Stanford University invites its neighbors to visit on Community Day Sunday, April 4, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Stanford is inviting its Bay Area neighbors to visit on Sunday, April 4, during Community Day, a family-oriented open house featuring music, arts, athletic events, science displays, a children's community carnival and health fair. Community Day hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Community Day, which is being held for the third time this year, drew about 8,000 to campus last spring and about 5,000 the year before. All events are free, and most activities will be centered on or near the university's Main Quadrangle and Oval at the end of Palm Drive. Free parking will be provided, and food will be available for purchase.

Participants in Community Day 2004 include Nobel Prize-winning physicist Douglas Osheroff, who served on the committee investigating the Columbia shuttle accident. Osheroff will give a free lecture on space exploration at noon. In addition:

• a children's community carnival will offer games, a petting zoo and lots of opportunity for interaction with Stanford students;

• popular slime-making booth again will be sponsored by the Center on Polymer Interfaces and Macromolecular Assemblies;

• the Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital will anchor a health fair, which will feature a visit by the Stanford Hospital Life Flight helicopter. A tour of the new Stanford Cancer Center also will be conducted;

• the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility will give visitors the chance to dress in "bunny suits" and visit a clean room to learn how nanostructures and integrated circuits are made;

• the Cantor Center for Visual Arts will offer mobile-making for families and filmmaker Ismail Merchant will sign books at the center bookstore at noon. (At 7 p.m., Merchant will speak free of charge in Kresge Auditorium and screen his new movie as part of the conference "Shakespeare in Asia.")

In addition, the community reading project, Discovering Dickens, will conclude with a discussion among scholars of "A Tale of Two Cities." Bridge to Asia, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization that provides textbooks to developing nations, will be accepting donations.

More than 20 student groups will participate in Community Day, including the Society of Women Engineers, the Stanford Chemistry Club and the Stanford Solar Car Project, as well as about 25 university departments, including Stanford athletics. The first 600 kids to visit the Cantor Arts Center will receive free Stanford athletic giveaways.

"This is our most jam-packed Community Day yet," said coordinator Ryan Foley. "There are more activities than ever before and a greater variety than in the past two years. We've also condensed the area in which Community Day occurs to give families a chance to take in the entire day."

For more information on Community Day, visit the web site at http://communityday.stanford.edu or call (650) 724-2933.

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