STEM for a Better World

Harvey Mudd College Strategic Plan 2025–2035

Our Mission

Harvey Mudd College seeks to educate engineers, scientists and mathematicians well versed in all of these areas and in the humanities, social sciences and the arts so that they may assume leadership in their fields with a clear understanding of the impact of their work on society.

The World Needs Harvey Mudd

The decade before Harvey Mudd College’s founding in 1955 was marked by extraordinary developments—the first electronic computer (UNIVAC), color television broadcasting, the transistor, the photovoltaic cell and the first surgically implanted artificial heart valve as well as medications for asthma, hypertension and rheumatoid arthritis. Amid a Cold War and the space race, artificial satellites were launched, powered by advancements in ballistic missile and thermonuclear technologies.

National leaders recognized the need for a new generation of scientific and technological leaders who could explore innovative solutions to the unprecedented challenges, including human spaceflight to the moon. They wanted leaders who could stand at the intersection of mathematics, chemistry, biology, physics, engineering and computing and help their teams develop new, human-centered solutions to these novel problems. They wanted innovative problem solvers who could work across disciplines and across cultures so that they ask the bold questions required to find innovative solutions.

Back in Claremont, California, our founders believed that integrating the humanities, social sciences and the arts into a rigorous and cross-disciplinary undergraduate STEM curriculum was key to creating this next generation of well-rounded leaders and compassionate problem solvers. They believed it could help students understand how these relationships can impact their work—relationships not just between the liberal arts and the STEM disciplines, but also between their work and its impact on society as well as how societal pressures often shape technologies and scientific advances.

Their idea was an innovative concept in undergraduate STEM education. It would focus on students. It would center the importance of strong undergraduate teaching with hands-on learning to build students’ capability to innovate and solve problems. The curriculum would explore the linkages and tensions between science and engineering on the one hand and the human condition on the other. Harvey Mudd was announced as “a new college of liberal arts emphasizing basic science and engineering.” To this day, we proudly refer to ourselves as the liberal arts college of science and engineering.

Despite its small size, Harvey Mudd College has had an outsized impact on STEM higher education in this country. That’s because our focus has always been our students. From the start, faculty have been focused on teaching excellence and exploring new pedagogical approaches to help students learn, grow and thrive.

More than 60 years ago, our engineering department created the Clinic Program—a unique approach to engineering education that partnered industry with undergraduate student teams to solve real-world problems. This model, later adopted by colleges and universities worldwide, teaches students how to lead and manage teams, ideate and develop innovative solutions, develop written and oral presentations and translate their discoveries for both technical and nontechnical audiences.

Over the last 15 years, faculty members have redesigned curricular and co-curricular approaches in computer science, engineering and our other departments to diversify STEM education and close gender-based gaps in course performance among our students. These advances, which inspired broader change across higher education, helped Harvey Mudd achieve gender parity in STEM in 2014. We continue to recruit and support students from a wide range of backgrounds, ensuring that different perspectives are valued.

More recently, we’ve begun developing a new, innovative approach to preparing future STEM leaders to address climate change through joint major programs that partner STEM disciplines with deep study in climate science and policy.

Throughout our history, the Harvey Mudd College community has reached across disciplines and across departments to collaborate and develop unique solutions to help prepare our students to lead and address the greatest challenges facing our world.

Each of us believes in living our mission every day.

Our faculty live our mission by advancing innovative curricular approaches that strengthen learning outcomes for all students. They explore and advance pedagogical improvements and share what they learn so that others can benefit from their innovations in teaching. They understand the critical importance of research and practical, hands-on learning as keys to deepening our students’ understanding of STEM disciplines and fueling their innovative problem-solving.

Our students throw themselves into a rigorous STEM curriculum that demands they collaborate to be successful. They begin with a foundational Core—a set of coordinated courses that engages every department on our campus—biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics, physics and humanities, social sciences and the arts. Beyond the Core, more than a quarter of their coursework is completed through courses in the humanities, social sciences and the arts, including a specialization. Students deepen their knowledge in their major field of study and by completing a senior capstone requiring either a research thesis or a Clinic project. Through these experience-based learning opportunities, they live our mission by gaining knowledge and learning to translate it by presenting on campus, to industry partners or at academic conferences around the world.

Our staff live our mission by collaborating across departments and offices to support and empower every student so that they can be at their best. From managing the campus infrastructure to providing a welcoming living, learning and working environment for our community, our staff members partner with one another and with the faculty to provide exceptional experiences in our co-curricular and curricular programs.

Finally, our alumni live our mission every day by being the leaders, inventors and innovators who discover new technologies, cure or develop new treatments for diseases, identify creative solutions to address climate change, launch new companies to address critical societal needs, teach new generations of students, and elevate our culture through innovations in music, theater and film.

The deep relationships forged here—among students and faculty, among the liberal arts and STEM disciplines, among teaching and research—help prepare our students to graduate as creative thinkers, leaders and innovators who can collaborate across disciplines and across continents to develop human-centered, novel approaches to address the most important problems impacting the world around them.

For 70 years, our unwavering focus on students and our mission has guided us. As we envision the next decade, our community’s creativity and agility position us to continue innovating and sharing our discoveries to benefit others.

This is how we live our mission—and why the world needs Harvey Mudd now more than ever.

Read the full plan at STEM for a Better World.