Welcome to a new academic year at Stanford! It was wonderful to welcome students last week with a joyful Convocation, and we’re delighted to begin the fall quarter.

At a time of significant change, Stanford has an enduring north star: to excel in the university’s fundamental mission of research and education. Essential to this goal is to sustain Stanford’s atmosphere of freedom and pluralism, and to support all of the members of our campus community in pursuing excellence.

Stanford is also a place where we look to the horizon, where – as a campus cornerstone says – we dedicate ourselves “to the things that haven’t happened yet, and the people who are about to dream them up.” That mindset is particularly important in the current moment. In that spirit, we would pose three questions:

• How can Stanford lead in creating a positive future for higher education?
• How can Stanford sustain and expand an ambitious, enduring research ecosystem?
• How can Stanford advance innovation to benefit the country and the world?
  

We have found these questions to be a valuable frame for discussions across campus and beyond. As we enter our second year leading Stanford, we look ahead to continuing those discussions, and we have several priorities:

• Promoting a culture of curiosity and inquiry: We want Stanford to model the open, constructive dialogue essential to a thriving academic community. Campus-wide programs, including COLLEGE, ePluribus, and the Stanford Civics Initiative will continue to foster a robust exchange of ideas.

• Enhancing student academic and residential life: As we welcome back our undergraduate and graduate students, we see many opportunities to nurture and improve our academic culture, adapt to AI’s arrival in education, and foster a vibrant residential life. We plan to make that a focus for the coming year.

• Advancing data-driven discovery and human-centered artificial intelligence: We intend for Stanford to be the world leader in realizing new opportunities for research and in ensuring that artificial intelligence develops to benefit humanity. We are excited to push forward the vast array of work across the university.

• Renewing public support for universities: We believe that building stronger public support requires us to demonstrate and communicate the value of research, the benefits of innovation, and the expansiveness of thought and dialogue that characterize American universities at their best. We aim to enlist more members of the university in efforts to bolster public trust and communicate the university’s contributions to the country.

• Making Stanford work better for faculty, students, and staff: We think Stanford excels when faculty, students, and staff can make good things happen. We launched Simplify Stanford to foster an agile work environment and reduce red tape, with many successes due to the efforts of Stanford’s staff, and that work continues.

At Convocation, we urged incoming students to be curious and open-minded, to take risks, and to be problem-solvers. These are quintessential qualities of Stanford that we see every day in our staff and faculty. As universities and the world face new challenges, we’ll apply that same creativity and problem-solving mindset to address them.

We look forward to the work ahead, and we wish you a productive and fulfilling year.

Jon Levin
Jenny Martinez