Stories

Convocation Remarks
Julie Sullivan
September 12, 2023

Introduction

Thank you, Ed. Good afternoon, Broncos! I am very grateful for the warm and embracing welcome I have received from our Bronco family of faculty, staff, students, and alumni during my first year. In my myriad of individual and collective conversations with you, I have learned so much about our university and our Bronco family, of which I feel truly blessed to be a part.

Thank you to all who have shared your hopes, frustrations, and aspirations with me. I have had the pleasure of meeting with numerous faculty, staff, and/or student groups, and I met individually with over 100 of you during my office hours last year. I also talked with over 1,600 SC alumni and friends during the “Meet the President” receptions we hosted in 10 locations around the country this past year. It was a whirlwind!

In addition, overseen by PAC, we launched a robust strategic planning process last year, which included focus groups, open forums, and surveys. We received input from over 850 faculty, staff, and students and over 1,500 alumni. 

My conclusion from the totality of these interactions and feedback is that Santa Clara is in an enviable position.  We are a special university made up of special people, nationally recognized for educational excellence, with an inspiring and compelling Jesuit vison and mission, and located in a geography known worldwide for its innovation.

At the same time, we must all be candid, and you have been, in acknowledging where we need to improve and to adapt, in order to achieve our vision of building a more just, humane, and sustainable world and defining what a great Jesuit university can be.  

The world around us is changing dramatically, and our students are coming to us with far different expectations, priorities, and skills, and will be going out into a future world that will continue to change even more rapidly.  Thus, we must adapt in how we prepare them, what we prepare them for, and what we seek to learn, discover, and create in our scholarship. We can not sit still. Sitting still is going backwards. We have to step up to lead! We have the capacity to do so, and now more than ever, the world needs Santa Clara’s leadership!

Our strategic plan, Impact 2028, will chart the course for how we lead over the next five years. I want to spend the remainder of my remarks today talking about the six broad themes or priorities that are emerging from your input to our strategic planning process. As I review the themes, I will focus only on the importance of each one. We have asked various working groups to evaluate specific proposed initiatives for each theme and create related goals and outcomes. We will seek your input later this fall on the results of their work and will use this to finalize the Impact 2028 plan for adoption by the Board of Trustees in early February 2024.  

Affordable Access

The first emerging theme calls for us to expand access to and ensure affordability of a Santa Clara education.  By enabling all talented students to benefit from our transformative Jesuit education, we fulfill our responsibility to advance the common good, contribute to social mobility in our society, and strengthen our democracy.

The monetary and non-monetary benefits of a college education are indisputable. Studies have shown that a bachelor’s degree is worth $2.8 million on average over a lifetime (Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, The College Payoff, 2011) and that Americans with bachelor’s degrees are more likely to vote and to be healthier, happier, and more civically engaged (The Lumina Foundation, 2015).

However, we have all seen the data documenting significant and persistent gaps in attainment of bachelor’s degrees between people of different income, racial, and ethnic groups.

Economic and racial justice in postsecondary education requires that we close these attainment gaps. A broadly educated citizenry is the backbone to a thriving democracy, eliminating wealth gaps, and enhancing innovation and our nation’s economic standing in the world.

I personally am very committed to and have made increasing SCU’s socioeconomic diversity a top priority. I am proud of our recent partnership with the American Talent Initiative (ATI) and the work we are doing to achieve our initial ATI goal of increasing our percentage of Pell eligible students to 15% by 2025. I also am excited about our partnerships with the California Private College Alliance and the Posse Foundation (announced just yesterday).

The evaluation of our university’s academic reputation increasingly, and rightfully so, includes measures of our contribution to social and economic mobility in our country and world.

This past Friday, the New York Times published its College Access Index which spotlights the economic diversity, as measured by the percentage of Pell grant recipients, at nearly 300 of the country’s most selective universities and colleges. Santa Clara was highlighted as one of the schools with the lowest Pell grant recipient percentage, but also as a school that is committed to enrolling more lower-income students in the years ahead. This is a priority we must continue to focus on. It’s also an immense opportunity!

You Belong

The second theme reflects our commitment to being a campus community that enhances diversity, promotes equity, practices inclusivity, and ensures belonging. We seek to be a vibrant learning community attracting people of diverse perspectives and lived experiences. We seek to be a community where no one feels marginalized and all feel respected, listened to, and affirmed. We seek to be a community of love and kindness where we are truly present for and genuinely accompany others.

Such a community promotes the God-given dignity of all human persons and our commitment to the care for the personal development of the whole person. Such a community also will have the strongest impact on addressing society’s most pressing and evolving issues and creating a more just, humane, and sustainable world.

This is why I am so grateful, for example, to those serving on our HSI Advisory Group who will be working to enhance the flourishing and sense of belonging for our Latinx community.  And I look forward to the continued success of initiatives spawned by our JEDI strategic plan and being championed by our Inclusive Excellence Liaisons, such as the CAS faculty cluster hires for social justice and equality, whom I had the pleasure of visiting with last night.

Human-Centered Solutions

Our third theme is focused on human-centered solutions to the world’s most pressing and evolving issues. The operative phrase is “human-centered.” This theme puts into action our Jesuit vision of educating citizens and leaders of competence, competence, and compassion and cultivating knowledge and faith to build a more just, humane, and sustainable world.

As a Jesuit, Catholic university, we are committed to all students engaging in a broad and rich, humanistic education – an education that explores the questions of what it means to be human and what are our responsibilities to all of God’s creation. And an education that helps students develop a moral framework and that embodies Ignatian pedagogy – critical thinking and analysis, openness to competing ideas and a timeless search for truth, experiential learning and immersion, and reflective discernment.  Such a humanistic education leads to human-centered solutions for both today and tomorrow.

So, what are some of today’s pressing issues? There are many. I will outline three important and promising areas, where SCU, through our mission, interdisciplinary strengths, and centers of distinction, is uniquely positioned to step in and make major societal contributions.

Artificial Intelligence is one of the newest and rapidly evolving societal issues. It is widely expected to change the landscape of all aspects of society, including the economy, art, culture, medicine, education, law, politics, climate, and much more.

Pope Francis has applauded artificial intelligence for its vast potential to contribute in a positive way to the common good and the future of humanity. At the same time, he cautions that this potential will be realized only if there is a constant and consistent commitment on behalf of those using and developing the technologies to act ethically and responsibly (Vatican News, March 2023).

Thus, many educators and researchers are actively exploring how all facets of human endeavor (from detecting cancer to creating art) can be positively aided by AI. Others are focused on the immediate concerns of ensuring privacy, fairness, safety, truth, and eliminating bias and discrimination. And some are focusing on the longer-term existential threat.

So, what does this mean for our teaching, scholarship, and operations?  I am proud to say that many of our faculty and staff across the university are proactively grappling with this question.

You understand that our students will increasingly be coming to us from an AI-infused world and expect the same when they get here. 

You understand that we all must expand our knowledge and imagination for how AI can be used in our area(s) of expertise and used in an ethical, responsible, and human-centered fashion.

You understand that this knowledge and imagination must be integrated into our teaching, because our students are entering a workforce where they will be expected to effectively use AI.

You understand that many of us are in fields of creation of AI or creation of the laws, policies, and practices that govern its use and are responsible for enhancing safety, equity, truthfulness, privacy, and sustainability.

While the opportunities and challenges are many, our heritage, mission, and academic strengths compel us to play an important leadership role. We intend to do that. 

Climate change and sustainability certainly continues to become an even more pressing issue. Just note the record-breaking climate conditions experienced across the globe this summer. Extreme heat and winds produced raging wildfires in many places, including one close to many of us, in Maui. Last month, a tropical storm came ashore in California for the first time in 84 years. More recently, Idalia hit north Florida causing the most damage my 86-year-old mother, who has lived in Florida all of her life, has ever seen.

It is not surprising that Pope Francis recently announced that he will release a follow-up document on October 4, providing an update to his 2015 encyclical, “Laudato Si’, a landmark papal letter that has been a rallying cry for global action in the fight against climate change. But Francis does not think our actions have been fast enough or gone far enough. He said the new document is an effort to help put an end to the senseless and terrible war against our common home. (Earthbeat, National Catholic Reporter, August 30, 2023).

Our Healthcare System is an obvious issue that has become more pressing since the COVID-19 pandemic, which certainly cast a glaring light on its inadequacies and inequities. We have a shortage of healthcare providers and stark inequities in access to care and quality of care.

Much has been written about the shortages of nurses, which is projected to continue. Less discussion is devoted to the shortage of physicians. Yet, the United States has fewer doctors per person than 26 out of 31 economically advanced nations (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development).

California is no different. In California, there are only approximately 89 active primary care physicians per 100,000 people (Healthcare Center at University of California, San Francisco, The State of California’s Physician Workforce, 2021), and in 2022, just under half of the state’s primary care needs were met (the Kaiser Family Foundation). We also know that there are inequities in access to our limited number of healthcare providers based on patient income and insurance status.

It is well-established that patient outcomes are significantly improved when healthcare providers resemble the diversity and life experiences of their patients. Yet, in 2021, Latinx people represented 39% of California’s population, but only 6% of the state’s physicians and only 10% of the state’s registered nurses (California Health Care Almanac, 2021).

The Provost’s Office commissioned a working group on Academic Health Care this past spring to consider the larger role Santa Clara might play in addressing these inadequacies and inequities.  The working group of faculty and staff suggested a number of new health care initiatives, certificates, degree programs, and schools for us to consider further and stipulated that any initiative we undertake should:

• Reflect Santa Clara’s mission and Jesuit values, while leveraging our location in Silicon Valley. This includes being responsive to community needs and being purpose-driven to serve our local community and improving access, equity, and efficiency within the health care sector.
• Build on the strengths of Santa Clara, including faculty expertise.
• Be distinctive, not merely replicating what is available at other schools in the region.
• Respond to demand from students and job markets. And
• Leverage existing and growing relationships with health care providers, alumni, community partners, and the education pipeline.

I have mentioned three important areas of focus that if positively impacted by our teaching, scholarship, and/or operations will lead to a more just, humane, and sustainable world. There are many more important issues that require human-centered approaches. As I have said before, now more than ever, the world needs Santa Clara University!

A Globally Engaged Jesuit University

Next, we are committed to becoming a more globally engaged Jesuit university. Fr. General Arturo Sosa, the head of the global Jesuit society, recently called on Jesuit universities to prepare students to contribute to the equitable interaction of diverse worldwide cultures through dialogue, mutual respect, and collaboration and for Jesuit universities, networks, and centers to work collaboratively on common issues of concern. There is much more we can do to expand our global imprint. For example, only about one-third of our undergraduate students currently study abroad, which is about half the percentage of students at many of our peer institutions.

We seek to expand Santa Clara’s global engagement and intercultural learning in many ways, including global study, immersions, internships, and research opportunities; attracting more international students; and collaborating more closely with Jesuit universities and institutions around the globe.

It also is important to proudly note that our Jesuit School of Theology is a global theologate, preparing Jesuits from the United States, but more predominantly from Africa and other parts of the Southern Hemisphere. Fr. Orobator recently joined Santa Clara as Dean of the Jesuit School of Theology. Dean Orobator is an internationally esteemed leader having just finished serving as the president of the Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar. He is a prolific theologian, author, and speaker on many relevant topics, including increasing the inclusion and role of women in the Church, ecological stewardship, and human rights and dignity.

I am truly excited about the ways in which the Jesuit School of Theology and all of Santa Clara University can have an increasingly important engagement with and impact on our world.

Better Ways of Working

Our fifth theme is Better Ways of Working. We all know that we operate in a very competitive sector.  Like most private universities, we are tuition dependent.  Net tuition represents 70% of our operating budget. Nationally, fewer students are pursuing bachelor’s and graduate degrees, and the segment of students that is growing has fewer financial resources. 

In addition, we are a people intensive sector.  Our work and success require that we retain and attract very talented, and often highly educated, people. This is particularly challenging given the housing costs in our geography. We must prioritize competitive compensation, retention and recruitment strategies, address housing affordability challenges, and provide ongoing professional development for our people.

We also must leverage technologies, breakdown silos, reduce operational complexity, and make data informed decisions.  In addition, working better requires us to strive for increasing sustainability in our use of energy and water, our procurement, and our waste management.

By continuously pursuing operational excellence and ensuring that the university is operating in an effective, efficient, and sustainable manner, we embrace our Jesuit, Catholic commitment to Laudato Si’ and wise stewardship of our human and financial resources.

A Vibrant Campus Community

The final theme is a vibrant and engaged campus and alumni community. One of the biggest takeaways from my learning and discovery this past year is that fostering, nourishing, and sustaining lifelong relationships is Santa Clara’s “secret sauce.” I recently spoke to an alumna who shared that she and her husband (not a Bronco, unusual in itself) still vacation every year with Bronco alumni (and their spouses) who were orientation leaders with her in college. This is one of countless stories I have heard from students and alumni about the importance of the relationships they formed at Santa Clara and still cultivate many years later even though they may now be separated by thousands of miles. 

One of my biggest worries is that we weaken or lose our secret sauce, particularly during this time when we face several challenges. Students are coming to us having spent up to two important emotional and social development years in isolation and with dramatically increased incidence of anxiety, depression, and other psychological distress. Additionally, we are striving to find the right balance of in-person and remote work for our employees and in-person and remote interactions with our students.

Preserving our secret sauce requires a vibrant and engaged campus and alumni community. We must foster well-being, resilience, and connectivity for all members of our community. We also have opportunities to reimagine our residential learning communities, better support our many student organizations, enhance our Bronco spirit through athletics, and better leverage the performing arts. This is about bringing everyone together in meaningful ways to build community, relationships, and school spirit. The good news is that this is in our DNA!

Conclusion

In conclusion, I end where I started, we are a special university, and we are a strong university! Yet, your good work this past year has highlighted many compelling opportunities for us to further realize our vision of building a more just, humane, and sustainable world. These opportunities are in our hands. And it would be irresponsible for us not to pursue them with gusto and fervor. For, these bold aspirations are made feasible by our current foundation and strength, and we owe great gratitude and accountability to those who came before us and put us in this enviable position.

I am very excited about the upcoming year and the next five to 10 years at SCU.  I believe our bold aspirations will continue to lift us up to become THE Jesuit University (with THE in all caps, as the late Fr. Mueller encouraged us to aspire to during our PAC strategic planning sessions last fall).

Go Broncos!

And now I am pleased to take your questions.  Thank you.

Julie Sullivan 
President, Santa Clara University