SJSU is Vital to San José’s Downtown Future

The following story was originally published in the Silicon Valley Business Journal on May 17, 2024.

Blue and gold adorns the Downtown San José streets and corridors, a tangible reminder that this vibrant city is our home, our history and our future. SJSU is the oldest campus, and the only one in a downtown metropolitan setting, in the nation's largest higher educational system - the California State University. We serve as a major anchor institution and premier partner in the future development of Downtown San José. This is why we are so proud of our announcement late last year that SJSU has leased and is renovating the South tower of the former Signia by Hilton Hotel into student housing for this fall.

In a few short months, as the 2024-25 academic year begins, hundreds of undergraduate students will move up and down the Paseo de San Antonio on their way to and from campus, breathing life and energy into a vital corridor in downtown. We imagine our marching band playing up and down the Paseo and student performances drawing people from all over the region. We imagine co-creating classroom spaces with some of the largest downtown companies, such as Adobe, for our students to learn at the feet of our industries' most accomplished leaders and creators.

The future of downtown San José is inarguably tied to the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) revolution. These world-changing technologies will bring jobs and intellectual energy into our offices, buildings and most certainly to our campus, where SJSU is already leading with experienced faculty and corporate partnerships, preparing our students to be the AI/ML workforce that our tech companies need and desire.

Our impact extends beyond that - the reinvigoration of downtown must include, and is better with, San José State. The Spartans are prepared to be the partners, leaders and innovators that make it happen.

SJSU is already embarking on a joint marketing partnership with the City of San José, including the SJSU signage that unites the downtown community, and places our students into City Hall jobs. This effort builds on our long-standing, nationally recognized partnership with the City, including last year's celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library - one of the first joint university-city libraries in the nation, and hosting cultural arts and humanities programming at Hammer Theatre.

We are 40,000 strong - students, faculty and staff - and we drive an economic impact of more than $4 billion annually across California.

SJSU's value-add is far more than economic benefit. We consider ourselves the "original start-up," an epicenter of innovation and critical workforce for Silicon Valley. SJSU is the second largest research university in the CSU, spending more than $70M in research dollars annually. Our campus' research addresses some of the world's most "wicked problems," including how we will build sustainable cities to serve and house diverse populations into the future.

SJSU sends more than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students into the workforce annually - equipping them with the skills they need to succeed right away in their careers, including harnessing artificial intelligence in a socially responsible way. We are the #1 public university in the nation for accounting salaries for graduates, #2 for marketing salaries, #4 for data science salaries, #5 for engineering salaries and #6 for software developer salaries.

SJSU alumni work in some of the most significant companies in Silicon Valley - approximately 2,000 alumni at Apple, 1,500 each at Google and Kaiser, 1,400 at Intel, 600 at Adobe, 550 at NVidia - and in almost every K-12 institution and County and City offices in Santa Clara County. Our 12,000 STEM and Information and Data Science students, along with students studying education, social sciences and health and human sciences drive change in San José. They graduate workforce-ready thanks to research projects, internships and externships in leading firms throughout the region.

We are very focused on being a key part of centers of innovation and excellence in downtown, places where SJSU can lead in AI technologies and advanced manufacturing, in arts and humanities, and in digital arts. We are in the final stages of developing our Institute for Ethical Technologies, and look forward to sharing more soon.

Our campus, at the epicenter of the future, has generated intellectual strength, activism, and downtown vibrancy since 1871. We will continue to be the city's anchor institution for the next 152 years. To see the downtown draped and lit in blue and gold is a pridepoint, further symbolizing that WE are all Spartans.

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