M. Godfrey Mungal, the new dean of Santa Clara University’s School of Engineering, describes himself as “a teacher who does research,” so he feels he’ll be a great match for SCU’s teaching scholar model of education. “Engineering fits so well with the Jesuit tradition of being able to change the world,” he says. Born in Trinidad, Mungal earned his Ph.D. in aeronautics from Cal Tech and has spent his career focused on turbulence and thermosciences. Before joining the SCU family, he spent more than 20 years at Stanford University, serving as a professor of mechanical engineering, associate dean, associate chair, and director of the High Temperature Gasdynamics Laboratory. He is the author or co-author of more than 150 papers and has won several teaching and advising awards, including Stanford’s Tau Beta Pi award for excellence in undergraduate engineering teaching. Mungal began his duties here Sept. 5, meeting with engineering faculty and getting his bearings before the start of the quarter, but even before that, he was taking in the engineering atmosphere. He was able to tour SCU’s house under construction for the national Solar Decathlon before it shipped to Washington, D.C., describing it as a “tremendous project.”
As dean, Mungal will seek ways to promote the University’s goals of increasing enrollment in the undergraduate and graduate engineering programs, and forming partnerships within the Silicon Valley community to enrich the curricula.
Although the job is new, Mungal is already quite familiar with what it means to be a Bronco. One of his daughters is a 2004 alumna; the other is an SCU sophomore. —SS & DA