Undergraduate Education at St. Edward’s University

Whatever you want to be, be it fully.

At St. Ed's, your college experience will be personalized just for you. Purposefully. Meaningfully.

From your first day on campus, you’ll be paired with a success coach, who will help customize your St. Edward’s experience to allow you to reach your goals. Success coaches are experts at pinpointing the exact experiences that amplify your talents — and set you up for a career that counts.

Not sure what you want to do? That’s OK, and it’s why we’re here.

Everything you do at St. Edward’s — classes, internships, research, service projects, study abroad — will help you discover what you love and how to turn that into a career. Your success coach and professors will help you decide on next steps and the best opportunities for you.

You’ll be living in a community that’s here to help you thrive. You’ll go to school in a city that offers world-class opportunities. With a 15:1 student-faculty ratio, you’ll never be a face in the crowd. Professors want to be in the classroom, and they’re ready to get to know you.

Top 10

Best University in the West
by U.S. News & World Report

Full-time success coaches for first-year students

100+

Majors and minors

Purposeful Internships

Leslie Rios ’20, Political Science major
Rios arrived at St. Edward’s interested in politics and pursued a range of classes to find the ones that inspired her, including Comparative Politics, The American Court System and Political Theory. She didn’t want to miss a thing, so she immediately joined an array of student organizations, including student government and the Latino Student Leaders Organization. She worked on a major research project on border policy with one of her professors. Rios interned for the Office of the Attorney General and the Texas House of Representatives. As part of a recent Service Break Experience to Peru, she ditched technology and spent time reflecting on her years at St. Edward’s and where she wants to go next.

Fulbright Award
winners since 2008

70k

Hours students contributed
to community service last year

Meaningful Connections

Joseph Ramirez ’19, Biology major
Ramirez came to St. Edward’s intending to go to med school — but quickly realized he wanted to pursue something with business. Through the School of Natural Sciences, Ramirez started working at Capital Factory, an Austin-based accelerator for tech startups. He also completed biomedical research with one of his professors. He says he learned that the approach of asking Why are we doing it this way? Why are we using this material? applies just as much to data analytics as it does to science. In addition, Ramirez interned for the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce and Cortez.

15:1

Student-faculty
ratio

100%

Goal for all students to participate in experiential learning

Experiential Learning

Eduardo "Lalo" Carrillo ’22, Biology major
Carrillo joined St. Edward's as a biology major where he spent time researching neuroscience. To learn more about the sciences, Lalo joined a neuroscience research team where he learned about model organism C. elegans and procedures like western blotting and fluorescent microscopy. He also participated in the group Ciencias sin Fronteras allowing him to build a community of Hispanic science majors while teaching others about prominent Hispanic scientists.

Learn more about Carrillo's St. Ed's experience in our featured episode of The College Tour, featured on Amazon Prime.

Lessons from a Hilltop Hive

See how a Biology professor and students tracked the health of bees in colonies on campus.

Collaborating on research

David Weier and Priyanka Ranchod are among several students who worked with Assistant Professor of Biology Matthew Steffenson to research what makes bees susceptible to colony collapse disorder (CCD), a threat to honeybee populations worldwide.

Suiting up for work

Biology students and Assistant Professor of Biology Matthew Steffenson put on bee suits to prepare to set up two bee colonies on the St. Edward’s campus. Once the colonies are installed, students will collect bees to bring back to the lab for research.

Gathering nectar

A bee collects nectar from wild flowers on the St. Edward’s campus. “Statistically, one out of every three bites of food you eat was pollinated by honeybees. Without bees, human health completely crumbles,” says Biology and Pre-Med major Kia Baeza.

Feeding the bees

Biology students David Weier and Priyanka Ranchod measure the amount of sugar water in a container. The water supplies supplemental food for the recently installed bee colonies as they acclimate to their new surroundings.

Installing the hives

Assistant Professor of Biology Matthew Steffenson and undergraduate students begin setting up two hives of about 30,000 honeybees on the St. Edward’s University campus.

Saying hello

A Biology student breathes over the bees to make them buzz. Carbon dioxide attracts the bees and alerts them to the presence of others.

Collecting sample bees

Biology students collect sample bees at the bee colony to bring back to the lab for research. In the lab, students run biochemical assays to measure the levels of proteins in the bees’ hemolymph, the equivalent of blood in bees.

Counting the samples

Using a vial for each bee they collected, Ranchod and Weier gathered sample bees from the hives — 50 bees per hive, twice a week, for seven weeks — in order to conduct their research.

Searching for the queen

Assistant Professor Matthew Steffenson and Biology students look for the queen bee in a honeycomb formation. Steffenson wanted to understand how moving a colony affects the bees’ stress response and ability to fight off infection.

Growing the hive

The queen bee, with a larger abdomen, lays eggs in the center of the masses. Each colony has a single queen who can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day in the summer. Over time, if the hives are healthy, they will grow to between 30,000 and 50,000 bees each.

Examining the evidence

To study the health of a sample bee’s hemolymph, which supports the bee’s immune system, Ranchod removes the bee’s abdomen with a scalpel. The bee research is being conducted in a lab in the John Williams Brooks Natural Sciences Center at St. Edward’s.

Learning through process

Biology majors Ranchod, Baeza and Weier collect hemolymph from bee samples. “All of us in the lab have similar passions. We’re here because we want to learn new things, and we enjoy the process of research,” says Ranchod.

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