Santa Clara University

What Is the Virtual Development Center?

The Institute for Women and Technology was formed with a three-pronged mission:

• To increase the impact of women on technology, in education, design, development, deployment and policy.
• To increase the positive impact of technology on the lives of all women.
• To help communities, industry, education and governments accelerate and benefit from these increases.

One of the projects to support this mission was the establishment of a Virtual Development Center (VDC) with selected universities, and commercial and philanthropic sponsors.

The VDC is a (potentially globally) distributed collaboration among universities (students and  professors), community members, and sponsoring organizations for the generation of technical innovation. But more than that, it is a model aimed at drawing women into technology and developing technologies that serve women.

1999 the VDC was established with sites at four universities: M.I.T., Purdue University, Santa Clara University, and Texas A&M. This paper describes the VDC effort at Santa Clara University.

The Leadership Team at Santa Clara University is headed by Dr. Ruth E. Davis, Professor and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies. The inclusion of people from many disciplines and backgrounds in the VDC is important to IWT and to SCU, whose mission includes providing an integrated education that fosters the development of competence, conscience, and compassion in our students.