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Teaching and Research
With the coming explosion of technology in education, Casper said, “the
university will remain attractive . . . to the extent that we make personal and
face-to-face learning and research more valuable.”
To accomplish this, the university will undertake a three-year planning cycle to
redistribute teaching loads and examine existing courses to enable more faculty
to teach first- and second-year students.
“We know that courses taken predominantly by freshmen and sophomores are
larger
and less frequently taught by regular faculty members than are courses aimed at
upper-level students,” Casper said. The plan is intended to rectify that.
Ramon Saldívar, vice provost for undergraduate education, noted that
Sophomore Seminars scheduled for next year will be taught by 87 professors, 60 of
whom are senior faculty. He estimated that about 100 professors would be needed
to teach Freshman Seminars.
The undergraduate initiative is an outgrowth of the work of the Commission on
Undergraduate Education that Casper established in 1993 to review the strengths
and weaknesses of the current program for undergraduate studies.
On the graduate side, Casper said fund-raising already has begun, with a $2
million gift from the Lucille P. Markey Charitable Trust, to build a $200 million
endowment for the support of up to 300 three-year fellowships.
The first Stanford Graduate Fellows are scheduled to enter the university in the
1997-98 academic year. Fellows will receive a $12,000 tuition grant and a $16,000
stipend annually. When fully operational, the program will provide funding
roughly equal to one-half of Stanford’s current federal funding for research
assistantships.
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