In his final Academic Council address, President Hennessy reflects on major successes of his tenure

“I hereby convene the 48th annual meeting of the Academic Council,” President John Hennessy said as he rapped on the lectern at Cemex Auditorium on Thursday, before stopping himself with a chuckle. “I love saying that, and I won’t get another chance.”

In his annual address to members of the Faculty Senate and the campus community, titled “President Hennessy on the State of the University,” he took the audience down memory lane, ticking off some of the major ways that the university has changed during his 16-year presidency. Hennessy will step down as president in August.

There were countless high notes, but when pressed for the best moment of his presidency, Hennessy quickly pointed to boosting financial aid to make Stanford affordable to all.

“That was the moment where I felt like we were doing the right thing, and I was really proud of what we were doing as an institution,” Hennessy said. He knew that so many students of lower-income families simply saw Stanford’s sticker price and didn’t think about applying, and he looked forward to being able to explain to those bright students that it needn’t be a worry.

Financial aid has been a focal point of fundraising efforts and has made a huge impact in shaping the student body, he said. The average award is $40,000, and for the average student on financial aid it’s cheaper to come to Stanford now, adjusted for inflation, than it was 16 years ago.

“The root of the success of our institution is providing access for the very best students to attend,” Hennessy said. “Our key goal was to ensure that the best students could come. This is a vision we’ve kept alive for a long time.”

The Stanford financial aid program continues to be one of the strongest in the nation, Hennessy reminded the audience. Families with incomes less than $125,000 pay no tuition, and Stanford covers tuition, room and board for families with income below $65,000. Since he took office in 2000, the median indebtedness of graduating undergraduates has dropped from $23,000 to $16,000, and 78 percent of undergrads last year  graduated with no debt at all.

Even during the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the university didn’t waiver from its commitment to financial aid, an achievement Hennessy attributed to heroic budget management by Provost John Etchemendy.

“No institution in the country has been blessed by a provost as good as John Etchemendy,” Hennessy said of his leadership partner of 16 years.

Restoring the original vision

If a president’s tenure can be graded simply by tons of sandstone and concrete, no one could compare to Hennessy. Enabling much of the multidisciplinary, collaborative research he champions required modern buildings and facilities to match.

The James H. Clark Center, with its open architecture that encourages chance encounters between faculty, very appropriately became the home for the interdisciplinary Stanford Bio-X institute. This was one of Stanford’s ice-breaking experiments, Hennessy said, because housing faculty from different departments together just wasn’t done decades ago, but is common now, with Stanford leading the way.

Nearby, the Lorry I. Lokey Stem Cell Research Building is the largest stem cell research facility in the country, and itself is just a stone’s throw from teaching space in the Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge.

The John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building provided space for attracting new economics faculty who used big data to understand complex social problems, and the Knight Management Center changed the way Stanford teaches business. The William H. Neukom Building, he said, allowed the Stanford Law School to build the best law clinics in the country.

Many of these moves were made with an eye toward restoring the original vision of the campus, Hennessy noted. Nowhere is the original symmetry and beauty better captured, he said, than the Science and Engineering Quad. Each of the four buildings revolves around an important research theme – thus supporting collaborations – and each features incredible advances in sustainability.

Hennessy’s tenure as president has also seen an unprecedented expansion to the university’s arts facilities, such as the state-of-the-art Bing Concert Hall, the Anderson Collection at Stanford, and the McMurtry Building housing the Department of Art and Art History. Exposing students to high-quality arts and making space available for them to perform provides for a more well-rounded academic experience.

“Art talks about deeply human things, cross-culture, ambiguity, interpretation,” he said. “It’s critical that our students have that exposure and sophistication in their education.”

It’s not just the new construction that Hennessy is proud of, but the renovation of old spaces. The Peterson Lab, once a mechanical support building, now famously houses the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, known as the d.school. Soon, Roble Gym will re-open to provide critical theater and dance performance space.

“When I started as president, one thing I really hoped I’d get done is turning Old Chem back into a useful building,” he said. “We’ll dedicate it later this year as the Science Teaching and Learning Center, giving undergrads a set of lab spaces of quality they really deserve.”

Improving student spaces

Several key buildings have also made campus a better place to relax as a student. Stanford Stadium was a fantastic renovation in the athletics complex, and facilities such as the Arrillaga Outdoor Education and Recreation Center and the Arrillaga Center for Sports and Recreation reflect the university’s commitment to recreational health for its students, faculty and staff.

Ensuring that students have a quality experience is crucial, he said, highlighting improvements such as the Windhover contemplative center, new undergraduate dorms at Lagunita, the Munger and Kennedy graduate residences, and several other buildings aimed at enriching student life.

The campus has also become greener, both literally, through the introduction of grassy, open spaces such as the O’Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm and Meyer Green, the site of the former Meyer Library, and figuratively, through the construction of the Central Energy Facility, which is part of the Stanford Energy System Innovations (SESI) program. SESI was a significant financial investment, but it is quickly paying off in energy and water savings. It will soon allow Stanford to surpass California’s 2030 targets for greenhouse gas emissions, and has become a model system for college campuses around the world.

“It cost half a billion dollars and disrupted campus, but we’re the greenest large research-intensive campus in the country,” Hennessy said. “As a university, we try to lead and show that we can do things differently in the future.”

Hennessy attributed much of Stanford’s success during his tenure to extraordinary support from the Stanford community – alumni, parents and friends of the university. The impact has been realized in every corner of the university, particularly through three historic fundraising campaigns. The Campaign for Undergraduate Education enhanced undergraduate education, mainly through improvements to financial aid and faculty support in the undergraduate schools. The Stanford Challenge produced incredible financial support for multidisciplinary research initiatives, financial aid and facilities. And the Campaign for Stanford Medicine yielded support for the new Stanford Hospital and other medical research initiatives.

“These are all things that we did together,” he stressed. “The reason we were so successful in fundraising is that so many faculty and students had so many great ideas about how to change the world and make it a better place. That’s what’s so inspiring.”

Looking ahead

As proud as Hennessy is of the university’s accomplishments during his tenure, he’s equally energized by the challenges that lie ahead. He is excited to see Cardinal Service, an initiative led by the Haas Center for Public Service, grow to new heights, with more students engaged in community service, an experience he believes will help them think about how they’ll give back to society in the years ahead.

There are new residences to build so that the university can continue attracting the very best students, especially as local rents continue to climb (an unfortunate downside of Stanford’s role in the success of Silicon Valley, he remarked). Two new hospitals, one for adults and one for children, will open in the coming years, and along with other facilities and institutes will bring new opportunities for developing the next wave of therapies and solving neurocognitive diseases.

Circling back to affordability, he singled out graduate financial aid as a future area of concern. As government aid declines, Stanford will have to find new ways to support the financial needs of graduate students to continue attracting the very best scholars.

Personally, Hennessy will help address this through his role in launching the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program that will annually identify and fund 100 graduate scholars from around the world per year. The program is named for alumnus Philip H. Knight, MBA ’62, philanthropist, American businessman and co-founder of Nike Inc., who will give $400 million. The program has a $600 million financial aid endowment.

The university faces a unique challenge. Historically, Stanford has thrived by growing, and has grown faster than most of its peer institutions. That growth will likely have to slow some, in order to maintain focus and preserve the look and feel of the university. But it took creativity and hard work to become No. 1, and Hennessy urged the university to continue in that direction.

“I have absolutely loved being the president of Stanford the last 16 years. Loved being here for 39 years,” Hennessy closed. “I’ve been so lucky and fortunate to be supported by so many colleagues and work with so many terrific people, all working on behalf of future students for whom Stanford will be a transformative experience. And when they go out and change the world, we can all remember that we were a part of making it able for them to do that, and I think that is the magic of a university.”