‘During my time at Santa Clara, I’ve become a better leader, a better storyteller, and a better listener’

The newsroom of the student paper, The Santa Clara, holds more than a century of student journalism in its walls and newspaper archives going back to 1922. But despite all the writers who entered that basement office in Benson, the space was never universally accessible, even though a previous editor-in-chief had used a wheelchair.

That’s why one of the last things editor-in-chief Dylan Ryu ’26 did before graduating was install an ADA-accessible automatic door opener for their newsroom. It sounds like a small thing, but as the co-founder of Santa Clara University’s Disabled Students Union, Ryu wanted to leave the space better than how he found it.

“Something as simple as intentionally holding a door open for someone—that small act can go a long way,” he says.

Across his four years at Santa Clara, Ryu practiced that same intentionality as a leader and advocate across campus life. As editor-in-chief of The Santa Clara, Ryu interviewed President Julie Sullivan, covered student elections, and regularly burnt the midnight oil to get the print editions out. As co-founder of the Disabled Students Union, he also helped amplify the voices of a community that, according to the Office for Accessible Education, represents nearly a quarter of Santa Clara’s student population.

That instinct to lead with others in mind was, in part, shaped by the mentorship Ryu found in his freshman year as a math major struggling to find his path.

His academic pivot began when he took “The History of Slavery and Unfreedom” with Michael Brillman, who saw something in him and connected Ryu with Professor Naomi Andrews in the history department. Over the next four years, Andrews became Ryu’s mentor, a sounding board, and eventually the person who encouraged him to apply to the university’s honors program. He got in.

“Dr. Andrews taught me how to be mindful about what I want to achieve from something as small as this assignment, or something as large as applying to a job or a grad school opportunity.”

This fall, he heads to Stanford’s Graduate School of Education to pursue a master’s in policy and organizational leadership. His goal: to build the kinds of academic environments where faculty actually show up for students, and students are expected to show up for each other.

On what leading the student newspaper taught him about mentorship:

“The hardest part of the job is managing a staff of your peers, where we all want to be friendly with each other, but still have those professional systems in place to make sure there are set expectations and a leadership framework at the same time. I really learned how to work with the people I manage to help them succeed in their own personal respects, all within the broader umbrella of serving the institution.”

On the value he’ll carry forward from his Jesuit education:

“I really like the idea of being someone for other people. We live in a time where more and more people are feeling divided, no matter their background. Santa Clara taught me to see my neighbors, peers, friends, and strangers as whole people. That lens of compassion is what I will take away from my time here.”