A Jesuit institution that values a person-oriented approach to education grounded in ethics may not sound like the best fit for the center, but Debora Shoquist thought otherwise.
Shoquist, Nvidia’s executive vice president for operations and a Santa Clara University graduate, made the multimillion-dollar donation to Santa Clara to create the Cunningham Shoquist Center for Applied AI and Human Potential, a hub for various departments on campus to explore and collaborate on AI tools.
“Right now, with AI, there’s an opportunity for Santa Clara to catch this wave, to determine how to use AI in a way that can make people’s lives better,” Shoquist said in a video released by Santa Clara. “I think that’s very synergistic with the Santa Clara values — developing the whole person in a way that allows them to contribute and shape and help others — and I do believe that used right AI can be extremely powerful in that area.”
Santa Clara University did not disclose the amount of the gift, but a person familiar with the donation said it was nearly $25 million.
The Cunningham Shoquist Center will become the fourth of SCU’s “Centers of Distinction,” joining the Miller Center for Global Impact, the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education and the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. It won’t have its own building but will be housed at the Sobrato Campus for Discovery and Innovation and will be part of the School of Engineering.
“AI is involving incredibly quickly,” School of Engineering Dean Kendra Sharp said. “I think it makes it more important that people not have only technical competence but that they have the critical thinking and communication skills to act thoughtfully in the moment and use AI as a tool for the common good.”
Sharp said the center soon will be hiring faculty and determining what qualities it’s seeking in an executive director. It also will fund grants for Santa Clara faculty, as well as student fellowships, hackathons and other events and projects. The center will aim to advance applied AI research in several areas including healthcare and medical imaging, information access, intelligent robotics and human-computer interaction.
Sharp also sees the center as a go-to hub for academic and industry collaboration in Silicon Valley, enhancing partnerships between SCU and valley tech companies.
“We will be able to be a convener for people and organizations, including industry, that are interested in enhancing the human capability and translating AI for these real world challenges,” Sharp said.
SCU President Julie Sullivan said she was part of the early discussions with Shoquist — who graduated from Santa Clara in 1976 and joined its board of trustees in 2023 — about where her support could make a difference on campus.
“We landed on artificial intelligence fairly quickly, given the fact that artificial intelligence is having such a transformative impact on society and is something that our students and faculty and staff across all the disciplines at our university are grappling with,” Sullivan said.
The university wants to be on the forefront of developing AI applications, she said, while also ensuring they don’t diminish human flourishing.
“We embrace technological innovation, but we think that it has to develop side-by-side with our humanity,” she said. “How do we embrace that technology as a companion but not as a substitute for our humanity?”
Shoquist and her older sister, G. Lee Cunningham, grew up in Eureka, where their father was president of a metal fabrication business. Cunningham earned a masters degree at Santa Clara and encouraged her sister to follow in her footsteps so she could expand her horizons beyond their small, Northern California hometown.
Cunningham now runs their father’s company, BT Metals, which is supplying materials for the BART Silicon Valley project.
“My sister is an integral part of my life. I went to Santa Clara University because of her belief in me and her encouragement to venture forward and take risks to reach my full potential,” Shoquist, who has been with Nvidia for nearly 20 years, said in a statement.
“This center will help Santa Clara and its students truly realize their full potential,” she said. “Santa Clara has the industry proximity, the leadership vision, the values-orientation, and the faculty expertise and interest to make a tremendous impact with AI — and to teach its students how to use AI in the ways the industry is looking for.”
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