School of Engineering

Whether it’s bringing solar-powered lights to classrooms in Ghana, treating post-traumatic stress disorder with virtual reality, delivering life-saving medicines to rural hospitals via drone, or designing houses that create more energy than they consume: most of the solutions that change the world come from engineers, and some of the best engineers in the world come from right here.

Dean's Message

September 13, 2017

Dear Bronco Engineers,

There is a lot to be proud of if you call yourself a member of the family of the Santa Clara University School of Engineering. You’re part of a family of compassionate engineering leaders and doers who truly believe that our responsibility is to create a world that is just to all and that can sustain not only us, but our children, and our children’s children. You are creative entrepreneurs, you manage enterprises, you create, and you give back.

If you are a Bronco engineer in training, this summer maybe you were in Rwanda, using your engineering skills in humanitarian service to those who need it the most. Or perhaps you worked as an intern in Silicon Valley, after all Silicon Valley companies not only prize your engineering skills, but also your ability to communicate and work in interdisciplinary teams, to plan and execute, and to finish! I might have run into you this summer in the Protein Engineering Laboratory where you explained your graduate research expanding genetic codes in mammalian cells, or in the Latimer Energy Laboratory where you were working on your summer research project to understand complex electrical energy grids and their control. As any Bronco engineer would do, you not only talked it, you built it, you understood it.

There’s a lot to be proud of if you are a member of this family. As your new Dean, and a new member of this family, I am so proud to join you. I wish you all the best in the coming academic year!

Alfonso Ortega

Dean, School of Engineering

Sobrato Professor of Engineering