Issue of
September 22, 1999

'Thank you for the opportunity to share this journey'

This is the text of Provost John Hennessy’s remarks to parents at a luncheon on September 17, 1999

Good afternoon and welcome to Stanford University. Today, we are joined by 1,767 new students, and we are especially pleased to welcome you as their parents.

The first thing I want to say to you this afternoon is congratulations. Your sons and daughters have worked hard to reach this point and your support of their efforts has been crucial. The students that make up the Class of 2003 are truly a remarkable set of individuals.

• The Class of 2003 is one of the most talented classes we have ever admitted. Academically, 96 percent of these students scored above 1200 on their SATs and fully one-third had a perfect 4.0 grade point average.
  
  
• But academics are not the only achievements of this class; we have a variety of outstanding atheletes, in sports as varied as fencing, volleyball, basketball and golf. The student performing groups that you have just enjoyed illustrate the bounty of artistic talent in our student body, and this new class brings new and exciting artistic and musical talent.
  
  
• The Class of 2003 is also one of the most ethnically and geographically diverse classes we have ever admitted. These students represent every state but North Dakota, in addition to 39 different foreign countries. We value this diversity in cultures, backgrounds and viewpoints, and what it will add to the education of all our students during the next four years.

The journeys of these students that have brought them to Stanford are amazingly varied, but the support of their parents, family and friends in these journeys has been universal. As the father of two high school age sons, one in his junior year, I am beginning to appreciate how challenging parenthood and the preparation for college can be. Thank you for all you have done to support your sons and daughters to this point.

While graduating from high school marks the end of one journey, this transition marks the beginning of another. We at Stanford sincerely hope that you will enjoy this journey with your sons and daughters. The Stanford experience is truly unique, and as parents, your support and encouragement of these students as they embark on a new, and significantly more self-directed path, will be crucial.

During the first few years of their Stanford education we will encourage the students to explore different subjects, to try different course, and to find areas that ignite their intellectual passion. To support this process of investigation and intellectual engagement, Stanford, under the leadership of our president, Gerhard Casper, has been in the process of revolutionizing its first two years of study. We call this revolution Stanford Introductory Studies. Let me describe three of its elements.

1. Freshman and sophomore seminars that provide the opportunity for students to meet in small classes with some of our most renowned and outstanding teachers. This program will offer over 200 different seminars this year. Every freshman will have an opportunity to enroll in one of these seminars. Let me give you a sample of some of the seminars we will be offering this year:

"Environmental Problems and Solutions," taught by renowned population biologist Professor Paul Ehrlich; "The First World War as Experience and Memory," taught by award-winning history Professor James Sheehan; "The Contemporary Short Story," by Elizabeth Tallent, professor of English and a short story author well known to readers of the New Yorker; and "Big Dams, the City Hall and the Sierra Club: An Examination of Water Resources Issues from a Policy and Environmental Viewpoint," by Peter Kitanidis, expert in hydraulic engineering and a professor of civil and environmental engineering.

These seminars not only provide an opportunity for students to explore exciting topics, they also provide an avenue for students to get to know faculty­personally. We will encourage these freshman and sophomores not to miss this experience, and I hope that they will share the excitement with you.

2. The second element is Sophomore College, a unique opportunity available to a limited number of returning sophomores. The students return to campus three weeks early to participate in an intensive seminar of 12 students led by a faculty member. Here are some of the courses we are just completing today in Sophomore College:

"American Foreign Policy in the 21st Century," taught by Coit Blacker, who recently spent several years in the White House as an adviser on national security; "Nature and Nurture in Brain Development," by Susan McConnell in biology which explores the scientific issues behind the debate over the influence of genetic and environmental factors on development of the brain; "Environmentally Sustainable Cities," led by Professor Len Ortolano, head of our interdisciplinary program in urban studies.

With Sophomore College we hope to accelerate a student's engagement with their desired area of intellectual exploration and to provide yet another venue for small­group, intensive faculty-student interaction.

3. Introduction to the Humanities (popularly known as IHUM) is the third element and is the core of Stanford's liberal arts education. IHUM begins in the fall with an intensive introduction to the methods of critical analysis, and is followed by a sequence of courses for the second and third quarter that offer more variety, enabling our freshmen to pursue their intellectual curiosities earlier in their college years. Here are some of options we will offer this year during the second and third quarter:

"Great Works: The Hereafter, the Here and the Now," taught by faculty from the French and Italian Department and covering such authors as Homer, Dante, Descartes and Mary Shelley; "The Literature of Transformation," taught by faculty from the English department and including readings from Chaucer, Milton, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolfe and Sylvia Plath; "Ten Days that Shook the World," a sequence taught by faculty from the History Department, which explores 10 events that shaped history.

I invite you to see how many of these you can guess. I'll start you off with the earliest and latest events, which are the destruction of the second Temple of Jerusalem and the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. To check your answers for the other eight events, please do what the students do and visit www.stanford.edu/dept/undergrad/areaone.

We also have continued to develop other ways for students to broaden and enhance their four years at Stanford. The introduction of minors during the past four years provides students with an opportunity to develop two lines of intellectual exploration. Some students may find it possible to pursue a double major, but for others a double major is unrealistic. Virtually every student, however, will be able to complete a minor if she is suitably inclined.

Upon graduating, many of our students report that one of their most memorable experiences was the opportunity to spend a quarter at one of our Overseas campus. The Overseas Study Program, which is celebrating 40 years of offering unique learning opportunities to students, currently includes nine different locations, among which are the Oxford program, which offers students the opportunity to study with Oxford faculty in the English tutorial system; the Kyoto center, which offers a two-semester program focusing on Japanese studies and one semester program focused on technology; programs in Puebla, Mexico, and Santiago, Chile, which offer an opportunity to study in a developing country and to pursue studies in Spanish, the most popular foreign language choice among students; programs in Berlin and in Moscow that provide the opportunity to view the rapid changes in Eastern Europe; and programs in Paris and Florence offering access to two of the cultural centers of Europe.

Your daughters and sons may want to consider these possibilities for intensive intellectual engagement with different cultures as they begin to plan their time at Stanford.

Honors studies and honors theses have a long history at Stanford, and we have been working toward providing more opportunities for research and honors theses through our majors. We will encourage your daughters and sons to pursue such opportunities as they move through the next four years. For me, participating in undergraduate research led me from my undergraduate major in electrical engineering to my graduate major in computer science, and also ignited a passion for being on the leading edge of discovering new knowledge. This passion sustained me through my Ph.D. and continues to excite me after 22 years as a Stanford faculty member.

While we will provide a variety of possibilities during the next four years, only your children, as individuals, will be able to choose what excites them, what generates intellectual passion and engages their very able minds. It will have to be their choice, and we hope that you will support that choice.

So, if your daughter comes home and tells you that she wants to major in medieval history and philosophy, recall that this double major was the undergraduate major of Carly Fiorina, the new CEO of Hewlett­Packard, the second largest computer company in the U.S. Ms. Fiorina, by the way, is not only the first female CEO of one of the top 10 computer or electronics companies in the world, but she is also the first person without an engineering degree to be CEO of HP in the 60 years since Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett left Stanford to start HP.

In its 108 years of history, Stanford University has had to endure several extremely difficult periods of transition. One of the most challenging began when Sen. Leland Stanford died in 1893, just two years after the opening of the university. The Stanfords' estate was entangled by legal difficulties for six years. Jane Stanford, who had functioned as a partner in setting up the university, assumed control of the university upon her husband's death and led Stanford through this difficult transition. She devoted all but $350 of her $10,000 personal monthly allowance to the university. Five years after Leland Stanford's death, the estate was released from probate and Jane Stanford turned $11 million over to the trustees. She then turned her attention to the construction of Memorial Church, which she dedicated to her husband. Finally in 1903, 10 years after the Senator's death, Mrs. Stanford, satisfied that the university had survived the transition and was now well launched, turned control over to the trustees. On this occasion, she used words I believe still resonate for our new freshmen, for the faculty who will work with these students, and for you as parents: "Let us not be afraid to outgrow old thoughts and ways and dare to think on new lines as to the future work under our care."

I want to close by saying thank you. Thank you for sending your talented daughters and sons to Stanford. All of us on the faculty are here in a large part because of the extraordinary students who are also at Stanford. The process of intellectual exploration and discovery is the university's reason for being. Thank you for the opportunity to share this journey of discovery with your sons and daughters. While I cannot make any commitments or predictions about what paths your children will take in their educational journey at Stanford, tomorrow I will encourage them to begin this process of intellectual discovery with the same words that Sen. Stanford used at the opening day ceremonies for the first freshmen class in 1891: "Students, all that we can do for you is to place the opportunities within your reach; it rests with you to grasp and improve them."

Welcome to Stanford University and thank you for coming today. SR