The Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) campus, home to 3,000 full-time undergraduates from over 70 countries, is conveniently located with easy access to downtown Manchester, New Hampshire’s largest city. Manchester has been named one of the top college towns in the country, and with the mountains, beaches, and Boston only an hour away, students say SNHU feels like home.
Within the past five years, SNHU has built a new welcome center, an athletic stadium, several residence halls, and a 50,000-square-foot Library Learning Commons. SNHU also recently completed an engineering and aeronautics facility to house its new College of Engineering, Technology, and Aeronautics (with another, larger facility on the way), underscoring SNHU’s dedication to STEM programs.
SNHU strives to provide students with an environment that is perfect for both work and play. An outdoor ice rink can be found on campus (embracing New England’s famously snowy climate), and the new athletic complex adds to SNHU’s already impressive athletics program, which consistently finds itself at the top of NCAA Division II leagues.
Engineering Success
In 2017, SNHU unveiled the College of Engineering, Technology, and Aeronautics (CETA), home to eight great majors — Aeronautical Engineering, Air Traffic Management, Aviation Management, Aviation Operations and Management, Computer Science, Construction Management, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering — that underscore the University’s commitment to STEM-related programs. CETA gives SNHU the opportunity to serve yet another growing subset of students, as well as the chance to put cutting-edge resources in the hands of those students. Over the next three years, SNHU will invest $50 million in CETA, an investment that includes the construction of a new, state-of-the-art academic building that will house the college and its engineering and aeronautics labs. The new building will augment SNHU’s existing CETA facility, which boasts an impressive array of labs, simulators, and other resources.
Outside the Classroom and Studying Abroad
Work in a boutique or culinary lab in Italy. Live with a family in France. Serve children in Chile. Complete a hands-on community project in London. Intern at a local business in Greece. Through SNHU, study-abroad opportunities go deeper. Students attend classes at partner institutions on five continents while also serving in the local communities and participating in extracurricular activities that extend beyond traditional field trips. In terms of tuition and room and board, studying abroad will not cost more than living on campus. SNHU will also pick up the tab for a student’s flight (up to $1,000) and the full cost of travel health insurance.
Learning takes place in many other ways as well. Students have taken computers to classrooms in South Africa, read to kids in local schools, interned at the Beijing Olympics, played on nationally ranked teams, joined a fraternity or sorority, worked as Resident Assistants, been elected to Student Government, and so much more. Recently, a group of students ran a conference in Istanbul before heading to a partner school in Rwanda. It’s once-in-a-lifetime opportunities like these that transform the college experience.
Internships and Real-World Experience
SNHU is dedicated to making sure that graduates are moving into meaningful careers when they graduate. Many universities leave it up to individual students to take advantage of career development services. At SNHU, it is built directly into the curriculum with SNHU 303, a required course that includes résumé writing and critiquing, mock interviews, company and industry research, and networking strategies.
SNHU’s top-notch Career and Professional Development Center (CPDC) also offers counseling and skill-building sessions, organizes company site visits, and brings businesses and organizations to campus to interview students for jobs and internships. SNHU has established relationships with a number of high-profile employers who provide internship and job opportunities, including Fidelity Investments, Google, IBM, New York Life, Walt Disney World, LEGO Systems, the Boston Celtics, the Boston Red Sox, and Marriott International.
With SNHU’s national reputation, and a base of over 70,000 alumni, graduates are seeing their employment opportunities expand. Take, for example, Morgan Munson, a recent graduate who now works for the Miami Heat, or Mike Capalbo, who landed his “dream job” for ESPN.
Private College Made Affordable
College should change students’ lives, not break the bank — SNHU believes a private education should be affordable. That’s why SNHU students with a high school GPA of 2.5 and higher can earn up to $20,000 in academic scholarships in addition to generous financial aid packages. More than 90 percent of the students at SNHU receive some form of financial aid, and SNHU has officially frozen tuition for the second consecutive year.