printable versionFaculty Senate minutes - November 9, 2006 meeting
At its meeting on Thursday, November 9, 2006, the Thirty-ninth Senate of the Academic Council heard reports but took no actions.
EDWARD D. HARRIS Academic Secretary to the University Minutes, NOV. 9 I. Call to OrderThe Senate chair, Sheri Sheppard, gaveled the meeting to order, and the senators, mingling pleasantly among themselves, settled into the chairs of room 190 in the Law School. The good will may have had something to do with the fact that the meeting occurred 38 hours after election day.
II. Approval of Minutes - (SenD#5896)Professor Sheppard noted that the Academic Secretary was, at this moment, flying home from Johannesburg, South Africa where he had been involved with other leaders of the Decade of the Bone and Joint, 2000-2010. It is probable that very few senators realized the existence of this particular decade. His minutes, therefore, will be dependent on the fine transcription of Laura Brewer and the nuances added by Trish Del Pozzo, giving each senator a good opportunity for additions or corrections to today's proceedings at the next senate meeting.
As for the Minutes of the October 26th meeting, one change was requested by Theo Milonopoulos who said, "I had a question about the record of my question. It says, 'Do athletes get excess perks?' I believe that does not fully represent the nature of my question." He wished to change that to something that suggests that "…we should equalize student benefits and opportunities for everyone." Professor Sheppard asked him to send the exact wording of his revision to Trish and that it would be incorporated. With this correction, the minutes were approved as written. They are available on the web at http://facultysenate.stanford.edu.
III. Action CalendarThis was empty today.
IV. Standing ReportsA. Steering Committee
"First of all," said Professor Sheppard, "I'd like to welcome Ann Arvin. Welcome, in your new role as Vice Provost and Dean of Research, and as an ex officio member of the Senate. It is great to have you on board!" Professor Arvin, often an elected senator in past years, was greeted with warm applause.
"And with Ann taking on that role, Artie Bienenstock is wearing a different hat. He's Acting Vice Provost for Graduate Education for the remainder of this calendar year.
"You'll also find at your seats the yellow sheets. Those of you who have been in Senate for a number of years have seen these before. This is an informal way to get feedback on topics that you'd like us to emphasize, either more or less. This is an addition to the results of our first meeting activity where we gathered a lot of ideas that are affecting the programming we're doing this year for Senate meetings.
"I'd like to draw your attention to some of the items on the bottom of your list on the forthcoming agenda. At our next meeting, on November 30th, we'll have an executive session up in the faculty lounge. That will be attended by voting members and ex officio senators only. Prior to the full Senate meeting at 3:15, the Steering Committee will have an administrative session beginning at 2:15. All senators are invited to attend. To most effectively use your time together as a Senate, there are some items that the steering committee takes on itself at these administrative sessions. We'll present a summary of our administrative session items at the full meeting. You'll also note that the meeting on January 11th has been cancelled. That's really due to the difficulty getting all of us back and classes started and getting the winter quarter up and running. The first winter quarter meeting will be January 25th, where we'll have a presentation by Professors Kenji Hakuta and Helen Quinn, who have recently been named the new co-leaders of the K-12 project in the School of Education.
"Our February 8th meeting is a field trip. Get ready to go out in the world! We're going over to the School of Medicine." "A different planet!", added Vice Provost Bravman. Professor Sheppard shouldered on. "We'll have a shorter business meeting, and then a program is being designed that embeds us out into parts of the medical school to see what goes on there.
"One more comment. If you were here last time or read the minutes, you know we had Bob Bowlsby with us. He is our new Athletic Director. After the presentation, I e-mailed him to thank him for his informative and entertaining presentation. I asked him two more questions, and now I will share the questions and two answers. First, I asked, what did he find easier at Stanford relative to Iowa. And his answer to that one was '…raising money. At Iowa, we had received only seven gifts to athletics of a million dollars or more. At Stanford, we have had over 200, and the number is climbing. We also have the opportunity to work with such an extraordinarily high level of students. It's really wonderful. And I would add, it's not only an opportunity; it's also a responsibility.'
"My second question was, what advice would you offer to us as teachers who work with student athletes? His answer to that was, 'I think most of our students expect to be treated like everyone else. Having stated that, it is also appropriate to recognize that they are physically and mentally tired at times and that they also have the rigors of difficult travel to deal with. In short, they have a lot on their plates, and at times, they miss some classes, which exacerbates the challenges.'
"Something I took away from Bob's comment is a reminder for us teachers to be compassionate, but also high standard-setters. His comments made me realize that I don't know a lot about what goes on in the life of my students outside of the classroom."
B. Committee on Committees
There was no CoC report. The Chair pointed out that the activity of CoC shifts into high gear next quarter when it will begin choosing faculty most appropriate for populating the Academic Council committees for '07-'08 year. Then the Academic Secretary contacts them, stressing the importance of this university service.
C. President's Report
President Hennessy had no formal report, and his offer to answer any and all questions yielded no takers.
Provost's Report
Provost Etchemendy said, "I have a wonderful announcement! Gail Mahood has agreed to be the Associate Vice Provost of Graduate Education. That team is falling into place nicely. Also, since you introduced Ann Arvin and Artie Bienenstock, I want to note that in the back of the room sits Patty Gumport, the Vice Provost of Graduate Education-elect, who will begin in that role on January 1st."
There were no questions for the Provost.
V. Other ReportsA. Creating a Sustainable Future (SenD#5892)
As an introduction, the Chair said, "With regards to creating a sustainable future, I'm pleased to welcome Chris Christofferson, Vice Provost of facilities, and Therese Brekke, the Sustainability program manager in the Land Use and Environmental Planning office, and Jack Cleary, Project Manager in the project management office. The Steering Committee has asked the group to give us a 20 minute presentation so that we'll also have ample time for questions and discussion. This should be of great interest to the Senate because 'sustainability' was an issue that came up in our first meeting as one the items people most wanted to learn more about.
"We have several guests in attendance for this report. Among them are four undergraduate members of the Stanford Climate Change initiative: Lauren Finzer, Hammad Ahmed, Kevin Hsu, and Sarah Rizk. Also, Robert Reidy, Stanford Management Company, who will introduce the report. Welcome to our Senate meeting!"
Mr. Christofferson led off the presentation. "It's a pleasure to be here. I appreciate the opportunity, on behalf of our group, to tell you a little bit about what we've been doing in the area of sustainability. I think it's a good story. There's a lot to tell.
"We've been asked to keep this concise, so we've come in here with the smallest number of slides humanly possible. I'll tell a big story with just a few slides. Our goal is to talk about how Land, Buildings, and Real Estate, under the direction of Vice Provost Bob Reidy, has integrated sustainability concepts into the planning, design, construction, and operations of campus facilities. While doing that, I will share a little bit about where we are, tell you of some accomplishments to date, and, more important, tell you where we're going and what we see as the challenges that are in place to getting there.
"First, a couple of definitions. The Stanford paraphrase of the United Nations definition of sustainability is:
A community is 'sustainable' when it meets present day needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
"At Stanford the concept of sustainability informs a decision-making process that balances economic, social equity and environmental considerations.
"If you ask most people what does 'sustainability' mean they'll most likely say, 'energy or environment or carbon'. And those are all critical elements of the sustainability program. But when you dig into the literature behind the movement, you'll see that they are balanced with issues of economy and equity. So it's not unusual to see in a balanced and mature sustainability program discussions of social justice that come out of the attempts to balance these three things. We began as an ad hoc group within Land, Buildings, and Real Estate. First, we researched what other institutions were doing. We found that they were doing the same kinds of things we were doing, trying to get a purchase on this subject, publishing in some cases greenhouse gas inventories, in some cases, after a couple of years of study, an actual plan. But we also found in talking to our peer institutions that a number of them are in about the same situation that we are. They and we have done quite a bit, and we each are in the process of organizing that and building on these accomplishments.
"We immediately realized that the small, ad hoc group needed to expand. We had to bring in the health and safety folks and the procurement folks. This is an effort that has continually broadened, to the point today where it's a University-wide committee. During our initial discussions, we realized that many small significant steps towards sustainability had already been taken, and we gained certification by Santa Clara County as a 'Green Business.'" "What does that mean?" interrupted Professor Block. "It means," continued Christofferson, "that in our operations, we have embraced sustainability, literally.
"Now I want to talk briefly about five specific areas and what we've done. In the case of recycling, Stanford, through our waste contractor, Peninsula Sanitary Services, has increased its diversion from the traditional waste stream so that, at this point, we are diverting 58% by weight of the refuse that used to go into the landfill through our recycling programs. Those kinds of numbers you hardly ever see in most cities. In order to get just beyond 50% diversion, we had to go into 'green waste'. Almost every tree limb that we cut down is mulched and used on campus, whereas it used to go into the waste stream. And that's how you get into these kinds of numbers approaching 60%.
"Another example. In the demolition of Encina Gym to build the Arrillaga recreation center, we 'deconstructed that building'." Professor Block chimed in again, suggesting that "deconstructed" may be the wrong term, and Christofferson agreed, but added, "It was 'deconstructed' in that 96% of the construction materials were saved for reuse and recycling, with a priority toward reuse here on campus. You may have seen the stacks of roof tiles. Some of those were used on the Graduate Community Center and will be used on other projects on campus.
"Water is a big issue for everybody in California. We have more people than we have water. Here at Stanford we take water from the same source that the City of San Francisco uses, the Hetch Hetchy pipeline. We have an allocation to use 3.033 million gallons a day. In the process of negotiating the new GUP with the county we agreed that we should deal with that as an effective cap and see if in fact we couldn't accomplish our growth to the fullest extent possible within that consumption allocation. We developed and implemented a comprehensive water conservation master plan. As a result of that, we have, since 2001, steadily reduced our daily consumption to the point we're now down to 2.2 million gallons a day. For example, after one retrofit project we just did in the Clark Center we cut the water use in half in that building. As you can tell, we've been very aggressive in trying to identify and then fund those opportunities.
"Another example is the stadium project. The stadium was using five million gallons a year for the irrigation. In the process of the stadium production, we convinced the people that were doing the work to switch that to our non-potable water source from one of the lakes on our 8000 acre campus that we have been using for years on the golf course.
"Transportation We have had for over a decade one of the most aggressive transportation demand management programs in the country as we try to get people out of their cars and use alternative transportation. We now pay commuters cash if they will choose not to buy a parking permit. During our GUP negotiations we set up a 'no-net-new-trips' requirement. In order to do that we now furnish, free of charge to qualifying faculty and staff, a pass that's good for free ridership on Valley Transit Authority and on Caltrain. And you don't have to give up your parking permit to do that. You should go down to transportation and sign up. We track what's called 'road split,' single-occupant cars. And that number has been reduced from 72% in 2002 to 55% this year, which is a direct inverse relationship to the growth in Caltrain ridership from the campus. We have just managed to stay within the no net new trips requirement each year since the baseline count in 2001.
But, you could say, 'Okay, you dramatically reduced the number of people driving cars, and yet the number of commuters is the same. Why is that?' The reason is that the campus faculty and staff population has grown by 622 people during that same time. These programs have allowed us to grow the campus where we need to in order to stay robust, and yet to do it in a way that is neutral in terms of impact on climate and emissions.
"I should mention that our buses all run on 5% bio-diesel, a diesel equivalent made from fry oil from food service establishments. Our goal is to go up to 20%.
"Building design and construction. In the case of new buildings, we've done several things that are very significant. Jack Cleary, who's in charge of that program, is here. For starters, we developed the Project Delivery Process, a way of documenting and bringing new discipline to the process of delivering buildings on time and within budget.
"We have developed guidelines for sustainable buildings. We were being encouraged by students to do more to produce 'green buildings'. We subsequently met with a group of students who were very interested in doing this, and we developed sustainability guidelines. Issues around sustainability now have an equal place at the table when decisions are being made about the elements that a given budget can support within a building. As an adjunct to that we also developed a program to formalize 'life cycle cost analysis' that defines the set of circumstances under which we would pay more in terms of first cost for some components in a building in recognition of the fact that there were longer-term savings over the life of those components.
"In addition to that, again bringing discipline into the process, we developed space standards in an attempt to maximize the existing inventory of space on campus. The mantra behind that, not one we can realize, is 'the most sustainable building is the one that's never built.' So, alternatively, if you can better utilize the space you already have, that's what you should be doing.
"What are these 'space standards'? We do analysis of proposals about elements that should be in the building that would cost significantly more than the basic kind of system we've installed. For example, if you do a payback analysis on a system in a building and the payback is five years or less, then it's required that this be incorporated into the design. If the payback is between six and ten years, it's strongly recommended that it be incorporated, which is to say, the default is it will be included unless there's a compelling reason not to do so. If the payback is ten years or more, we'll still consider it, but not recommend it.
"Let me give you an example. We wanted to bring more sustainable elements into the Environment and Energy building that sits very close to our 'cogeneration plant'. The cogeneration plant wastes a lot of water for the cooling towers. It uses a lot of 'blow-down water' to keep the chemical balance diluted. That's 60,000 gallons a day. We decided that we could use dual plumbing in the buildings, starting with Environment and Energy using its water. Instead of letting it go down the drain when it cycles, we would pump it through the building and use it to flush the toilets.
"Energy. We've been 'benchmarking' for over a decade with all the research universities in California. And in that process, we benchmark overall energy consumption per square foot of buildings on campus. Stanford is the fourth most efficient among the 13 campuses that benchmark. Here we are at 160,000 BTUs per gross square foot.
"Which are more efficient than we are? UC Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz are both directly on the ocean and, by and large, are not air-conditioned. USC is an anomaly I can't explain. Some campuses, such as UCSF and Caltech have more than twice our consumption."
After some back and forth discussion with Professor Block about the definition of 'consumption', Christofferson continued. "Let me discuss, briefly, the Energy Retrofit Program. In the period between 1996 and 2005, we funded out of our utility program 206 projects that are saving 20 million kilowatt hours a year, year in and year out. Our utility group tries to emulate a real-world utility in that it basically, in its rates, funds a rebate program, where our customers can come to us and say, 'We want to propose this. Will you fund it?' And we do a payback analysis, and if the payback is attractive, we do fund it.
"ESIP, Energy Conservation Incentive Program. You're all aware of this, I'm sure. With the Provost's encouragement, we basically took the metering budgets and we delegated them out to the deans of each school, with the understanding that we would adjust the budget as necessary for unit price changes of kilowatt hours, but that the consumption was the actual budget. And if the deans could cut consumption, they could keep the savings. If they couldn't and if the energy use went up, they would have to pay the difference. As the Provost has said, 'We would much rather spend money paying for faculty than paying for energy.'
"Cogeneration, for those of you who may not be familiar with it, is burning waste to provide heat and cooling on the campus. This has been since the mid-'80s a very, very effective measure for Stanford.
"We have won awards for our sustainability programs.
One, last year, was for being one of the ten best green projects for the Leslie Sun Field Station at Jasper Ridge.
We have been recognized by the EPA as one of the 'Best Workplaces for Commuters'.
We have received a Clean Air Award for avoiding increases in emissions from the Bay Area American Lung Association,
a Certificate of Commendation from Santa Clara County supervisor Liz Kniss as recognition of receiving the Acterra Business Environmental Award for 'remarkable environmental efforts in the community'.
"We now have set up a formal committee, the Sustainable Working Group, to help spread this kind of effort across the campus. It has broad representation from undergraduate and graduate students, the Woods Institute for the Environment, Haas Center for Public Service, and the Law School, GSB, and the School of Medicine. Many staff units and the hospitals are included. The first meeting was June 5th. It is advisory to the President and Provost, and is charged with the preparation of policy and program recommendations designed to:
Further learning, knowledge, and community service
Encourage faculty, staff and students to be active examples of good stewards and provide expertise to the University
Continuously improve Stanford's leadership and practice
The goal is to bring Stanford to the forefront of sustainable education and practice.
"The next steps for the SWG are to complete and publish a 'greenhouse gas' (GHG) inventory that will include comparisons with comparable universities, and to work with the city of Palo Alto's Green Ribbon Task Force.
"In addition to focusing on new construction, we must go back to our existing buildings to recommission them and look for opportunities to do retrofit projects in a very aggressive way. We did a study that determined that, in fact, 12 of our campus buildings use 33% of campus energy. We started with those and have identified several million dollars' worth of projects and have put those into the capital cycle so that we can achieve some significant savings there.
"Finally, we want to strengthen outreach and education. The educational campaign on campus must be expanded beyond the '5 Rs' - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, buy Recycled, and Rot. [What is Rot? mused the Academic Secretary] The campus must be educated about simple things, such as making double-sided copies, and reusing draft paper in printers. We must develop new public outreach materials and continue to support an internship program."
There was warm applause for the presentation and the evidence that Stanford had a reasonable start on the quest for sustainability. Mr. Christofferson gave the Senate the following internet links to sites of interest:
Guidelines for Sustainable Buildings and Life Cycle Cost Analysis <cpm.Stanford.edu/pdp.html>
Water Conservation, Reuse and Recycling Master Plan, and Energy Retrofit Program <facilities.stanford.edu/conservation/energy.htm>
Commute Cost and Carbon Calculator <transportation.Stanford.edu/alt_transportation/calculator.shtml>
Questions and Discussion
Dean Matson (Earth Sciences) was enthusiastic about the presentation, particularly "…the idea of not only doing it, but letting other people know we're doing it. So that's great. One quick question about the sustainability plans for all the future buildings that we're building. When we did the SEQ2 master plan, we also did a sustainability master plan that laid out a whole range of options from relatively easy to much more difficult, across a range of water, energy, and so forth. Our hope at the time was that that the sustainability master plan would actually become a tool that every building planning committee could use as they think about tradeoffs and so forth. But I'm not sure if that has disappeared or is it actually in use."
Jack Cleary responded to this question. "The sustainability component of that master plan for SEQ2 is really based upon our sustainability guidelines. We felt because of the special program that was E&E, that sustainability had to be a big part of it, and the fact that we were really concerned, and you were concerned, and that the three other buildings in that quad were not 'pigs.' Therefore, that particular master plan used that as the fundamental basis for it. The foundation was the sustainability guidelines, which we do use on every project. It is part of the overlay of our project delivery process.
"Just so you know, we have 13 project management professionals. And as of today, ten of them are 'green accredited'; I feel confident today that we do this on every project that we do now, particularly new buildings. We're getting better at renovations. But it's something we talk about throughout the entire process."
Vice Provost Reidy added, "I think you were in the meeting with Dean Plummer the other day and we started talking about the SOE center, the next two buildings in that wonderful quad. We're going to transfer what we used and learned in E&E to the next building. What we want to do is build on these things. And I think that you in this room know better than I that it is continuous improvement and constant education that will improve our standing."
Dean Matson urged one more item. "I think for the education part of that sustainability master plan, a spreadsheet might be useful, because it is faculty that are in the planning committees, and the programming committees; it is important for them to learn from the process. Thank you so much."
Professor Russell Fernald had a question about how decisions are made and what gets built. "I was jogging and I came across what appears to be a practice golf course being built. And I was sort of stunned that we would use the land this way, especially after this wonderful presentation. It is puzzling that we would be building a practice golf course for a minimum number of students when we have land use issues. How does that kind of decision get made and how is it rationalized relative to land use generally on campus?
"My second question is, what are you doing about solar power? We have so much sunlight here. Will any of the existing or planned buildings incorporate solar power?"
Mr. Christofferson responded. "There are some sustainability qualities that you might appreciate in that the dirt that's going into that practice range for the varsity golfers and physical education students is part of this. This is the dirt that came from the Munger Parking Garage that would have had to be exported off campus at considerable expense, and that project has allowed us to reuse it."
Professor Fernald wasn't mollified. "My point is that a golf course seems like one of the least sustainable things that you'd want to have on the campus. We have one…why do we need another? How are these decisions made?"
Professor Sheppard turned to the Provost for help on this one. Provost Etchemendy said, "Let me say something about the capital planning process. We have a capital planning process that I report on briefly at the end of the budget presentation to the Senate each year. That's a process that takes four or five months of constant meetings. It's a group that consists of me, staff from the various relevant areas, and three faculty members. That's the process that describes, for example, allocation, GUP square footage, what projects should be approved, and how much should be allocated to the various projects. Simultaneously, a lot of the capital planning goes on in the executive cabinet, which is the group of deans, the Vice Provost for Research, the Vice Provosts for Undergraduate and Graduate Education.
"There are a couple of reasons for constructing the practice golf area. First of all, you realize that no potable water will be used. Second, it's not a full golf course. It's a practice facility that will allow not just the students on the golf team, but all of our students who take golf classes to practice. Golf is one of the most popular and high-demand PE classes. The athletic department must turn away lots of students who would like to learn golf, and if one is lucky enough to enroll, all he or she can do is use the driving range because there is insufficient availability of the prohibitively expensive tee times on the regular course. This is going to be a facility that is solely for the use of the students and possibly… faculty! [a number of senators, the President, and the Academic Secretary brightened up at this possibility]
"Another reason for doing this is that it is a way of reserving that area for future academic purposes. Eventually, in 50 years, it's probably going to be land that is needed for the medical center if the medical school expands in that direction. So, this is a temporary golf practice facility. It will be used for, you know, possibly 20 years, possibly 25 years, possibly 50 years. But as soon as it's needed for academic use, it will be used that way.
"Now, as to whether or not that could have been used for, say, a solar facility. Please understand that we're not short of land. And if there were an affordable, economically viable way of installing solar panels and supplementing Cogen, we could easily find places for that to happen."
Mr. Christofferson, speaking to the electricity issue, added, "…one of the perverse consequences of having cogeneration, which is a thing that should be encouraged, is that our unit is sized so that it generates more electricity than the campus actually needs at peak. Therefore, we sell excess power to the grid. What that means is that the only PG&E power that we use is in a standby capacity for about 2% of the time during the course of the year when Cogen is scheduled to be shut down for major maintenance. As a result of that, PG&E has taken the position that we do not qualify for rebates for alternative energy projects as we would if we were a 100% PG&E customer. We've appealed that to the Public Utilities Commission…and lost.
"As you may know, the payback is difficult to make solar systems if you're talking about photovoltaics, even with rebates in place. Without them, it's virtually impossible. Now, having said that, we have looked for opportunities to do solar demonstration projects. One possible site is in the foothills, where we do have PG&E meters and take their power 24/7. As a matter of fact, I'm meeting with a manufacturer next week to look at new technology and where we might use it." The Provost added "…at this point that since Stanford is a nonprofit institution the tax incentives don't work for us."
Professor Koseff added even more. "We set a goal for the Environment and Energy building of 5% from photovoltaics. But we had a budget bottom line that doesn't move. So in evaluating alternatives, as Chris pointed out, we have to make tradeoffs. Looking at the life cycle cost analysis was a really important tool. We concluded in the end we're going to put as much as we can on the building to start out with. We want to put the infrastructure in place that will allow it to grow." He added that "the technology in photovoltaics is changing so fast that it would be prudent to wait several years in order to have the best systems installed." "We need," he said, "to work a deal with a third party who would own, operate, replace and maintain solar power or photovoltaic systems on the buildings on campus. The company would derive whatever benefits there are from it, and we would get power. We have started to look at some companies." He emphasized that the current technology requires constant maintenance.
Professor Spiegel agreed that many impressive data had been presented about Stanford's progress in sustainability. "But," he said, "I am curious about the Clark Center water savings you mentioned, I think 50%. Two questions…number one, how did you do it? Number two, Clark is a new building…. So how did it get built with the rather inefficient water system to begin with?"
Mr. Christofferson was unhappy that he had not "…brought along a couple of people in my utilities group who understand this better than I do. There are some processes in laboratory buildings where, basically, water is automatically being injected into, for example, plumbing traps to make sure that the water doesn't evaporate. And in particular, I think in autoclaves, there are issues where water is constantly being used unless you install equipment that monitors what's going on and controls that water use. And that's what we did. As a matter of fact, we've identified a product called Water Miser that we plan to automatically roll into future laboratory buildings because the savings are so dramatic."
Vice Provost Reidy added, "At the time those decisions were being made, the Water Miser technology was not integrated and, in essence, did not exist."
Christofferson pointed out, "The other thing that we've made substantial improvement on, and it's reflected in those domestic water consumption numbers, is the fact that we really sniffed out, as would detectives, circumstances where in order to support experiments in a way that was very cheap, domestic water systems were being used as a source of refrigeration to cool equipment and dump straight into the drain, or once-through cooling. We've found those and helped people retrofit with systems that are actually more sustainable, instead of one pass through and going to the drain."
With that comment, Professor Sheppard called an end to the Q&A. She thanked the presenters and moved on to the next report. "But first," she noted, "the slides from this presentation weren't printed on paper, in order to be true to sustainability, they were e-mailed to all of you."
B. Graduate Student Leadership Opportunities (SenD#5886)
Professor Sheppard introduced this report by noting that "…our second presentation is going to be led by our fellow senator, Professor Mark Horowitz, who, as John said, is our newly-appointed Associate Vice Provost for Graduate Education and had a leadership role in the Commission. Mark is going to report on some of the seed projects that have been developed during this past year as a result of the Commission for Graduate Education. Along with him are Professors Garth Saloner, Terry Winograd and our fellow senator, Andy Fire, each of whom participated in this process, as well as some guest graduate students."
Professor Horowitz began. "So why am I up here in the first place? Well about a year ago, the Commission finished its work and presented its report to the senate. After we finished, we did what all commissions do…we disbanded. However, the Provost and President asked me during the interval period to help start some programs that we recommended in the report until the VPGE office gets started and a VPGE is appointed. I foolishly thought this would be a couple months' work and no big deal!
"This is our progress report. First, we started the Stanford Graduate Summer Institute. Fortunately, it was a huge success, by all metrics. Second, we're starting some new interdisciplinary classes and skills-based classes. Third, in response to recommendations to start a Faculty Academy, we have formed a 'pre-academy.' The idea of the Academy is getting faculty together to talk about broad interdisciplinary areas and give them a 'mini sabbatical' for a quarter. It is envisioned that they could get to know each other and find out which among them might want to collaborate in research. Finally, I've just been trying to run around and offer support, either moral or financial, for people who have interesting ideas for graduate students.
"As I looked around for potential faculty to facilitate and coordinate graduate programs, I found The Career Development Center. Actually, I found many career development centers. There's one globally for the main campus, but then there is also one in the Law School and one in the Medical School. Engineering has its own program for career development advice. We've been working on trying to coordinate the activities of these. Another major challenge has been to devise ways to get information out to the graduate students so that they know about these programs.
"One resource has been the Alumni Association. Many alumni are interested in getting involved with students. We're working on trying to generate a pilot program to create 'second mentors', nonacademic mentors for some of the graduate students. We're going set up resources for Ph.D. graduates who have taken alternative careers as an economic career choice in lots of different areas and have them come in and participate in a panel on why they made the choices, and what the opportunities are in the outside world. They then would be urged to stick around and form relationships with students who are interested in their pathways and to perhaps be mentors for them. We noted that there is a conference in the spring that's being organized for science and engineering women graduate students. We'll help with that.
"A new program is being formed that is a Masters degree in Public Policy. The idea here is that you take graduates from other programs, extend their education by a year, maybe two, to earn a M.A. in Public Policy for those people who are interested in doing service work for the country.
"As for the Faculty Academy, we have a seed program that we launched with the help of the Stanford Humanities Center. John Bender has been very accommodating. We went through and looked at some of the humanities workshops offered during the year. We're working together to try to encourage faculty across the University to get involved. These are law and history, global justice issues, and 'visualizing knowledge', a program that deals with both how people perceive visual information to understanding the latest technology.
"In addition to developing ideas for the first Faculty Academy, I'm going to be talking to people from the new initiatives to try to collect ideas for what they think might be good concepts for development of future faculty academies. We'll collect ideas and then get small faculty groups together to select what would be the right thing to do. My goal is to try to have a Faculty Academy in the '07/'08 time frame, planning it this year and launching it next year.
"In terms of interdisciplinary leadership classes, there's been a lot of activity going on. I must say that the Law School has really taken the lead here. It has a large set of classes that are interesting for both law school students and students from across the University. For example, one is about expert witness testimony in various legal situations. We will help getting students from engineering, medicine, and other fields involved in these. Another has been an interpersonal training and leadership class, similar to one taught in the Graduate School of Business but now is done to include students from across the University.
"Another has been the I-RITE program in which students come together for a weekend to put together two-minute presentations of what they're doing and why it's interesting.
"In addition, we are always looking for new classes to start. From my perspective, there are two reasons to do this. First is to provide truly interesting classes. Second is the need to educate future leaders and the importance of interdisciplinary classes for them. We need to change the institutional culture to enable development of these types of classes.
"Last, I want to talk about the biggest program we've done so far, the Stanford Graduate Summer Institute, launched this last summer. There were three classes: The Institute for Entrepreneurship, the Adventures for Design Thinking, and Genetics. Garth, Terry, and Andy put these classes together, and they're here to answer questions you might have. It happened quickly. By the time the classes were announced for the students, the deadline was only a couple of weeks away. Students were enrolled in all the classes.
"The Institute for Entrepreneurship was a little different from the others. It was a four-week program. The first two and a half weeks were focused upon general management issues, and the last one and a half weeks were focused on entrepreneurship. Students visited six companies in the Bay area and had seven guest speakers. 70 students were enrolled from four schools. All but three were Stanford students, and were both Ph.D and masters students from across the University.
"The goal of the Design School class was to just get an intensive week where students were introduced to the notion of design thinking. As part of that was the objective to give them an opportunity to work with faculty and other students that they might not have had a chance to work with from lots of different disciplines. It was a one week class with 32 graduate students from a broad range of departments enrolled. There were a lot of hands-on activities. I went to the last activity and I can assure you it was really interesting to see all the different students talking about different ways of using fruit, the subject of that day's project. Terry Winograd, Bernie Roth, and Tina Selig were the principal people involved there.
"The Genetics class was designed to provide an introduction to genetics, including some opportunity to work in a lab and to really understand why it's critical to a growing number of different fields. It was a week-long class for about 20 students. Students were able to do projects and report on them at the end.
"So let me just now end by giving you a couple of comments from students. Andy asked the students to write comments on what they thought about the class. They all were overridingly positive about what a good experience it was:
'It was a good — got exposure in both fundamentals and the ground breaking work in genetics.'
'It was good — instruction was good and it was nice having lots of people'
'I was a faculty member, and I thought it was terrific. It was a great week crash course in genetics and genomics. I'm a statistician and it really helped me to learn some of the science things I want to do.'
"When I read that last one, I was a happy guy!
"In the Design course, they had an evaluation:
'So, overall course value: waste of time, but the best thing I've done at Stanford.'
'I think it was very well organized and I really appreciated the amount of conscious, careful thinking that went into the planning of each event. It was great to feel how much the faculty in this program cared about students - I think I felt that more strongly this week than at any other moment in my Stanford career thus far.'
"And the GSB course… again, very positive experiences:
'The SIE was one of the most satisfying learning experiences I've had at Stanford. I feel I achieved my goals of gaining insight into the business world and what a venture must be if it is to be successful.'
"Now, my goal and the reason I'm really here is to ask for your help. I'd like to launch five of these classes next summer. The GSB has already agreed to do the entrepreneurship course again. Terry hasn't committed to do the Design course again, but I'm counting on him. Andy made a good comment to me that maybe we should do genetics every other year and do something else on the medical side. I have some leads that I'm tracing down. But I still need two, maybe three classes. And I'm really interested in people who want to do this. Come on, give me ideas and volunteer to teach!
"One problem is that for the interdisciplinary classes, we all don't have enough hours in the day. Somehow, we must figure out a way to give faculty time to teach these courses, and to do that, deans and department chairs will have to be involved in solving these time problems.
"One of our students, Eric by name, sent me some ideas for possible courses. They are:
Intellectual property protection. - The patent application process and patent litigation process.
Primer on computational math or statistics
Sustainable engineering
Philosophy - I think many grad students from non-liberal arts colleges have never attended a course on philosophy and have trouble appreciating its significance in American society." [The Provost beamed at this one, but realized that he would be asked to teach in this course!]
That ended his presentation, and Professor Horowitz walked away to applause, feeling that he had indeed filled in the interim implementation of the Graduate Commission in admirable fashion.
Questions and Discussion
A number of short questions had short answers. The answers were:
Students are expected to spend all their time for that week in that class they have chosen, including interactive time with other students from different disciplines.
An option for Masters students is to take the class after they graduate, and sometimes the company they will work for can provide the tuition
Bruce Owen is running the planned Masters in Public Policy, and C-GS is doing its due diligence for approval. It is likely that it will be open for co-term students next year. The Senate will be asked to approve it in winter quarter.
It is Horowitz' goal to have money and staff to support development and presentation of the classes in the GSI when faculty could present an acceptable idea and outline for a course.
Horowitz agreed with Hazel Markus that Immigration would be a great topic for a GSI course.
<SGSI.stanford.edu> is the web site at which, when it is updated, students and faculty can find details about the proposed offerings.
Professor Sheppard asked, "Did any students feel like they couldn't tell their advisor that they were taking the class?" Professor Horowitz answered, "Yes, that happened. So I ended up having to support the student over the period of time that he took the GSB class. But the good news is, at the end of that, the other faculty advisor thought the program was a good idea. But there is an issue, especially for the GSB class, because it's basically a month of a graduate student's life that they're not going to be working as hard on the grad stuff. So this is an issue. This is an issue for all these kinds of classes."
Dean Matson added, "…an e-mail was sent to all of us whose students went to the Summer Institute to find out not only how the students felt about it, but how the faculty members felt about it. In doing that, we found that all of our faculty members whose students took this course who were worried about it going in, loved it coming out. They were really happy that their students had done it. I was going to ask Bob Joss if he had gotten a sense of that being the general response." Professor Joss had no data at this time.
Professor Roberts asked, "I was wondering if you thought in the fullness for time these courses might eliminate some holes in the undergraduate education. You'd think these are things that you'd want all graduate students to have, maybe it's because they have been missing in the undergraduate program. I'd love to see more people have statistics or some of those other concepts. Do you think it would cross-fertilize?"
Horowitz answered, "I think it could. I actually view these classes as having finite life spans. I see them as is a way of exciting a group of students to look further into an area, and what areas you want them to look into further is very time-dependent. Right now, for example, there's a lot of interesting new statistical tools. Getting people to know they exist is probably a useful thing. In five years, they might just be what everybody does. right? They may permeate through the culture a little bit more, or maybe not. But the thing is that there are issues that are of high importance now that you really would want to emphasize."
Theo Milonopoulos (representative at large for ASSU noted that, "This program sounds very similar to an undergraduate program called Sophomore College where sophomores have the opportunity three weeks before the start of their year to take one course with a small group of students and fully engage academically. Are there any parallels or ideas that you could draw from there to contribute to that program?"
Professor Horowitz admitted, "Yeah, to be honest, we stole a lot of some of the basic ideas from it. But if you think about sophomores and what you're trying to accomplish in Sophomore College, and you think about graduate students and what you're trying to accomplish in the graduate program, they're very different. Some transfer from Sophomore College was very helpful. The small group, faculty-intensive interaction was something that was really successful and was imported from Sophomore College.
Professor Block was "…trying to get a better sense of who the target group is for the Academy. And it occurs to me that this makes a lot of sense perhaps for the humanities and social sciences, education, and business. But it doesn't make a lot of sense, to me, at least, for the hard sciences because we're trying to do research and don't have time for such extra activities." Professor Horowitz agreed that 'hard' scientists and everyone else was busy, but added that, "…I think the issue is that we do enjoy sabbatical time. We do actually go to conferences and workshops on various things that bring a broad section of people together. We do sometimes go to a meeting that lasts a week. We do a lot of things. The issues are, is it worth our time? Is the return going to be large enough to do that? We need to make our programs have high enough return for the faculty to make it a high priority." He also said that getting teaching time relief for faculty teaching in the Summer Institute would be a major objective in his negotiations with the deans.
In response to questions about funding graduate students to take courses in the GSI, Professor Horowitz said, "There is the whole program for the SGF2s, which is trying to provide funding for interdisciplinary graduate students. We also want to have funding for the Faculty Academy so that for people who want to start new collaborations, and at this time there is some funding available for these."
Professor Stefanick asked about the structure of the courses. The answer was that after design of the courses, including much interactive time, the material demanded attendance from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm and several evenings as well. In the GSB course there was a faculty director and 14 faculty. In one group project 16 friends of the GSB were brought in as panelists. In the Genetics course, about 15 of the senior genetics faculty were involved.
Professor Garcia-Molina was pleasantly overwhelmed. "These are interesting opportunities. There's a Faculty Academy… I could spend a quarter there. Continuing education people are always calling me. There's a Sophomore College…and I could teach a freshman seminar. Our department is always after me for teaching summer courses and summer school. SCPD wants 'courselets' for industry. And then the overseas studies people (OSP) are contacting us always, wanting engineers because they have a shortage. Did I miss anything, other opportunities that could consume my time?" The Provost noted that he had missed the opportunities to be a freshman advisor or a resident fellow.
President Hennessy pointed out the obvious, "Hector, should you save some time for your research?"…
VI. Unfinished and New BusinessNone were mentioned.
VII. AdjournmentThis happened by unanimous acclaim at 4:55 pm.
Respectfully submitted, Edward D. Harris, Jr. M.D. Academic Secretary to the University