Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private Private universities are not operated by governments though they may or may not receive funding . Depending on the region, private universities may be subject to government regulation. Private universities are common in some countries but do not exist in others research university A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education. The word university is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, roughly meaning "community of teachers and scholars" located in Stanford Stanford is a census-designated place in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 13,315 at the 2000 census, California California ( /kælɪˈfɔrnjə/ ) is a state on the West Coast of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and, to the south, the Mexican state of Baja California. California is the most populous U.S. state. Its four largest cities are Los Angeles, San Diego,, United States.

Stanford was founded in 1885 Year 1885 was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar) by former California governor The Governor of California is the highest executive authority in the California state government, whose responsibilities include making annual "State of the State" addresses to the California State Legislature, submitting the budget, and ensuring that state laws are enforced and senator The United States Senate is one of the two Houses of the bicameral United States Congress, the other being the House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate and the House are established in Article One of the Constitution, with the Senate given additional powers in Article Two. Each U.S State is represented by two Senators, Leland Stanford Amasa[citation needed] Leland Stanford was an American tycoon, politician and founder of Stanford University and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, as a memorial A memorial is an object which serves as a focus for memory of something, usually a person or an event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects or art objects such as sculptures, statues or fountains (and even entire parks) to their son Leland Stanford Jr., who died of typhoid Typhoid fever, also known as enteric fever, Salmonella Typhi or commonly just typhoid, is an illness caused by the bacterium Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi. Common worldwide, it is transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with feces from an infected person. The bacteria then perforate through the intestinal wall and are in Europe Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast. Europe is washed upon to the north by the Arctic Ocean and a few weeks before his 16th birthday. The Stanfords used their farm lands to establish the university hoping to create a large institution in California California ( /kælɪˈfɔrnjə/ ) is a state on the West Coast of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and, to the south, the Mexican state of Baja California. California is the most populous U.S. state. Its four largest cities are Los Angeles, San Diego,.

Stanford enrolls about 6,700 undergraduate and about 8,000 graduate students from the United States and around the world every year. The university is divided into a number of schools such as the Stanford Business School The Stanford Graduate School of Business is one of the professional schools of Stanford University, in Stanford, California. It is one of the leading business schools in the world, Stanford Law School Stanford Law School is a graduate school at Stanford University located in the area known as the Silicon Valley, near Palo Alto, California in the United States. The Law School was established in 1893 when former President Benjamin Harrison joined the faculty as the first professor of law. It employs more than 50 faculty and hosts over 500, Stanford School of Medicine Stanford University School of Medicine is a leading medical school located at Stanford University Medical Center in Stanford, California. Originally based in San Francisco, California as Cooper Medical College, it is the oldest continuously running medical school in the western United States. The medical school moved to the Stanford Campus in 1959, Stanford School of Engineering Stanford University School of Engineering is one of the schools of Stanford University. The school has had eight deans; the current is James D. Plummer, etc.

The university is in Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California, United States. The term originally referred to the region's large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers, but eventually came to refer to all the high-tech businesses in the area; it is now generally used as a metonym for the high-tech sector, and its alumni have founded companies like Nike Nike, Inc. (NYSE: NKE) is a major publicly traded sportswear and equipment supplier based in the United States. The company is headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, which is part of the Portland metropolitan area. It is the world's leading supplier of athletic shoes and apparel and a major manufacturer of sports equipment with revenue in excess of $1, Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company , commonly referred to as HP, is a technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States; with offices at the old Compaq Campus in Houston, Texas. HP is the largest technology company in the world and operates in nearly every country. HP specializes in developing and manufacturing computing,, Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California (part of Silicon Valley), on the former west campus of the Agnews Developmental Center, Nvidia Nvidia , a multinational corporation, specializes in the development of graphics processing units and chipset technologies for workstations, personal computers, and mobile devices. Based in Santa Clara, California, the company has become a major supplier of integrated circuits (ICs) such as graphics processing units (GPUs) and chipsets used in, Yahoo! Yahoo! Inc. is an American public corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, (in Silicon Valley), that provides Internet services worldwide. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine (Yahoo! Search), Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, advertising, online mapping (Yahoo! Maps), office productivity, video, Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. is a multinational corporation with more than 66,000 employees and annual revenue of US$39 billion as of 2008. Headquartered in San Jose, California, it designs and sells networking and communications technology and services, Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark and Abbey Silverstone. Its initial market was 3D graphics display terminals, but its products, strategies and market positions have evolved significantly over time and Google Google Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies. The Google headquarters, the Googleplex, is located in Mountain View,.

Contents

History

The ruins of Stanford Library after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, CA and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 A.M. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely-accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.8; however, other values have been proposed, from 7.7 to as high as 8.25. The main

Stanford was founded by railroad Rail transport is the conveyance of passengers and goods by means of wheeled vehicles running along railways in British and Australian English . Railway transport is part of the logistics chain, which facilitates international trade and economic growth. Rail transport is capable of high capacity and is energy efficient, but lacks flexibility and magnate and California Governor The Governor of California is the highest executive authority in the California state government, whose responsibilities include making annual "State of the State" addresses to the California State Legislature, submitting the budget, and ensuring that state laws are enforced Leland Stanford Amasa[citation needed] Leland Stanford was an American tycoon, politician and founder of Stanford University and his wife, Jane Stanford Jane Stanford , was the daughter of a shopkeeper and lived on Washington Avenue in Albany, New York. She wed Leland Stanford in 1850. They headed west, first to Wisconsin and then to California. She would eventually co-found Stanford University with her husband. It is named in honor of their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr. Leland Stanford Jr. , Leland DeWitt Stanford until age nine, was the only child of Governor Leland Stanford of California and his wife Jane Stanford nee Lathrop and is the namesake of Stanford University in the United States, who died of typhoid Typhoid fever, also known as enteric fever, Salmonella Typhi or commonly just typhoid, is an illness caused by the bacterium Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi. Common worldwide, it is transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with feces from an infected person. The bacteria then perforate through the intestinal wall and are 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."

There exists a popular story An urban legend, urban myth, or urban tale is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories thought to be factual by those circulating them. The term is often used to mean something akin to an "apocryphal story." Like all folklore, urban legends are not necessarily false, but they are often distorted, exaggerated, or sensationalized that a lady in "faded gingham" and a gentleman in a "homespun threadbare suit" went to visit the provost of Harvard Harvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is also the first and oldest corporation in North America. Administratively, Harvard comprises ten about making a donation, were rebuffed, and then founded Stanford. [7] The historical account is that the Senator and Mrs. Stanford visited Harvard's President Eliot and asked how much it would cost to duplicate Harvard in Palo Alto Palo Alto (pronounced /ˌpæloʊˈæltoʊ/, from Spanish: palo: "stick" and alto: "high") is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, USA. It is named after a tree called El Palo Alto. The city includes portions of Stanford University and is. Eliot replied that he supposed $15 million would be enough. However, the Stanfords were gracefully rebuffed in securing A.D. White Andrew Dickson White was a U.S. diplomat, historian, and educator, best known as the co-founder of Cornell University the president of Cornell University Cornell University, located in Ithaca, New York, USA, is a private university and a member of the Ivy League. Cornell is one of two private land grant universities, and has four state-supported statutory or contract colleges. Its two medical campuses are located in New York City and Education City, Qatar as Stanford's founding president. [8] Instead, White recommended David Starr Jordan David Starr Jordan, Ph.D., LL.D. was a leading eugenicist, ichthyologist (the study of fish), educator and peace activist. He was president of Indiana University and Stanford University, White's former student. They eventually settled on David Starr Jordan David Starr Jordan, Ph.D., LL.D. was a leading eugenicist, ichthyologist (the study of fish), educator and peace activist. He was president of Indiana University and Stanford University, president of Indiana University Indiana University, founded in 1820 as the Indiana State Seminary and renamed the Indiana College in 1846, is a nine-campus university system in the state of Indiana. The IU system includes the following campuses:, although they had offered leaders of the Ivy League twice his salary to direct Stanford.[9]

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 Cornell University, located in Ithaca, New York, USA, is a private university and a member of the Ivy League. Cornell is one of two private land grant universities, and has four state-supported statutory or contract colleges. Its two medical campuses are located in New York City and Education City, Qatar[10]. At the opening of the school there was no tuition for students, a program which lasted into the 1930s [11]. Among the first class of students was a young future president Herbert Hoover Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States (1929–1933). Besides his political career, Hoover was a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted government intervention under the rubric "economic, 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.[12]

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 (12,000 m2) 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.[13]

The school was established as a coeducational Mixed-sex education , is the integrated education of males and females in the same institution. The opposite situation is described as single-sex education. Most older institutions of higher education restricted their enrollment to a single sex at some point in their history, and since then have changed their policies to become coeducational institution. 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. 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. 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. [14][15]

After Senator Stanford died in 1893, Jane Stanford continued to supervise the university's development for the next 12 years. However, she grew increasingly disturbed. In 1897, she directed the board of trustees, "that the students be taught that everyone born on earth has a soul germ, and that on its development depends much in life here and everything in Life Eternal."[16] She forbade students from sketching nude models in life-drawing class, banned automobiles from campus, and did not allow a hospital to be constructed so that people wouldn't get the impression Stanford was unhealthy. She had Starr Jordan fire Edward Alsworth Ross, a close friend of his on the economics and sociology faculty, whom she suspected of being a radical for his public statements in favor of municipal control of city transit systems. Between 1899 and 1905, she spent 3 million on a grand construction scheme building lavish memorials to the Stanford family, while university faculty and self-supporting students were living in poverty.[16]

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, CA and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 A.M. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely-accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.8; however, other values have been proposed, from 7.7 to as high as 8.25. The main destroyed parts of the Main Quad (including the original iteration of Memorial Church Stanford Memorial Church is located at the center of the Stanford University campus in Stanford, California. It was built during the American Renaissance by Jane Stanford as a memorial to her husband Leland. Designed by architect Charles A. Coolidge, a protegé of Henry Hobson Richardson, the church has been called "the University's) 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 German (Deutsch, [dɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native, this quotation of Ulrich von Hutten Ulrich von Hutten , was an outspoken German critic of the Roman Catholic Church and adherent of the Lutheran Reformation means "The wind of freedom blows." At the time of the school's establishment, German had recently replaced Latin Latin is an Italic language historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe. Romance languages such as Italian, French, Catalan, Romanian, Spanish, and Portuguese are descended from Latin, while many others, especially European languages, including as the supraregional language of science and philosophy.

In addition, the Stanford Research Institute SRI International, founded as Stanford Research Institute, is one of the world's largest contract research institutes. Based in the United States, the trustees of Stanford University established it in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic development in the region. It was later incorporated as an independent non-profit organization operated one of the four original nodes that comprised ARPANET The ARPANET created by ARPA of the United States Department of Defense during the Cold War, was the world's first operational packet switching network, and the predecessor of the global Internet, predecessor to the Internet.

Campus

Stanford University is located on an 8,180-acre (33.1 km2)[6] campus approximately 37 miles (60 km) southeast of San Francisco and approximately 20 miles (32 km) northwest of San Jose. Stanford is situated adjacent to the city of Palo Alto, on the San Francisco Peninsula. It also operates the Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, California, in Monterey Bay. The main campus is bounded by El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue, Junipero Serra Boulevard and Sand Hill Road, in the northwest part of the Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula.

Stanford University owns 8,183 acres (33.1 km2) which makes it one of the largest university campuses in the world, in terms of contiguous acreage.[17] Moscow State University is built vertically and has a larger total floor area 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.[18] 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,[19] owns more than 50,000 acres (200 km²), but only 269 of those are part of the campus.[20][21] Sewanee: The University of the South occupies 13,000 acres in its "Domain" however most of this is unused forest.

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 721, 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.[22] [23]

Stanford offers free passes for public transportation[citation needed], offers a free shuttle bus service named Marguerite and offers monetary incentives to its employees for carpooling. The Green Dorm currently under construction will house between forty and fifty students, have a net carbon emission of zero, and produce more electricity than the building itself uses.[24] In 2009, The Sustainable Endowments Institute awarded Stanford University with a grade of A- in its annual College Sustainability Report Card, making Stanford one of the top fifteen of the 300 colleges and universities reviewed.[25][26] 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.[27]

Landmarks

Orthographic panorama of the Main Quad, located in the heart of the Stanford University campus.

Contemporary campus landmarks include the Main Quad and Memorial Church, the Cantor Center for Visual Arts 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-Honeycomb House and the 1919 Lou Henry and Herbert Hoover House are both listed on the National Historic Register.

Stanford Memorial Church Lou Henry and Herbert Hoover House Stanford Mausoleum Hoover Tower
The Dish

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.

Non-main campus

On the founding grant but away from the main 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 (Lake Lagunita, actually an irrigation reservoir), both home to the endangered California Tiger Salamander. Lake Lagunita is often dry now, but the university has no plans to artificially fill it.[28]

Lake Lagunita in early spring; the Dish is visible in the foothills behind the lake.

Sustainability At Stanford

Stanford has several sustainability initiatives underway, such as a plan to build a 21,000 sq. ft. green dorm and a new environmentally friendly Environment and Energy building. The Wood Institute serves to undergird the university’s environmental movement as well, as a “hub for multidisiciplinary environmental research, teaching, and outreach.”[29] Stanford is also a member of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.[30]

Administration and organization

Stanford University is a tax-exempt corporate trust owned and governed by a privately-appointed 35-member Board of Trustees.[31] Trustees serve five-year terms (not more than two consecutive terms) and meet five times annually.[32] The Stanford trustees also oversee the 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).[31]

The Board appoints a President to serve as the chief executive officer of the university and proscribe the duties of professors and course of study, manage financial and business affairs, and appoint nine vice president posts.[33] John L. Hennessy was appointed the 10th President of the University in October 2000.[34] The Provost is the chief academic and budget officer and office to which the deans of each of the seven schools report.[35] John Etchemendy was named the 12th Provost in September 2000.[36]

The university is organized into seven schools: 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.[35] The powers and authority of the faculty are vested in the Academic Council which is made up of tenure and non-tenure line faculty, research faculty, senior fellows in some policy centers and institutes, the president of the university and some other academic administrators but for most purposes the Faculty Senate made up of 55 elected representatives of the faculty handles matters.[37]

In 2006, President Hennessy launched the Stanford Challenge, a $4.3 billion fund raising campaign focusing on three components; multidisciplinary research initiatives, initiatives to improve education, and core support.[38] Stanford raised $832.2 million in private donations from 69,350 donors in 2006-2007, the most of all U.S. universities.[31]

The Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) is the student government for Stanford University and all registered students are members.[39] 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.[39]

Academics

Walkway near the Quad

Stanford University is a large, highly residential research university with a majority of enrollments coming from graduate and professional students.[40] The full-time, four year undergraduate program is classified as "more selective" and has an arts & sciences focus with high graduate student coexistence.[40] Stanford University is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.[41] Full-time undergraduate tuition was $36,030 for 2008-2009.[42][43]

Research centers and institutes

View of Hoover Tower from Main Quad.

Other Stanford-affiliated institutions include the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (originally the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) and the Stanford Research Institute, a now-independent institution which originated at the University, in addition to the Stanford Humanities Center.

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. 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).[44]

The Stanford Center, an intensive language training institute, was originally established at National Taiwan University (NTU) to fulfill Stanford's needs in training graduate students in Mandarin Chinese. Later, other prestigious universities joined the board and the institute changed its name to the Inter-University Program (IUP). Today, the IUP has relocated to Beijing, while the original program in Taipei exists as an institute of NTU and is now known as the International Chinese Language Program (ICLP).

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, the Library for Aid with Down Syndrome (LADS), and the University's special collections. There are 20 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.

Student body

Demographics of student body[42][45][46]
Undergraduate Graduate California U.S. Census
African American 10% 3% 6.2% 12.1%
Asian American 23% 13% 12.3% 4.3%
White American 38% 35% 59.8% 65.8%
Hispanic American 12% 5% 35.9% 14.5%
Native American 2.7% <1% 0.7% 0.9%
International student 7% 33% N/A N/A
View from Hoover Tower observation deck of the Quad and surrounding area, facing west

Stanford enrolled 6,532 undergraduate, 1,021 professional, and 10,280 graduate students in 2008.[42] Women comprised 48.9% of undergraduates and 37.6% of professional and graduate students.[42] The freshman retention rate for 2007 was 98.3%, the four year graduation rate is 79.4%, and the six year rate is 94.4%.[42] The relatively low four year graduation rate is a function of the University's Co-Term program, which allows students to earn a Masters degree as an extension of their undergraduate term. [47]

Stanford awarded 1,646 undergraduate degrees, 1,984 master's degrees, 673 doctoral degrees, and 271 professional degrees in 2008.[42] The most popular bachelor's degrees were in the social sciences, interdiscplinary studies, and engineering.

Stanford received 25,299 applications for admissions to the undergraduate program in 2007-2008, admitting 2,400 (9.8%), and enrolling 1,703 (71%), the lowest percentage in the University's 117-year history.[42][48] 92% of students graduated in the top tenth of their high school class and the inter-quartile ranges for the SAT was 680-780 for math, 670-760 for writing, and 650-760 for reading.[42]

For the class of 2013, Stanford received 5300 single-choice early action applications and accepted 689 of them, for an early admission rate of approximately 13%. This application season Stanford received more than 30,000 total applications from both the regular and early rounds and expects an overall admission rate of about 7.2%, the lowest rate yet in the university's history and more than 2% lower than for the class of 2012.

Stanford's admission process is need-blind for US citizens. The university awarded $75.6 million in financial aid to 2,960 students, an average package of $33,108.[42] Stanford does not require a parental contribution for families with income below $60,000 and families with income below $100,000 will have tuition charges covered.[42][49]

Rankings

Stanford University's undergraduate program is ranked fourth among national universities by U.S. News and World Report (USNWR).[50] Stanford is ranked second among world universities and second among universities in the Americas by Shanghai Jiao Tong University,[51] seventeenth among world universities in the THES - QS World University Rankings,[52][53] (subject rankings: social sciences, technology: 3rd, life sciences & biomedicine: 6th, arts & humanities, natural sciences: 8th). Seventh among national universities by The Washington Monthly,[54] second among "global universities" by Newsweek,[55] and in the first-tier among national universities by The Center for Measuring University Performance.[56] The Stanford Law School is ranked third in the nation while its Education School and Business School are both ranked second. Stanford School of Medicine is currently ranked sixth in research according to U.S. News and World Report. The acceptance rates for all Stanford schools (undergraduate, graduate, and professional) are amongst the lowest (if not the lowest) in the United States.

Also, Stanford received an overall grade of "A-" on the Sustainable Endowment Institute's College Sustainability Report Card 2009, with climate and energy, and transportation as weak points.[57] Stanford was one of 15 schools, out of 300 in the U.S. and Canada, to receive this grade.[58]

Arts

Bronze statues by Auguste Rodin are scattered through the campus, including these Burghers of Calais.

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, particularly within the extracurricular community. Extracurricular activities include 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. Beyond these, the music department sponsors many ensembles including five choirs, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Taiko, and the Stanford Wind Ensemble.

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.

Endowment and fundraising

Stanford was the top fund-raising university in the United States for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2008 with $785 million.[59]

The endowment, managed by the Stanford Management Company, was valued at $17.2 billion in 2008 and had achieved an annualized rate of return of 15.1% since 1998.[31][60] In the economic downturn of January 2009, however, the endowment has dropped 20 to 30 percent.[61] According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Stanford's endowment has lost approximately $4 billion to $5 billion, or 20 to 30 percent of its value," since 2008. As a result, all campus units are cutting their budgets by 15 percent in 2009.[62]

Student life

Many students use bicycles to get around the large campus.

Dormitories and student housing

89% of undergraduate students live in on-campus university housing.[42] According to the Stanford Housing Assignments Office, undergraduates live in 80 different houses, including dormitories, co-ops, row houses, fraternities and sororities.[63] 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.[63] 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 at peer institutions such as Wesleyan, Oberlin, Clark, Dartmouth, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania. [64]

Several residences are considered theme houses, with a cross-cultural, academic/language, or focus theme. Examples include Chicano themed Casa Zapata, German language-oriented Haus Mitteleuropa, and arts-focused Kimball.[65]

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.[66]

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

Vintage Stanford University postcard

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

Greek life

Stanford is home to three housed sororities (Pi Beta Phi, Kappa Alpha Theta, and Delta Delta Delta) and seven housed fraternities (Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Chi, Kappa Sigma, Kappa Alpha, Theta Delta Chi, Sigma Nu, Phi Kappa Psi), as well as a number of unhoused Greek organizations, such as Alpha Epsilon Phi, Alpha Phi Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi, Omega Psi Phi, Phi Beta Sigma, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, Alpha Epsilon Pi, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Chi Omega, Delta Tau Delta, Alpha Kappa Psi, Sigma Theta Psi, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Lambda Phi Epsilon, Alpha Kappa Delta Phi, Lambda Theta Nu, Gamma Zeta Alpha and Sigma Psi Zeta. In contrast to many universities, all the Greek houses are on university land and in almost all cases the university also owns the house. As a condition to being recognized they also cannot permit the national organization or others outside the university from having a veto over membership or local governance.[71]

Student groups

Stanford offers its students the opportunity to engage in nearly 600 groups. Groups are often, though not always, partially funded by the university via allocations directed by the student government organization, the ASSU. These funds include "special fees," which are decided by a Spring Quarter vote by the student body. Groups include:

Athletics

Main article: Stanford Cardinal The "block S" is the official logo of Stanford athletics

Stanford participates in the NCAA's Division I-A and is a member of the Pacific-10 Conference. It also participates 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. Women's field hockey team is part of the NorPac Conference.[72] Stanford's traditional sports rival is the University of California, Berkeley, its neighbor to the north in the East Bay.

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 new Stanford Stadium, site of home football games.

The winner of the annual "Big Game" between the Cal and Stanford football teams gains custody of the Stanford Axe. The first "Big Game," played at Haight Street Park in San Francisco on March 19, 1892, established football on the west coast. Stanford won 14 to 10 in front of 8 thousand spectators. Stanford's football team played in the first Rose Bowl in 1902. However, the violence of the sport at the time, coupled with the post-game rioting of drunken spectators, led San Francisco to bar further "Big Games" in the city in 1905. In 1906, David Starr Jordan banned football from Stanford. The 1906-1914 "Big Game" contests featured rugby instead of football. Stanford football was resumed in 1919.[73] 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.

Club sports, while not officially a part of Stanford athletics, are numerous at Stanford. Sports include archery, badminton, cricket, cycling, equestrian, hurling, ice hockey, judo, kayaking, men's lacrosse, polo, racquetball, rugby union, squash, skiing, taekwondo, tennis, triathlon and Ultimate. The men's Ultimate team won national championships in 1984 and 2002[74], the women's Ultimate team in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2007 [75], the women's rugby team in 1999, 2005, 2006 and 2008. The cycling team won the 2007 Division I USA Cycling Collegiate Road National Championships.

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 Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band rallies football fans with arrangements of "All Right Now" and other contemporary music.

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 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, the Bank of the West Classic, at Taube Stadium. Cobb Track, Angell Field, and Avery Stadium Pool are considered world-class athletic facilities. Stanford Stadium hosted Super Bowl XIX on January 20, 1985, featuring the local San Francisco 49ers defeating the Miami Dolphins by a score of 38-16.

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."[76] 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."[77] Stanford athletes won 24 medals at the 2008 Summer Games - 8 gold, 12 silver and 4 bronze.[78]

Notable alumni, faculty, and staff

Main article: List of Stanford University people

Stanford alumni started companies including Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, NVIDIA, SGI, VMware, MIPS Technologies, Yahoo!, Google, and Sun Microsystems. The Sun in Sun Microsystems originally stood for "Stanford University Network[79][80]."

Stanford's current community of scholars includes: 18 Nobel Prize laureates; 135 members of the National Academy of Sciences; 82 members of National Academy of Engineering; 224 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; 21 recipients of the National Medal of Science; three recipients of the National Medal of Technology; 26 members of the National Academy of Education; 41 members of American Philosophical Society; 4 Pulitzer Prize winners; 23 MacArthur Fellows; 7 Wolf Foundation Prize winners; 7 Koret Foundation Prize winners; 7 Presidential Medal of Freedom winners. [81][citation needed] NFL quarterbacks Jim Plunkett and John Elway, NFL receiver Gordon Banks, MLB left-fielder Carlos Quentin, Grand Slam winning tennis players (doubles) Bob and Mike Bryan and U.S. President Herbert Hoover are alumni.

References

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