SCU's Executive Development Center has a New Name
SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 11, 2018—The Executive Development Center in the Leavey School of Business has been providing high-quality programs and professional certifications to the Silicon Valley business community for over 60 years. Through growth and expansion, we are sending a message to the global executive education market that we represent the heartbeat of Silicon Valley, by evolving our name to - the Silicon Valley Executive Center @ Santa Clara University.
Since 1957, the Center has been producing high-impact programs to help local business leaders, managers and professionals be better equipped to tackle the speed and complexity of growth in the Silicon Valley. It currently serves 1,800 people annually, across seven countries around the world. The Center offers professional certifications as well as certificates and customized programs in innovation, entrepreneurship, and product development; leadership and management; accounting and finance; and data analytics and information systems.
In 2017, Leavey School of Business Dean Caryn Beck-Dudley hired a new executive director, veteran executive-education leader Dennis Lanham, to steer the Center into a new era of growth. “We were searching for an individual who could build upon our Center’s success and position us to compete more broadly,” said Beck-Dudley. “Dennis and I have worked closely over the last year to plant the seeds to make that happen.”
The new Silicon Valley Executive Center strategic plan includes an expansion of its global footprint. Using Silicon Valley-based frameworks, insights and practical tools, the Center has begun work to modernize its portfolio by incorporating online and blended programs to make the learner experience more convenient and increase its global reach. “Silicon Valley has major global cachet. We’re already partnered in several different countries across Europe and Asia, largely because of the attraction to our entrepreneurial and tech-focused business environment, and we intend to leverage those touchpoints as channel partners to introduce the newest trends in executive and professional education to those markets,” said Lanham.
Estimated at almost a billion dollars, the global university-based executive education market is alive and well - but so is the competition. The Center has always incorporated a Silicon Valley angle in its program designs and faculty selection as a point of differentiation, but the new name highlights this as a central theme of the portfolio. “By choosing to put Silicon Valley in our name, we hope to send a clear message about our value in the global marketplace,” said Jan Sola, newly promoted senior associate director of the Center.
“With all of this change, we have a few simple goals; greater visibility, gold-standard program design, and ultimately, learner and organizational impact,” said Lanham. “We know that if we can achieve these three things, our brand will grow.”
The Center is planning a celebration of its new name this summer, in a new larger facility in Santa Clara University’s Loyola Hall, 425 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, California, 95053.
About Leavey School of Business
Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, one of the most dynamic business environments in the world, the Leavey School of Business combines academic excellence in the 450-year Jesuit tradition, with an energetic, innovative spirit that typifies the region. For more information, see www.scu.edu/business.
About Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University, a comprehensive Jesuit, Catholic university located 40 miles south of San Francisco in Californiaís Silicon Valley, offers its more than 9,000 students rigorous undergraduate curricula in arts and sciences, business, and engineering; masterís degrees in business, education, counseling psychology, pastoral ministry, and theology; and law degrees and engineering doctoral degrees. Distinguished nationally by one of the highest graduation rates among all U.S. masterís universities, Californiaís oldest operating higher-education institution demonstrates faith-inspired values of ethics and social justice. For more information, see www.scu.edu.
Media Contact
Deborah Lohse | SCU Media Relations | dlohse@scu.edu | 408-554-5121