Stanford Report, July 12, 2006

Cardinal Chronicle

BY MICHAEL PEÑA

The Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity plans to offer a course in the fall on immigration and hopes to set up an art exhibit in the center's library featuring the works of students, staff and faculty. "No issue has been as contentious in American politics as immigration," reads the course description for CSRE10, Immigration: Rights and Wrongs, which will explore the history, politics, cultural discourse and policy of immigration in America, as well as global issues of migration and citizenship. Artwork, including photos, must relate to immigration, but precise requirements on subject matter and medium are open and flexible. The exhibit will run through February 2007. Anyone interested in exhibiting art should contact CHRIS QUEEN at cnqueen@stanford.edu.

Students and staff aren't the only ones who have vacated campus for the summer. So has STANLEY, the robotic car that traversed 132 miles of desert sans driver last October and won the 2005 Grand Challenge, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The modified Volkswagen Touareg is now on loan to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., until Labor Day. The museum is exhibiting the experimental vehicle in its robot collection because Stanley is said to demonstrate promising advances in artificial intelligence and driverless cars.

No alumni are serving as crewmembers of the current space shuttle mission, but as pointed out in a San Jose Mercury News article that ran July 2, the Farm has been a launch pad of sorts for many aspiring astronauts. Professor BRIAN CANTWELL, chair of the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department in the School of Engineering, offered several reasons in the article: Many astronauts have engineering backgrounds, and Stanford has one of the nation's top engineering schools. Cantwell also cited Stanford's proximity to much of the aerospace industry on the West Coast, while DAVID ORENSTEIN, spokesman for the School of Engineering and Stanford Report contributor, pointed over his shoulder to the NASA/Ames Research Center in Mountain View as another factor. Although not an alumna, Palo Alto-native PAMELA MELROY will be the commander for the space shuttle mission scheduled for August 2007. But her crew will include mission specialist SCOTT PARAZYNSKI, who is an alumnus. The names of all 18 alumni astronauts are listed in the 2006 Stanford Facts book.