Relationship-rich education

The University of Silicon Andhra institutional culture is rooted in relationships. Relationships drive student success and institutional excellence. Student relationships with faculty, staff, and peers matters most.

Faculty build active relationships with students by providing inspiring teaching in engaging classrooms and beyond. Faculty know students by their names, understand students’ career aspirations, identify students’ strengths and areas that need improvement through formative feedback, and engage in one-on-one interactions and conversations with students.

Staff connect students with academic resources, industry mentors, internship and post-graduation employment opportunities. We encourage and promote peer-to-peer student interactions through recitation sessions, tutoring sessions, and student professional organizations.

We do not view the two-year study at the University of Silicon Andhra as a transaction. We view this as an opportunity for helping students realize their career aspirations, challenge them to explore the big questions of their lives, and establish life-long relationships.

Career-focused curricula and courses

The program is exclusively designed to prepare students for challenging and demanding careers in the computing industry. Our curriculum and courses are rigorous, challenging, and taught in a non-traditional way by leading experts.

All courses involve collaborative problem-solving and learning in a team environment. The program design is based on the premise that professional skills are as critical as technical skills. Just like the development of technical skills, professional skills development is infused throughout the curriculum.

We help students showcase their technical, professional, and personal accomplishments via personal websites, GitHub code repositories, contributions to open-source projects, and Linkedln profiles.

Industry-immersive program

Students experience frequent interactions with industry professionals through in-person guest lectures. In addition, we pair students with industry mentors who meet frequently.

We help students secure industry certifications by providing coaching delivered by industry professionals. This coaching is held in the evenings on campus as outside formal classroom activities. There is no fee for coaching sessions.

At UofSA, your career preparation starts when you set foot on the campus through a two full days of impactful orientation sessions.

Integration between theory and practice

We practice the maxim that theories without tools are useless, and tools without underlying theories are unsuitable for professional practice. Teaching and learning do not exclusively depend on textbooks.

We employ non-textbook-centric teaching and learning using interactive computational notebooks that promote inquiry, experimentation, and reproducibility (e.g., quarto documents, JupyterLab notebooks). In other words, we use computation as a powerful learning aid. Lab and lecture are indistinguishable, as lab components are intertwined with theory.

We reinforce theory and practice beyond formal classroom learning via recitation sessions, peer tutoring, study groups, and open-source projects.

Professional skills development

Professional skills are as important as the technical skills. We take your professional skills (also known as soft skills) far beyond oral and written communication skills. As professional skills development takes a prolonged period of time, they are integrated into all courses.

The program takes a holistic approach to the development of professional skills. It includes learning how to learn, a love for lifelong learning, professional networking, team leadership, organizing and planning, empathic listening, collaboration, conflict management, project management, decision making, providing and receiving constructive feedback, and engaging in difficult conversations.

Student leadership development

The University of Silicon Andhra hosts local chapters of national societies, including ACM, IEEE Computer Society, and Women in Technology. Students run these local chapters and participate in national activities. They gain access to domain experts and invite them for campus visits and seminars.

Through participation in various roles, students develop their leadership skills, master new technical skills, establish professional relationships, and enrich their educational experiences.

Silicon Valley advantage

The University of Silicon Andhra is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the preeminent technology hub known for transformative and groundbreaking high technology innovations.

Silicon Valley is home to the headquarters of many of the world’s largest high-tech corporations, including Apple, Hewlett Packard, Google, Intel, Cisco, Facebook, YouTube, Broadcom, and Nvidia. It is also home to thousands of startups.

Silicon Valley is world-renowned for excellent economic opportunities, multiculturalism and diversity, and fabulous year-round weather.