printable versionFaculty Senate minutes - April 20, 2006 meeting
At its meeting on Thursday, April 20, 2006, the Thirty-eighth Senate of the Academic Council took the following action:
1. By unanimous voice vote, conferred baccalaureate degrees on the Winter Quarter degree candidates listed in SenD#5824, as recommended by the Committee on Undergraduate Standings and Policy.
2. By unanimous voice vote, also conferred the various advanced degrees on the Winter Quarter candidates listed in SenD#5825, as recommended by the Committee on Graduate Studies.
EDWARD D. HARRISAcademic Secretary to the UniversityMinutes, April 20I. Call to OrderChairman Eric Roberts called this meeting of the Senate, the first spring quarter meeting of Senate 38, to order at 3:19 p.m., saying quietly to the Academic Secretary, "No one will notice that there is not quite a quorum present." Just then, more senators poured in, no doubt anticipating the meeting of the Academic Council to which the Senate would adjourn at ~4:20 pm.
II. Approval of Minutes of March 9, 2006 (SenD#5817)The Chair directed the senators' attention "…to Senate document 5817, the minutes of our last Senate meeting that were sent out via E-mail and that also appeared in the Stanford Report on March 15th. First I'd like to ask if there are any additions or corrections to those minutes?" He heard none, called for a vote, and the minutes were approved unanimously as submitted more than one month ago.
III. Action CalendarA. Committee on Undergraduate Standards and Policy: List of candidates for baccalaureate degrees (SenD#5824)B. Committee on Graduate Studies: List of candidates for Advanced Degrees -- (SenD#5825)Professor Roberts noted that "One of the exciting opportunities that we have as members of Senate is that we get to vote upon the conferral of degrees. That's our responsibility. At your desks, you'll find two lists. We have first senate document #5824, the list of candidates for baccalaureate degrees that were completed last quarter and are recommended by the Committee on Undergraduate Standards and Policy. Roger Printup, are there any last-minute changes or additions to these?"
There were none, and a unanimous approval of those recommended for baccalaureate degrees was obtained. Similarly, SenD#5825, the list of candidates for advanced degrees recommended by the Committee on Graduate Studies were approved as presented by the Registrar. The senators joined in congratulating this cohort of graduates.
IV. Standing ReportsA. Memorial Resolution Herbert Solomon (1919-2004) SenD#5826This was presented by Professor Sanford Dornbusch. He began, speaking in a sonorous and firm voice. "It's an honor to present to you on behalf of a committee consisting of Ted Anderson, myself, Bradley Efron, and Ingram Olkin a statement on Herbert Solomon.
"Herbert Solomon, Professor of Statistics, emeritus, was born on March 13th, 1919, and died on September 20th, 2004, after a long, disabling illness. He received his BS in mathematics from City College in 1940 and his master's degrees in statistics from Columbia in 1941. During World War II, he did military research at the Mathematics Research Group and then with the famed statistical research group at Columbia. From 1948 to 1952, he served in the Office of Naval Research, where, while still a graduate student at Stanford, he was named the first head of the Statistics branch. He continued his ties to ONR for decades, serving in 1978 and 1979 as its chief scientist in London.
"Awarded Stanford's first Ph.D. in statistics in 1950, in 1952, he was named associate professor of statistics, and later professor at teacher's college in Columbia. He became Professor of Physics at Stanford in 1959 and was Chair from 1959 to 1964, and from 1985 to 1988.
"Ken Arrow said, 'His outstanding chairmanship of the Statistics Department served to consolidate its leading position in the field, which it has retained.' "
"His research honors included president, 1964/'65, of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, president, 1966, of the Operations Research Society of the West, The American Statistical Association's Wilkes Medal in 1975, the Towns and Harris Medal in 1977 for a distinguished alumnus from the City College of New York, Guggenheim Fellowship in 1958/59, Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, and in 1979, the Navy Department's highest honor, the Distinguished Public Service Award. His research brought large government grants to Statistics. He used the money primarily to support graduate students and their dissertations.
"To the students, he was, 'Big daddy.' When he had basement space constructed to provide offices for students who were writing their theses, the area was known as 'King Solomon's Minds'. He made two major contributions for faculty colleagues. First, although personally Von Eshelman patriotic, he was one of only two department chairs who in 1963/'64, successfully achieved the withdrawal of patriotism as a criterion in long-term faculty appointments at Stanford. Second, because of his close ties to federal officials, Stanford sent controller Kenneth Creighton and him to Washington to voice opposition to intrusive rules on effort reporting for faculty who receive federal grants. The proposed rules were appreciably softened by their efforts.
"Finally, and most important to him, Solomon was devoted to his beloved wife, Lottie, a violinist and choir director, their lawyer children, Mark and Jed, their four grandchildren, and brothers Seymour and Henry. Their oldest child, Naomi, with whom they were very close, died in the September 11th, 2001, World Trade Center attack, creating a raw wound that lasted through his last years. For him, family always came first."
Chairman Roberts asked the Senate to rise for the traditional moment of silence, and then he thanked Professor Dornbusch and his committee for that memorial statement.
B. Steering CommitteeRoberts moved to the report from the Steering Committee. "I want to call your attention to the fact that we have an abbreviated Senate meeting today. We'll be ending at 4:20 so that we can walk over to the annual meeting of the Academic Council, which will be held in the Cubberley auditorium
"But also, I wanted to say that we have finished the election for the new Senate. You have at your desks the list of new senators for Senate 39. And at this point, we move on to the election of the next year's Steering Committee and Senate chair. All of the members of the new Senate have been sent notification that the ballot is available. You can vote online. It seems to be extremely easy to do. We are very pleased to announce that the online voting that we put in place for Senate 39 resulted in a substantial increase in participation. A full 50 percent of the Academic Council cast ballots, a new indoor record! Please remember that the deadline for voting for the Steering Committee and Chair of the Senate is May 2nd.
"I do want to reiterate Ted Harris' note that went out to all of the members. Because we've asked two candidates to stand for Chair, the CoC wants both of them to be on the Steering Committee, so it is the usual procedure to cast your vote for the Chair, and then vote for the other Chair candidate high on your list for the other Steering Committee members. That decision, of course, is yours alone. The second stage election for the Advisory Board is also under way. And that deadline is coming much sooner, April 24th at midnight. In either case, you go to <vote.Stanford.edu> on a secure http:// server.
"The list of forthcoming agenda items is at the bottom of the agenda. On May 4th , we will have a report on the Google digitization project of our libraries from Mike Keller, a very interesting topic. A report on infrastructure charge changes from Provost Etchemendy will be on the agenda as well as the annual report from the Committee on Libraries. The spring quarter informal executive session will then be held upstairs in the Law Faculty lounge.
"On May 18, we will hear the report on the Status of Women Faculty, and Faculty Gains and Losses from Vice Provost Pat Jones, and a report from the Committee on Research which will bring back some changes in the Scientific Misconduct Policy. On June first, we will hear Provost Etchemendy's budget report and the Committee on Graduate Studies will ask us to approve formation of a new IDP in Genetic Counseling. On June 15th, we will have the report on the activities this year of the Emeritus Council from Professor Abernethy. At the close of this, our last meeting, President Hennessey will host a reception for Senates 38 and 39 and the Board of Trustees at the Faculty Club.
C. Committee on CommitteesThere were no questions for the Steering Committee, and Chairman Roberts turned to Professor Sheppard for a report from the Committee on Committees. She noted that "…we're within six faculty of having chosen members for all the committees for next year. Our work is near completion and those efforts are really made possible by my fellow committee members, Luis Fraga, Andrea Lunsford, Scotty McLennan, Maureen McNichols, Doug Osheroff, and Charles Prober. They have been very loyal in coming to meetings and helping me think about what attributes and disciplines we want in faculty for the seven committees.
"I'd also like to acknowledge the chairs of the committees, who have also been very active in meeting regularly and pushing issues forward. Our faculty senate committees are really the active infrastructure of the academic edifice here. The chairs are:
Abbas El Gamal - Academic Computing and Information Systems
Sylvia Yanagisako - Graduate Studies
David Riggs - Libraries
Elisabeth Paté-Cornell - Research
Brad Osgood - Review of Undergraduate Majors
Hazel Markus - Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid
Rosemary Knight - Undergraduate Standards and Policies.
"We have been working seriously with the chairs of C-RUM and C-GS, exploring possible ways that we can make their tasks more efficient and rewarding, while being relevant and important for our academic functions. These are relatively new committees and it is appropriate to evaluate their functions and processes. This spring or next fall the CoC will probably be coming forward to the Steering Committee with our recommendations. That is my report, Mr. Chairman."
Chairman Roberts thanked Professor Sheppard as well as all of the members of the Committee on Committees, "…and my colleagues on the faculty. This faculty runs on the time and effort of volunteers who serve it on these committees."
D. Provost and PresidentPresident Hennessy deferred his talking until the Academic Council meeting. "I think I will have adequate time later this afternoon," and there were no questions for him.
In contrast, Provost Etchemendy did have something to say. "I don't think I ever had a chance to announce the final membership of the joint search committee for the Vice Provost and Dean of Research and Vice Provost for Graduate Education positions.
"Mac Beasley, of Applied Physics, has agreed to chair it. Stephanie Kalfayan is Associate Chair. Membership consists of Jenny Allen, our colleague and law school student and member of the Graduate Student Council; Jonathan Dorfan, director of SLAC; Mo Fiorina, Poli Sci; Steve Graham from Geological and Environmental Sciences; Roni Holeton from H & S; Steve Kahn from SLAC and Physics; Pam Karlan from the Law School; Roberta Katz from the President's office; Tom Kenny, our colleague here from Mechanical Engineering; Jim Leckie from Civil and Environmental Engineering; Jim Patel from the GSB; Sohini Ramachandran, biological sciences student; and Hannah Valantine, from the School of Medicine.
"They've been meeting and working very hard and gathering input and realizing that it's going to be a tough job to fill Artie's shoes… even if you have four feet to fill two shoes!
"Second, I want to reiterate what I hope I've communicated adequately to the campus: it is extremely important that we try to cut down on the peak-hour commute trips immediately during this spring, and on into the future. So we're asking a lot of the schools and administrative units to try out trial projects to see what works for the individual departments, schools, and administrative units. I am very pleased with how well we have done so far. We just received the final word that we did not exceed the limit set for last year, although we were very, very close. The reason we did not exceed it was partly because of credits that we received. So the raw count was above the actual number. We get various credits from the county for complex reasons that I won't go into in detail. These are derived from the ridership on the Marguerite and so forth and so on.
"What is really remarkable is, if you look at the statistics, that the percentage of our faculty and staff and students who are commuting to campus in single-driver, single-occupant vehicles has really gone down. This in spite of the fact that our population has actually gone up. We have managed to remain below the commute level of 2000 or 2001, which was the baseline. But we need to continue working at it. So I urge all of you and your colleagues and staff to find other ways of getting to campus. Now that spring has finally come, I think you should all be jogging to campus!"
"We'll be running right behind you, John", said Professor Stipek with a smile.
Apparently interested more in the passing of minutes than in discourse, the senators had no questions for the Provost.
5. Other ReportsA. A Discussion of Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid by Dean Richard H. Shaw.Chairman Roberts moved through the introductions. "We've invited the Dean of Admissions, Rick Shaw, to speak. He's new in his position. The most important thing for each of us as faculty is the students. It's bright and curious undergraduates, those who are recruited through Rick's office, that make our professional lives interesting and rewarding. We have asked Rick to share some of his perspectives about the admissions process this year. Most of you have seen young people with badges wandering around campus today; they are the ProFros, the secondary school students that we have admitted. Those are Rick's responsibility now, and we hope that they will become ours. Rick gets to tell us what his ideas are, and, time permitting, we can share some of our concerns and questions with Rick."
Dean Shaw came forward and began his PowerPoint presentation. He gave the impression of a man who was organized, and who had a clear vision for his work based upon a lot of experience. He began. "I thank you very much for the opportunity to come and address the Senate. And as you've heard, we will have by late this evening, 1500 of the newly admitted students coming from the largest applicant class in history.
"We're going to talk a little bit about application trends here. And then I'd like to spend some time talking about candidate evaluation, because we have made some structural changes in the way we go about evaluating students and where we put our emphasis of our evaluation. One of the things that I've been mandated to do is to really look at the issues of outreach. How do we and should we go out to the nation and the world to identify the best and the brightest young people to bring to you to be taught. I'll talk briefly about the financial aid enhancements that have been improved and implemented this year, and add some comments about equity and access. I will outline some of the research carried out within our office, and then, of course, respond to your questions
"The story about applications. We have had this year 22,332 applicants to Stanford. We selected 852 students through early admission, and 1578 during the regular cycling. The class size is going to be 1657. We're also working towards the admissions of 60 transfer students into later years. There are a lot of high school graduates; therefore, many schools are seeing rises in their applications. But Stanford's rise was probably higher than most of the institutions that we compete with. Our admission rate was less than 11 percent this year.
"So after receiving all of these applications, we have the daunting task of evaluation. And in all the years up to this point in time, and really going back to the period of Dean Fred Hargadon, there was a system that was really individualized. Most of the evaluation went on by reviewers in rooms by themselves, and there weren't many discussions that went on. There was lots of narrative and then a summary was generated by that one person. Those were passed up through the levels of seniority. The next level of reader would sign off on them, and then they would go up to the Dean. The Dean had a significant signoff authority on all of the class." That is power!
"I've implemented a committee process and have put a lot of ownership in this process in the 'Territory Manager', who, in fact, is an admissions officer whose primary responsibility is to understand the geographic area that they work in. The reviewers within that territory become quite expert in the area, and they have the primary responsibility for advocacy for candidates, for doing the initial evaluations, and then passing the papers of the competitive candidates on to seasonal readers whom we hire.
"The next step is the Committees composed of a chair, a presenter (the territory representative), a recorder (also a voting member of the committee), and the other voting members of the committee. So what we have here is a democracy! This is an opportunity for people to have discussions about the relevant qualifications of the students that are applying for admission, and to be a check and balance in which we can really challenge each other's opinions rather than looking at them in ink on paper. There are more eyes on the process. And it works quite well.
Evaluation CriteriaScholarship"What are our criteria for evaluation? First we focus on the academic rigor of the coursework that students take. This is the highest priority. This is the foundation for what we're looking at. The number of courses they took, the rigor of their courses, and their grades play a big role. We want to find their class rank, and even if they don't have rank, we try to generate some understanding of what that might be in a particular school.
"Obviously, we look at the SATs, including the SAT II, which is not required. A vast majority of the students that apply send us subject exams, and we look at those as well. We analyze the testing patterns, whether these plateau or are up and down. We also can use the American College Test (ACT) in lieu of the SAT, as a primary test." The senators were impressed with the quantitative nature of this process, and yet waited to hear about the other criteria.
Commitment to Scholarship" 'Intellectual Vitality' means passion and depth and breadth for the intellectual experience beyond just getting grades…having a deep passion about the academic enterprise, about learning, about engaging in the subject material. We use terms like 'showing maturity' and 'self-discipline in the fulfillment of projects,' 'read deeply' and 'create energetically', or 'experiment creatively in response to deep-seated intellectual curiosity'. These are less easy to quantify, but when you see them, you recognize them.
"Non-academic accomplishments are reflections of strong leadership. Examples would be captain of three sports, or the president of high school student government, or the academic decathlon to the national or international level, or the Model United Nations, or involvement in community service. If you go out in the Tresidder Mall today the student groups you would see there are similar to many of the things that kids have done in high school and have carried on to college.
Personal presentation"And then there's Student Self-presentation. How have they presented themselves in the application process? How have they structured their essays?
Recommendations"Teacher and counselor recommendations are critical components of the evaluation. We scrutinize the tone and level of those, the emphasis,…and the hyperbole.
Intrinsic qualities"Personal strengths and qualities are examined. An example might be a young person who is first generation immigrant (like Madeline Albright at Wellesley in 1955) who has faced great hardship and, in fact, prevailed and been the best in his or her community and met those challenges head on."
"That is a summary of our evaluation process. But we do much more in this office. Outreach Activities are an integral part of our plan for the next two years. We want to go out and carry the flag for Stanford in national/international venues. We also want to work hard in developing relationships in this outreach activity among the national Alumni Association. We want to work with nonprofit organizations, those organizations that are empowering young people that are first generation residents in our country, and then to continue to work on our relationships with guidance counselors.
"We're going to increase our travel substantially around the country and worldwide. We're starting to develop an international plan to attract the best and the brightest from everywhere. Our Diversity Outreach program is very important. We want Stanford to be known as one of the most diverse campuses in the United States.
"Increasing our matriculant to admit ratio is very important. These are our Yield Activities, one of which is the admit student weekend going on right now. Every time you see a young person today, smile at him or her, say 'Hello', and add, "I'm a Stanford professor…can I answer any questions?' In this vein, we're going to create a new computerized Prospect Management system to enable us to know a lot, using national demographics about where all the rising high school seniors are in the nation, primarily based on where they've tested. A lot of who you are parents know what this is about, because you're buried alive with materials with your young sons and daughters. We'll be using that to plan our travel and also plan interactions on the worldwide web. Concurrently, we're going to continue to increase the scope and breadth of our prospect mailings, getting the message out to kids about what Stanford is and what makes it unique and what's exciting about the place. We are developing the possibility of the use of the national and international Alumni Association groups. We are asking them how they'd like to become involved in the process of a 'recruitment army' nationally and internationally, helping us do our work.
"We are asking this question, which has been raised before: 'Would you like to be involved in doing admissions interviews?' This will be asked of the campus constituencies as well." [The Academic Secretary's memory wandered back to 1953, remembering that it was his local interview with a Dartmouth alumnus that generated his decision to go there.] "We do not now interview applicants, but many of the institutions with whom we compete with certainly do. We want to get alumni groups more involved in 'adopting' schools and increasing the number of what we call 'trained cities', places where we go and give alumni/ae intensive training about doing outreach for us at college fairs and other local programs.
"We're also going to increase our recruitment travel almost immediately tenfold. We're joining the "Exploring College Options" consortium with Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, and Penn to travel to 300 cities in the fall of 2006 and spring of 2007. By ourselves, we are going to start doing summer recruitment for all those kids in all those towns who don't have the money to go to vacation towns and who stay at home in the summer, work at their local grocery store and go to the library and hang out at the Dairy Queen. We'll bring them information about Stanford in five cities this summer.
"And then we are developing long-term recruitment strategies for the international market. We started travel last fall in Latin America and Mexico, and we'll return this year. We're going to Asia in two weeks that will be a big trip for my staff. And we'll add three other continents in the fall. As you can tell we're beginning to reach out to the strongest scholars worldwide. And this is all in concert with the extraordinarily wonderful announcement from President Hennessy that in five years or so perhaps we can try to work towards being completely need-blind and need-based.
"We continue to develop a Diversity Strategy. We are in the midst of searching for an Assistant Dean for Multicultural Outreach. This officer will have primary responsibility for reaching out to students of color and other less advantaged populations that are important to us. They will join other recruitment folks in our operation and in developing a national outreach strategic plan. We will work intensively with nonprofit organizations such as College Summit, College Horizons, A Better Chance [ABC], and Quest Bridge. There are other supplemental operations to schools in cities that are empowering young people to think about going on to college and doing incredible things to make that possible. We're already working with them now. This summer we will have ABC students on campus. In the summer of 2007 we'll have two more of the programs and their kids on our campus. Facilitating these efforts will be, we hope, a new 'Welcome Center' for our visitors' operations.
"I want to comment a little about our 'Likely Admit Program', because this is where the faculty has been very involved this year. This reaches out to the most extraordinary kids early, before the Regular Review mailing date. We ask the faculty to join us in trying to interact and contact them, actively recruiting those prospective students beginning in January […just like the athletic team coaches]. We send them a letter that says '…you are an extraordinary person and if all holds stable you will be admitted to Stanford and we want you to come here!' We follow those letters with calls from the faculty. This January we had 61 what we call 'Super-star Academic Likelies' and another 60 'Multicultural Likelies'. Each of these 121 students will be admitted to every competitive institution in the country. We're trying to get at them early and convince them that this is the place that they really want to attend.
To help us in this enterprise we enlisted 45 faculty (including many undergraduate advisors) and senior administrators. From this group 90 students got phone calls, a special and much appreciated effort!
"We asked this same group of volunteer faculty to phone our top 81 'Academic Superstars' admitted in our 'Single Choice Early Action' program. This program will expand next year.
"Stanford's Financial Aid policy has been announced.
In 2006/07 parental contributions will be eliminated for families with a total annual income less than $45,000.
Parental contributions from families with total incomes between $45,000 and $60,000 will be 'smoothed.'
"We thank the President, Provost, and Board for continuing this process of caring deeply about issues of affordability.
"What about our 'institutional research' on issues related to admissions and financial aid? We do these internally and also in direct cooperation with
C-UAFA. Examples are the 'Admitted Student Questionnaire' that we distribute each May, and the reports done by outside organizations such as COFHE that accumulate information on admissions and financial aid from great numbers of colleges and universities. One group of students that we are most interested in hearing from are those students who chose NOT to accept admission to Stanford. What are their reasons? Last year the top reasons that Stanford was rated 'Fair or Poor' by 'non-enrolling students' were
tuition, room and board costs - to costly
the surrounding communities - not sufficiently urban
access to off-campus activities - too provincial
geographic location - too far from the East coast!
"The most widely held images that non-enrolling admits associate with Stanford were that the place is
selective
challenging
intellectual
fun
impersonal
Dean Shaw was intrigued by the last one on the list. "Why do they say that? We think we're the most personable people on earth, so we'll have to dig down and find out what that means. I hope you're all being very personal on this. That's an issue they see from a distance. Maybe it's size. I don't know what drives it."
The amount of financial aid and costs of attending Stanford have been significant for non-enrollees in the range of 45 - 52 % over the last four years.
"This year," continued Dean Shaw, "C-UAFA has submitted lots of new questions for our new cycle of questionnaires and has been very involved in asking all kinds of questions of prospective students. Hazel Markus, chair of C-UAFA, has contributed much to these. They are intended for comparison of us to our major competitors, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and MIT.
"These are some of the questions that we've added on to our questionnaires this year:
Role of outside assistance and coaching in application process
o Use of college counselor or advisor OTHER than high school counselor or advisor
o Use of test preparation agency or individual to prepare for standardized testing
o Degree and source of assistance and coaching on Stanford application essays
Importance of specific factors in decision to apply to Stanford
o Physical distance from home
o Freshman/Sophomore Seminar program
o Opportunity to conduct research as an undergraduate
o Parental influence
Evaluation of Admission and Financial Aid Office's customer service
o Aspects of admission process that both encouraged and discouraged students in decision to apply to Stanford
o Responsiveness and accessibility of Stanford representatives throughout the process
o Participation in admission interview for another college(s) and interest level in opportunity for a formal interview at Stanford
o Suggestions for future changes that could make a positive difference in the Stanford admission experience
Student self-assessment
o Adjectives and phrases a student would use to describe herself/himself
At this point, Dean Shaw commented on several other issues. "What about gender balance at Stanford? Professor Ted Harris asked about this in the context of the announcements about how many more women are going on to college as opposed to men. There are some pretty shocking statistics. Greater than 56% of the enrolled students in the universities and colleges today are women. That's not shocking for women. They're doing very well. It's the men I'm worried about! The data are even worse for black men. There's a prediction that by 2009, only 42% of the college-age men in this country will be enrolled in college. The greatest impact, as you've seen in these articles that have been written, will be on liberal arts colleges. What's happening here at Stanford? We had 11,106 this year male applicants and 11,226 female applicants. So, almost 50-50. The admissions rate for men was 10.8% and for women, 10.9%…and without social engineering. It just happened!
"The last is equity and access. It's a national issue acknowledging the divide in this nation between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. There are many more 'have nots' than 'haves'. In the recent Newsweek Magazine, the headliner was that 30% of high school students in the nation will not graduate from high school, and the data for black males are abysmal. By age 24, for example, only 10% in the lowest income quartile have earned degrees from college. And that's the fastest-growing population in this country.
"Stanford will be in the midst of providing leadership in this area… being part of the conversation and we hope part of the solutions as well. We hope you will be caring deeply about the same issue as well."
Questions and DiscussionProfessor Noll was frowning and thinking as an economist. "I'd like to push you a little bit to try to explain a disconnect in your presentation. In the first part, you described a big increase in the budget for marketing, travel, brochures, and the like. In the second part, you explained why people turn us down after being admitted and the financial aid problems are significant reasons to around 50% of them. Financial aid is a big deal. Other things, such as geographic location aren't going to be fixed, I suspect, by marketing!
So the curiosity I have is, why do we believe that spending an extra $100,000 is more productive if we spend it on marketing than if we give 100 students $1,000 more financial aid?"
Dean Shaw answered by focusing on his desires to recruit applicants from a much more broad catchment area. "I think we've rested on our laurels for a long time and just received the applicants that we get. What I'm trying to accomplish is to bring a very diverse perspective from across the nation to Stanford. We want students from the southeastern United States, northeastern, the Midwest, the southwest, and foreign countries to be interested in pursuing their education in a place like Stanford and bring their diverse perspectives and experiences to us. I'm not interested in receiving more applications. I'm interested in reaching out to kids that really are not on our wavelengths. Quite frankly, the schools we compete with do it ten times as much as we do it. In other words, the representation in their student bodies is much broader and deeper."
Professor Noll frowned even more and cut back in at this moment. "My question is not about your goals. The question is about the instrument for achieving them. One way to get more students from the southeast is to market to them. Another way is to give them more financial aid."
Dean Shaw agreed, and Professor Noll continued. "So why would you believe that the marketing is more effective than the financial aid?"
Dean Shaw insisted that they are both imperative, that both need to happen. Noll pointed out that budget constraints would come into play at some point.
Shaw responded by saying, "I think the imperative here is to work harder at what we're doing, and not to expect higher budgets. And I think that the institution has been extraordinarily friendly in terms of considering increases in financial aid. So I don't think we're taking financial aid away from another student. When we think we need more aid, we go and ask for that aid. And I think they've been very friendly. I think the institution has been very friendly."
This interchange could have continued, but Chairman Roberts called upon John Bender, who said, "I'm delighted, as I'm sure most all colleagues will be, to hear that you're going to be doing more outreach. I'm in the humanities, and I know that a number of humanities faculty have felt for many years that somehow we ended up without as many of the best of the potential humanities students as we might have admitted. This has been looked at a number of times. And I think the feeling has been that we just aren't getting the applicants in many cases. So I imagine this is already on your program, but I'm hoping that with the help of the President and the Provost and the faculty, that we can really beef up the impression students have of our quality in the humanities.
"We have as many faculty as our competitors, roughly speaking. We're very, very high quality. But we just don't feel we're getting as many of the students as we would like to see. And, ultimately, this ties into larger institutional goals. It's extremely hard to recruit top-level faculty in the humanities if we can't offer them top-level undergraduates, when most of the teaching load in the humanities is at the undergraduate level. I'd like to talk with you about this, and I'm sure many of my colleagues would. If it comes to phone calls and other mechanisms to attract them, I think we can certainly pitch in.
I think the feeling has been that the humanities is an area where we need more effort because of our geographical location, and because of our profile as a 'semi-tech institution'."
Dean Shaw accepted that, and at this point, acknowledged some of his staff in the back of the auditorium, Karen Cooper (the director of financial aid) and Christina Wire designated as the new director of outreach and marketing. They are both associate deans.
Dean Stipek was next to speak, expressing concern about the ever-increasing competition to get into Stanford. "We've had discussions in the Senate before about our concerns about the messages that Stanford gives, and other universities like it, to high school students and counselors and parents about what it takes to get into a university like Stanford. We've talked about the huge level of stress and anxiety and pressure that's on kids right now and we're seeing the negative consequences for their emotional and mental health as a result of this stress in high school. I fear that with the increased application pool and the increased competitiveness of getting in, that, in fact, what we look at becomes even more narrow, so that it becomes even more difficult to identify those kids who, on one hand, may not have had the same kind of opportunities to take nine or ten AP classes, or those that are not straight A students but might be a little bit more creative than people who just want to follow the rules and do what it takes to get an A. So… how are we addressing both an effort to find those kids who don't look like those who attain the high SAT scores and high grade point averages and lots of AP tests? Have you given sufficient thought to what kind of messages we give about what it takes to be admitted to Stanford?"
Dean Shaw responded. "First, I want to say that we think of every young person as an individual. We think of them in the context of where they learn and in the context of the advantages they've had access to and the nature of the schools from which they will be graduating. We're looking at every kid in the context of where they are. If a student is from a school that's resource poor, doesn't have fourteen AP courses but, rather, six, and she has taken three, she is competitive. We may decide that she, in the context of her learning environment is the best that there is, and we'll admit her.
"Additionally, if a student has special talent in the arts, we have faculty listening to that, and if a student has extraordinary ability in mathematics but is not so strong in the verbal side, we pay close attention to that."
As for the second part of his answer, Dean Shaw admitted that college admissions these days, "…is incredibly competitive. It's the most competitive environment in the history of higher education. And we have to be straightforward and honest to kids about how hard it is to get in. So the first thing I tell my staff to do is, don't mislead anyone. Tell them, this is a long shot. Tell them what the percentages are. And tell them what we're looking for. We spend a lot of time talking about what we think makes the institution unique. But can we predict that the student with perfect scores on SATs and all A's will get in? The answer is no. This year, 16% of kids who had straight A's didn't get in. Why not? Because they were not the human beings we are looking for here. We are looking for the persons behind the process, their intellectual depth and breadth behind the straight A's. What kinds of contributions will they make to the classroom here and what kind of dynamic will go on between the faculty and the student."
The Dean went on to muse about hearing from disappointed applicants, and added that "I hardly ever hear from happy admitted students. They don't call me." President Hennessy interjected, "That comes in the Fall, Rick!"
Shaw brightened up, adding, "I get to get in the golf cart with the president and the admitted students are really happy. But I do hear a lot from families who didn't make it. And the first question I ask the families is this: Where did your son or daughter get in? Invariably, they list four or five of the best institutions in the country. So I can say, 'What's to be disappointed about?'
"It's the parents that are really the most anxious about this, because they want the very best for their kids. We have to tell them the truth, tell them what's going to happen at the end of the process, wish them the very best, tell them what we're about, and then let the cards fall where they may."
Chairman Roberts recognized Luis Fraga for the penultimate question.
Professor Fraga said, "Rick, I wanted to ask if you can talk to us and inform us later by e-mail about what our trends are here at Stanford and what the trends are at our competitor institutions for the for first-generation college students in terms of percent of the applicant pool, acceptance rates, and percent of the entering class. I know those three are all very much related to each other. And I'd like to know not just how we stand, but how our competitor institutions stand and especially what the trends have been since the late '60s." The Dean promised to try to gather those data.
Professor Sheppard asked about the dilemma of to offer or not interviews of applicants, since a lot of our competitor institutions are doing those interviews. The Dean said that he'll send his answers to these questions to the Academic Secretary who will then forward them to the Senate.
V. At this point, 4:20 pm, Chairman Roberts asked briefly if there were unfinished or new business. There were neither and the Senate adjourned to Cubberley auditorium for the annual Academic Council meeting.Respectfully submitted,Edward D. Harris, Jr. M.D.Academic Secretary to the University