Departments
President’s Column - A Key to Learning |
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The capacity to acquire, integrate and apply new knowledge -
the habit of “unceasing inquiry” - is important for today’s
students, who will need to relate such knowledge in all parts of the
world. To strength its courses in the coming decade, Stanford has added
two new initiatives. One of them, Stanford Introductory Studies, is an
integrated way of thinking about the first and second years of college
and is a central theme of a new three-year planning cycle beginning
this fall. By Gerhard
Casper
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Campus News
A Tangible Commitment |
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President Gerhard Casper has pledged $25 million in two
path-breaking initiatives to bring freshmen and sophomores into closer
classroom contact with senior faculty and to bolster support for graduate
students. Casper has allocated $15 million to fund 20 new professorships
for five years, and $10 million as seed money toward a $200 million
endowment that will support up to 300 new graduate fellowships,
particularly in the sciences and engineering. By
Diane Manuel and Marisa
Cigarroa
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Genius Times Two |
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Barbara Block, co-director of the Tuna Research and Conservation
Center (a collaboration between Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station and the Monterey
Bay Aquarium) and Anna Deavere Smith, a performer and playwright whose work
blends theatrical art, social commentary, journalism and intimate reflection,
have received “genius grants” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation. By Diane Manuel
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Jemison
Brings Message of Hope to Grads |
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Commencement speaker Mae Jemison recalls a “most difficult
personal decision,” that of resigning from NASA three years ago after
becoming the first black woman astronaut, and urges students to stay open to a
range of possibilities throughout their lives. And President Gerhard Casper
bids an affectionate farewell to the undergraduate class that entered Stanford
the year he became President.By Diane Manuel
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Campus
News Digest |
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Rabbi to Join University Staff - Patricia Karlin-Neumann, rabbi
of Temple Alameda in Alameda, Calif., joins two other recently appointed
deans.  New Trustee
Named - Mari J. Baker elected as alumni-nominated
trustee. Budget Crunch
Eases - Because of unexpected revenues, upcoming academic and administrative cuts are
reduced by $4 million. Two Centers
Get Grants - The Stanford Center for Adolescence and the Institute for Research on
Women and Gender receive $1.2 million and $100,000,
respectively. Chicken
at Tresidder - Pollo Rey restaurant to open outlet at Tresidder Memorial Union.
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Science & Medicine News
The Ocean as Laboratory |
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George Somero, renowned as the father of the field of biochemical
adaptation and Stanford’s first David and Lucile Packard Professor of Marine Science, gets
the chance to design his own laboratory in the new DeNault Family Research Building at
Hopkins Marine Station.By Janet Basu
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New Jewel in the
Hopkins Crown |
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The first marine laboratory on the Pacific Coast, Hopkins Marine Station
seemed headed for obsolescence in the mid-1970s. Hopkins director Dennis Powers and his
predecessor, the late Colin Pittendrigh, have presided over a 20-year program of building
and renovation at the marine station, capped by the opening in May of the DeNault Family
Research Building, and coupled with recruitment of a faculty of highly respected
scientists. By Janet Basu
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Science &
Medicine News Digest |
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Cohen Wins Major Prize - Dr. Stanley N. Cohen, co-inventor of genetic
engineering, shares this year’s Lemelson-MIT
Prize. Packard Hospital
Gets Scanner - High-speed system reduces need for sedation when scanning
children. Women MDs Earn Parity - Salaries
of young female physicians now equal those of their male counterparts.
New Clinical Center
Approved - Campus center to research cancer, immune disorders and genetic diseases.
Genetic Code
Deciphered - Scientists spell out entire genetic code of baker’s yeast, an organism
closely related to human cells.
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Sports News
Intramurals: Soccer Grows Up |
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A generation after a wave of youth soccer programs swept the country,
soccer is no longer the unknown, unappreciated sport the rest of the world loves.
Millions of America’s kids are playing soccer; only basketball and volleyball
are more popular. At Stanford, soccer has displaced softball as students’ most
popular spring sport. By Gregg Osofsky
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Sports
News Digest |
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Tennis Team Takes National Crown - Stanford men win 1996 NCAA
championship, women finish second.
Tiger Tames Competition -
Sophomore Tiger Woods wins NCAA golf championship, the first Stanford player to do so since 1942.
Women’s Water Polo Makes Big
Splash - Team finishes in fifth place at national championships - and does so with five
freshman starters.
Rugby Team Finishes
Third - Coach Franck Boivert’s players reach national finals for the first time in the
team’s history.
Tree Gets Trimmed -
Two Stanford students rig a cyperspace competition (in which fans vote for college sports
team mascots) by flooding the Website with votes for Stanford’s "Tree" mascot, banning
it from competition for five years. Stanford
Nine Fades at Regionals - Cardinal baseball team reaches regional playoffs but is eliminated after
two one-run losses.
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Features
Shooting Star |
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Astronaut Mae Jemison’s pioneering journey aboard the
space shuttle Endeavour was fueled by a childhood passion for “Star Trek,” its
made-for-TV adventures stimulating a hunger for real ones in her mind. Now, as president
of her own consulting firm, whose mission is to find high-tech salves for the afflictions
of developing nations, Jemison is the Lt. Uhuru of her generation.
By Jesse Katz
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Why Being Brilliant
Isn’t Enough |
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Legendary teacher Nancy Packer is interviewed by her former
student, novelist Michael Cunningham, who wants to know what makes a great
teacher. She says it’s confidence; he says it’s Packer’s integrity
as a writer - her bottomless respect for the brute work of putting words
on paper - that make her such a brilliant lecturer on the subject of
fiction.
By Michael Cunningham
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Essay
A Baboon’s Life |
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Robert Sapolsky, professor of biological sciences and neuroscience,
spends his summers studying the behavior of wild baboons in the Serengeti of East
Africa. He observes that as male baboons age, there is a connection between the
quality of their later years and how they lived their lives.
By Robert
Sapolsky
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Who Owns the Past? |
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In a Stanford conference held Feb. 8 called “E Pluribus
Unum,” Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur Schlesinger tells several
hundred faculty and students that, in its “militant” form, multiculturalism
“becomes an alternative to . . . the concept of a common nationality,” and
a panel of historians addresses the role of cultural diversity in the writing and
teaching of American history.
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