Stanford Today
Edition: July/August, 1996
Section: Campus News
WWW: Campus News

Rabbi To Join University Staff
A rabbi will join the university church staff for the first time in history, one of a trio of recently appointed deans of religious life. Robert Gregg, dean of the chapel, said the appointment of Patricia Karlin-Neumann "marks the beginning of a new era and acknowledges the religious diversity of the Stanford community." Karlin-Neumann, rabbi of Temple Alameda in Alameda, Calif., will be joined by Maurice Charles, an Episcopalian postulant for Holy Orders from the Diocese of Chicago, and Kelly Denton-Borhaug, evangelism pastor of St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco.

New Trustee Named
Mari J. Baker has been elected to the Board of Trustees as an alumni-nominated trustee. Baker, 31, fills the unexpired term of Mariann Byerwalter, who resigned in February to become Stanford's vice president and chief financial officer. Baker is vice president and general manager of the financial supplies group at Intuit Inc. in Mountain View. She received a bachelor's degree in economics and sociology from Stanford in 1985. Her term expires in 1998.

Budget Crunch Eases
The university has gone from a $40 million deficit to having a $14.5 million contingency fund, Provost Condoleezza Rice has announced. Stanford's preliminary operating budget for 1996-97 contains about $1.4 billion in revenues and slightly less in expenditures. The next fiscal year will be the last in a three-year cost-cutting initiative to slash $18 million from the operating budget. Due to the unexpected revenues, the preliminary budget for the upcoming year calls for only $3.1 million in academic and administrative cuts, rather than the initial target of $7 million, Rice said. Despite these reductions, the university and its seven schools plan new research, teaching and construction programs. Rice attributed the improved budgetary situation in part to a "remarkable" increase in the endowment's market value and to successful fundraising efforts.

Two Centers Get Grants
A new Stanford Center for Adolescence has been established with a $1.2 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation. The center's faculty will study issues ranging from adolescents' language use to health risks, with the intention of making the findings public in order to influence policy on related issues. Chris Hayward, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, will act as interim director of the center and Professor Emeritus Sanford M. Dornbusch will chair the center's advisory board. Meanwhile, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender has received a $100,000 grant to explore the establishment of a Center on Gender-Based Medical Research. The gift to the institute was made by Dr. Terry S. and F. Scott Gross. Iris F. Litt, M.D., the center's director, said that the grant represents "a major step toward bringing together researchers at Stanford and around the world to collaborate in order to expand the knowledge base about women and improve their health status."

Chicken at Tresidder
Pollo Rey, a locally based chain of restaurants specializing in Mexican food and rotisserie chicken, was selected in April to open an outlet in Tresidder Memorial Union. The announcement came several weeks after students collected signatures of more than 2,000 people who opposed a bid by PepsiCo's Taco Bell to open a campus outlet. Dean of Students Marc Wais and members of the Tresidder Advisory Board said Pollo Rey was selected because the chain's bid met all the primary criteria -- quality food, affordable prices and late-night hours.The petitions were not a major factor in the decision, Wais said. PepsiCo had become the subject of protests around the country in recent months because of its corporate ties to Myanmar (formerly Burma), a country many consider one of the world's worst offenders on human rights issues. ST