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Santa Clara University
Impact 2030

Solutions for the Universal Good

STRATEGIC PRIORITY TWO

SOLUTIONS FOR THE UNIVERSAL GOOD

Our graduate and undergraduate faculty currently excel at educating for rigor, relevance, and preparation for lifelong career success. Our students leave Santa Clara prepared with critical-thinking and ethical frameworks to work through challenges not foreseen in the classroom, and with the confidence to be both strong team players and effective leaders.

To continue this success in these times of rapid technological advances, increased interdisciplinary collaboration, complex societal challenges, and widening gaps in who benefits from such advances, we must strengthen our teaching supports and expand the scope and quality of our research infrastructure.

Our Silicon Valley setting provides the opportunity to make maximum use of the vast technical knowledge and innovation present within our Silicon Valley environs. We must leverage this ecosystem for learning, research, and new programs, and ensure faculty can lead all students to confidently and ethically utilize emergent technologies like AI to advance their disciplines, emerging fields, and society. AI, in particular, is an area of focus due to its new and transformative impact on the way we live, learn, work, and tend to areas of human need.

“

In the STEM field, we spend our time thinking about new technologies and the things we want to develop and build. But the choices that we make in doing that work come out of the ethos of the University. We want to make the world a better place.

—Christopher Kitts, William and Janice Terry Professor, Mechanical Engineering

”

There also is a growing opportunity for Santa Clara to offer leadership in the area of health care. Health care represents almost 20% of the national GDP and is an area of need and opportunity for Santa Clara. Our nation is facing a health care provider shortage that is projected to become even more acute, particularly in California. At the same time, Santa Clara has the strong science, technology, business, and ethical foundations for exploring new health-related degrees, programs, or even schools. This includes our robust public health program, medical ethics expertise within the Markkula Center, and the fact that approximately 500 undergraduate students currently are pre-health majors.

 

GOAL 1:

Strengthen the teacher-scholar model by investing in our faculty and bolstering the relevancy and impact of their research and teaching

Initiatives include:

  • Create a new Center for Teaching Excellence
  • Raise $150 million for new endowed chairs and professorships to support faculty scholars in key areas of expertise and distinction and whose research helps fashion a more humane, just, and sustainable world
  • Expand the scope and depth of our faculty research support and increase the number of externally funded grants

 

GOAL 2:

Build on our strengths in undergraduate liberal arts education and Ignatian pedagogy that incorporate discernment, experiential learning and research, reflection, and commitment and service to others

Initiatives include:

  • Launch a new core curriculum reflective of Santa Clara’s Jesuit and humanistic values and responsive to the needs of a rapidly changing world
  • Increase the number of transformative opportunities for students to apply their liberal arts skills to real world problems through immersions, research, startup acceleration, and other experiential learning opportunities offered by the College, Schools, and our Centers of Distinction

 

GOAL 3:

Grow enrollment in, and expand the prominence of, our graduate and law programs, to strengthen our impact on Silicon Valley and beyond

Initiatives include:

  • Adapt existing, and develop new, graduate and law programs in response to changing needs of employers
  • Bolster graduate and law student financial and other support, and increase completion rates and placements with the most desirable employers in the Silicon Valley and beyond

 

GOAL 4:

Increase our expertise and reputation in high-impact areas where we have strong foundations and where the societal need is great, notably health care; emerging technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) and the ethics of its use; and sustainability

Initiatives include:

  • Create new health care professional programs that are differentiated and distinct, reflect our values, and incorporate the future trends in health care practices
    • Possible new programs will undergo comprehensive study to determine an optimal strategy.
    • Possible programs include a focus on public health, health sciences, nursing, or medicine.
  • Ensure that all Santa Clara University students can responsibly and effectively use AI and other technologies to advance their disciplines, emerging fields, and society
    • Develop a leading University institute that catalyzes the beneficial integration of AI and other emerging technologies into our teaching, learning, and scholarship, and connects and leverages our faculty and staff expertise across the University and with outside experts
    • Support research and thought leadership that examines the causes of environmental injustice and vulnerability, and puts forward potential solutions for the public and policy makers

 

 

NEXT STRATEGIC PRIORITY THREE: OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL TALENTED STUDENTS