Skip to main content
Engineering Computing Center

Engineering Computing Center

Welcome to the Engineering Computing Center!

The Engineering Computing Center is a cluster of lab spaces in the Heafey building that provides primary computing resources for instructional activities in the School of Engineering and STEM.

The Engineering Computing Center currently has 10 "in person" computer labs, and provides remote access to computer-lab resources. The labs provide provide access to a wide variety of industry-standard technical software packages and a variety of programming language compilers. 

ECC computer labs and software

Remote access to the ECC computer labs

The ECC's in-person labs are open daily from 8am - 10pm (excluding academic holidays). Classes and scheduled events take precedence over individual students' access to the labs.

View the ECC lab daily schedule

The ECC's remote labs are generally available 24x7.

An account is automatically created for anyone who registers for a class taught in the ECC labs. Use your SCU Username and Password to log in to the ECC computers.

Physical access is automatically provided to all STEM students. Use your ACCESS card or credential to access the building and the rooms.

Check our FAQs to see if your question has been asked before.

The Lab Monitors provide support for students using the ECC labs:

For other questions or issues, or to share feedback please contact the ECC staff.

In terms of computing specs for the School of Engineering, we recommend the platform you're comfortable with. The only caveat is Chromebooks/iPads are not something we have tested and probably not recommended. We recommend you buy from a reputable computing seller like Dell/Apple which offers support and warranty. As a general framework, the following are some suggestions:
 
1. Don't buy the top-tier CPU processor as that is overpriced and not worth the performance gain to cost. One level lower is usually worth the investment. Avoid the lowest tier as that is usually at the tail end of the life cycle and performance.
 
2. 16 GB memory is recommended as that covers a large spectrum of application usages. It also gives your computer a bit more longevity.
 
3. Hard drive size is dependent on your storage needs. If you plan to store a lot of photos/videos/multimedia files then plan accordingly. From the SOE software point of view, we offer remote access to our Engineering software. Our remote access platform software requirement is less than 350MB. The school also offers google drive cloud storage with very generous storage size. So in terms of choosing hard drive size, plan for your personal storage needs. If the cost increase is palatable, we would recommend upgrading to an SSD/NVME type hard drive. That has a huge performance gain over the traditional and cheaper mechanical hard drives. SSD/NVME is becoming more default but they are usually at the top and mid-tier computer build selections, which means the cost does increase.
 
4. Our remote access software supports Windows, macOS, and Linux. So any computer running these 3 platforms should be compatible.

Contact Us

Email: ECCLabMonitors@scu.edu
 
Santa Clara University
School of Engineering
500 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95053

Heafey-Bergin, Bldg. 202