Stanford University History
Centennial
When Stanford celebrated its Centennial in 1991, it was young enough for its founding objectives to remain familiar, yet mature enough to have developed the quality of wisdom required to fulfill the needs of a complex, contemporary society.
At the University's opening day exercises, which were both Stanford's inaugural and his own, David Starr Jordan said,
"Our University has no history to fall back upon. No memories of great teachers haunt its corridors... No tender associations cling ivy-like to its fresh new walls. It is hallowed by no traditions; it is hampered by none... Traditions and associations are ours to make. From our work, the future of the University will grow as a splendid lily from a modest bulb."
On that first day of October, 1891, Stanford became an instant university. Though free to create its own traditions, it already had a spacious and marvelously conceived physical plant, a carefully selected and broadly representative faculty and nearly twice the number of students expected, women among them. Then, as now, Stanford looked toward the coming century in ambitious anticipation.
There is, perhaps, no other university - national or international - for which a centennial represented a more interesting or profound opportunity. By virtue of its place in time, Stanford entered its second century just as the modern world prepared for its 21st. And by virtue of its geographic placement on America's Pacific Rim, Stanford found itself at 100 poised strategically between two worlds - East and West - and at the frontier between two disciplinary domains - technological and humanistic. If it can bridge both, Stanford can make a meaningful contribution to the resolution of some of the world's most vexing dilemmas.
Leland Stanford told the first class on opening day,
"Remember that life is, above all, practical; that you are here to fit yourselves for a useful career."
But remember, too, he could have added, that useful careers include innovation, and that dreams, well thought out, really can come true.
Through their vision, their idealism and their strong will, the dream conceived by Leland and Jane Stanford, and David Starr Jordan, was transformed into the beginning of one of the world's premier educational institutions. Combining innovation, excellent faculty and students, and a rigorous curriculum, it remains pioneering, vibrant, challenging, incomparable.