Santa Clara University - School of Engineering
About
The Santa Clara University School of Engineering sits at the center of Silicon Valley, where academic rigor meets real-world innovation. Its graduate programs are designed for impact, blending hands-on research, close faculty mentorship, and direct access to leading tech companies to prepare students for meaningful, high-growth careers.
The Santa Clara University School of Engineering sits at the center of Silicon Valley, where academic rigor meets real-world innovation. Its graduate programs are designed for impact, blending hands-on research, close faculty mentorship, and direct access to leading tech companies to prepare students for meaningful, high-growth careers. Grounded in Jesuit values, the school goes beyond technical training to emphasize ethical leadership, ensuring graduates are equipped to build technology that advances both industry and society. The school fosters a close-knit, collaborative community where small class sizes and a low student-to-faculty ratio support strong faculty connections, personalized mentorship, and an educational experience focused on developing the whole person.
Vision
Grounded in the Jesuit approach to education, the School of Engineering’s vision is to educate the whole person to solve society’s most complex problems. Our vision is an engineering community that inspires and develops engineering leaders of competence, conscience, and compassion—entrepreneurial thinkers who will build a more just, humane, and sustainable world.
Mission
The mission of Santa Clara University's School of Engineering is to prepare diverse students for professional excellence, responsible citizenship, and service to society. The engineering school does this through:
- Distinctive academic programs that are designed to produce engineers who approach their profession with competence, conscience, and compassion.
- Broadly educated faculty, who model and encourage the notion of lifelong learning.
- Scholarly activities that create new knowledge and advance the state of the art of technology.
- Interactions with professional societies and companies in Silicon Valley and beyond.
- Service activities that benefit our diverse constituencies and humanity in general.
Values
Based on our Vision and Mission, our values, known as iCARE, are:
- integrity - in the pursuit of knowledge
- Collaboration - between each other, across disciplines, and with Silicon Valley and beyond
- Aspiration - for excellence in education, research, and service
- Respect –and understanding of our differences among students, faculty, and staff
- Exploration - of the frontiers of engineering by research and innovation
Santa Clara University's School of Engineering is dedicated to preparing students for professional excellence, responsible citizenship, and service to society. Our dynamic programs in applied mathematics, bioengineering, civil, environmental and sustainable engineering, computer science and engineering, electrical and computer engineering, engineering management and leadership, general engineering, mechanical engineering, and power systems and sustainable energy provide the theoretical and practical instruction necessary for professional excellence.
Combining expert instruction and a commitment to personal attention with a pedagogy that begins from an ethical perspective is our mission, and lays the foundation for everything we do. In its pursuit, we:
- Provide educational excellence that interlaces theoretical knowledge, practical application, and societal and environmental impact.
- Explore, cultivate and apply knowledge and scholarship in distinctive frontiers of engineering.
- Collaborate with our partners within the vibrant and diverse Silicon Valley community and throughout the world.
- Embrace our values and our Jesuit mission in developing a diverse and inclusive culture of integrity, mutual respect, and aspiration for excellence.
At SCU, we are “engineering with a mission”—a mission to serve our students, our valley, and our world. Our mix of rigorous academics, project-based learning, and values-based education nurtures students of competence, conscience and compassion into the leaders of tomorrow—leaders who are well-equipped to face the engineering and ethical challenges of the future.
Our state-of-the-art laboratories provide limitless hands-on learning opportunities, both within your own particular field of study and with multi-disciplinary teammates.
Find or fuel your passion in one or more of our interdisciplinary labs. Tackle problems at the nanoscale in our Center for Nanostructures. Work on humanitarian projects in the Frugal Innovation Hub. Work independently or with peers to find solutions to the world's energy challenges in the Latimer Energy Lab. Have fun working on your own 3D printing project or an assignment for class in the Maker Lab. Advance drone technology, monitor satellites for NASA, or design autonomous vehicles for use in Monterey Bay or Lake Tahoe in the Robotics Systems Laboratory. Partner with Silicon Valley medical device and biotechnology companies to solve real-world challenges that transform global health in the Healthcare Innovation and Design Program.
Our departments also have their own discipline-specific labs for bioengineering, civil engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering, and our Engineering Computing Center provides ten computer labs for student use.
Engineering with a mission. We educate engineers empowered with the ability and drive to address the greatest challenges of the 21st century.
Guided by our Jesuit, Catholic values, we are committed to the highest in academic and ethical achievement. Our mission is to fuel engineering students' intellectual curiosity in support of building a more just, humane, and sustainable world. Through our undergraduate and graduate programs, we focus on educating the whole person.
3 Cs + 3 Hs + 1 T = 1 Unique Education
Competence, Conscience, and Compassion: We are dedicated to educating men and women to be leaders of competence, conscience, and compassion.
Head, Heart, and Hands: We strive to inspire the head, touch the heart, and put the hands into action to improve the world. Technical knowledge and ethical thinking are meaningless if not put to use.
The T-Model of Engineering Education: We pair a deep technical core curriculum (math, science, engineering) with a broad set of skills essential for success (communication, ethics, entrepreneurial mindset, creativity, global view), engaging both the left and right sides of the brain.
In the classroom and beyond, we offer courses, interdisciplinary projects, competitions, and a myriad of opportunities for students to tackle real problems here at home and around the world. They put into action their technical expertise as well as business and social skills, empathy, and the ethical discernment that can lead to a sustainable future for all.
Yes, you'll study with great professors and take challenging courses, but you just might learn the most about yourself through the many programs we have available to you outside the classroom.
Become a peer advisor, lead a student organization, take on an internship at a Silicon Valley industry leader, help the SCU team design and build a solar-powered boat for competition, inspire the next generation of engineering undergrads through K-12 outreach... Whatever sparks your interest, opportunities abound for you here.
