Stanford Today
Edition: July/August, 1996
Section: President's Letter: A Key to Learning
WWW: A Key to Learning

Think back to your own college days: Probably the most important thing you learned was not specific data but rather the capacity to acquire, integrate and apply new knowledge throughout your life. If anything, that is even more important for students today, who will need to relate such knowledge to all parts of the world. Unless one is equipped to reason independently and critically, no accumulation of facts will add up to a sufficient education.

This is the habit of "unceasing inquiry." And the first year of college sets its tone. Students' minds should be challenged and stretched from their first year onward. Yet, courses taken predominantly by freshmen and sophomores are larger and less frequently taught by regular faculty members than courses aimed at juniors and seniors. As a result, we miss important opportunities to bring students fully into the search for knowledge from the very beginning of their university careers.

To address that, we have renewed our continuous effort to strengthen Stanford for the coming decade with two initiatives. Here, I should like to focus on Stanford Introductory Studies, an integrated way of thinking about the first and second years of college.

At the center of this initiative is a plan, within three years, to engage every entering student in Freshman Seminars -- learning in a small-class setting led by a tenure-track faculty member. These seminars will draw from a wide range of disciplines and topics; the field of study is less important than having the students -- even those who will not become researchers -- gain an appreciation of the intensity, importance, and promise of the scholarly approach. The very tools of thought and analysis will be employed in nothing less than the rigorous, interactive search for truth.

I have a physicist friend who once said to me: "The love of truth implies that one must search not just for evidence, but for the counter-evidence as well." That is the spirit that I hope we can convey.

In addition to providing this experience for freshmen, we will continue to expand the number and variety of offerings in our Sophomore Seminars, Sophomore Dialogues, and Sophomore College. Inaugurated in recent years, these have been highly successful in providing close interaction between teachers and students. Often, they introduce students to a prospective major and mentor. And they have been much valued by participants.

Further, we will seek to integrate these and the related parts of the first two years -- such as the Science Core and the Cultures, Ideas and Values (CIV) course sequence -- into a whole and sensible program. Thus, Stanford Introductory Studies will be a central theme of a new three-year planning cycle beginning this fall. Among other things, schools and departments will review their potential to redistribute current teaching loads to support Stanford Introductory Studies. In many cases, we believe they can. In others, an already extremely hard-working faculty will need additional help.

Fortunately, such help is at hand. Former trustee Peter Bing, a loyal and generous supporter of undergraduate education at Stanford, has volunteered to fund up to 20 new faculty positions for five years. And already, an anonymous donor has augmented that with a $5 million pledge. I have every confidence that, if the programs prove to be successful, we will find permanent support for the positions.

These new faculty members will not be our "designated teachers," assigned the task so others can avoid it. Rather, the additional positions will help meet the manifold demands on our faculty, freeing time for many, particularly distinguished senior professors, to teach classes in Stanford Introductory Studies.

In the last three years, Stanford has moved decisively to make the undergraduate education we offer even better. We have acted on recommendations of our Commission on Undergraduate Education, including developing a rigorous Science Core for non-science majors; strengthening the language requirement and establishing the Language Center; raising writing requirements; introducing minors; toughening grading and other serious academic requirements; reexamining majors, Distribution Requirements, and the Cultures, Ideas and Values course sequence; and appointing a vice-provost for undergraduate education, with academic advising consolidated under his leadership.

To this we now add Stanford Introductory Studies, demonstrating to the best students in the country our unfaltering commitment to taking their college education seriously from its inception. ST