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Greetings Bronco Alumni, Donors, and Parents!
We have just wrapped up another academic year and sent another impressive class from our halls into the world. It takes a College, a University and many families to help our students arrive at this day, so thank you!
Earlier this year, President Sullivan highlighted the University's new strategic plan, Impact 2030. While the plan includes many important pieces, the most exciting part, in my opinion, is that it will make a significant investment in access and affordability for students, starting right now. It is exciting to imagine Santa Clara adding social mobility to the long list of things we do with and for our students, and this plan will equip us to join leading universities in the country whose graduates jump into a different socioeconomic class by virtue of having come to our university. I look forward to seeing the plan put into action.
Here in the College, we have two new initiatives that launched this spring—the Black Justice Studies Collaborative and the Silicon Valley Studies Initiative, both of which will bring a deeper understanding of our unique place in the world.
The Black Justice Studies Collaborative will combine Black Studies and Justice Studies in many innovative and interdisciplinary ways; will harness the vast intellectual research and creative talents of SCU’s faculty on Black life and studies; and will mentor and promote student research, retention, and excellence. Through a robust speaker series, conferences, and visiting scholars and artists, it will challenge, inspire, and bring light to major issues confronting Black Studies and global Black communities through an intersectional perspective.
The Silicon Valley Studies Initiative seeks to bring a critical perspective to the history and development of Silicon Valley, both as an idea and a place. It will bring Jesuit humanist and social justice values into a University-wide conversation about the nature and history of this region: what does it mean to be human in our ever-evolving but now more technologically-driven world? It will also explore how the humanities are essential to approaching the development of technology, including artificial intelligence, in an ethical, responsible, and just manner.
Lastly, I wanted to take a minute to acknowledge three beloved members of our community that we sadly lost this spring—Michelle Bezanson (Anthropology), Fern Silva (Communication) and Rich Barber (Physics). They were tremendous people, beloved and respected by students, faculty, staff and alumni alike. We are so fortunate that they were among us for as long as they were. We miss them dearly.
Warmly,
Daniel Press
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
Santa Clara University
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