printable versionFaculty Senate minutes for May 14, 2009
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE ACADEMIC COUNCIL FORTY-FIRST SENATE Report No. 8
SUMMARY OF ACTIONS, MAY 14
At its meeting on Thursday, May 14, 2009 the Forty-first Senate of the Academic Council heard reports..
REX L. JAMISON, M.D., Academic Secretary to the University
Minutes, may 14
I. Call to OrderThe Chair, Professor Karen Cook, called the Senate to order at 3:20 PM. She welcomed the new ASSU Senate representative, Varum Sivaram. There were 38 members and 10 ex officio members present.
II. Approval of Minutes - (SenD#6209)The Minutes of the Senate Meeting, April 16, 2009, were approved.
III. Action CalendarThere were no items on the Action Calendar.
IV. Standing ReportsA. Memorial Resolutions
Chair Cook welcomed fellow Senator, Professor Al Camarillo, to present a memorial statement in honor of his colleague, George M. Fredrickson, emeritus professor of History in the School of Humanities & Sciences.
George Fredrickson (1934-2008) SenD#6204
George M. Fredrickson, the Edgar E. Robinson Professor of American History, Emeritus, died of heart failure at age 73 in his campus home on February 25, 2008. Born in Bristol, Connecticut in 1934, he grew up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
One of the great American historians of his generation, George leaves behind a tremendous legacy — pioneering scholar of comparative history, internationally renowned author on the subject of the origins of racism, mentor to dozens of Ph.D.s who followed in his intellectual path, and co-founder of Stanford's Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. He was a man of enormous integrity, someone whose deep devotion to principles of fairness, equity, justice, and freedom was reflected both in his intellectual work and in the way he conducted his life as a citizen of the nation.
Fredrickson received the doctorate in history in 1964 from Harvard. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1984.
George's stellar career included the publication of numerous books, journal articles, and essays in the New York Review of Books. Several of his publications are classics in the field of white-black relations both in US and in South Africa. They include The Black Image in the White Mind (1971), White Supremacy: A Comparative Study of American and South African History (1981), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Black Liberation (1995), and Racism: A Short History (2002). These and others are standard reading for anyone interested in the history of race and its influence in the U.S. and elsewhere. Two of his books were published posthumously. In recognition of his stature in the field, he was elected President of the Organization of American Historians in 1997-98.
George Fredrickson was a man who practiced in his life what he preached as a professor. As a student he traveled to the South during some of the most violent years of the civil rights struggle for African Americans. As a faculty member at Northwestern in the late 1960s he supported the rights of students to demonstrate peacefully against the war in Southwest Asia and advocated for the development of Black studies on campus. Soon after joining the Stanford faculty, Fredrickson participated in a teach-in on university divestment in South Africa. In the mid-1990s he and other colleagues established the intellectual foundations through the Mellon Foundation supported Seminar on Race and Ethnicity that eventually led to the development of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity in 1996.
George M. Fredrickson will long be remembered at Stanford as pioneering historian, outstanding mentor, advocate for equality and justice, and dear friend to colleagues and students alike.
Madam Chair, I have the honor, on behalf of a committee consisting of Professors Gordon Chang, James Campbell, and myself, to lay before the Senate of the Academic Council a resolution in the memory of the late George M. Fredrickson, Edgar E. Robinson Professor of American History, Emeritus.
All present stood in silent tribute.
Chair Cook thanked Professors Camarillo, James Campbell and Gordon Chang.
The full text of the memorial resolution will be published in the Stanford Report, May 20th.
Chair Cook welcomed Professors Ray Levitt and Bob Tatum, who co-chaired the committee to present a memorial statement in honor of their colleague, John Walker Fondahl, emeritus professor of Civil Engineering in the School of Engineering. She also welcomed Mrs. Doris Fondahl who came for the Memorial Resolution honoring her late husband.
John Fondahl (1924-2008) SenD#6213
John Walker Fondahl, the Charles A. Leavell Professor of Civil Engineering, died on September 13, 2008 at the age of 83 years. He served on the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 1955 until his retirement in 1990 and was recognized worldwide as a major contributor to the development and use of the Critical Path Method for construction planning and project management. He also served in the Marines during World War II, worked on a major infrastructure project in California, co-founded the graduate Construction Engineering and Management program at Stanford, and served as a member of the Board of Directors of Caterpillar, Inc.
John conducted research on the "time-cost tradeoff problem" to determine the performance rates for activities that would minimize the overall cost of a project, including indirect costs. He developed the precedence diagramming method for project planning and scheduling and investigated ways to increase the use of network-based planning techniques in construction. John's teaching focused on planning and construction engineering for large infrastructure projects. He developed some of the first courses focusing on application of network planning techniques in construction. John taught construction management courses in Egypt, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Denmark, Switzerland, South Africa, Australia, and Japan, and traveled with one of the first American groups to visit China following its opening in 1979.
In another pioneering effort, John founded the Construction Institute in 1960. One of the first industry affiliate programs at Stanford, the Construction Institute included progressive facility owners and contractors who established mutually beneficial links with the graduate construction program. It continues to provide valuable support for the Stanford Construction program. John also used the Construction Institute to maintain long-term links with graduates and friends of the program and to assist them in their careers. Based on this platform, he became a consummate "networker" well before this term entered the business lexicon.
The importance of John's contributions was widely recognized. He was awarded the "Golden Beaver Award for Services & Supply in Heavy Engineering Construction" in 1976. John was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1993 and the National Academy of Construction in 2001. John's many contributions to construction were recognized by ASCE's Construction Management award in 1977 and ASCE's Peurifoy Construction Research Award in 1990. In 2007, the Project Management Institute, which he helped to found in 1969, recognized John's major contributions to the field as recipient of the James O'Brien Lifetime Achievement Award in Project Management.
Madam Chair, as Co-chairs of a committee we have the honor to lay before the Senate of the Academic Council a resolution in memory of the late John W. Fondahl, Charles A. Leavell Professor of Civil Engineering in the School of Engineering.
All present stood in silent tribute.
Chair Cook thanked Professors Levitt and Tatum.
The full text of the memorial resolution will be published in the Stanford Report, May 20th.
Chair Cook welcomed Professor Gio Wiederhold, to present a memorial statement in honor of his colleague, Gene Howard Golub, emeritus professor of Computer Science and by courtesy of Electrical Engineering in the School of Engineering.
Gene Golub (1932-2007) SenD#6210
Gene Howard Golub, Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science died on November 16, 2007, at Stanford hospital at the age of 75, of a recent diagnosis of acute myelogenous leukemia. He was a member of the faculty for 44 years.
In 1964, he created the method to solve the Singular Value Decomposition, an essential computational tool. Gene was deeply dedicated to his colleagues and 30 Ph.D. students. He received ten honorary degrees from schools all over the world. On February 29, 2008, Gene's 19th birthday was remembered at Stanford and thirty locations around the world.
Madam Chair, I have the honor, on behalf of a committee consisting of Jennifer Widom, Walter Murray, Michael Saunders, and myself, to lay before the Senate of the Academic Council a Resolution in memory of the late Gene Golub, Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering.
All present stood in silent tribute.
Chair Cook thanked Professors Wiederhold, Widom, Murray and Saunders.
The full text of the memorial resolution will be published in the Stanford Report, May 20th.
B. Steering Committee
The Roster of the 42nd Senate, including its Chair and members of the Steering Committee, will be available next week and will be sent to members by email.
The second-stage of the Advisory Board election is complete. The results will be published in the next Stanford Report.
The agendas for the two remaining meetings are:
May 28. The Provost will present his annual Budget Report, and the Chair of the ad hoc Senate Committee to Examine Non-academic Council Appointments and Procedures (CENCAP) will present its report as requested by the Senate. Following adjournment of the regular meeting, the Senate will reconvene in Executive Session for a follow up on the discussion from Fall Quarter's Executive Session on student health issues.
June 11. At the final meeting of the 41st Senate, Professor Deborah Rhode will present a preview of the results of a survey on faculty quality of life issues. Professor emeritus David Abernethy will present the annual report of the Emeriti Council. Following early adjournment of the meeting, President Hennessy will host a reception at the Faculty Club for the members of the incoming and outgoing Senates, chairs of the Committees of the Academic Council and members of the Board of Trustees.
C. Committee on Committees (CoC)
Chair Cook welcomed Professor Gilbert Chu, Chair of the CoC, to present the committee's report.
Professor Chu: "The Committee on Committees met regularly in Winter and Spring Quarters to nominate faculty to serve as Chairs or members of the seven standing committees of the Academic Council, succeeding members whose terms expired.
"The Committee on Committees also nominated faculty to serves as members of
— Five University Committees
— Two Board of Trustees committees
— Judicial Panels and the Judicial Board.
"It executed its liaison role to assess and facilitate the work of the committee system, attending meetings of the Committee on Research, the Committee on Graduate Studies [and the Committee on Review of Undergraduate Majors]. We found that both committees worked well. [For example] student members made key contributions to the Committee on Graduate Studies, attesting to the wisdom of including students on our University committees.
"The work of the Committee on Committees of the 41st Senate is now complete. I thank my committee colleagues for their hard work, good judgment and sharp sense of humor. We spend our time discussing colleagues who are wise and good citizens interested in serving the university. That's a job more pleasant than most. I especially thank Rex Jamison and Trish Del Pozzo for doing the real work behind the scenes with such grace and enthusiasm."
Chair Cook thanked Professor Chu and the CoC.
[Applause]
D. President's Report
The President had no remarks and was not asked any questions.
Provost's Report
The Provost had no prepared remarks but was asked a question.
Professor Chu stood and, before speaking, put on his bike helmet. He began with a reminiscence that as a freshman in high school, "I went to the Student Council and asked, 'Why can't we have bike racks?' We had a huge parking lot for students with cars, but no bike racks. The Student Council, including the incredibly good-looking president, laughed, and I felt my ears burning hot from shame. Fifty years have passed, and I'm still biking to school. Stanford's Parking and Transportation Services and Planning Office have been working very well together and Stanford was just honored as a Gold Level Bicycle Friendly Community. Nevertheless, many campus locations suffer from a severe shortage of bike racks in appropriate locations, including the entrance to this august meeting place for the Senate. In honor of Bike-to-Work Day, I'd like to ask …Why can't we have enough bike racks? I'm hoping you can mend my psychic scars with your answer…"
[Laughter]
Provost Etchemendy replied, "That is a wonderful question, I'm glad you asked it…Brodie Hamilton of Parking Transportation Services is the point person on bike racks—and many other things involving transportation management…and they install bike racks very quickly when they are aware of the need… there are a lot of bike racks on campus that have to be in the right place at the right time, and they don't automatically know when an area is undersupplied with bike racks.
"I want all faculty to know, first of all, that I want [them] to bike to work, as Gil does; that's great for the environment [and] your health… If you [know of] places where there should be more bike racks, send the information to Brodie Hamilton and he will make sure that it happens as quickly as possible."
After a brief discussion about whether to create a committee to survey places on campus that might need bike racks, the provost suggested to Professor Chu that the CoC should assume responsibility, but Professor Chu backpedaled without providing a definitive answer.
Professor Penny Eckert asked, "Since nonconforming ways of coming to campus are on the table, I can once again bug you about walking paths. Those that walk across the areas of campus that have high grass, who do we see to get the areas mowed?"
Provost Etchemendy replied that it was the Land and Building Planning Department.
V. Other ReportsA. Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education
Chair Cook invited John Bravman, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE), to come forward to present his report.
Vice Provost Bravman introduced his colleagues who were attending the session as guests, Sharon Palmer, Director of Freshman and Sophomore Programs, Julie Lythcott-Haims, Freshman Dean, and Carol Porter, Senior Associate Vice Provost. He added that "Carol is leaving Stanford and returning to Princeton after six years of outstanding service. She has done so much behind the scenes during this period of great growth in undergraduate programs and I would like to thank her publicly for that."
[Applause]
Vice Provost Bravman added, "I also invited Allison Rhines, a junior who is one of the three student representatives on the Committee of Undergraduate Standards and Policy [C-USP]."
The Vice Provost began his presentation with the use of slides. The first slide was a quotation from John F. Kennedy:
"The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity."
The Vice Provost continued, "We all understand that we're in a period of financial crisis. I think we are quite insulated in the Stanford bubble, but we know even here how bad things are. Our job is to be aware of the danger but to recognize the opportunities that this might present… President Obama's new chief of staff said never let a good crisis go to waste.
"As we think about undergraduate education in challenging times…our job is to take stock of where we are, what we have to give up, what we can do better, and how we can evolve…I think this period [ahead] is many years in length; in some ways for all intents and purposes it will be forever. The president of our university said it could be 30 years before we return [the value of our endowment to] equivalent buying power."
The Vice Provost listed five topics he wished to cover:
Faculty Governance
Transformations
New Realities
Building an Advising Infrastructure
WASC [Western Association of Schools and Colleges]
Faculty Governance
He listed six groups that deal with undergraduate education oversight.
Academic Council Standing Committees—The Committee for Undergraduate Standards and Policy (C-USP) and the Committee for Review of Undergraduate Majors (C-RUM). "The mechanism by which we change policy is through these two Senate committees."
Undergraduate Advisory Council (UGAC). "This is the principal faculty governance board that is advisory to me; in particular [its members] help decide how many dollars to partition among our different undergraduate research programs, but they also advise me on a number of other matters."
Program Governance Boards—PWR (Program on Writing and Rhetoric), IHUM (Introduction to the Humanities), and the Overseas Program (OSP).
The VPUE Cabinet (faculty and staff).
School Curriculum Committees.
Informal groups. "I don't want to underestimate the constant, informal discussions amongst ourselves. Last night we had the second of our annual springtime faculty dinners to talk about undergraduate matters…the discussion was robust and interesting, as it always is...".
Transformations
The Vice Provost continued, "Transformations [which means]: 'What has this university done in the last 10 to 12 years in undergraduate education?'" He singled out four "iconic advances":
1. The creation of hundreds of small class courses. "These experiences are not unique to Stanford, but in the context of a research university of our size, no school compares… [There are] Freshman seminars, sophomore seminars, overseas programs and, starting this September…a first?ever Stanford Arts Iniative program."
2. Undergraduate research. "There has been enormous growth in undergraduate research. The financial commitment has grown ten fold. And I think it has completely transformed the undergraduate experience."
3. Unsurpassed overseas opportunities. "We just celebrated the 50th anniversary of our overseas program. I think we have the best program in the country…We send Stanford faculty to ten—which will soon be eleven—different campuses around the world. We just reached an important milestone this year: For the first time more than half of our undergraduates will graduate having had an overseas experience."
4. Enhancement of the Freshman Experience. "We have made great enhancements to the overall freshman experience. Julie [Lythcott-Haims] has played an essential role in that effort."
The Vice Provost continued, "You take these four advances, and you add the president's commitment to improve our financial aid programs at the worst economic time in the country since the Depression and [the result is] you get 30,400 applications, a 21% increase above last year and a doubling over the last seven years. Only 7.6% of the applicants were offered a place." The Vice Provost noted that this makes Stanford one of the most selective research universities in the country. It has the second largest applicant pool, second only to that of Cornell, a far larger institution. He concluded that there is now "infinite demand" for what Stanford offers its undergraduates.
New Realities
Finance
The Vice Provost turned to the effect of the collapse of the economy on the financial support for undergraduate education. His office gets 60% of its income from the endowment and a large fraction of that from relatively new endowments, which are "underwater", meaning that their present value has dropped below the value of the original corpus.
"In this fiscal year '09 we had an unexpected $8 million deficit on roughly a $52 million base, due exclusively to endowments being underwater." The staff of the Development Office, "…is working through the list of roughly 1,000 underwater endowments at Stanford and seeking relief from donors, allowing us to pay out the full endowment income and we're getting good responses. Our budgeting model in light of this reality was based on recovering 25% of that lost income in '09 and 75% in '10 and beyond. We are ahead of the game this year…but we have not yet gotten to the 75% mark for subsequent years. Overall, if nothing changed we would see an $11 to $12 million deficit on a $52 million budget, [which is] an untenable situation."
Missions
The Vice Provost said that in response to this drastic fall in projected income he and his staff went through the same exercise that every dean, vice provost and unit head at Stanford has gone through, which is to ask—What is the essence of what we do, what are the things we want to protect at all costs if possible and what are things we can let go? The answer was:
"We provide educational opportunities for the students, we support faculty in a variety of ways and we guide students through Stanford, this wonderful but bewildering at times [host] of academic opportunities, challenges, victories and defeats. To do that…we try to provide an infrastructure of undergraduate education that supplements that which is found in every department that offers undergraduate degrees. [We also provide an] infrastructure of advising students [which requires] a proper understanding of…what advising means."
Restructuring
Undergraduate Advising and Research (UAR)
Stanford Introductory Studies (SIS)
Bing Overseas Studies (BOSP)
Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL)
Vice Provost's Office (VPUE)
UAR. "Three groups have been in the process of merging for about three or four years—the freshman dean's office, undergraduate advising center—which actually never was an advising center—and undergraduate research programs. These programs are to merge to become the UAR under the leadership of Dean of Freshman Julie Lythcott-Haims and Associate Director Elizabeth Fox."
"I want to say absolutely clearly and emphatically—Daily Reporter, are you listening?"—
[Laughter]
"We have not closed the Freshman Dean's office in terms of what we do for freshmen.
"Our job is to take that same commitment and extend it to sophomores in particular, because that is our mission, and to help departments extend that to juniors and senior, as well.
"One of the things we have not done well but now are working very hard at is making sure our professional advisors understand the curriculum."
SIS. The Vice Provost announced that IHUM (Introduction to Humanities), FSP (Freshman-Sophomore Seminars) and PWR (Program in Writing and Rhetoric) will be merged administratively to become SIS, Stanford Introductory Studies.
"This program will be temporarily led by Professor Harry Elam, Senior Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. In time this position should have an appointed faculty member to run it, but in these lean times, Harry will serve in a central role getting this new unit up and running. He is doing a great job and is aided by our IHUM and PWR directors. [Professor] Andrea Lunsford has decided she will be retiring in two years and [Professor] Russell Berman will take a sabbatical in two years time and leave the IHUM directorship at that time so we are facing significant turn over in faculty leadership.
BOSP. "[Professor] Norman Naimark does a fabulous job in running the Overseas Program but is entering his fifth and final year as director. We have eight or nine staff on campus. We do our budgets in six or seven different currencies, which is a different issue [see below].
"But to this day—and probably for some time to come—the programs of OSP are more or less budgeted separately. They have significant endowment but we [the VPUE Office] ultimately are responsible for their operations.
CTL. "The Center for Teaching and Learning is well?known to many faculty and especially deans of schools. Michelle [Marincovich, Director] and her staff have saved many a career here at Stanford; many tenures have resulted from Michelle's work, and it is a wonderful resource, but we took away the administrative staff of CTL [in order] not to have to reduce the professional head count. We in the Vice Provost's office will provide the administration support for CTL."
Summing up the restructuring the Vice Provost said, "As a result we've gone from nine administration units to four, and I don't think we can go beyond this."
He turned to the results of the restructuring, which he called, "impingements".
Impingements: Neutral or Positive
Freshman seminars and large course programs will not be changed. "The freshman seminar program and our large course enhancement program which puts almost $2 million a year into [the School of Humanities and Sciences] to help with psychology, economics, mathematics, and chemistry, we left untouched."
OSP. "As you might recall last year we opened our 10th campus in Madrid. It was immediately fully subscribed. We are still on track to open our 11th—and final for a long time—campus in South Africa next January. We've already hired a director. So OSP is actually growing during this period." South Africa is supported mainly through gift funding from the president's office for three years.
Stanford Art Initiative. "…This is new and [scheduled to begin] next September. It is based on the platform of Sophomore College and Honors College. There will be six classes with 10 to 16 students per class. Harry [Elam] put the whole thing together…It is gift funded for three years,"
"Advising has also seen small incremental growth."
Impingements: Staff
"The major impingements have been on our staff: 16 layoffs, 5 hires and 9 losses by attrition. [The net result is that] the VPUE staff has been reduced by 18%.
"We couldn't move people around because of all the restructuring we did, but over nine months we have lost nine people by not [hiring replacements]. And our staff—our nonlecturing staff— has been reduced by almost 20%. We have 70 lecturers on top of the professional staff.
"I don't think the VPUE office can be very much smaller in…staff head count and deliver the program that the faculty and the students have come to expect. There is a balancing act between how much staff you can cut and how much program you can cut…This is a significant and painful reduction for many colleagues who have served us so well."
Impingements: Reductions
"We eliminated paying faculty and staff ($750 a year) to serve as a freshman or sophomore advisors, a savings of perhaps $400,000. We also eliminated, as was made public a few months ago, the HPAC [Head Peer Academic Coordinator] program. There have been reductions in the budget for Sophomore Seminars and Sophomore College…on the order of 15% to 20%. It is in these places that I think our students are most likely to feel the pain of the financial reality we face. [The acceptance rate for] Sophomore College, one of our very most successful programs…has usually been between 40 and 50%; the current acceptance rate was 35% [because] the applicant pool went up but the number of classes had to go down, so about 35% got in, about a 10% reduction."
Undergraduate research. "On a base of about $5.5 million, we've had to take about $1.1 million out of that program. But I still think it is the largest such program in the country."
The Vice Provost listed two examples of a variety of smaller reductions: Helping faculty develop new curriculum has been diminished. Salaries for teachers in IHUM have been reduced.
"If there is any good news it is that we're close to getting [the budget adjustments] done. We have some more cuts to achieve but we will not talk about that much today…We went through a very intensive process and I'm glad to say that most of it is in the rear?view mirror and we can focus on the future and make things better."
Impingements: Future Concerns.
Overseas Studies. "Overseas Studies has been a successful and valuable program but it has been hit very hard by the currency fluctuations in the dollar-to-Euro ratio over the last couple years. The budget for OSP is about $14 million a year…We buy currency once a year in the spring. This year we saved $1.6 million, relative to budget, because of the strengthening of the dollar. But compared to two years before that, we have lost several million [because of the weakened dollar]. So a $1 to $2 million dollar swing in one year is not unexpected.
"This program has been growing, partially on the President's Fund money and as a result, the programs have been spending down their resources significantly. If we see a bad year in terms of the dollar, and a few other things happen, this program is going to be extremely vulnerable."
The Vice Provost gave an example of the problem. There was discussion of closing the single quarter program in Moscow. That plus closing the overseas seminar program would add up to less than $700,000 a year. "So if you're looking at a $1 million or $2 million swings, you can see the difficult situation we might face.
Stanford Introductory Studies. "As I indicated we've taken a reduction in some seminar programs but these programs are really run about as leanly as possible and yet the total cost is almost $10 million a year. I think we have to look at the cost of running those programs. I think it is not right to say simply the way they're structured now is the way they have to be. I think we should always head for academic excellence but I think we have to take into account the cost."
Building an Infrastructure of Advising
Engagement with Departments. "We are very aggressively seeking to engage with departments especially with faculty like never before and that has been a wonderful thing."
Academic Standing and Review. "This is a function that was done previously in the Registrar's office but is now handled in the VPUE's office. We have an Associate Dean of Advising and one of his staff that is devoted to that [function] full time. There are 1,000 or more petitions that our students submit every year. There are also hundreds of students every year that come to our attention because of Academic Standing…We are more proactive about calling students in. We have a great partnership with [Registrar] Tom Black and a sizeable review committee meets 10-12 times per year, with smaller weekly meetings.
"We also are [reviewing] all the academic policies…for undergraduates. Some appear untouched for more than 40 years—and some are outdated. [For example] do you know that after students are suspended once for one year, which is the normal period of time, the second time they're suspended it's supposedly for three years? I don't think that makes sense any more…There are other policies like that that we want to bring to the attention of the Senate for review and action."
Academic Directors. "[This] is a program we've been building for several years. It is a new type of professional Ph.D.?level academic advisor, which we call Academic Directors. They have their offices in residential clusters. As of this year we have at least one in each residential cluster where freshmen are located. In our peer institutions, these are often called academic deans or residential college deans. Their job is to be the professional adjunct to faculty and staff premajor advisors or volunteer advisors.
"…We wanted to unburden our volunteer advisers from much of the nitty?gritty work of advising and place it in the hands of full time professionals."
The Vice Provost then invited Allison Rhines, an undergraduate who is a student member of C-USP to describe her experience with an Academic Director.
Miss Rhines responded, "The Academic Director system has been very important in guiding the course of my undergraduate education since my freshman year, when I was able to form a personal relationship with a particular advisor. Access to professional advising in this manner has been extremely valuable to me in navigating the plethora of options and opportunities Stanford offers undergraduates, particularly with regard to preparation for post-graduate education and undergraduate scholarships and fellowships. I was able to receive guidance regarding how to best prepare for the post-graduate opportunities I might consider, while still undecided, as well as in deciding which fellowship opportunities would be best suited to my interests. Now, I am in my third year, and my former Academic Director generously continues to advise me in post-graduate planning, despite the fact that she is no longer at Stanford."
The Vice Provost thanked Miss Rhines and resumed his comments. "When the advising system works well, it works extremely well. It is a great partnership between VPUE and VPSA (Vice Provost for Student Affairs)…We have resident fellows and resident deans—those are through VPSA—and we have Academic Directors through VPUE and others, working together in a dorm clusters…pulling in the same direction. I think…we have made an improvement in our undergraduate advising."
WASC Accreditation
"Lastly, we are in the middle of our WASC process; our proposal was accepted enthusiastically many months ago. We have two visits in the fall of 2010 and 2012.
We will learn the outcome of our accreditation work in the winter of 2013. This is a long process which Stephanie Kalfayan [Vice Provost for Academic Affairs], Brad Osgood [Professor of Electrical Engineering and Senior Associate Dean for Student Affairs in Engineering], Judy Goldstein [Professor of International Communications] and myself spent a significant fraction of our time thinking about. [What WASC] is focused on is what they call 'outcomes assessment'."
In closing, Vice Provost Bravman quoted John W. Gardner:
"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities—brilliantly disguised at insolvable problems."
"And that is the spirit we tried to bring to [the budget reduction]. Many of us had to lay off staff; this doesn't work for someone laid off, but we have to move forward as an institution and that is what we're trying to do.
Thank you."
[sustained Applause]
Chair Cook invited questions from the floor.
Professor Mark Applebaum was the first to be recognized: "John, thank you for a great and very clear presentation. And I want to thank you for many years of assistance from the VPUE in the context of undergraduate research grants to my students in the music department who have had senior honors concentration projects that have benefited enormously from the opportunity to have original musical compositions performed in a public context. I'm somewhat alarmed by hearing…reports that this source is drying up and [will] not be available for students for performing and I —
Vice Provost Bravman interjected, "It is shrinking a little bit, not drying up."
Professor Applebaum resumed, "Okay. I just want to emphasize to you and to my colleagues that while many of you are guilty of using music as entertainment and enjoyment and fun, over in the music department, we don't enjoy ourselves at all."
[Laughter]
Vice Provost Bravman nodded, "Mark once told me he doesn't like music at all, even though he is a brilliant pianist and composer."
Professor Applebaum continued, "For the record, that is true; I love and hate music, it is my research area, an occupational hazard of mine, but I can't really like music…I didn't mean to — this is in the too much information category."
[Laughter]
"But it is important for me to explain to you and my colleagues in other disciplines, that for a composer to labor and, in one case, labor for three years on a full length opera from the sophomore year through its completion as a senior concentration project, for that composer not to hear that piece of music, for it not to be realized in a public performance — that is equivalent to conducting a scientific experiment in a laboratory but not being allowed to look at the results. You put the petri dishes out, but you're not allowed to look at them. [Or it's] similar to writing a paper, but you're not allowed to publish it or disseminate it in e?mail or present it to a conference.
"This [kind of change] is not simply [a matter] where we say we have fewer resources so we can only fund this top cream of the crop. It is rather a change in a fundamental kind of criterion that would remove this source, which is really, frankly, the only one that I know of for these students."
The Vice Provost responded, "If I understand your question, I like it because it…highlights [the fact] that when people hear 'research' they think of petri dishes and test tubes. We support faculty who support students across the entire academic spectrum, including the arts. We are not favoring…any one unit through [greater] cuts to…others; we're trying to share the pain…We go through and make the best possible decisions we could.
"Today we argued—should we increase the stipend [for summer students] which hasn't been increased in three years, at the expense of having fewer students? We [decided] we will only increase the stipend by a small amount, equal to inflation, to keep as many students supported as possible."
Professor Applebaum followed up, "The word on the street is not that music or the arts are being punished in any way, but rather that performance specifically is no longer eligible for those grants."
Vice Provost Bravman said that was not the case.
Professor Stephen Stedman had two questions, both about the infrastructure for advising. "The first has to do with the decision to eliminate the HPAC positions. It seems to me, going back to my experience when I was Resident Fellow, that actually they were a very good value. I look back six years ago, these are really sharp people who gave a lot of good advice; [for example] one is an assistant professor in Oregon. What exactly is the cost savings of eliminating the HPAC and what was the evaluation done that showed the evidence that they really didn't add anything or were detrimental?…[As for the new Academic Directors]…how much does this infrastructure cost against [to the cost] before when there was more reliance on the HPAC?"
Vice Provost Bravman responded, "The last part first. [The cost savings is mostly] from reassignment, it is on the order of two FTE…so the actual increment has been small. I can't remember the dollar figure for the HPACs [program but it was] many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. They were sharp people—they were Stanford graduates."
Professor Stedman commented, "There was an additional question, which is—you stated you think the Academic Director infrastructure is working well. I would like to know what the evidence is and how exactly you evaluate the impact of one Academic Director per housing cluster versus eight HPACs in a freshman housing cluster."
The Vice Provost acknowledged, "All good questions and way beyond what I can answer in full. [Here are a] few points. First of all, HPACs are undergraduates; they have one or two more years of life's experience than the freshmen they are serving. Secondly…lots of the advice [they] were giving was not good advice…They were not even able to hear the question correctly—which is typical and expected of undergraduate peers—and turn that question around, let alone give the right answer…How many HPACs…had real knowledge of what academic life is about? How many knew lots of faculty? Very few. We were on their mailing list, their chat list [and] it was full of bad advice. I had many wonderful HPACs [but] I had many that were not wonderful. It was a mixed bag, and in the end, the choice was…to take our limited resources and pay professionals.
"One of the data points that is strikingly different about Stanford in the COFHE [Consortium for Financing of Higher Education] data that are gathered almost every other year is the huge gap [between Stanford and other universities in the answer to the question asked of undergraduates]—where do you typically get your advice from? At Stanford, the number one answer by a large proportion is—students, rather than faculty or staff. [In] peer institutions like Princeton and Yale and Harvard, the answer is completely the reverse. So we thought, after talking with a lot of people—and we will continue to assess this…that the life experiences of a 19?year?old are not optimized to offer academic advice guidance to an 18?year?old. And we've [heard] increasingly from resident fellows, faculty, and students who have embraced this program…stories [like that of] Allison's, rather than the stories where a student gets into deep trouble because of advice she has been given by a peer.
"…When academic standing [became our responsibility]…and we …started tracking backwards these problems…we found one of the places that was common was bad advice from a peer."
Professor Stedman replied, "But the question is—how are you going to evaluate Academic Directors? How do you know what they will give you—not just advice to the students that seek them—but actually make a larger impact in terms of the overall [student] population?"
The Vice Provost answered, "We're working with a new Institutional Research Office that the provost has organized and it is specifically studying this [question]…We can hold these professional staff to account, to show us the list of students they've talked with in a given month. Those lists may end up …with [the names of ] hundreds of students. I'm concerned about the ratio, although in our peers, we find often that one professional [advisor] serves 300 to 400 students and gets to know a significant fraction of those students. [These advisors] will proactively call those students in when they are in trouble or when they think there is a connection they need to make because of some opportunity. None of that happens with peers. It cannot happen with peers.
"We will do our very best to document and measure [the accomplishments of this new program].
"We have some residences where the resident fellows will not even give the Academic Director access to the dorm student list. That is absurd. That is not the cooperation we need. We need to build a holistic approach to solving student's problems. Greg Boardman and I are committed to making this work. We have a wonderful new director of residential education, Deborah Goulder, and if we all pull in the same direction, our students are going to be better served than they have been."
Professor Anat Admati commented, "I'm going to show my ignorance because I'm in the Business School, not in undergraduate education, so maybe my interest is more that of a parent, but you mentioned peer institutions…Why are our faculty so little involved in advising?…I have a daughter who transferred from Yale to Stanford, and [she noted that] there was a huge difference in the level of involvement that she got as a freshman and a sophomore at Yale from faculty [compared to Stanford]."
Vice Provost Bravman replied, "First of all, thank you for reminding me that we are at a phase of time in the spring when we are soliciting a solution to that very problem. Stanford faculty are amazingly productive and very busy, but I believe it is true compared to our peers, that they are less involved in advising. If there is any one difference that explains it, I think it is because of the residential housing system that exists at other institutions which have long?standing [experience] with residential clusters and [the faculty develop] a connection to those places and students who reside in them."
Professor Admati remarked, "[The difference in advising] was in department faculty, interested in the freshman and sophomore student."
Vice Provost Bravman clarified, "Those are the faculty that are advisors to the colleges."
Professor Admati replied, "I know [my daughter] was able to get more attention as a freshman and sophomore at Yale than here as a junior and senior."
Chair Cook commented, "I think we will come back to this issue at the Executive Session in May, because advising is part of that whole issue surrounding mental health. Are there other questions for John?"
Professor Helen Blau commented that she thought the undergraduate research awards have been invaluable…"The [awards] allow students in the summer to become fully engaged in research without distractions, and they usually find out whether they are suited for research during that time so it is an invaluable experience. They become part of the lab and nurtured by the lab; I can't speak highly enough for them. My question is—to what extent have these awards been cut?"
Vice Provost Bravman replied, "[Through the undergraduate research awards] we support departments, individual faculty and individual students. We have three different programs during the year and during the summer. The number of summer students will be about 900, which is not down very much from previous years. But the overall budget is down about 18%. [Since] the vast preponderance of our funding goes to supporting students, you can expect overall to see roughly a similar reduction in the total number of students supported in the summer and over the course of the year… I would expect to be 15% less."
Professor Al Camarillo commented, "John, you and your staff have to be commended for going through a really difficult process, reducing your budget and reducing the staff…You mentioned one program that is very costly and I'm wondering if [there should be] a possible painful discussion about IHUM. Have you started that discussion with Russell Berman and his colleagues?"
The Vice Provost replied, "You will recall that Russell received from this group last year permission to experiment in IHUM and try on a small scale experimentation with established…It is a broad program and…different faculty will see things differently, but there may be a way of delivering a program without cutting the number of courses or quarters, so we have to look at this and we will."
Provost Etchemendy commented, "Many of you aren't thinking about this, but these programs, like IHUM, are legislated by this body and John is not free to cut those aspects of those programs. John can't do it, I can't do it, the president can't do it. That has to be something done in this body, so John [Bravman] has, as he said, launched a number of committees to look at these programs and potentially bring back recommendations to the Senate. So in some sense, the answer to your question, Al, is—John couldn't do that even if he wanted."
Chair Cook responded, "In that spirit, John is coming back to the Senate in November to give a follow?up report because we will want to track these things fairly closely."
Professor Chu gave a personal anecdote: "I wanted to follow?up on Helen's comment. I realized in listening to the discussion that cutting support for undergraduate research was sort of a dagger to my heart. My son, who is just graduating [this year from Stanford], found out how these kinds of experiences [can effect] life changes, so that every single cut of an award could change someone's career. I just want to let you know how painful it can be at other end. If there is anything you can do to introduce flexibility, to make cuts in different ways, depending on the programs, [whether] it is a laboratory or music performance, anything that can help will make huge difference to every single undergraduate who is affected."
Vice Provost Bravman agreed, "…Faculty call me all the time asking for money, probably [only slightly less frequently] than they call the president or provost or their dean, but they call me often for support for undergraduate education and we try hard to find some source of funding for almost everything. People should not hesitate, given even the difficulty of the [times], to call...If you've got a composition a student wants to perform and you are out of money and it costs x thousands of dollars or whatever, I will find that money. That is too important for that student…That is what we work hard at…that is why we need those underwater funds to come back up above water."
The Vice Provost returned to Professor Stedman's query about how the new Academic Director's program will be evaluated. "…We looked once, early on, at [students in] Sophomore College, normalized as much as possible—by grade point average and other things. Students who went to Sophomore College that one year had twice the probability of going on for a Ph.D. as those who didn't. So these programs can have an impact and we hear [often]. We will continue to support programs…that connect students to this faculty—the best students and the best faculty working together."
Chair Cook noted, "We have two more last comments, from the president and the provost.
President Hennessy: "All I wanted to say is we didn't cut the most expensive thing we do for undergraduates, which is [provide] financial aid; instead, we have a $40 million deficit coming out of financial aid. Obviously, we can't continue that forever, we will do some fund raising for it, but that was the key decision. And once we made that decision, then I think John, leading the entire VPUE staff, had to find money from programs because we weren't going to take it out of financial aid."
Provost Etchemendy: "John and his entire staff including Carol and faculty leadership, have done an incredible job of approaching this [budget reduction] as a chance to creatively rethink the operation of VPUE. There are going to be things that people feel and obviously there are losses, real and substantive losses, but I think also there is an incredible amount of efficiency, originality and creativity that have gone into this process, and John is a great leader of the VPUE office."
[Applause]
B. Report on the Office of Development
Chair Cook invited Martin Shell, Vice President for Development, to come forward to present his report.
Vice President Shell thanked Chair Cook and introduced three of his colleagues from the Development Office attending as guests: Kathleen Quinn, Assistant Vice President for Development, Jon Denney, Senior Associate Vice President for Development, and Donna Lawrence, Assistant Vice President for Development.
"They are part of an incredible leadership team and do a tremendous job for us."
With the aid of slides, the Vice President began his presentation.
"Karen had asked us to provide a quick update on where we are with the Stanford Challenge. As Karen suggested to us, we would love to come back in the fall and give a more elaborate presentation on how fund raising is doing in fiscal year '09. As you can imagine, fiscal year '09 has been a little more challenging than some previous years. But as John Hennessy said two weeks ago in his State of the University report [to the annual meeting of the Academic Council], the Stanford Challenge has had remarkable success…We say this somewhat quietly, that we have passed the initial milestone of $4.3 billion in the Stanford Challenge…While that is a significant number, probably in anyone's category, there are some important things that envisioned at the beginning of the campaign that are not yet funded and, because of the dynamic nature of this institution, there are a lot of new things that had been added.
"As many of you know, it only takes a minute to walk out of this building and in any direction on campus, see a specific piece of the Stanford Challenge that is focused on facilities. While we are grateful we launched the Stanford challenge in October of '06 instead of October of '08, we are also pleased that we secured most of the fundraising for the facilities in the first few years, as opposed to now. It will be challenging to raise a lot of new, significant commitments for new facilities for a while. While we have some declines in the cost of construction, we've also seen a significant decline in the net asset values of our major donors.
"So as we have crossed this milestone moment in the Stanford Challenge, we still have a long way to go to the finish line and we're now focusing, as the president said two weeks ago, on people. And because development offices always have to have a handle, we …decided to [call] this effort, "The Three Ships"—scholarships, graduate fellowships, and professorships…Again to quote John Hennessey, it's appropriate to be focusing on the heart and the soul of any great institution, and that is its people—its students and its faculty."
Scholarships
Overall Goal $200,000,000
Raised $108,000,000
Left to raise $ 92,000,000
201 new scholarships funds have been established since January 1, 2006
"...Undergraduate financial aid is an important part of our needs now, particularly in light of the change in endowment values in the last few months. In the Campaign for Undergraduate Education [CUE], we had a goal of $1 billion. $300 million of that was for undergraduate financial aid endowment. We were successful in meeting that CUE goal, but only achieved it…by moving some undesignated dollars into the program…As the university leadership and the Board [of Trustees] began to look last year at changing the undergraduate financial aid formula, we decided to change the TSC [The Stanford Challenge] goal [financial aid] from $100 million to $200 million. To date, we've raised $108 million leaving about $92 million left. We raised over 200 new scholarship funds since January of 2006.
"One of the longer term goals was to fully endow a need?based international financial aid program. We have put that on the back burner right now because, we now have a new 'delta' of somewhere north of $500 million of endowment we need to secure to bring the current domestic financial aid program back to within balance. The Stanford Fund, which is our undergraduate expendable annual giving program, has been raising on average $20 plus million dollars a year. We have been allocating somewhere between 50 and 60% of the Stanford Fund to help with undergraduate financial aid. For the next few years, we will move that percentage up very significantly to help cover some of this gap. But scholarships are clearly one of the very important things we will be focusing on."
Fellowships
| Goal | Raised | Left | |
| Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowships | 100 | 13 | 87 |
| Emmett Interdisciplinary Fellowships | 15 | 9 | 6 |
| Departmental Fellowships | 265 | 200 | 65 |
| Total Dollars Raised | $212M | $128M | $84M |
"As some of the deans have been successful in the past few years in raising school?based or departmental?based graduate fellowships, we announced a new graduate fellowship program at the beginning of the Stanford Challenge, the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowships (SIGFs)…To date, we have raised funds for 13 SIGFs that are managed by Vice Provost for Graduate Education (VPGE) Patti Gumport's Office. We've added about five more in the last few days.
"Earlier this year Dan Emmett, an alum from southern California, made a gift to IPER [Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources] to what is now named the Emmett Interdisciplinary Fellowships in Environment and Resources (E-IPER). In addition we have raised funds for 200 departmental fellowships. So a lot of progress has been made in this area. John Hennessy secured early in the campaign a $25 million anonymous gift to be used as matching dollars for SIGFs and we're calling upon that."
Professorships
| Goal | Raised | Left | |
| Department Chairs | 76 | 36 | 38 |
| Provostial Chairs | 22 | 14 | 6 |
| Center/Institute Directorships | 13 | 6 | 7 |
| Senior Fellows | 10 | 3 | 7 |
| Total Dollars Raised | $330M | $166M | $164M |
"Stanford has been the model institution for a long time of using matching dollars to leverage new gifts. We saw that in the undergraduate effort; we're seeing that again as we look for scholarships and fellowships and in an area some of you might be interested in, professorships, clearly one of the most important areas of the institution. The president has indicated the Development Office will be carrying some responsibility to help secure the resources as we start to grow faculty in the next few years and doing it through gift support…At the beginning of this campaign we created a new type of endowed faculty funded position called 'provostial chairs'. We have had some nice support thus far for those.
"We are about halfway through the campaign, and if you look at the totals, we are about halfway through our goals in this area. That progress is reflective of the fact that we were spending significant time early on in the campaign focusing on some important facility needs that are now under way."
Review of recent accomplishments of the Development Office.
"…the Steering Committee requested a quick review of how this institution has done in terms of fund raising in the last few years. To paraphrase Dizzy Dean, it is not bragging if it is true. For the last four years we have raised more money than any other institution in higher education."
Color Code: Stanford, red; Harvard, orange; Johns Hopkins, blue dashed line; Columbia, black; Cornell, orange dashed line; Yale, blue; Penn, purple.
"You will see that starting in 2005, we were slightly ahead of our friends at Cambridge, and then put some distance between the rest of the group in '06 and '07, and in '08 we saw some decline. Stanford, Hopkins, Columbia, Cornell, Yale and Penn are all in some form of capital campaign, and have been for the last three to four years. Harvard was planning to launch a campaign but decided to have a change in executive leadership and that slowed that process down. I think they are beginning to have another conversation about what they do next.
"[This] FY '09 has been a very different climate for fund raising; as we ended the eighth month of our fiscal year, we continued to see a slow down in cash gifts, [and] in new commitments. We get a phone call at least once a week from the media wanting to know how we're doing. We have quit talking about it, but as you would imagine, this economic downturn has had a significant effect on philanthropy. If you think about your own investments in the last 10 to 12 months, you might imagine some of our donors are feeling the same way. I've been talking to colleagues around the country. Most [people] felt like the world stopped, somewhere about January 5, in terms of gift conversations and so forth. …Conversations have elongated; donors are slower to make commitments and they are asking for more time to pay pledges. At the same time, we are beginning to see a resurgence of more conversations and…thawing when it comes to gift decisions. I think some of that has to do with the stock market and some of it has to do with donors beginning to feel like they know what the future is starting to look like.
"Annual giving is also down—not as far as our overall cash results—but we're working very hard particularly in expendable support to try to increase that because expendable dollars are very important right now.
"There are about 1,000 funds underwater. We sent out about 650 letters and are following up with those individuals, asking them to consider allowing us to anticipate a prudent flow of funds from endowed gifts. By and large, the responses to date have been very positive. Some of the donors…have said, 'instead of allowing you to dip into the historic gift value, what I would like to do is give you an expendable gift that would be the equivalent of what that endowment would earn this year.' I think those donors have a particular concern about long?term preservation of capital and want to ensure the goal and the need for which those dollars were given is, in fact, achieved."
Budget reductions in the Development Office. "We have gone through a set of budget reductions and we announced our layoffs on March 31st. We laid off 19 employees, an additional 14 positions that had been frozen through attrition or otherwise were collapsed, and we asked several people to take a different and reduced work schedule. About 50 people in our office were affected one way or the other with the budget reductions.
"There was about a $5 million reduction in university general funds for the Office of Development, a 15% reduction in our general funds allocation. It was a challenging time.
"…I have seen articles recently that some people think fund raising is 'bullet proof', good times or bad. Well, it is not. With the drop in endowment and the budget situation as it is, there were no places to hide and there are no units that were spared. We think we have now turned a corner. You don't do what we do and not be optimistic.
[Laughter]
"One of the things we take significant pride in…that gets us up in the morning and…ensures that we raise the kind of resources we do is because people now, more than ever, look to institutions of higher education as the place to be optimistic about the future. For [we as] universities, if we're not about the future, I don't know what we're about. Given the kind of research that goes on here, the kinds of students we bring in and the kind of work each of you and your colleagues do, we are about the future. When we look at work going on in this campus, and see the students that will be marching across the stage in a month, we've got to feel very optimistic about that future.
"We're going around the country and the world doing a series of campaign events, and people are coming together at those events…We think they're coming because it is a place to come together in community and to be inspired. I think the message that is embedded in the Stanford Challenge is not a fund raising message per se, it is about [what] this place is doing. That message is resonating and that's why I think we have turned the corner and why I am optimistic. I'm not making a prediction where we will come out at the end of fundraising on August 31 quite yet, but I'm optimistic about the long?term future for the success of the Office of Development, which is only a reflection what goes on in this campus."
"Thank you very much."
[Applause]
Chair Cook expressed the sentiment of the Senate: "It is clear we also have the best development office in the country. Thank you, Martin and to your staff."
Chair Cook opened the floor for questions.
Professor Pat Burchat asked if the scholarships for which funds are being raised are need?based and Vice President Shell confirmed that they were.
Professor Stedman asked if the figures on the slides represented money in the bank or pledges and if there were any time lags on some of the money pledged.
Vice President Shell replied that the figures were of pledges or new commitments and that about 3/4 of the pledges have already been fulfilled.
The Vice President continued, "We've had some donors who have asked for a bit longer period to pay. Most pledges are booked over a five?year period but before the downturn, our pledge fulfillment rate was less than five years, usually three to four. It will now elongate a bit…we stay in close conversation with our donors. While there is a lot of work going on to produce these underwater fund letters, it also provides a wonderful opportunity to have a conversation with our donors about endowed funds…Our newest programs are the ones most at risk right now…Gifts [starting in] 2005 forward are the ones that have been most at risk because of the drop in endowment…Financial aid, the VPUE's [office], some of the new fellowships…are the ones most at risk and this gives us a chance to have productive conversations with our donors."
Professor Harvey Cohen commented, "…One issue is how to support junior faculty after the initial package has been spent; is that part of your fundraising?"
Vice President Shell replied, "Those are not built into the university-wide goals of the Stanford Challenge. Several schools—the business school and engineering school, and I believe, the medical school—are looking at raising money for professorships or faculty endowment dollars for new faculty…We've written language into some of the provostial chairs [so that the money raised] could be used for a faculty member who is not yet ready [for an appointment to a Chair]."
Vice President Shell again expressed his appreciation to the Senate.
[Applause]
C. Report on Graduate Student Issues
Chair Cook welcomed Adam Beberg, the Graduate Student Council representative, to report on accomplishments and issues of the past year. [The report from the Undergraduate Senate Representatives will be presented in the fall.]
As Mr. Beberg was approaching, Chair Cook added, "I would like to thank him for three years of service."
[Applause]
Mr. Beberg began by saying, "Yes, this is my third year here, my fifth year at Stanford. I'm going to try to do less service and get out of here."
[Laughter]
"But I have seen a lot of change in the five years I have been here. There was not a Vice Provost for Graduate Education (VPGE) office. Resources for someone like me who was returning from industry to teach were very limited. A lot more resources are available now. The office of VPGE has done great things and thank you for creating it."
Mr. Beberg turned to his first slide.
Graduate Health Care
Still no health insurance for Stanford children and spouses - unique among our peer institutions.
Healthy Families, the country kids insurance program, is at great risk with the California budget.
Costs rising 50% this year-($400 + $167)/$378.
"[While the] VPGE solves problems we deal with, the big things kind of linger…[like] the graduate health care [issue]…is a very emotional issue for anybody in this country. We still do not have …[covered] health care for our spouses and children; it is pretty unique [among] our peer institutions. We're the only one. UC Davis [graduate students] just lost their dependent health care recently, but we are still in a pretty small crowd.
"Healthy Families, the program that has most of the graduate student children on it, narrowly escaped getting canceled last year. Thanks to a private donor, it was extended and remains alive, but given California's budget…it is certainly something we can't count on.
"The cost of health care for a student next year is going up 50 percent. The cost of Cardinal Care, plus the $167 fee, is now 150% of what it was last year."
The Vaden Fee
New $167; quarter fee for basic services at Vaden.
Takes Vaden off the general budget.
A fee-based door has opened, what's next?
Fees have overhead, tuition does not.
No clear winner, lots of losers.
Nobody knew = anger and confusion.
"The Vaden fee…is a quarterly fee, regardless if students are on Cardinal Care or external insurance, so a lot of people have external insurance [as an] extra cost.
It takes Vaden out of the general budget, which makes perfect sense, but given the context, it is not a great time [to have done that].
"It has opened the door for fee?based things, and we're starting to hear of other fees being created…[causing] a lot of uncertainty for grad students. There is no clear winner in moving to a fee system, but there are a lot of people who feel they are losing in this system…I run into students all the time who haven't heard of this [fee], and they go through the traditional stages of denial, doubt, anger, grief. They can get through it in about five minutes, but it is still something that affects them."
Other Major Issues
Housing- more cheap housing on campus.
Cost of living - graduate cost model from financial aid does not account for taxes.
Cuts to services - GSPB, et al. and to staff.
If you cannot fund and take good care of the students here, maybe admit fewer of them?
THE ECONOMY - Both industry and academic jobs have disappeared.
"Another major issue is always a problem—the need for more low?cost housing on campus. With the housing situation in Palo Alto and the foreclosure rates, rents will be going down in the community, but that doesn't necessarily bring down on?campus rates."
The cost of living. "The graduate cost model is calculated with a formula from the Feds and doesn't take into account taxes. Last year, we did a lot of work to get the cost of living model more in line with what we were really spending."
Cuts to services. "Funds for the GSPB [Graduate Student Planning Board] were cut and other things are inevitably going to be cut— if not this year then the next year—with the additional 15% budget cuts across the university. Staff have been reduced—a lot [being] position?based staff reduction. [Some of the students believe that] the people that students have problems with should be removed."
[Laughter]
"I've heard [the idea] floating around—if you can't support the people you have, maybe admitting more grad students every year isn't the best idea. I think you can easily make a case that nine happy grad students are better than 10 slightly unhappy ones—and more productive.
"And of course, the economy is a huge concern right now to everyone. If you're following the Chronicle of Higher Education, you know that faculty jobs are disappearing en masse, industry jobs are disappearing just as quickly and a lot of soon-to-graduate students like me are looking into an abyss of job offers."
Mr. Beberg concluded, "Those are big things on student's minds—in five minutes."
Chair Cook thanked Mr. Beberg and opened the floor for questions.
Provost Etchemendy commented, "Let me start by saying something about the first thing that you mentioned—the no health insurance for Stanford children and spouses. This is something I'm bound and determined to solve, and I hope we can solve it, not this coming year but by the following year. I can't guarantee we can solve it because a lot of this is reality that we're running into, and, as I think Adam knows and most of you know, the last time we tried to solve it, we had a variety of possible options and the graduate students resisted. They did not want to adopt the solutions, which partly involved spreading costs of [health care for] the children and dependents across a larger pool. That is what you need to do in order to make a workable system that doesn't let…costs get out of hand. But this is something that we need to solve and…can solve. It may involve, whether we like it or not, spreading costs. That is the only way insurance will work.
"I want to say something about the health fee, which has been announced in both of the newspapers, announced at the Senate, and announced in every way we can, but —
Mr. Beberg interjected, "Everything but an email to all the students."
Provost Etchemendy continued, "The reason [for the health fee] I think was explained [at the last Senate meeting] two weeks ago but I wasn't here. The reason we did this is that people on campus can access Vaden's free services but many of our students are overseas, or doing research, or [located where] they can't access the services. Yet since we were charging for it, they ended up having to pay for the services. Conversely, there are people on campus, [for example], summer students, high school students—that can access that service but [since] they don't pay standard tuition they don't pay for the service. By having a separate fee, we can charge the people who are here and not charge the people who are not here, to cover the cost of Vaden. The people that the fee impacts and who complain the most are graduate students on site, and I feel bad about that.
"Since John [Hennessy] and I started in our offices, one of our highest priorities [has been] to increase the financial aid for our TAs [teaching assistants] and RAs [research assistants]. The year before we started, the RA?TA minimum stipends were $16,592; next year they will be $28,700, an increase of 73% over a time period in which the rise in inflation has been 23%. So that's an increase above inflation of $7,500.
"In addition, we are now subsidizing half of the Cardinal Care insurance for the students, and that is an additional $400 [per student], so that is basically $8,000 above inflation by which we've increased the stipends. If you look just three years ago in 2007, the stipend has gone up just in that period $2,848 above inflation. These [increases in stipends] dwarf the cost of the health care fee.
"So that's basically all I can say, and I agree with you, Adam, that it is a shame that the health care costs are going up but, you know, we're doing the best we can."
Mr. Beberg nodded, "We certainly understand you are doing the best you can. These are not simple issues, they are very complicated… [But] these issues of increasing costs are a very large concern among grad students."
Chair Cook thanked Mr. Beberg and added, "These issues won't be resolved in the next five minutes. With Patti [Gumport] in the room and John Etchemendy and John Hennessy and others, I think we're moving in the right direction, so thank you."
[Applause]
VI. Unfinished BusinessThere was no unfinished business.
VII. New BusinessThere was no new business.
VIII. AdjournmentChair Cook declared the meeting adjourned at 5:15 PM.
Respectfully submitted, Rex L. Jamison, MD Academic Secretary to the University