The President's Special Recognition Awards

Santa Clara recognizes Ruth Davis for her enormous impact on our students and engineering education. She initiated our Women in Engineering Dinner, where women engineers across classes and programs come together. An advocate of all underrepresented students in engineering, Dr. Davis led an initiative to restructure a staff position to better meet the needs of our diverse student body. 

Over the past two years Dr. Davis has led a school-wide initiative to reimagine our curriculum to better embrace our Jesuit identity, develop engineering leaders of competence, conscience, and compassion and entrepreneurial thinkers who will build a more just, humane, and sustainable world, and address the changing needs of our society. Her efforts have led to reimagining our first-year programs and senior design experience. Dr. Davis exemplifies SCU’s dedication to education of the whole person through her commitment to student success, advocacy for diversity and inclusion, and passion to promote engineering education.

As collaborators at the intersection of digital humanities, archaeology, student participation, and community engagement, Lee Panich and Amy Lueck have been instrumental scholars and teachers on the Community-Initiated Partnership Grant "Teaching Ohlone History, Changing Public Memory." In 2020, Amy and Lee published an article based on their work together, titled "Representing Indigenous Histories Using XR Technologies in the Classroom." The scholarly essay is based on their collaborative courses in the English and Anthropology Departments.

Beyond the SCU classroom, Lee and Amy have shared their work on the public platform of Google Earth. Their "SCU Native History Tour," developed along with former colleague Matt Kroot and in collaboration with members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, traces "the Indigenous history of the Santa Clara University campus as revealed by the dedicated work of Bay Area Ohlone people utilizing archaeological materials, historical documents, oral histories, and community knowledge." Amy and Lee's collaboration showcases Santa Clara at its conscientious, community-oriented, scholarly, and pedagogical best.