{"id":325349,"date":"2026-05-20T23:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T23:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/325349\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T23:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T23:51:10","slug":"university-of-san-diego-breaks-ground-on-a-75-million-stem-center-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/325349\/","title":{"rendered":"University of San Diego breaks ground on a $75 million STEM center \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The University of San Diego has broken ground on a science, technology, engineering and mathematics center that will enable the school to expand its modest but growing offerings in these disciplines and better compete for STEM-oriented students.<\/p>\n<p>The three-story facility has been named the Shiley STEM Initiative building in honor of philanthropist Darlene Marcos Shiley, one of the largest benefactors of USD,\u00a0a private Catholic university located in San Diego\u2019s Linda Vista neighborhood.<\/p>\n<p>Shiley donated $75 million to USD in 2024 to ensure that the 70,000-square-foot center would be built. It is the largest gift in the school\u2019s 77-year history.<\/p>\n<p>USD established an undergraduate engineering program in 1987. That evolved into the Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering after Shiley made a $20 million donation in 2012.<\/p>\n<p>The program also received a $10 million donation from Raffaela and John Belanich in 2018, mostly to expand engineering facilities.<\/p>\n<p>USD is trying to establish itself as a STEM power in a county that is home to UC San Diego, which has about 10,000 engineering students, and San Diego State University, which has roughly 4,200 such students. USD has fewer than 1,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The University of San Diego has broken ground on a science, technology, engineering and mathematics center that will&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,15,181,10923,23,100,74,84,76,75,1696],"class_list":["post-325349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california","tag-education","tag-latest-headlines","tag-linda-vista","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}