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The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as Stanford University (or simply Stanford), is a private university located approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco in an unincorporated part of Santa Clara County. Adjacent to the city of Palo Alto, Stanford lies at the heart of the Silicon Valley, both geographically and historically.

Situated on an expansive campus, the University offers, in addition to its undergraduate college, schools of engineering, law, medicine, education, business, earth sciences, and humanities and sciences. Stanford hosts programs and a teaching hospital in addition to various community outreach and volunteer initiatives.

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 son, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died of typhoid as a teenager. Locals and university affiliates 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, with free tuition and 15 faculty members, seven of whom hailed from Cornell University. The school was established as a coeducational institution although it maintained a cap on female enrollment for many years.

The official motto of Stanford University, selected by the Stanfords, is "Die Luft der Freiheit weht." Translated from 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 dominant language of science and philosophy (a position it would hold until World War II).

Campus

Stanford University owns 8,180 acres (32 km²). The main campus is bounded by El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue, Junipero Serra Boulevard and Sand Hill Road, in the center of the Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula.

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 (reportedly the residence of John Steinbeck during his time 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.

The off-campus Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a nature reserve owned by the university and used by wildlife biologists for research. Hopkins Marine Station, located in Pacific Grove, California, is a marine biology research center owned by the university since 1892. The University also has its own golf course and a seasonal lake (Lagunita, actually an irrigation reservoir), both home to the endangered California Tiger Salamander.

Contemporary campus landmarks include the Main Quad and Memorial Church, the art museum and art gallery, the Stanford Mausoleum and the Angel of Grief, Hoover Tower, the Rodin sculpture garden, the Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden, the Arizona Cactus Garden, the Stanford University Arboretum, Green Library and the Dish. Frank Lloyd Wright's 1937 Hanna House and the 1919 Lou Henry and Herbert Hoover House are both National Historic Landmarks now on university grounds.

The United States Postal Service has assigned two ZIP codes to Stanford: 94305 for campus mail in general and 94309 for student mail. Stanford lies within area code 650 and campus phone numbers start with 723, 724, 725, 736, 497, or 498.

Institutions

Stanford University is governed by a board of trustees, in conjuction with the university president, provosts, faculty senate, and the deans of the various schools. Besides the university, the Stanford trustees oversee Stanford Research Park, the Stanford Shopping Center, the Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University Medical Center and many associated medical facilities (including the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital), as well as many acres of undeveloped foothills.

Other Stanford-affiliated institutions include the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and the Stanford Research Institute, a now-independent institution which originated at the University.

Stanford also houses the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, a major public policy think tank that attracts visiting scholars from around the world, and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which is dedicated to the more specific study of international relations.

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 East Asia collection and the student-accessible media resources. Other significant collections include the Lane Medical 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 Marine Biology Library at Hopkins Marine Station, the Music Library, and the University's special collections.

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 University student traditions include Full Moon on the Quad, Sunday Flicks, steam-tunnelling, Big Game Gaieties (a student-written, composed, and produced musical put on before Big Game), primal scream (performed by stressed students at night during dead week) and Viennese Ball, which was started in the 1970's by students returning from the now defunct Stanford in Vienna program. Other old traditions include the Big Game bonfire at Lake Lagunita, and the Halloween party at the Stanford family mausoleum (though this has not happened since 2000).

Community

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. 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.

Stanford places a strong focus on residential education. Approximately 94 percent of undergraduate students live in university housing, with another five percent living in Stanford housing at the overseas campuses. In addition to numerous dorms and residential houses, Stanford is home to three housed sororities and seven housed fraternities. Several residences are considered theme houses, with either an ethnic or academic focus.

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.

Academics

The schools of the University include the School of Humanities and Sciences, School of Engineering, School of Earth Sciences, School of Education, Graduate School of Business, Stanford Law School and the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Stanford awards the following degrees: B.A., B.S., B.A.S., M.A., M.S., Ph.D., D.M.A., Ed.D., Ed.S., M.D., M.B.A., J.D., J.S.D., J.S.M., LL.M., M.A.T., MFA, M.L.S., M.L.A., and ENG.

The University enrolls approximately 6,700 undergraduates and 8,000 grad students. The University has approximately 1,700 faculty members, including 17 Nobel laureates and 23 MacArthur fellows. 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.

Stanford built its international reputation as the pioneering Silicon Valley institution through top programs in business, engineering and the sciences, spawning such companies as Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, VMware,Yahoo!, Golden Baseball League, Google, and Sun Microsystems—indeed, "Sun" originally stood for "Stanford University Network." The university also offers programs in the humanities and social sciences, particularly creative writing, history, government, economics, communication and psychology.

Admission

Admission is highly competitive, and according to America's Best Colleges 2006 by U.S. News & World Report, it is the eighth most selective college in the United States, with the third lowest acceptance rate (13%), ranked fifth in the nation (tied with Duke University) in overall quality. Stanford is the third-ranked university in the Academic Ranking of World Universities and the fifth-ranked American university in the 2004 Times Higher Education SupplementHarvard, Berkeley, MIT, and Caltech. Additionally, Stanford is ranked #2 in the country and #3 in the world by The Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's.Top 500 World Universities, retrieved July 7, 2006 list of the top 500 universities in the world. In 2006, Stanford's undergraduate admission rate was 10.8 percent, from a pool of 22,223 applicants - the lowest rate of undergraduate admission in the history of the university[http://ivysuccess.com/stanford_2010.html" target="_blank" >*. The admission rate at Stanford Law School is 7.7 percent. The acceptance rates at the university's medical school (3.3 percent) and business school (10 percent) are the lowest in the country.

Arts

Stanford has a thriving artistic and musical community, including theater groups such as Ram's Head, and award-winning a cappella music groups, such as the Stanford Harmonics, the Stanford Mendicants, Stanford Fleet Street Singers, Mixed Company, Talisman A Cappella, and Everyday People.

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 unique 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 an exciting 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.

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.

Athletics

Stanford participates in the NCAA's Division I-A and forms part of the Pacific Ten Conference. It also has membership in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation for indoor track (men and women), water polo (men and women), women's gymnastics, women's lacrosse, men's gymnastics, and men's volleyball. Stanford's traditional sports rival is Cal (UC Berkeley).

Stanford has won the NACDA Director's Cup (formerly known as the Sears Cup) every year for the past twelve years (the award has been offered the past thirteen years), honoring the first-ranked collegiate athletic program in the United States.

Stanford has earned 91 NCAA National Titles since its establishment (second-most by any university), 74 NCAA National Titles since 1980 (most by any university), and 393 individual NCAA championships (most by any university). Stanford athletes have won 47 Olympic medals since 1990; if Stanford were a country in the 1996 Olympics, it would have placed 7th in medal count. 15 athletes affiliated with Stanford University participated in the 2004 Summer Olympic Games, winning a total of 17 medals.

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 (the deep red color, not the bird), in reference to the university's official color since the 19th century (later cardinal and white); the band's mascot, "The Tree", has become associated with the school in general. Part of Leland Stanford Junior 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 hosts an annual U.S. Open Series tennis tournament (Bank of the West Classic) at Taube Stadium. Cobb Track, Angell Field, and Avery Stadium Pool are considered world-class athletic facilities.

Club sports, while not officially a part of Stanford athletics, are numerous at Stanford. Sports include archery, badminton, cricket, cycling, equestrian, ice hockey, judo, kayaking, men's lacrosse, polo, racquetball, rugby, squash, skiing, taekwondo, triathlon and Ultimate, and in some cases the teams have historically performed quite well. For instance, the men's Ultimate team won a national championship in 2002, the women's Ultimate team in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2005, and 2006, and the women's rugby team in 2005 and 2006.

People

University Presidents

  1. David Starr Jordan (1891–1913)
  2. John Casper Branner (1913–1915)
  3. Ray Lyman Wilbur (1916–1943)
  4. Donald Bertrand Tresidder (1943–1948)
  5. J. E. Wallace Sterling (1949–1968)
  6. Kenneth Sanborn Pitzer (1968–1970)
  7. Richard Wall Lyman (1970–1980)
  8. Donald Kennedy (1980–1992)
  9. Gerhard Casper (1992–2000)
  10. John L. Hennessy (2000–present)

Provosts

The position of Provost was created in 1952 during the Presidency of J. E. Wallace Sterling. Many people consider the Stanford Provost to be the "heir apparent" to the President because of the five men who succeeded Sterling as President, three were Provost of Stanford (Lyman, Kennedy, and Hennessy), one was Provost of the University of Chicago (Casper), while the other was President of Rice University (Pitzer). The Provost is the University's chief academic and budget officer. The Provost and the President together conduct Stanford's relationships with the neighboring community and other schools and organizations.

  1. Douglas M. Whitaker (1952–1955)
  2. Frederick E. Terman (1955–1965)
  3. Richard Wall Lyman (1967–1970)
  4. William F. Miller (1971–1978)
  5. Gerald J. Lieberman (1979–1979)
  6. Donald Kennedy (1979–1980)
  7. Albert M. Hastorf (1980–1984)
  8. James N. Rosse (1984–1992)
  9. Gerald J. Lieberman (1992–1993)
  10. Condoleezza Rice (1993–1999)
  11. John L. Hennessy (1999–2000)
  12. John W. Etchemendy (2000–present)

Notable alumni, faculty, and staff

Stanford has many famous alumni. Among the best-known are 31st President of the United States Herbert Hoover and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak; Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, and the late William Rehnquist; U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Max Baucus (D-MT), Kent Conrad (D-ND), and Ron Wyden (D-OR); entrepreneur Charles Schwab; Hewlett-Packard co-founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard; Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang; Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page; Indian multi-billionaire Azim Premji of Wipro Technologies, Nike Chairman and CEO Philip Knight; and Sabeer Bhatia (co-founder of Hotmail.com); astronaut Sally Ride; and athletes Bob Mathias, Jim Plunkett, John Elway, and Tom Watson. Others who attended but did not earn degrees include John F. Kennedy, Academy Award-winning actresses Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Connelly, author John Steinbeck, and athletes Tiger Woods and John McEnroe. Among its most famous faculty or former faculty members are Condoleezza Rice, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David M. Kennedy, psychology professor Philip Zimbardo, law professor Lawrence Lessig, and 16 living Nobel Laureates including Kenneth Arrow, Paul Berg, and Douglas Osheroff. Premiership footballer Ryan Nelsen attended the university on an athletic scholarship.

Trivia

  • Many people erroneously think that the plural of "Cardinal" is "Cardinals." The word "Cardinal" is used both singularly and plurally; it refers to the color, not the bird.
  • Stanford Research Institute hosted one of the ARPANET's four original nodes.
  • Apparently because it could not locate a copy in any of its libraries, the Soviet Union was obliged to ask the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, at Stanford University, for a microfilm copy of its original edition of the first issue of Pravda (dated March 5, 1917).
  • 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. It has been debunked by Stanford.

Further reading

  • Stuart W. Leslie, The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford, Columbia University Press 1994
  • Rebecca S. Lowen, R. S. Lowen, Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford, University of California Press 1997

See also

External links

For the student or prospective student

Stanford publications and other media outlets

For the visitor


1891 establishments | Association of American Universities | Pacific Ten Conference | Stanford University | Universities and colleges in California | Western Association of Schools and Colleges

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