Silicon Valley Engineering Scholarship (SVES) 2009 Scholarship Luncheon

The Davidson College of Engineering received a powerful embrace from our Silicon Valley community on November 18. Corporate and individual donors, alumni, and friends of the university came together with scholarship recipients, department and university representatives to recognize and celebrate another year of generosity, commitment, and appreciation.

The SVE scholarships help attract bright and talented applicants and impact these students’ educational experience and performance. Especially in this tough economic time, students feel blessed to be embraced by such generosity and commitment from the sponsors. In individual testimonies, scholarship recipients demonstrated the hardships mentioned by Provost Gerry Selter, including fee increases, furloughs, and other budgetary impacts.

Mr. Zain Saidin (Executive VP and Chief Engineer for KLA-Tencor) was the guest speaker, and he empowered scholarship recipients and everyone in the room with these three words: Innovation, Collaboration, and Execution. All three aspects are needed for success in engineering. Invention requires cash to create ideas. Innovation uses ideas to create cash. Global collaboration to execute an innovative idea is the key to success. One last advice Mr. Saidin provided to students was to show up, get dirty, work hard to build stuff, complete work on time the way it was asked, and do not carry an entitlement mentality.

To the scholarship sponsors, we salute you and thank you for not only providing the scholarships to our talented students, but also for your mentorship in the form of internships and powerful words to take on the road to success.

Thank you to our scholarship donors:

  • Applied Materials
  • Atmel
  • Walter C. Benzing Memorial Fund
  • David Brown
  • Cadence
  • Cisco
  • Charles W. Davidson
  • Ditmore Family
  • Flextronics
  • Hewlett-Packard
  • KLA-Tencor
  • Lam Research
  • Emma E. Legg Memorial Fund
  • Lockheed Martin
  • Doug Munson
  • National Semiconductor
  • Novellus
  • Rockwell Collins
  • SJSU Alumni Association
  • Harry Wong Memorial Fund
  • Xilinx

To read the scholarship awardees’ essays, download the 2009 Scholarship Recognition Luncheon program.

Tags: