Stanford Report, January 21, 2009

Sociologist with deep roots at Stanford takes helm of senate

BY KATHLEEN J. SULLIVAN

Listen very carefully as Karen Cook speaks and you just might hear the faintest possible echo of the twang that would give away her birthplace.

After living in other parts of the country and the world for more than four decades—starting with her undergraduate years at Stanford—the distinctive accent she acquired as a native of Austin, Texas, has mostly disappeared.

"If I'm talking to somebody from Texas, like my sister, it comes right back," said Cook, snapping her fingers during a recent interview to show how quickly she can revert to speaking Texan. "I don't think I have much of an accent, but undergraduates will sometimes say at the end of a quarter, 'You're not from here, are you?' But they won't be able to identify the accent."

Cook, who is chair of the 2008-09 Faculty Senate, is the Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology, an endowed chair named after Stanford's third president.

Her connection to Stanford dates back to 1964, when she and her twin brother, Ken, arrived at the university as freshmen. An aunt who lived in San Jose had paved the way by sending her niece and nephew a Stanford catalog and encouraging them to apply.

The first quarter of Cook's sophomore year was momentous. She entered Stanford with a strong interest in biology but "discovered" the social sciences when she took classes in anthropology and sociology. (Her high school hadn't offered classes in those fields.) It was also memorable for another reason: It was the year she gave up on French.

"I would get up to speak, and the other students would just laugh," she recalled with a laugh of her own and a lightening-quick imitation of her teenage self, mangling the pronunciation of Dans ma famille il y a beaucoup de personnes with a heavy dose of Texan.

Cook set her sights on Stanford in Britain. She spent two quarters at Harlaxton Manor, an ornate stone mansion surrounded by more than 100 acres of formal gardens, park and woodland in England's Midlands.

When she returned to campus, she immersed herself in sociology. Impressed with her commitment and drive, her professors encouraged her to go to graduate school.

"That was key—that people actually defined me as someone they thought should go to graduate school," she said. "It wouldn't have occurred to me initially to get an advanced degree."

Cook said she discovered "what fun doing research was" while she was working on her senior honors thesis. She got a glimpse of what life might be like in academia by working as a research assistant on faculty projects during summer breaks.

"Teaching is how faculty disseminate what they know, but it's the end product—not the only thing they do," she said. "You don't know that until you get involved deeply in research. Then you know what drives them."

Cook earned a bachelor's degree with honors in 1968, followed by a master's degree in 1970 and a PhD in 1973—all in sociology, all at Stanford.

Those were tumultuous years on campus, as students demonstrated against the Vietnam War and classified research at Stanford by organizing protest marches and occupying buildings. Encina Hall, which then housed most of the university's financial and business operations, became a target of demonstrators on several occasions.

Cook, who was working on her dissertation in a lab on the fourth floor of the historic sandstone building, had to find another office in which to work after a major fire—believed by many to have been arson—broke out in the central attic and spread to the upper floors of its east wing in June 1972, causing more than $1 million in damage.

She finished her dissertation during her first year of teaching at the University of Washington, where she rose through the ranks, becoming a full professor in 1985.

Duke University lured her across the country in 1995 with an endowed chair in sociology and the directorship of the Sociology Laboratory for Research.

Three years later, Stanford enticed her back to the Farm.

Current research

Cook's current research focuses on issues of trust in social relations and networks. Her most recent book, published in 2005 by the Russell Sage Foundation, is titled Cooperation Without Trust? She co-authored the 256-page volume with a professor of international studies at the University of Washington and a professor of politics at New York University.

Cook also is working on projects related to social justice, power-dependence relations and social exchange theory, and is collaborating on research on trust between physicians and patients.

In December 2006, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior published "Patients' Race, Ethnicity, Language, and Trust in their Physicians," an article Cook wrote with two sociologists (both former doctoral students at Stanford), a medical professor at the University of California-San Francisco and a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

At Stanford, Cook is the director of the university's Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, a post she has held since 2004. The institute hosts nine centers and programs focused on a variety of issues, including poverty and inequality, democratic stability, and philanthropy and civil society.

She has been the chair of the Department of Sociology since 2005 and has a second-floor office in the Main Quadrangle, giving her a view of the red tile roofline and stone arches of the arcade along Memorial Court. She also served as the senior associate dean for the social sciences from 2001 to 2004.

During her 35-year career in academia, she has served on dozens of university advisory boards and committees at the three universities at which she has taught.

Currently, she is a member of the Provost's Advisory Board for Appointments and Promotions.

"I like committees that cross the university, because you get introduced to faculty from all different fields," she said. "It just makes the university a more exciting place."

As for juggling so many positions and responsibilities at once, she said: "I'm the kind of person who the more I have to do, the more I do. The more I have to do, the more I accomplish."

Senate chair

Many of her Thursday afternoons during the academic year are devoted to chairing the Faculty Senate, which meets in a lecture hall in the Law School.

Cook sits front and center, next to the Academic Secretary, facing tiered seating filled with nearly five dozen members of the faculty, including economists and philosophers, musicians and lawyers, historians and medical doctors, biologists and electrical engineers.

The audience also includes more than a dozen top university officials, including President John Hennessy, Provost John Etchemendy, University Librarian Michael Keller and the deans of all seven schools.

Cook, like the senate chairs who preceded her, once sat on the other side of the gavel, as a senator from 2005 to 2007 and as a member of its steering committee from 2006 to 2008.

"Having a place like the senate, where faculty can express their opinions and have serious input into the direction the university is moving, is important, especially for young faculty members," she said. "There's a tendency to think that faculty are relatively conservative when it comes to institutional values, wanting to retain the Stanford that they experienced 40 hears ago. But I think faculty are just as concerned with the Stanford of the future—what it's going to look like, where our fields are headed, what resources are needed to make Stanford a cutting-edge institution in all fields across the sciences, social sciences and humanities."

As senate chair, one of Cook's duties is to call on senators or administrators who have questions or would like to comment on a topic of discussion—and to keep the meeting, which opens at 3:15 p.m. and is scheduled to end at 5 p.m., moving along.

In late October, at the end of a long discussion about the pros and cons of expanding the undergraduate population, Cook looked at the clock.

"I want to abide by my commitment to let you leave at 5 o'clock," she said, adding that she would take two more questions from people who had already raised their hands—the provost and Margaret Brandeau, a professor of management science and engineering.

Etchemendy hesitated. "I'd hate to use up one of the last two questions," he said.

"You can pass—feel free," Cook quickly replied. Laughter rippled through the hall.

Etchemendy, who appeared surprised, did pass, saying: "She's a good chair."

After Brandeau spoke, Cook asked: "Does someone have a more important question than the provost?" Which elicited another round of laughter.

"Here's one," she said, noticing that Jonathan Bendor, a professor of political economics and organizations at the Graduate School of Business, had raised his hand.

True to her promise, Cook adjourned the meeting shortly afterward—at 4:58 p.m.

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• Senate of the Academic Council
• Department of Sociology