History of the School of Humanities and Sciences
It may be surprising to learn that H&S was the last of Stanford's seven schools to be organized, given its size—it is the largest—and its centrality to the University's mission: it is responsible for more than 80 percent of undergraduate teaching and awards the largest number of Stanford Ph.Ds.
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In fact, most of H&S's present-day departments have
existed since the University opened in 1891, but in an attempt to break with the traditional classical curriculum of the day, President David Starr Jordan initially organized Stanford into departments, rather than schools, with a progressive major-subject system that emphasized the initiative and responsibility of the student.
But by 1916, "the old departmental system had begun crystallizing into airtight compartments," President Ray Lyman Wilbur wrote in his memoirs, "so that we had to break down some of the barriers to get a freer circulation of air, a wider view, and more opportunities for interchange of ideas and information."
Change did not come easily. "There is always quite a herd of sacred cows browsing about in the academic field," Wilbur observed. But in 1922, the School of Biology, the first of the nonprofessional schools, was created. Over the years, other departments were grouped into the Schools of Social Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Humanities. By the early 1940s, the new schools had also come to seem too narrow, and in 1948 they were combined into the School of Humanities and Sciences.
Since its founding a half-century ago, H&S has joined together three highly interdependent elements—a superb faculty of scholars-teachers, some of the finest graduate students in the country, and a talented and diverse group of undergraduates—that work together in an environment that fosters flexibility, innovation, individual initiative, and teamwork, all leading to discovery and creativity at the highest levels.
The timeline on the following pages shows the evolution of H&S from 1891 to 1999.
1891 to 1920 
