Description
The university is situated in Santa Clara, California, adjacent to the city of San Jose in Santa Clara County at the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is commonly known by the abbreviation SCU; its students and 81,000 alumni, which live in all fifty states and around the world are called "Santa Clarans" or "Broncos" and its highly ranked athletics teams are called the Broncos. The school is promoted as "the Jesuit university in Silicon Valley."
Built around historic Mission Santa Clara, the present university is home to a population of nearly 5,200 undergraduate and 3,800 Master's, Juris Doctor, and PhD students. The institution employs over 450 full-time faculty members, who are divided between four professional schools and the College of Arts and Sciences, all of which are located on the 106-acre (43 ha) mission campus. In July 2009 the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley (JST), formerly an independent institution, legally merged with the university, taking the name "Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University." Although a division of SCU, it retains its campus in Berkeley, California. JST is one of two Jesuit seminaries in the United States with ecclesiastical faculties approved by the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education. The other, Weston Jesuit School of Theology, completed a similar affiliation with Boston College in June 2008, becoming Boston College School of Theology and Ministry.
For the 2011-2012 academic year, the university's operating budget was $467 million, and its endowment was over $717 million. For the same period, undergraduate tuition and fees totaled $39,048 and the average cost of room and board was $11,997.
Santa Clara University is civilly chartered and governed by a board of trustees, which appoints the president. By internal statute, the president must be a member of the Jesuit order, although the members of the board are primarily non-Jesuits. About 40 Jesuit priests and brothers are active teachers and administrators in various departments and centers located on the main campus in Santa Clara. An additional 14 Jesuits currently hold faculty positions at the university's Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. Jesuits comprise around 7% of the permanent faculty and hold teaching positions in biology, computer engineering, counseling psychology, economics, English, history, law, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, religious studies, and theater arts in addition to theology. They also serve in campus and residence-hall ministry, and some act as faculty directors in residential learning communities (RLC's).
SCU maintains its Catholic and Jesuit affiliation and supports numerous initiatives intended to further its religious mission. Students are invited to attend the Sunday evening student Masses in the mission church and encouraged to participate in campus ministry programs and lectures. All Bachelor's degrees require three religious studies courses as part of the academic core. An emphasis on social justice is furthered through the Pedro Arrupe Partnership and Kolvenbach Solidarity programs, which offer service opportunities in the community and immersion opportunities throughout the world. The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and the Center for Science, Technology, and Society offer programs that serve the University's Catholic-Jesuit ethos and identity.
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