Dear Bronco Family,

Fall is upon us, and I welcome you to the start of the 2024-2025 academic year! I hope you have returned to campus after memorable adventures and special time with your loved ones, families, and friends. I enjoyed reuniting with many of our faculty and staff this past week, as well as welcoming our newest Broncos and their families during a wonderful Welcome Weekend.

Our School of Law and Jesuit School of Theology students and faculty started their fall terms a few weeks ago, and now we are all back in session. As is the Bronco way, our returning members of campus are ready to welcome, assist, and befriend our incoming Class of 2028 and our new transfer students. While you dive into classes, I encourage you to take the time to build and rekindle friendships, connect with one another, and embrace the full Bronco experience!

We also welcome our new faculty and staff who have joined us this academic year. Together, we will continue our work to establish Santa Clara as the world’s leading Jesuit university. During our faculty and staff Convocation last week, I shared how we are progressing toward our ambitious Impact 2030 goals, as well as the many milestones we have to celebrate as part of this journey.

And we have so much to celebrate! I encourage you to review specific updates we were excited to share during Convocation on our Convocation landing page. Some of these highlights include:

• We have made tremendous progress towards increasing the socioeconomic diversity of our student body, and in particular, towards our goals for Pell-eligible and first-generation students.
• We announced the news that, next year, we will meet full demonstrated financial need for all California State Grant-eligible students as well as for graduates of the Cristo Rey network of schools across the U.S. Our Santa Clara Jesuit education will be more accessible for many more students!
• This year, we welcomed our first-ever Posse cohort and our largest group of LEAD Scholars ever!
• This fall, we are remodeling our Multicultural Center (MCC), which has become an important part of our vibrant campus community and a meaningful resource for our students.
• We continue to evaluate important changes to our University, including potentially moving our Jesuit School of Theology from Berkeley to our Santa Clara campus.

So, we begin this academic year with much excitement. Yet, we also come together against a global backdrop of tremendous geopolitical conflict, human suffering, and political division in our world. We know that for many in our community, this turmoil creates trauma, fear, and anger.

Particularly this year, we must keep our Santa Clara community grounded in our Jesuit educational mission and values. We are committed to protecting freedom of speech and expression as long as it does not harass, intimidate, threaten, or discriminate. These protections are a bedrock of what it means to be a university. And as a Jesuit university, we seek to hold ourselves to a higher standard, striving to express ourselves openly and freely while at the same time upholding our community values of respect, kindness, empathy, and understanding.

Our Provost, Jim Glaser, and I each shared a message about our role – as a university community guided by our Jesuit values – in learning, honoring the diverse views of all in the Bronco family, and finding ways to contribute to a hope-filled future. This includes information about programs and resources planned for our community. I encourage you to watch our message, shared at Convocation.

Despite the world churning around us, the start of a new academic year at Santa Clara University brings me much joy and immense gratitude for my ability to work with all of you. We have so very much to look forward to – together – and it will be a very exciting year for all at SCU! I look forward to seeing you soon on campus and during my office hours.

Kind regards,

Julie Sullivan
President