confirm before they notify the VPSA and University Communications and Marketing, according to the procedure. Then, the Dean of Students will contact the family within 24 hours of the confirmation of death.
“I walked in this room, and it’s just empty,” Soulie remembered. “There’s like no sheets or anything. I literally told my friend, ‘this is just like a prison cell, I’m not staying here. I’m going to go to a hotel or something.’”
Cal Poly’s procedures state that the Dean of Students can offer hotel arrangements and reimburse up to three days of lodging for the deceased student’s family when needed.
The CARE members were attentive and did the best they could, Soulie acknowledged. But what followed was what Soulie described as an “unnecessarily complicated” process while juggling academics. He found himself coordinating emails to professors to arrange accommodations for final exams, a week after his brother’s passing.
“It was just a lot at the moment,” Soulie said.
The dean of students coordinates campuswide messages with family members following a student’s death. While they provide guidance and support, the decision to send an email is up to the family.
The Soulie family advocated to include the cause of death in the campuswide email about James, but the school ultimately chose not to. Instead, they included a link to the In Memoriam website, which included a message from the family.
Luke explained that more than anything, he and his mother wanted the email to spread awareness about suicide prevention.
“I didn’t really care to say much,” Luke said. “All I wanted was to have some sort of support for students and suicide awareness. Really, that’s all I cared about.”
Every email consistently includes information about the health center, memorial page and service plans, Pedersen said. Other details, such as cause of death, are typically included at the family’s discretion, but Pedersen emphasized that the university aims for a delicate approach to avoid distress to anyone opening their inbox.
Luke’s family worked with David Groom on campus wide communications. Groom has served as the interim dean of students since December 1, 2024, when Pedersen assumed the interim role for Cal Maritime. He will continue in this position until July 1, 2025.
“I think maybe there’s a misperception that we send an email for every student death or there might be a question about why we send it sometimes and not others,” she said. “It’s really that is really driven by the family and what feels most respectful and appropriate for them.”
Despite the emotional weight of this responsibility, Pedersen said she found meaning in working with the families and supporting the campus community.
“I’ve tried to reframe this part of my job as not only one of the hardest, most challenging things I do, but one of the most important ways that I can help families, students and our community,” she said.
Once the dean of students and family members draft the campuswide email, university spokesperson Matt Lazier provides a final copy edit, focused on spelling, grammar and style.
According to Lazier, some faculty and administrators receive an internal notification before the message is distributed to the entire campus community. Patrick O’Sullivan, the director at the Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology, is on the mailing list and forwards the emails along with specialized grief resources to department chairs.
O’Sullivan noticed a gap in resources for faculty and staff at Cal Poly. He stressed that the support should differ, considering their position of influence and credibility in a classroom.
“As a former faculty member, it wasn’t difficult for me to imagine how that might be walking into a classroom, seeing the empty chair of the student who was not there, and not knowing what to do,” O’Sullivan said.
He first encountered guiding a classroom through grief on September 11, 2001, while teaching at Illinois State University.
“I walked in the classroom, probably about five or six years into my career as a professor, and I realized I was really unprepared,” O’Sullivan said. “But, I knew instinctively that the thing to do was not to pretend nothing happened.”
O’Sullivan said he compiled grief sources that detail what a teacher can do to support a student in grief and how faculty can support their own mental wellbeing to help bridge the resource gap. These include loss and mental health-based articles from Education Corner, Heal Grief and the Jed Foundation.
“I’m just a little cog for this particular aspect of supporting faculty and students at this difficult time,” he said.
The university does not maintain a log or tally of current-student deaths, according to the Cal Poly records office. Additionally, the Cal State system does not track student deaths on a system-wide level, according to the system’s spokesperson Hazel Kelly.
‘How to lose:’ Insights from a grief counseling professional
Denise LaRosa suggested university communications about student deaths should go deeper than just achievements and involvements.
“I think it needs to have the heartfelt warmth of who the person is, not just what they did,” she said. “We get caught up in that so much. What motivated them? What enlivened them? What made them come alive?”
LaRosa noted the strength of the university’s provided counseling services in their communications. She specifically recommended implementing group grief support, which can act as a space to start the healing process, she said.
“It would be really nice for students to have a place to go where they could support each other and have somebody who can guide that support and let them know all the different ways that grief affects people,” LaRosa said. “People don’t really understand that. We teach people how to get, gain things, but we don’t teach people how to lose.”
Approximately one mile away from Cal Poly’s campus, the SLO Hospice Center offers free grief counseling services for San Luis Obispo County residents in a historic family home. According to LaRosa, each counseling room and office is decorated to create a comforting, homey feel.
“Death isn’t their specialty,” LaRosa said about Cal Poly. “It’s my specialty.”
‘The beginning of a long relationship:’ the aftermath of a student death
In the wake of a student’s death, families have the option to receive a posthumous degree on their behalf.
In June, the College of Engineering conferred four posthumous degrees during its commencement ceremony. Family members and supporters appeared on stage, some holding framed photos of the students, and were handed a framed diploma by President Armstrong.
“Though they are no longer with us, their pursuit of knowledge and their impact on the Cal Poly community remain,” Liddicoat said.
Under Cal Poly’s posthumous degree policy, which was first approved in 2013 and revised two years later, faculty in a student’s major department can recommend to the president that a degree be awarded to the family. To be eligible, the student must have completed at least two-thirds of their coursework, though the president can make exceptions in special circumstances.
Cal Poly plans to continue reviewing its student death procedures every two to three years, according to Pedersen. The university has not announced any specific changes to current protocols.
Pedersen explained that she is still in touch with nearly all of the families that she has worked with over the last several years, adding that several families are coming to commencement this year to accept posthumous degrees for their students.
“I’m in touch with almost all the families that I’ve worked with over the years,” Pedersen said. “The first day that I make the call is often just the beginning of a long relationship that I have with these families.”
