“Joining CFA was the socially responsible thing for me to do,” said Greg Philbrick, CFA San Luis Obispo member and new lecturer at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (SLO).

Philbrick, a recent PhD graduate from the University of Waterloo, began teaching in SLO’s Computer Science & Software Engineering Department in Fall 2025, and it wasn’t long until he decided to become a CFA member.

“I became more interested in politics in my late 20s and 30s than I had been before. I now see myself as living through a history that’s moving very quickly and has largely happened before. And when it happened before, organized labor ended up contributing to things for the better than for the worse,” Philbrick noted.

He knew of organized labor from a young age when he watched his high school teachers go on a statewide strike, but his attitude about the value of unions shifted as he matured.

“I’m not saying unions are an inherently virtuous thing,” Philbrick acknowledged. “But when power and money get more and more concentrated, organized labor is one of the only things known to counter that.”

With the current state of our nation, Philbrick highlighted the contributions and countless sacrifices that organized workers have made to both enhance and prevent working conditions from deteriorating. For him, becoming a CFA member was the most natural thing to do.

Unlike other faculty who usually learn about and join CFA during their New Faculty Orientation, Philbrick missed the meeting but signed up after receiving a CFA e-mail.

While he is still assimilating to the CSU, getting his bearings as a lecturer, and learning about the challenges that come with being a teacher in public higher education, he’s had the pleasure of meeting other faculty through CFA events and is enjoying his time on his campus.

When he is not teaching, Philbrick creates digital art, with his own research contributing to the intersection of computer graphics and art. Click here to see his incredible artwork.

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