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Stanford University

Stanford University History

Stanford History by Presidency

The Jordan Years, 1891-1913

In late March 1891, Leland Stanford, appointed an energetic young scholar, David Starr Jordan of Indiana University, to head the fledgling university and mature with it. He had little time in which to recruit professors and design a curriculum by the university's Oct. 1 opening. Jordan found that established scholars in the East were reluctant to move to an unproven school in the West, so he turned to promising younger scholars, many from his alma mater, Cornell.

Two years later, in 1893, Senator Stanford died, and his estate was snarled in legal proceedings that threatened the life of the university. For "six pretty long years," as Jordan later summed up the difficult experience, the future of the university was in doubt. But Jane Stanford's determination, the courage of the pioneer faculty and their families, the faith that the community outside the campus placed in them and the buoyant energy of those early-day students sustained the university.

Once the estate was released from probate, Jordan was eager to build the academic program, but Mrs. Stanford wanted to see constructed the rest of the buildings she and her husband had planned -- the Outer Quad, Memorial Church, the Chemistry Building, a new library and a new gymnasium. Jordan came to call this period of construction the university's "stone age." Mrs. Stanford died in 1905; she saw fulfilled her "fondest wish . . . to live long enough to give to you young students all the requisite buildings planned by the founders."

But on April 18, 1906, a violent earthquake wrecked many of the new buildings and caused considerable damage to others. Jordan had been offered the position of secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, a job he now declined as he looked forward to rebuilding the university: "I am sure that my place is here," he wrote to a friend. "I can now, I believe, weld this institution together. I need some years to complete this. Then the institution will be beautiful, with a great library, adequate apparatus, a strong and well-paid faculty and a small but selected and effective body of students. . . . I shall stay with the poppies, the perfect sunshine and the shadow of the great temblor."

Stanford University's western, entrepreneurial spirit was evident through and beyond the period of rebuilding that followed the earthquake. Jordan's early faculty appointees became eminent in their fields, and in places far from California, Stanford graduates were earning reputations in their professions that reflected well on their alma mater.

In 1913, Jordan assumed the new post of chancellor, so that he could devote himself to the peace movement. When he died in 1931, he had spent half of his 80 years at Stanford.

The Branner Years, 1913-1915

Geologist John Casper Branner, President Jordan's first appointee to the Stanford faculty and his vice president, was on tour in Brazil when Herbert Hoover, a graduate of the pioneer class and later U.S. president, convinced his fellow trustees that Branner should succeed Jordan. Branner's two-and-a-half-year term was purposely short: He accepted the appointment on the condition that he must be allowed to retire at age 65. When the trustees requested the new president to cut expenses by eliminating some departments and consolidating others, Branner affirmed the university's quest for excellence: "If the scholars are to be chased away or replaced by cheap instructors, I don't want anything to do with the outfit." The board rescinded its request and adopted the president's increased salary budget. Branner died in 1922.

The Wilbur Years, 1916-1943

In January 1916, alumnus Ray Lyman Wilbur (A.B. '96, A.M. '97), dean of the School of Medicine, became Stanford's third president. During his tenure, graduate study and professional education were expanded, and the independent departments were reorganized into schools. Building activity was limited by the Great Depression and the onset of World War II, but included the construction of research buildings to complement a heightened university emphasis on faculty research and new dormitories to house increasing enrollment. The Wilbur years saw the end of the running of the university solely on income from the original endowment, the value of which had been eroded first by inflation after World War I and then by the Depression. In 1934, alumni volunteers formed as "Stanford Associates" to raise money for the university and ensure the development of its programs and facilities. Although Wilbur reached retirement age in 1940, he was asked to stay on as president through the celebration of the university's 50th anniversary. Just as the anniversary year ended, the United States went to war, and the trustees again asked Wilbur to stay on. After his tenure as president, Wilbur served as university chancellor until his death in 1949.

The Tresidder Years, 1943-1948

Alumnus Donald B. Tresidder (A.B. '19, M.D. '27), head of the Yosemite Park and Curry Co., resigned as president of the Board of Trustees to accept the university presidency. Tresidder's task was to keep the university's standards high during the straitened circumstances of the war years. Because of wartime shortages and priorities, there was little permanent construction, but Tresidder concentrated on the long term and established a planning office to study space on campus and anticipate the flood of returning veterans and the resulting need for additional classroom, laboratory and dormitory space. Tresidder died of a heart attack on Jan. 25, 1948, in New York City while on university business.

The Sterling Years, 1949-1968

J. E. Wallace Sterling left the directorship of the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., to become Stanford's fifth president on April 1, 1949. It was a homecoming for the former faculty member at the California Institute of Technology, who received his Ph.D. in history from Stanford in 1938.

Postwar prosperity and the surge in federal support of research occasioned by the Cold War aided Sterling's efforts to boost Stanford from regional to national prominence by building and maintaining "steeples of excellence" -- clusters of outstanding researchers who would attract superior students.

Many major building projects were completed during Sterling's tenure: the west campus science buildings and labs, the Medical Center, the Graduate School of Business building, the Meyer Undergraduate Library and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Several major dormitories, the Escondido Village apartments and Tresidder Memorial Union strengthened the university's residential character.

The value of Stanford's vast acreage became apparent with the growth in the area's electronics industry and the postwar boom in population, and the administration encouraged development of the Stanford Research Park and the Shopping Center.

In the early '60s a $100 million fundraising drive based on a Ford Foundation challenge grant was the most ambitious effort undertaken by a private university at the time. Its success fixed Stanford, according to a report by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, "among the best half-dozen American universities."

In 1967, Sterling announced his intention to retire the following year. The political activism brought about by the Vietnam War was dividing the campus. Two months before his retirement, the president's office was destroyed by arson.

Sterling retired Sept. 1, 1968, and became university chancellor. He died in 1985 at age 78.

The Pitzer Years, 1968-1970

Kenneth S. Pitzer, the president of Rice University and a former professor of chemistry at the University of California-Berkeley, left Houston to assume the Stanford presidency on Dec.1, 1968. His term, however, was short. Faced with increasing violence and disruption on campus over the prolonged conflict in Southeast Asia, he announced his resignation, effective Sept. 1, 1970, in a June 25 letter to the university trustees. In his letter he cited "trends [that] have made it increasingly difficult to obtain the very broad and active support from all those groups who together are responsible for the well-being of the university." Pitzer returned to UC-Berkeley in 1971 and taught there until his retirement in 1984. He died in 1997.

The Lyman Years, 1970-1980

Richard Lyman, an expert in contemporary British history who joined the History Department in 1958, became Stanford's seventh president in September 1970. Having served as the university's vice president and provost since 1967, he had experience in coping with the activism that was rocking the campus and was an outspoken communicator who enjoyed the give-and-take of argument.

Yet while order was returning to campus, the economics of running a university was shifting rapidly with the advent of double-digit inflation, a world oil shortage and a declining stock market. Under Lyman's leadership, the university first embarked on rigorous cost control and budget-cutting programs, and then on the ambitious "Campaign for Stanford" to raise $300 million. The successful five-year drive raised $132 million for the university's endowment and additional funds for buildings, endowed chairs and student financial aid.

Lyman's tenure also saw an increase in the numbers and influence of women and members of ethnic minorities as faculty and students. During the summer of 1980, Lyman left Stanford to become president of the Rockefeller Foundation, a philanthropic organization he previously had served as a board member. He returned to campus in 1988 to become the inaugural director of the university's Institute for International Studies. He retired from the institute as an emeritus professor in 1991.

The Kennedy Years, 1980-1992

Stanford celebrated its centennial and its full emergence as a world-class university under Donald Kennedy, who had served his predecessor Richard Lyman as vice president and provost since 1979. Kennedy, holder of three degrees from Harvard, joined Stanford's biology faculty in 1960 and while on leave from 1977 to 1979 served in Washington, D.C., as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

During Kennedy's presidency, Stanford completed the $1.26 billion Centennial Campaign, at the time the largest fund-raising success in the history of higher education. He was at the forefront of the university's student public service initiative and efforts to renew faculty commitment to teaching as "first of our labors."His tenure was marked by the creation of major new facilities -- the value of the physical plant more than doubled during his term.

Yet his record was overshadowed by the university's disagreement with the federal government over reimbursement for the indirect costs of research. In July 1991, one week after announcing a program to reform university financial systems to improve the university's accountability for public funds, Kennedy announced he would resign the following summer, saying: "It is very difficult . . . for a person identified with a problem to be the spokesman for its solution. We need to . . . look to the future as we resolve the problems of the past." In 1994, the government reached a settlement with the university concerning the billing of expenses for federally sponsored research. The Office of Naval Research, the government agency that oversees Stanford's research contracts with all federal agencies, said that it did "not have a claim that Stanford engaged in fraud, misrepresentation or other wrongdoing."

Kennedy is presently the Bing Professor of Environmental Science and a senior fellow at the Institute for International Studies.

The Casper Years, 1992-2000

Gerhard Casper was recruited from the University of Chicago, where he was Provost from 1989 to 1992, and Dean of the Law School from 1979 to 1987. He had been on the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School since 1966, after two years as an assistant professor of political science at the University of California-Berkeley.

His concerns as president ranged from resolution of the indirect cost dispute with the federal government to restoration of the campus after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake to innovation in curriculum, programs and physical plant.

His Commission on Undergraduate Education was the first comprehensive examination of undergraduate education at Stanford in 25 years. The Commission and other faculty initiatives led to a new approach to the first two years of college. Stanford Introductory Studies (SIS), which includes the Freshman Seminars Program, Sophomore College, and Sophomore Seminars and Dialogues, provides small-group learning experiences that encourage mentoring relationships between students and faculty. In addition, the new residential Freshman/Sophomore College provides a setting to bring faculty and students closer together. Restraints on tuition increases and improvements in financial aid policies under Casper's leadership also reemphasized Stanford's commitment to founder Jane Stanford's promise to keep "open an avenue whereby the deserving and exceptional may rise through their own efforts."

Recruitment and retention of exceptional faculty members who excel in both research and teaching was emphasized during Casper's presidency through Research Grants for Junior Faculty in the three schools that offer undergraduate degrees: Earth Sciences, Engineering, and Humanities and Sciences. In addition, the university's bureaucracy was streamlined through internal reorganizations and a reduction in the number of vice presidential positions. The integration of the Stanford Alumni Association into the university in 1998 enhanced outreach to Stanford's alumni worldwide. Giving at Stanford, especially by alumni, increased sharply under Casper's leadership, with particular emphasis on fortifying Stanford's endowment and increasing participation through the creation of the Stanford Fund for Undergraduate Education.

During Casper's presidency, the physical infrastructure of the campus improved substantially. Restoration of buildings damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was completed, and the architectural value of new buildings was enhanced with competitions attracting some of the world's most gifted architects. With support from the Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, one of the oldest buildings on campus, Encina Hall, was restored and seismically reinforced. The 1893 Leland Stanford Junior Museum became part of an expanded complex, the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts. The reconstructed Bing Wing of Cecil H. Green Library opened in 1999, a decade after the severe damage inflicted by the Loma Preita quake closed its doors. A new Science and Engineering Quad was constructed thanks to a $77.5 million gift from David Packard and Bill Hewlett. New graduate residences were added to the campus, and the university constructed a new Center for Clinical Sciences Research and the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center.

As a scholar, Casper has written and taught primarily in the fields of constitutional law, constitutional history, comparative law, and jurisprudence. Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1937, Casper holds a law degree from the University of Hamburg, a master of laws from Yale Law School and a doctorate from the University of Freiburg.

The Hennessy Years: Sept. 2000-present

John L. Hennessy joined Stanford's faculty in 1977. He was named the Willard and Inez Kerr Bell Endowed Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1987.

From 1983 to 1993, Dr. Hennessy was director of the Computer System Laboratory, a research and teaching center operated by the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science that fosters research in computer systems design. He served as chair of computer science from 1994 to 1996 and, in 1996, was named dean of the School of Engineering. As dean, he launched a five-year plan that laid the groundwork for new activities in bioengineering and biomedical engineering. In 1999, he was named provost, the university's chief academic and financial officer. As provost, he continued his efforts to foster interdisciplinary activities in the biosciences and bioengineering and oversaw improvements in faculty and staff compensation.

A pioneer in computer architecture, in 1981 Dr. Hennessy drew together researchers to focus on a computer architecture known as RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer), a technology that has revolutionized the computer industry by increasing performance while reducing costs. In addition to his role in the basic research, Dr. Hennessy helped transfer this technology to industry. In 1984, he cofounded MIPS Computer Systems, now MIPS Technologies, which designs microprocessors. In recent years, his research has focused on the architecture of high-performance computers.

Dr. Hennessy is a recipient of the 2000 John Von Neumann Medal, the 2000 ASEE R. Lamme Medal, the 2001 Eckert Mauchly Award and the 2001 Seymour Cray Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, and he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

He has lectured and published widely and is the co-author of two internationally used undergraduate and graduate textbooks on computer architecture design.

Dr. Hennessy earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Villanova University and his master's and doctoral degrees in computer science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

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