How Rose Float Design Chair Saira Mapes Took Chances and Became a Leader

How Rose Float Design Chair Saira Mapes Took Chances and Became a Leader

Outside the Cal Poly Rose Float Lab, an 11-foot metal contraption, looking like a steel spider web sculpture, leans against a wall.

“So here’s the mushroom cap,” says Saira Mapes, pointing toward the piece.

The highest element of the 2023 Cal Poly universities float, she explains, will be a giant mushroom with a snail perched on top. But, because of its size, students are inserting a truss that allows the spore to be adjusted as the float drives to the Rose Parade.

“You can’t have a 25-foot mushroom just driving anywhere,” she said. “It needs to be lowered so it doesn’t take out trees, power lines and such.”

The Rose Parade is Pasadena’s oldest (dating back to 1890) and most celebrated event, typically held on New Year’s Day and broadcast internationally. Cal Poly students, working with their counterparts from Califoria Polytechnic University in Pomona, have been designing and building floats since 1948.

“It’s the only student-built float in the Rose Parade,” said Josh D’Acquisto, Rose Float coordinator. “It’s designed by students, it’s built by students, and it’s driven by students in the parade.”

As the design chair representing San Luis Obispo for the 2023 Rose Float team, Mapes, an industrial technology and packaging student from San Jose, oversees all design aspects.

“We’re responsible for what is the overall look of the float,” she said. “What is the vibe? What is the message? What is the theme with the float?”

Rose Float is a huge commitment, but I love it. More time with Rose Float means more time hanging out with my friends.

Saira Mapes

Each year, the students begin working on the design of the float in January, just weeks after the most recent parade. Once the design is finalized and approved by Rose Parade officals in Pasadena, the two campuses work on the float separately until October, when Cal Poly students deliver their half of the float to the Pomona campus, then both teams complete the project there before driving it to the decoration pavilion in the shadow of the Rose Bowl. (Students from the newest California Polytechnic University, in Humboldt, may be involved in future Rose Float projects.)

The 2023 float, Road to Reclamation, worked off the parade theme, Turning the Corner. 

“What we are planning on doing is a float based on the biological concept of a nurse log,” said team president Annie Doody, a marine sciences major from Glendale. “It is a fallen tree branch that a bunch of snails and mushrooms and other organisms have come together (on) to create this new community and recycle these nutrients and create something completely new.”

The Rose Float team is typically loaded with engineering students; Mapes is the only Orfalea College of Business student.

“I think Rose Float is a great opportunity for business kids to get involved because, why not expand your horizons and skill sets with this organization?” she said. “Especially with Rose Float, you have so many opportunities to learn about leadership and how to communicate with people, which I find very valuable, and I’m going to carry on to my career later in life.”

Mapes found out about Rose Float through her mother and then the club fair at the start of her freshman year.

“I got involved with Rose Float because I’ve always been interested in just being creative and the problem aspect of creating something,” she said.

Building a parade entry allowed for a completely new outlet, she added.

“When I first came to Rose Float, they asked me, ‘What do you want to do — you can work with the flowers, you can work with these machines, you can learn how to weld,’” she remembered. “I was, like, ‘I wanna learn how to weld!’ and they took me away, and I learned how to weld that first day.”

Mapes is also a member of the Poly Pack club, where she has served as chair of the mentorship program and the egg drop competition. The latter is a popular feature held at the San Luis Obispo Farmer’s Market, in which visitors are challenged to design a package that could protect an egg from a 30-foot drop.

“Before coming to college, I did not have a lot of leadership experience,” said Mapes, who hopes to become a packaging engineer after graduation. “And with applying to become design chair or applying to become egg drop chair, it was really me pushing myself to be put in these situations that maybe I’m not comfortable with. So getting comfortable with being uncomfortable because you grow so much from that.”

As design chair of the float, she has worked year-round, coordinating with various teams, setting deadlines and overseeing unique aspects such as animatronics, said team leader Doody.

“One thing I admire a lot about Saira and the skills that she brings to the program is her sense of time management and her communication,” Doody said. “She is one of the people that I trust most to be able to lead a department, a huge group of people, on a bunch of different projects.”

Time management for Rose Float is crucial.

“They don’t put off New Year’s,” D’Acquisto said. “It’s an amazing learning experience to have to project manage by looking at that firm deadline and looking backward as to what needs to be done.”

After moving their half of the float to Pomona in October, Cal Poly Rose Float students make the 3-1/2 hour, 220 mile trek there every weekend until the holiday break, when they spend most of their time off finishing the float, then from Dec. 26 to the day before the parade applying flowers and other materials to cover the entire float.

The process is capped off by judging the afternoon – Road to Reclamation won the Extraordinaire Award —  before the parade and then the float’s high-profile ride down Colorado Avenue.

“Rose float is a huge commitment, but I love it,” Mapes said. “More time with Rose Float means more time hanging out with my friends.”

PHOTO GALLERY: Rose float construction and parade. (Photos: Jack Sann, Tom Zasadzinski, Pat Pemberton, Charlie D’Amico)