Just a couple of miles from campus, Levi’s Stadium is gearing as much as host two of the world’s greatest sporting occasions: Super Bowl LX and the FIFA World Cup. For Santa Clara University college students, that proximity isn’t simply thrilling information—it’s an open door.
Thanks to the Career Center’s rising relationship with the San Francisco 49ers, dozens of Broncos had the prospect to step straight into the guts of Bay Area sports activities enterprise on the 49ers’ third annual “Students at the Stadium” profession immersion occasion.
“One thing that makes Santa Clara so special is that we’re really in the middle of it all. Not just with tech and Silicon Valley, but in so many other industries as well,” says Melissa Thiriez, the Career Center’s director of employer relations and partnerships. “This event highlights our ability as a university to connect students to employers and to what the Bay Area is about.”
This yr, greater than 50 Santa Clara undergraduate and graduate college students have been chosen from tons of of candidates throughout a number of universities to take part in Students on the Stadium, with numerous majors spanning from advertising and marketing to engineering.
Over the previous few years, Thiriez notes, college students throughout disciplines have requested for extra alternatives to know office tradition firsthand—not simply hear recruiting pitches. Meeting this demand, the Career Center hosted its first Spring Break AI Immersion earlier this yr, that includes website visits to business leaders like Nutanix, Adobe, and HP. This fall, they’ve continued these in-individual treks to different massive-title employers, together with Verkada and Western Digital.
“Students really want an insider’s perspective—what a workplace actually feels like, what a day in the life looks like,” Thiriez explains. “The hiring environment right now is tough. Students need to network, build relationships, and ask great questions to stand out from the pack.”
Students on the Stadium delivered precisely that. The day included hearth chats, breakout periods, and small-group networking with 49ers workers throughout advertising and marketing, fan engagement, analytics, enterprise operations, social media, and ticketing.
For many college students, the occasion was each eye-opening and affirming.
For lifelong Niners fan Emma Alvarez ’28, a freshman communication main, the occasion was a little bit of a ‘pinch-me’ second. “Meeting the people behind this incredible team was so amazing; they were so welcoming and helpful.” She added that the recommendation on networking and interview preparation is one thing she’ll “definitely be using” quickly.
Meanwhile, Brett de la Fuente ’27, a bioengineering main on the pre-med monitor, mentioned the occasion confirmed that “even for somebody like me, whose major doesn’t have the most direct connections to the sports industry, you can still build bridges.” He even met an intern who shared his main and profession objectives—proof, he mentioned, that expertise like drawback-fixing and information fluency are valued throughout the sports activities world.
According to Thiriez, since Santa Clara started attending Students on the Stadium, a number of college students have gone on to work for the 49ers, together with Jasmine Santacruz ’27 and Mo Lichaa ’26 of their Entertainment Operations, and Libby Slater ’25, MS ’26, who secured a full-time function on the Game Presentation Field Team and is at present finishing Santa Clara’s new graduate program in Sports Business.
“We’ve built incredible momentum with these employer partnerships, and seeing students engage so deeply—and find meaningful career paths—only motivates us to keep expanding these opportunities,” Thiriez remarks.