Initiatives

In response to student interest and advocacy, the new course highlights issues at the intersection of environmental science and social justice.

The 80-plus guest artists visiting campus this fall are hosted by over 20 Stanford departments, centers and programs. Some of the artists will be at Stanford for a single public event and others will stay for an extended visit for deep engagement with students and faculty.

Stanford will celebrate the arrival of the first cohort of Knight-Hennessy Scholars on Saturday with Day One, an orientation program designed to introduce the students to each other and to the unique experiences that await them through its global leadership program.

Tackling tough societal problems requires applying academic research findings to real-world situations. But translating from findings to solutions can be a daunting task. Now a team at Stanford has created a set of toolkits to help organizations bridge that gap.

I am delighted to announce significant initiatives that Stanford is undertaking to support graduate students who are parents, in order to alleviate stress and to enhance community-building. In April we received a compelling report from the Student Families Working Advisory Group (SFWAG). The committee’s charge was to better understand the unique needs of our graduate students who are parents supporting families and to develop recommendations to address these needs in the near term and longer term.

When Samantha Snyder opened the warming oven in the kitchen at the Schwab Residential Center, she found silver trays filled with leftovers: penne pasta, barley with baby kale, and turkey stuffed with goat cheese, spinach and roasted peppers.

Throughout the long-range planning process, we have been reminded of the great value that our postdoctoral scholars bring to faculty and to the university. Numerous submissions and white papers also highlighted the fact that postdocs face significant affordability challenges. In particular, the high cost and limited availability of housing and childcare were reported to be significant challenges. Marc Tessier-Lavigne and I will be sharing next steps on the long-range vision for Stanford later this month, addressing a wide range of issues across the university.

The allocation of campus space can be a contentious issue, particularly for students who come together around and across a range of identities.The challenges of providing state-of-the-art academic facilities for a world-class university with growth needs, partnered with needs for housing in an extremely high-cost housing market and Santa Clara County’s oversight related to campus growth, present a number of challenges when it comes to how the campus deploys its physical space.

The first annual Stanford First Generation and/or Low Income (FLI) Conference was held this past weekend. Around 250 students and school administrators from Stanford and other elite universities including Duke and UC Berkeley participated in the conference, which was based around the theme of “uplifting voices.”

In a new course at the Stanford Educational Farm, students develop a positive relationship with the land through organic gardening while addressing the history of forced farm labor in the U.S. and its enduring, traumatic effects on communities of color.