Announcements

Earlier this academic year, I asked an advisory committee of students, faculty and staff to give me advice on how Stanford should approach its next campus climate survey. I’m writing now to share the news that, informed by the committee’s very helpful input, we are planning to join the Association of American Universities (AAU) survey that will be conducted in spring 2019.

The School of Humanities and Sciences has received an $800,000 gift from engineers and entrepreneurs ROUZBEH YASSINI-FARD and ANOUSHEH ANSARI to establish a graduate fellowship in memory of mathematics Professor MARYAM MIRZAKHANI. The Maryam Mirzakhani Graduate Fellowship will support graduate students in the Department of Mathematics.

This continues to be a time of anxiety and uncertainty for many people in our country, as the federal government works to define a future for those who have been covered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Provost Persis Drell has appointed a committee of faculty, students and staff to make recommendations on the next campus climate survey to be administered to students.

On Jan. 25, L.A. Dance Project’s David Adrian Freeland Jr. taught a master class for students at Roble Gym. Stanford Live sponsored the class and presented the company at Memorial Auditorium on Jan. 26 and 27. After a warmup based in Horton technique, the dancers moved across the floor with small jumps. Freeland taught a new movement sequence and encouraged dancers to find their own style of execution. After the class, Freeland answered questions about working with dance and film, and how to engage more women choreographers.

White papers summarizing more than 2,800 long-range planning ideas for Stanford are about to be released to the campus community. Faculty co-chairs of the Education and Research steering groups discuss how they reviewed the ideas in their respective areas and what they learned.

The Emmy, Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe winning Stanford alumnus will deliver the 127th Commencement address.

We’re excited to have reached today a new milestone in Stanford’s long-range planning process: the release to the campus community of 37 white papers that summarize more than 2,800 ideas we received for guiding Stanford’s future.

President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Provost Persis Drell updated the Stanford community on the long-range planning process and talked about a swath of some of the university’s most pressing issues, from sexual violence and free speech to faculty diversity and the state of federal research funding, during an informal meeting Wednesday afternoon.

As we mourn today the loss of our colleague and dear friend Ben Barres, I thought it would be fitting to share a piece that I wrote in tribute to Ben almost a year ago. I was honored to deliver it as an introduction to a symposium held in Ben’s honor on January 12, 2017.