Catalyzing Undergraduate Innovation
In 2023, Santa Clara University received a transformational $1 million grant from the Fletcher Jones Foundation titled "Cultivating Undergraduate Experiences in Advanced Computation and Visualization." This investment serves as a vital catalyst, moving high-performance computing (HPC) beyond specialized labs and into the core of the undergraduate experience across all disciplines. By focusing on "human capital"—the skills, training, and mentorship required to utilize advanced hardware—the grant ensures that students and faculty are prepared to lead in an increasingly data-driven world.
A Strategic Financial Model for Sustainability
The grant is uniquely structured to provide both immediate impact and long-term sustainability. Of the total $1 million investment, $750,000 was allocated for current-use spending over a five-year capacity-building period. This fund powers the daily operations of the initiative, including the development of new curricula, faculty learning communities, and intensive skills-based workshops. The remaining $250,000 has been invested to create the Fletcher Jones Advanced Computation and Visualization Fellowship Endowment. This endowment will continue to grow, providing permanent annual support for student fellowships and mentorship programs long after the initial grant concludes.
Expanding the Computational Curriculum
A primary goal of the Fletcher Jones initiative is to embed computational literacy across the university’s diverse academic landscape. To achieve this, the grant provides stipends ranging from $2,000 to $5,000 for faculty members who redesign existing courses or develop new modules that integrate HPC resources. These efforts have already successfully embedded computational skills into disciplines as varied as climate change modeling in Environmental Science, molecular modeling in Biology, and customer analytics in the Leavey School of Business. This programmatic support is supplemented by skills-based workshops and "boot camps" that teach essential tools like Python, Machine Learning, and Slurm, ensuring students outside of traditional computer science majors gain mastery over high-value technical skills.
Empowering Students through Peer Mentorship
Central to the project’s success is the HPC Student Fellows Program, a cascaded mentorship model that fosters a self-sustaining support community. Under the guidance of faculty mentors, a team of student fellows serves as technical specialists for the HPC Center. These fellows assist their peers with technical trouble tickets, author new tutorials, and consult on complex research projects. This program not only improves the reach of HPC services across campus but also provides the fellows themselves with professional-grade technical experience, preparing them for leadership roles in industry and academia.
Measuring Impact and Future Innovation
The ripple effect of the Fletcher Jones Foundation’s investment is evident in the dramatic growth of SCU’s computational capacity. Since the grant’s implementation, the university has nearly tripled its computing capacity, significantly increasing the available CPU cores and GPUs through strategic hardware upgrades and corporate equipment gifts valued at over $250,000.
Furthermore, these investments have been augmented by other donors, including generous GPU hardware support from Supermicro and NVIDIA and a new $1 million gift to establish the Stitt Family Distinguished Visiting Professorship in computing. This resource will bring a resident expert to campus annually to tackle computational problems alongside SCU collaborators. In parallel, the university is preparing to join the national "Science DMZ" consortium, a high-speed network infrastructure designed to facilitate the rapid transfer of massive scientific datasets. This connectivity will serve as a critical gateway for SCU faculty to engage in deep, data-intensive research collaborations with national labs and leading research institutions across the country.