WikiPortallus: Stanford University.html

Stanford was founded in 1885 by the former Governor of California and future U.S. Senator Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, as a memorial to their only son, Leland Stanford Jr., who died of typhoid in Europe a few weeks before his 16th birthday. The Stanfords used their farm lands to create the university, and hoped to establish a major research university in the West, the first of its kind. In addition, the university was established as a co-educational institution, enrolling both male and female students.

Stanford enrolls about 6,700 undergraduates from all over the United States and the world, as well as about 8,000 graduate students. There are approximately over 160,000 living Stanford alumni, both undergraduate and graduate. ^[6]There are also 18 Nobel Prize laureates affiliated with Stanford. The University, because of its close location to Silicon Valley, offers strong programs in business management and engineering; many Stanford alumni have founded companies associated with technology, such as HP and Google. It is also known as a highly selective school, with competitive admissions cycles. It currently ranks as the 4th best university for undergraduates in the annual U.S. News and World Report best colleges list.

History

Stanford was founded by railroad magnate and California Governor Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane Stanford. It is named in honor of their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died of typhoid just before his 16th birthday. They decided to dedicate a university to their only son, and Leland Stanford told his wife, "The children of California shall be our children."

The story that a lady in "faded gingham" and a man in a "homespun threadbare suit" went to visit the president of Harvard about making a donation, were rebuffed, and then founded Stanford is untrue. ^[7]

Locals and members of the university community are known to refer to the school as The Farm, a nod to the fact that the university is located on the former site of Leland Stanford's horse farm.

The University's founding grant was written on November 11, 1885, and accepted by the first Board of Trustees on November 14. The cornerstone was laid on May 14, 1887, and the University officially opened on October 1, 1891, to 559 students and 15 faculty members, seven of whom hailed from Cornell University^[8]. At the opening of the school, there was no tuition for students, a program which lasted into the 1930s [2]. Among the first class of students was a young future president Herbert Hoover, who would claim to be first student ever at Stanford, by virtue of having been the first person in the first class to sleep in the dormitory.^[9]

On October 1, 1891, Stanford University opened its doors after six years of planning and building. In the early morning hours, construction workers were still preparing the Inner Quadrangle for the opening ceremonies. The great arch at the western end had been backed with panels of red and white cloth to form an alcove where the dignitaries would sit. Behind the stage was a life-size portrait of Leland Stanford, Jr., in whose memory the university was founded. About 2,000 seats, many of them sturdy classroom chairs, were set up in the 3-acre Quad, and they soon proved insufficient for the growing crowd. By midmorning, people were streaming across the brown fields on foot. Riding horses, carriages and farm wagons were hitched to every fence and at half past ten the special train from San Francisco came puffing almost to the university buildings on the temporary spur that had been used during construction.^[10]

The school was established as a coeducational institution although it maintained a cap on female enrollment for many years. This was based on a concern of Jane Stanford, who worried that without such a cap, the school could become an all-female institution, which she did not feel would be an appropriate memorial for her son.

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed parts of the Main Quad (including the original iteration of Memorial Church) as well as the gate that first marked the entrance of the school; rebuilding on a somewhat less grandiose scale began immediately.

The official motto of Stanford University, selected by the Stanfords, is "Die Luft der Freiheit weht." Translated from the German, this quotation of Ulrich von Hutten means "The wind of freedom blows." At the time of the school's establishment, German had recently replaced Latin as the supraregional language of science and philosophy.

Campus

Stanford University owns 8,183 acres (33.1 km²) which makes it the largest university campus in the world, in terms of contiguous area.^{citation needed} Moscow State University, which is built vertically and has a large floor area, is the largest university, but occupies a smaller piece of land. Berry College occupies 28,000 acres (110 km²) of contiguous land, and Paul Smith's College occupies 14,200 acres (57 km²) of land in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, but neither is a university. Duke University occupies 8,709 acres (35.2 km²), but they are not contiguous.^[11] The United States Air Force Academy has a contiguous 18,000 acres (73 km²) at its disposal, but it is not a university. Dartmouth College, with a large land grant,^[12] owns more than 50,000 acres (200 km²), but only 269 of those are part of the campus.^[13]^[14]

In the summer of 1886, when the campus was first being planned, Stanford brought the president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Francis Amasa Walker, and prominent Boston landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted westward for consultations. Olmsted worked out the general concept for the campus and its buildings, rejecting a hillside site in favor of the more practical flatlands. Charles Allerton Coolidge then developed this concept in the style of his late mentor, Henry Hobson Richardson, in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, characterized by rectangular stone buildings linked by arcades of half-circle arches. The original campus was also designed in the Spanish-colonial style common to California known as Mission Revival. The red tile roofs and solid sandstone masonry hold a distinctly Californian appearance and most of the subsequently erected buildings have maintained consistent exteriors. The red tile roofs and bright blue skies common to the region are a famously complementary combination.

Much of this first construction was destroyed by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake but the University retains the Quad, the old Chemistry Building and Encina Hall (the residence of Herbert Hoover, John Steinbeck, and Anthony Kennedy during their times at Stanford). After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake inflicted further damage, the University implemented a billion-dollar capital improvement plan to retrofit and renovate older buildings for new, up-to-date uses.

Stanford University is actually its own census-designated place which is part of unincorporated Santa Clara County though some of the university land is within the city limits of Palo Alto. For many intents and purposes it can be considered a part of the city of Palo Alto; they share the same school district and fire department though the police forces are separate. The United States Postal Service has assigned it two ZIP codes: 94305 for campus mail and 94309 for P.O. box mail. It lies within area code 650 and campus phone numbers start with 723, 724, 725, 736, 497, or 498.

The physicist Werner Heisenberg was once asked if he knew where Stanford University was located. "I believe it is on the west coast of the United States, not far from San Francisco. There is also another school nearby, and they steal each other's axes," he replied, referring to Stanford's rivalry with the University of California, Berkeley.^[15]

Landmarks

Faculty residences

One of the benefits of being a Stanford faculty member is the "Faculty Ghetto," where faculty members can live within walking or biking distance of campus. Similar to a condominium, the houses can be bought and sold but the land under the houses is rented. The Faculty Ghetto is composed of land owned entirely by Stanford. A faculty member cannot buy a lot, but he or she can buy a house, renting the underlying land on a 99-year lease. The cost of owning a house in Silicon Valley remains high, however, and the average price of single family homes on campus is actually higher than in Palo Alto. The rapid capital gains of Silicon Valley landowners are enjoyed by Stanford, although Stanford, by the terms of its founding cannot sell the land. Houses in the "Ghetto" may appreciate or may depreciate but not as rapidly as overall Silicon Valley land prices.

Off campus

Academics

The University enrolls approximately 6,700 undergraduates and 8,000 graduate students. The University has approximately 1,700 faculty members. The largest part of the faculty (40 percent) are affiliated with the medical school, while a third serve in the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Governance

Research Centers and institutes

Libraries and digital resources

The Stanford University Libraries hold a collection of more than eight million volumes. The main library in the SU library system is Green Library. Meyer Library holds the vast East Asia collection and the student-accessible media resources. Other significant collections include the Lane Medical Library, Terman Engineering Library, Jackson Business Library, Falconer Biology Library, Cubberley Education Library, Branner Earth Sciences Library, Swain Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Library, Jonsson Government Documents collection, Crown Law Library, the Stanford Auxiliary Library (SAL), the SLAC Library, the Hoover library, the Miller Marine Biology Library at Hopkins Marine Station, the Music Library, and the University's special collections. There are 19 libraries in all.

Digital libraries and text services include HighWire Press, the Humanities Digital Information Services group and the Media Microtext Center. Several academic departments and some residences also have their own libraries.

Stanford is a founding and charter member of CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, the nonprofit organization which provides extremely high-performance Internet-based networking to California's K-20 research and education community.

Admission and rankings

Stanford is one of the most selective universities in the U.S. In 2006, The acceptance rates at the university's law school (7.7 percent), medical school (3.3 percent), and business school (7.9 percent) are also among the lowest in the country. For the Class of 2012, Stanford admitted 2,400 students from a undergraduate applicant pool of 25,298 candidates, resulting in an overall admissions rate of 9.49%, the lowest percentage in the University's 117-year history.^[16]

Stanford University's undergraduate program is ranked fourth among national universities by U.S. News and World Report (USNWR).^[17], ^[18] Stanford University is ranked second among world universities and second among universities in the Americas by Shanghai Jiao Tong University,^[19] nineteenth among world universities in the THES-QS World University Rankings,^[20]^[21], seventh among national universities by The Washington Monthly,^[22] second among "global universities" by Newsweek,^[23] and in the first-tier among national universities by The Center for Measuring University Performance.^[24] Stanford received $911 million in private donations for the year ended August 31, 2006, the most of all U.S. universities and seventh highest of all charities.^[25] Stanford announced recently that it would use some of its endowment to cover the $36,000-a-year tuition for students whose families make under $100,000 a year. For students with family income under $60,000, living costs will also be paid.^[26]

Arts

Stanford University is home to the Cantor Center for Visual Arts museum with 24 galleries, sculpture gardens, terraces, and a courtyard first established in 1891 by Jane and Leland Stanford as a memorial to their only child. Notably, the Center possesses the largest collection of Rodin works outside of Paris, France. There are also a large number of outdoor art installations throughout the campus, primarily sculptures, but some murals as well. The Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden near Roble Hall features handmade wood carvings and "totem poles."

Stanford has a thriving artistic and musical community, including theater groups such as Ram's Head Theatrical Society and the Stanford Shakespeare Society, award-winning a cappella music groups, such as the Mendicants, Counterpoint, Stanford Fleet Street Singers, Harmonics, Mixed Company, Testimony, Talisman, Everyday People, Raagapella, and a group dedicated to performing the works of Gilbert and Sullivan--the Stanford Savoyards.

Stanford's dance community is one of the most vibrant in the country, with an active dance division (in the Drama Department) and over 30 different dance-related student groups, including the Stanford Band's Dollie dance troupe.

Perhaps most distinctive of all is its social and vintage dance community, cultivated by dance historian Richard Powers and enjoyed by hundreds of students and thousands of alumni. Stanford hosts monthly informal dances (called Jammix) and large quarterly dance events, including Ragtime Ball (fall), the Stanford Viennese Ball (winter), and Big Dance (spring). Stanford also boasts a student-run swing performance troupe called Swingtime and several alumni performance groups, including Decadance and the Academy of Danse Libre.

The creative writing program brings young writers to campus via the Stegner Fellowships and other graduate scholarship programs. This Boy's Life author Tobias Wolff teaches writing to undergraduates and graduate students. Knight Journalism Fellows are invited to spend a year at the campus taking seminars and courses of their choice. There is also an extracurricular writing and performance group called the Stanford Spoken Word Collective, which also serves as the school's poetry slam team.

Stanford also hosts various publishing courses for professionals. Stanford Professional Publishing Course, which has been offered on campus since the late 1970s, brings together international publishing professionals to discuss changing business models in magazine and book publishing.

Student life

Stanford has been coeducational since its founding; however, between approximately 1899 and 1933, there was a policy in place limiting female enrollment to 500 students and maintaining a ratio of three males for every one female student. By the late 1960s the "ratio" was about 2:1 for undergraduates and much more skewed at the graduate level, except in the humanities. As of 2005, undergraduate enrollment is split nearly evenly between the sexes, but male enrollees outnumber female enrollees about 2:1 at the graduate level.

Student government

The Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) is the student government for Stanford University. Its elected leadership consists of the Undergraduate Senate elected by the undergraduate students, the Graduate Student Council elected by the graduate students, and the President and Vice President elected as a ticket by the entire student body.

Dormitories and student housing

Stanford places a strong focus on residential education. Approximately 98 percent of undergraduate students live in on-campus university housing, with another five percent living in Stanford housing at the overseas campuses. According to the Stanford Housing Assignments Office, undergraduates live in 77 different houses, including dormitories, co-ops, row houses, fraternities and sororities. Residences are located generally just outside the campus core, within ten minutes (on foot or bike) of most classrooms and libraries. Some residences are for freshmen only; others give priority to sophomores, others to both freshmen and sophomores; some are available for upperclass students only, and some are open to all four classes. All residences are coed except for seven all-male fraternities, three all-female sororities, and one all-female house. In most residences men and women live on the same floor, but a few dorms are configured for men and women to live on separate floors.^[27] In April 2008, Stanford unveiled a new pilot plan to test out gender-neutral housing in five campus residences, allowing males and females to live in the same room. This was after concerted student pressure, as well as the institution of similar policies peer institutions such as Wesleyan, Oberlin, Clark, Dartmouth, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania. ^[28]

Several residences are considered theme houses, with a cross-cultural, academic/language, or focus theme. Examples include Chicano themed Casa Zapata, French language oriented French House, and arts-focused Kimball.^[29]

Another famous style of housing at Stanford are the co-ops. These houses feature cooperative living, where residents and eating associates each contribute work to keep the house running. Students often help cook meals for the co-op, or clean the shared spaces. The co-ops are Chi Theta Chi, Columbae, Enchanted Broccoli Forest (EBF), Hammarskjöld (which is also the International Theme House), Kairos, Terra, and Synergy.^[30]

At any time, around 50 percent of the graduate population lives on campus. When construction concludes on the new Munger graduate residence, this percentage will probably increase. First-year graduate students are guaranteed housing.

Traditions

Older, now inactive traditions include the Big Game bonfire on Lake Lagunita (a seasonal lake usually dry in the fall) due to the presence of endangered salamanders.

Greek life

Sustainability

Stanford University has worked to bring sustainable practices to more prominent public awareness, as well as to demonstrate through its own campus the possibilities of these practices. The University's dining services purchase 35% of the school's fresh produce from local organic sources. In 2006, about 61% of the school's food waste was diverted through composting, and in 2007 over 75 tons of food waste was recycled through the compost process. Stanford offers free passes for public transportation, and offers monetary incentives to its employees for carpooling. This reduced the frequency of employees driving to work alone by 20% in the past year. Of great interest is the Green Dorm that is currently under construction at Stanford. This dormitory will house between forty and fifty students, have a net carbon emission of zero, and produce more electricity than the building itself uses. In 2008, The Sustainable Endowments Institute awarded Stanford University with a grade of B+ in its annual College Sustainability Report Card, making Stanford one of the top twenty of the 200 colleges and Universities reviewed.^[36] The Aspen Institute ranked the Stanford Graduate School of Business as the #1 MBA program for incorporating social and environmental issues into the training of future business leaders, out of 590 schools worldwide.^[37]

Athletics

Stanford offers 34 varsity sports (18 female, 15 male, one coed), 19 club sports and 37 intramural sports—about 800 students participate in intercollegiate sports. The University offers about 300 athletic scholarships.

The winner of the annual "Big Game" between the Cal and Stanford football teams gains custody of the Stanford Axe. Stanford's football team played in the first Rose Bowl in 1902. Stanford won back-to-back Rose Bowls in 1971 and 1972. Stanford has played in 12 Rose Bowls, most recently in 2000. Stanford's Jim Plunkett won the Heisman Trophy in 1970.

Until 1930, Stanford did not have a "mascot" name for its athletic teams. In that year, the athletic department adopted the name "Indians." In 1972, "Indians" was dropped after a complaint of racial insensitivity was lodged by Native American students at Stanford.

The Stanford sports teams are now officially referred to as the Stanford Cardinal, referring to the deep red color, not the cardinal bird. Cardinal, and later cardinal and white has been the university's official color since the 19th century. The Band's mascot, "The Tree", has become associated with the school in general. Part of the Leland Stanford Junior (pause) University Marching Band (LSJUMB), the tree symbol derives from the El Palo Alto redwood tree on the Stanford and City of Palo Alto seals.

Stanford has won the award for the top ranked collegiate athletic program—the NACDA Director's Cup, formerly known as the Sears Cup, every year for the past thirteen years. The Cup has been offered for fourteen years.

NCAA achievements: Stanford has earned 95 NCAA National Titles since its establishment, the second-most by any university; 78 NCAA National Titles since 1980, the most by any university; and 393 individual NCAA championships, the most by any university.

Olympic achievements: According to the Stanford Daily, "Stanford has been represented in every summer Olympiad since 1908."^[39] As of 2004, Stanford athletes had won 182 Olympic medals at the summer games; "In fact, in every Olympiad since 1912, Stanford athletes have won at least one and as many as 17 gold medals."^[40] Stanford athletes won 25 medals at the 2008 Summer Games.^[41]

Notable alumni, faculty, and staff

Notes

^ Casper, Gerhard. "Die Luft der Freiheit weht - On and Off" (1995-10-05).
^ "Stanford University History". Stanford University. Retrieved on 2007-04-26.
^ "Stanford Management Company report issued", Stanford News Service (September 28, 2007). Retrieved on 2007-09-30.
^ "Stanford Facts 2007 (The Stanford Faculty)". Stanford University. Retrieved on 2007-04-26.
^ ^a ^b "Stanford Facts 2007". Stanford University. Retrieved on 2007-04-26.
^ http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/facts/alumni.html
^ "Stanford University History". Stanford University.
^ Cornell/Stanford Connection
^ Dave Revsine, One-sided numbers dominate Saturday's rivalry games, ESPN.com, November 30, 2006.
^ http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/history/begin.html#Pro
^ "Quick Facts about Duke". Duke News & Communications. Duke University.
^ "Second College Grant". Dartmouth Outing Club. Retrieved on 2007-10-30.
^ "Dartmouth College: College Life". America's Best Colleges 2008. U.S. News & World Report (2007).
^ "About Dartmouth: Facts". Dartmouth College. Retrieved on 2007-10-30.
^ "The Life and work of Felix Bloch", Guide to the Felix Bloch Papers, 1931-1987. Stanford, California: Stanford University Archives. “For the next few months, Bloch stayed mostly at his home in Zurich, but he also traveled to France, Holland, and Denmark. During his summer visit to Copenhagen to see Niels Bohr, he received his first offer from the chairman of the Stanford University physics department, David Locke Webster. Originally, Bloch later confessed, he knew nothing about Stanford so he mentioned the offer to Bohr and Heisenberg and asked for their advice. Heisenberg knew only that Stanford was in California and that the students from Stanford and another school nearby stole each other's axes. Bohr's opinion was definitive: Stanford was a good school; he should go.”
^ 2,400 students from record applicant pool offered admission
^ "America's Best Colleges 2007". U.S. News & World Report (2007). Retrieved on 2007-04-15.
^ "Stanford Fourth in US News Rankings". Stanford University (22 September 2006).
^ "Academic Ranking of World Universities 2006". Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2006). Retrieved on 2007-04-15.
^ "World University Rankings". The Times Higher Educational Supplement (2006). Retrieved on 2007-04-15.
^ [1] — A 2007 ranking from the THES - QS of the world's research universities.
^ "The Washington Monthly College Rankings". The Washington Monthly (2006). Retrieved on 2007-04-15.
^ "The World's 100 Most Global Universities" . Newsweek. Retrieved on 2007-04-15.
^ "The Top American Research Universities: 2006 Annual Report" (2006). Retrieved on 2007-04-15.
^ "The Philanthropy 400", The Chronicle of Philanthropy (2007-11-01).
^ Korber, Dorothy (March 2, 2008), "Stanford tilts playing field with free tuition pledge", Sacramento Bee, <http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/753472.html>. Retrieved on 3 March 2008
^ Stanford University - Residential Education
^ Stanford Daily article on gender-neutral housing
^ Stanford | Living at Stanford | Theme Houses
^ Stanford University - Residential Education
^ Johnston, Theresa (May 2002). "Strictly Ballroom", Stanford Magazine, Stanford Alumni Association.
^ The 37th Annual Stanford Powwow May 9-11, 2008
^ charityfashionshow.stanford.edu
^ "Degree of Uncommon Man and Uncommon Woman Award". Stanford Alumni Association.
^ Greek Life @ Stanford
^ "College Sustainability Report Card 2008" Sustainable Endowments Institute. Retrieved on July 20, 2008.
^ "Beyond Grey Pinstripes 2007-2008 Rankings" Aspen Institute. Retrieved on August 26, 2008.
^ "NorPac". i2i Interactive (2007). Retrieved on 2007-06-08.
^ Cardinal boasts golden history - The Stanford Daily Online
^ Forty-two athletes try living up to Stanford’s Olympic legacy - The Stanford Daily Online
^ Stanford Sets All-Time Record With 25 Olympic Medals

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