Brittany Torrez – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Thu, 05 Jun 2014 22:40:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Brittany Torrez – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Elizabeth Lyman, former Stanford first lady dead at 88 https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/25/elizabeth-lyman-former-stanford-first-lady-dead-at-88/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/25/elizabeth-lyman-former-stanford-first-lady-dead-at-88/#respond Tue, 26 Nov 2013 00:52:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080846 DAILY NEWS BRIEF: Elizabeth “Jing” Lyman, widow of former Stanford President Richard W. Lyman, died on Thursday Nov. 21 at age 88 at Channing House in Palo Alto after suffering from an illness for 2 ½ years.

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Courtesy of Linda A. Cicero
Courtesy of Linda A. Cicero

DAILY NEWS BRIEF: Elizabeth “Jing” Lyman, widow of former Stanford President Richard W. Lyman, died on Thursday Nov. 21 at age 88 at Channing House in Palo Alto after suffering from an illness for 2 ½ years.

Lyman was instrumental in creating the University’s Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, established in 1974. The former “first lady” arrived at Stanford with her husband and children in 1958 and since then worked for a variety of volunteer causes—including discriminatory housing practices, philanthropic funding aimed at helping women and girls nationwide.

Lyman requested that donations be made in her name to the Enterprise Community Partners, an affordable housing advocacy organization, or to the Clayman Institute.

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McCormick ’10 wins George J. Mitchell Scholarship https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/25/mccormcik-11-wins-george-j-mitchell-scholarship/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/25/mccormcik-11-wins-george-j-mitchell-scholarship/#respond Tue, 26 Nov 2013 00:35:29 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080845 Ty McCormick '10 was recently named a George J. Mitchell Scholar. McCormick is currently an associate editor at Foreign Policy magazine where he focuses on issues in the Middle East.

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DAILY NEWS BRIEF: Ty McCormick ’10 was recently named a George J. Mitchell Scholar. McCormick is currently an associate editor at Foreign Policy magazine where he focuses on issues in the Middle East.

As part of the scholarship, recipients will spend a year at universities in Ireland and Northern Ireland for post-graduate study. McCormick is one of the twelve scholars selected out of a pool of nearly 300 applicants nationwide.

He earned a B.A. in political science from Stanford. He has worked for numerous international publications, including Newsweek and The New York Times. McCormick plans to start his own publication, which will personalize fact-based news coverage in new markets.

McCormick will study comparative ethnic conflict at Queen’s University Belfast.

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GSB student pleads not guilty in fatal crash https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/13/gsb-student-pleads-not-guilty-in-fatal-crash/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/13/gsb-student-pleads-not-guilty-in-fatal-crash/#comments Wed, 13 Nov 2013 10:05:24 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080429 On Tuesday, Stanford Graduate School of Business student Zachary Katz, 24, pleaded not guilty to three felony charges in connection with a fatal head-on collision on U.S. Highway 101 in early October, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.

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On Tuesday, Stanford Graduate School of Business student Zachary Katz, 24, pleaded not guilty to three felony charges in connection with a fatal head-on collision on U.S. Highway 101 in early October, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.

On Oct. 5, the crash killed 62-year-old Pedro Juan Soldevilla of Puerto Rico, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Karen Guidotti. Katz is charged with one count of vehicular manslaughter and two counts of felony drunken driving causing great bodily injury.

Katz’s blood alcohol content was around .15 when the crash occurred, according to the California Highway Patrol.

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Bing Nursery launches performance series for children https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/05/bing-nursery-launches-performance-series-for-children/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/05/bing-nursery-launches-performance-series-for-children/#respond Tue, 05 Nov 2013 10:21:09 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080184 The Bing Nursery School has launched a three-part performance series in collaboration with the Department of Music to encourage an appreciation of the arts among young children.

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The Bing Nursery School has launched a three-part performance series in collaboration with the Department of Music to encourage an appreciation of the arts among young children.

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SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily

The series—which began in October with a sold-out show for a performance of “Peter and the Wolf” narrated by Helen Bing—was created through a longstanding partnership between the Bing Nursery School and Jindong Cai, director of Orchestral Studies and associate professor of music.

“It was really sort of a collaborative effort between him and us, and he was always very generous bringing musicians to the school,” said Jennifer Winters, director of the nursery school. She added that the program has been funded thus far by donations.

Cai, whose two young children attended Bing Nursery School, has worked with the school to offer a variety of live performances since 2007, but this year marks the first formal performance series.

“After the kids left, I continued to help to do this project,” Cai said. “This time we wanted to put it into a series so people will have a program to look for it.”

Cai emphasized the important of exposing children to arts education at a young age.

“Arts are the most important part of education for kids to have,” he said. “We have this responsibility to explore arts for the students.”

Beth Wise, the assistant director of Bing Nursery School, shared similar feelings.

“I think early exposure to the arts is key in young children’s lives,” Wise said. “We want to encourage audience goers in the future. Hopefully they’ll attend when they’re older, with their children.”

However, to Cai, this means more than simply introducing them to music.

“My idea at the nursery school is to find programs that will more open their minds, open their thinking,” he said. “It’s more diverse. They not only explore music but also explore different cultures or different disciplines.”

Cai said there were many possibilities available for this performance series.

“We can bring dancers, we can bring instrumental players, we can bring different ethnic performing art forms from all over the world,” he said. “Whenever we have those groups come on campus, if we just take some initiative to connect them with the series, more people will benefit from it. Stanford has the advantage to connect with that and that’s what I’m here to do.”

Next quarter, the children and their families will be given the opportunity to see music and dance from Tibet. In the spring, Oran Etkin, a jazz/world musician, will perform for the children.

Cai works to make sure these performances engage his young audience.

“Different age groups have different needs,” he said. “You have to find the right art form, the right performance that they will like.”

Winters said that Cai’s understanding of the children helps him select the appropriate performances.

“He’s a gifted musician and conductor, but he also is really gifted in understanding children of that age,” she said. “He can relate to young children and that’s really special.”

And it seems to have paid off. Wise said that the students are excellent audience members and enjoy the performances they have been given the chance to attend.

“We really recognized that they had not only a love of this, but also a thirst for it,” Winters said, who said she hopes the performance series continues to grow in the future.

Contact Brittany Torrez at btorrez ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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ASSU Senators get $3K each for new initiatives https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/31/senators-get-3k-each-for-new-initiatives/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/31/senators-get-3k-each-for-new-initiatives/#comments Thu, 31 Oct 2013 09:43:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079973 The 15th Undergraduate Senate recently announced the launch of its new Senate Innovation Fund that will allocate $3,000 to each senator who will then decide how he or she wishes to spend it throughout the year.

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The 15th Undergraduate Senate recently announced the launch of its new Senate Innovation Fund that will allocate $3,000 to each senator who will then decide how he or she wishes to spend it throughout the year.

KRISTEN STIPANOV/The Stanford Daily
KRISTEN STIPANOV/The Stanford Daily

The budget for this fund is $52,000, said the bill’s author, Ilya Mouzykantskii ‘16.

Mouzykantskii explained that in the past, senators have felt a need for monetary funds to follow through on promises or plans that they made during their campaigns.

“Once you get to the Senate you realize there are a lot of checks and balances and processes in place that restrict access to cash,” he said. “We feel as a Senate, we can afford to allocate a really small amount of the funds that we have sitting in reserves to allow senators to effect change in the way that they personally feel is appropriate.”

Stephen Trusheim ‘13 M.S. ‘14, assistant financial manager for the ASSU, shared similar thoughts.

“Sometimes in a collective body, an individual’s idea or passion can get lost and this program is one way of changing that,” said Trusheim, who originally proposed the idea in early October.

Mouzykantskii—along with senators Nikos Liodakis ‘16 and Ryan Matsumoto ’16—sits on the ad-hoc Senate Innovation Fund committee, which will monitor reimbursements by a senator requesting money from the fund.

Of the $52,000 fund, Mouzykantskii said he expects half to be spent this year.

“I don’t expect each senator to take advantage of the allocation,” Mouzykantskii said.

But, for those that do take advantage of the fund, there are some limits on how they can spend their allocation.

“We want the money to be spent in a way that creates a meaningful difference to the undergraduate community,” Mouzykantskii said. “Giving it to yourself is not a meaningful difference to the community.”

Students are also encouraged to approach the Senate with ideas they may have for using a senator’s allocation, Mouzykantskii said.

“Send an email to us, pitch an idea at us and I bet you one of the 14 senators will pick it up and run with it,” he said. “We really want to encourage innovation and creativity on campus.”

Mouzykantskii said this could be in the form of web services that would help student life, new publications or events that students want to host.

Some students have already expressed ideas for which they would like to use the funding. Julia Quintero ‘15, president of the Stanford Pre-Education Society (SPREES), said she was hoping her student group could utilize the funds to create a resource center for students interested in education or to bring in speakers.

“I think it will be really effective,” she said. “We can trust [the senators’] judgments to identify projects that will be highly effective and influential for Stanford undergrads.”

Natasha Patel ‘16, sponsor for the bill, said that this year the new fund would be a trial run.

“We don’t have plans to make this something that happens every year,” she said. “The idea is that if this is a success…the senators next year should consider forging a path similar to what we’ve done.”

Contact Brittany Torrez at btorrez ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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BOSP to launch new winter quarter program in Istanbul https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/24/bosp-to-launch-new-winter-quarter-program-in-istanbul/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/24/bosp-to-launch-new-winter-quarter-program-in-istanbul/#respond Thu, 24 Oct 2013 08:42:56 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079736 The Bing Overseas Studies Program (BOSP), in partnership with Koç University, is planning a new winter quarter program in Istanbul, Turkey.

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The Bing Overseas Studies Program (BOSP), in partnership with Koç University, is planning a new winter quarter program in Istanbul, Turkey.

Scheduled to launch in January 2015, the program will include courses from a range of fields and may even offer students the chance to room with Turkish students who attend Koç University.

According to Irene Kennedy, associate vice provost and executive director of BOSP, there has been a considerable amount of student demand for a program in the Middle East, with 155 applications received for the 15 spots in the 2012 summer Overseas Seminar in Istanbul.

Courtesy of Stanford News Service
Courtesy of Stanford News Service

Koç University will provide classrooms, housing, field trips and cultural programs for Stanford students in the new winter program. According to Kennedy, the partnership came about through a connection with Koç University president, Umran Inan Ph.D. ’77, a Stanford professor emeritus of electrical engineering.

Kennedy said this partnership program is the beginning of a trend in BOSP initiatives.

“It is a different model for us in that we are partnering with another university, and we are not building the infrastructure that we normally build when we open up a center,” she said. “I think you’ll see more flexible programs.”

Ramon Saldivar, director of BOSP, explained that the winter program is part of a larger effort to balance the availability of study abroad offerings throughout the year.

“The hope is that Istanbul will be successful and popular and we will expand to other quarters, but for now we thought that this was a quarter that fit well for Koç and for us as well,” Saldivar said.

According to Inan, a big challenge so far has been trying to integrate the quarter-long program into Koç University’s semester system.

“We had to work hard at this because, I think, obviously the semester and quarter systems may appear to be incompatible,” he said.

However, despite these challenges, he expects the students to feel comfortable with the program. Inan said the environment the Turkish students are in is similar to that of Stanford because 90 percent of the faculty obtained their Ph.D. from an American university.

“But [it is] very different at the same time,” Inan said. “So there’s a comfort of knowing that your feet are on the ground, but you are also so close to incredible diversity in terms of culture and history.”

Inan and BOSP administrators share high hopes for the new program.

“I’m hoping basically that the program will not only attract students, but will attract much more student numbers than we are initially expecting, so we may even have to do this in the fall quarter,” he said.

Meanwhile, BOSP is currently working with faculty at Koç to develop curriculum. According to Kennedy, the biggest challenge is selecting which courses will be taught as well as the disciplines that the courses will fall under.

Saldivar added that the courses offered would be from a variety of fields.

“We’re looking to have an exciting, interesting and challenging set of courses that really cover the broad spectrum that Stanford students are used to,” he said.

In early November, Saldivar will meet with a committee of Stanford faculty interested in the program to discuss potential course offerings.

Contact Brittany Torrez at btorrez ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Daniel Garza, professor of Orthopedic Surgery, dies https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/17/daniel-garza-professor-of-orthopedic-surgery-passed-away/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/17/daniel-garza-professor-of-orthopedic-surgery-passed-away/#comments Thu, 17 Oct 2013 09:21:55 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079494 Daniel Garza ‘91 MD ‘00, an assistant professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the Stanford School of Medicine and medical director for the San Francisco 49ers, passed away the evening of Oct. 15 at his home.

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Daniel Garza ‘91 MD ‘00, an assistant professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the Stanford School of Medicine and medical director for the San Francisco 49ers, passed away the evening of Oct. 15 at his home.

Garza mainly focused his research on preventing traumatic brain injury in athletes and taught undergraduate courses in the Human Biology program.

His most recent project revolved around fitting athletes with mouthpieces to measure the impact of collisions. He advocated for education among athletes and their parents about the potential for injury in youth-level sports and was an inspiration for his students.

“He was always really energetic and fun in class,” said Debha Amatya ‘14, a former student of Garza’s.

Garza wrote a letter of recommendation for Amatya, who is starting to apply to medical school.

“I was looking forward to telling him how the interviews were going,” he said.

“It’s just really shocking.”

Students are encouraged to seek help from grief resources on campus if they feel they need to at http://grief.stanford.edu/resources.html, or by calling Vaden Health Center’s Counseling and Psychological Services at (650) 723-3785. Support services are available to faculty and staff at the Help Center by calling (650) 723-4577.

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Stanford MBA offers highest financial return https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/15/stanford-mba-offers-highest-financial-return/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/15/stanford-mba-offers-highest-financial-return/#respond Tue, 15 Oct 2013 08:47:34 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079424 An MBA degree from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business (GSB) offers the highest financial returns nationwide, according to a report from Forbes.

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An MBA degree from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business (GSB) offers the highest financial returns nationwide, according to a report from Forbes.

The report found that GSB graduates typically see a 5-year MBA gain of $99,700, a value that represents the return on degree investment five years after graduation.

The financial returns at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and Harvard University are $92,600 and $79,600, respectively. Forbes calculated these numbers by taking into account graduates’ earnings five years after graduation and opportunity costs, including tuition costs and potential salary lost, foregone in pursuit of the MBA.

GSB alumni now earn an average of $221,000 five years after graduation, compared to $205,000 two years ago. Forbes also said that typical GSB students already earn an average of $80,000 per year by the time they enroll.

According to Forbes, Stanford’s business school acts as “a feeder program to coveted employment spots like consultancies Bain, Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey, as well as tech giants Apple and Google.” Forbes also notes that the GSB is the most selective business school in the U.S., accepting only seven percent of applicants.

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Engineering Dean Jim Plummer to step down after this year https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/10/engineering-dean-jim-plummer-to-step-down-after-this-year/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/10/engineering-dean-jim-plummer-to-step-down-after-this-year/#respond Thu, 10 Oct 2013 08:04:41 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079281 Jim Plummer M.S. ’67 Ph.D ’71, dean of the School of Engineering, will step down at the end of this year after serving as dean for 15 years.

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Jim Plummer M.S. ’67 Ph.D ’71, dean of the School of Engineering, will step down at the end of this year after serving as dean for 15 years, according to a press release.

“I have been privileged to serve as dean and to work with some of the best faculty, staff and students in the world, but it is time for me and the School of Engineering to move on,” Plummer said. “Change is good. It is good for people and it is good for institutions.”

Plummer is the longest-serving dean of the school to date.

At the end of this year, Plummer will begin a yearlong sabbatical, after which he will return to research as a professor in the Electrical Engineering department.

“Jim Plummer’s leadership has changed the character of Stanford’s graduate and undergraduate engineering education, which has become known internationally for its hands-on, creative, multidisciplinary approach,” said Provost John Etchemendy Ph.D. ’82. “The soaring numbers of students and the accomplishments of our engineering alumni are proof of that success.”

Since being appointed as dean in 1999, Plummer has overseen upgrades to the school’s physical plant, including the Science and Engineering Quad slated for completion in 2014. During his tenure, the percentage of undergraduates pursuing a degree in engineering has grown from 20 percent to nearly 35 percent.

“Students come to Stanford because they want to change the world, and more of them are deciding that engineering provides the means to do this,” Plummer said.

Etchemendy will appoint a search committee this fall to replace Plummer.

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Renovations cancel Oxford Fall ’14 program https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/09/renovations-cancel-oxford-fall-14-program/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/09/renovations-cancel-oxford-fall-14-program/#comments Wed, 09 Oct 2013 09:39:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079238 The Bing Overseas Studies Program (BOSP) in Oxford will not operate during Fall Quarter 2014-15 due to renovations on the Stanford House.

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Courtesy of Rebecca Chaplin.

The Bing Overseas Studies Program (BOSP) in Oxford will not operate during Fall Quarter 2014-15 due to renovations on the Stanford House.

The total construction project will include a remodeling of student living spaces, adding a classroom large enough for all of the students in the program and creating disability access in the facility, according to Irene Kennedy, executive director and vice provost of BOSP.

Kennedy said the renovations will cost approximately $4 million and will be funded through general funds from the facility’s reserve. She added that the last renovation to the Stanford House was done 30 years ago.

“It’s simply time to refresh and replace again,” she said.

The renovation project will likely begin a day after students in the Spring 2013-14 program depart from Oxford and end before the start of winter break in 2014, according to Kennedy.

“We were looking for the minimum impact on students,” she said. “The other option would have been [to start during] spring quarter, but we weren’t ready to launch the project at that point.”

However, Kennedy said the main reason for choosing to renovate during fall quarter was that it allowed a six-month construction period because of the summer break.

She said BOSP began reviewing general contractors for the renovation this week.

Towards the end of the program, a few students in Oxford last spring gathered with officials to discuss the possibility for the renovation project. Many, like Tyler Haddow ‘14, agreed that the Stanford House was in need of some renovations.

“The access to disabled students is important,” Haddow said. “I don’t know what they would have done if a disabled student had studied abroad there. There was no elevator; it was hard to get in the house.”

However, Haddow did not think that all the renovations are necessary.

“I was actually not sure why we really needed a room in the house that fits all the students,” he said. “I think that there was one, maybe two times when all of us gathered in one place.”

Robert Mata ‘14, who also participated in the Oxford program last spring, thinks the newly released information on the renovation project appropriately echoes what was discussed abroad.

“It sounds pretty much consistent with what we were saying was going to happen and what we said should happen,” Mata said. “The renovations seem great. They will only build on what has already been sort of a characteristic Oxford experience.”

Applications are currently being accepted for the Stanford Program in Oxford for Spring 2013-14.

Contact Brittany Torrez at btorrez ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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UAR working to improve Pre-Major Advising program https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/02/uar-working-to-improve-pre-major-advising-program/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/02/uar-working-to-improve-pre-major-advising-program/#respond Wed, 02 Oct 2013 08:53:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1078997 Over the past year, the Office of Undergraduate Advising and Research (UAR) has been working on new ways to enhance the Pre-Major Advising (PMA) program.

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Over the past year, the Office of Undergraduate Advising and Research (UAR) has been working on new ways to enhance the Pre-Major Advising (PMA) program.

One of the recent changes included naming Alice Petty, a former academic director, as the new director of the PMA program.

However, UAR has also been working to clarify the role of a PMA in response to student feedback they received through surveys and focus groups during spring quarter of last year.

Throughout the 2012-13 school year, academic directors and officials from UAR held bi-weekly meetings for brainstorming sessions they called PMA lab.

“We just got together to talk about what we wanted to do with the PMA program in coming years,” said Kirsti Copeland, a PMA and associate dean of residentially based advising and pre-major advising.

Copeland said one of the things they discussed during their meetings was how to structure conversations between PMAs and students for specific times of the year rather than limiting interactions to students asking their advisors to lift a hold barring them from registering for classes each quarter.

She explained that a proposed structure would involve quarterly themed conversations with talk of transitioning during the fall and discussions of various campus opportunities during the winter. During the spring, Copeland said students should take a moment to reflect with their PMAs on their past interactions.

“They’re actually these important reflective moments to think back to what’s going on and how we help a student best transition [through] Stanford, find these opportunities and reflect on their experience,” Copeland said.

Despite the PMA lab’s suggestions, Copeland said that all PMAs ­ who volunteer for the unpaid role ­ have their own way of advising.

“We are not creating a one-size fits all program,” she said.

Indeed, PMAs have different takes on their roles in advising students.

“I see my role as talking them through the questions of why they came to Stanford and what they’re interested in,” said Roland Greene, professor of comparative literature.

He said he tries to dispel students’ assumptions about Stanford as a PMA and encourage them to think about what benefits they can reap from their education.

However, Greene said he faces a challenge when students come in with ideas of what majors their peers or parents consider more useful for securing employment after graduation.

“You don’t come to a place like this to follow conventional wisdom,” he said. “You come to expand yourself intellectually and as long as you’re doing that at a good pace, you’re doing the right thing.

Academic directors often pair PMAs with students, though advisors can ask for students with particular qualities. As former director of the residential program Structured Liberal Education (SLE), Greene said he always asks for advisees in the program.

“I think the relationship with those students is something I can carry on into later years,” he said.

Other PMAs have broader preferences.

“I like advisees who are polite and passionate and have the courage to find their own paths in life,” said Matthew Rabinowitz ‘96 M.S. ‘97 Ph.D. ‘01, consulting professor in the School of Engineering.

Rabinowitz said he tries to advise his students in areas other than course selection and academics.

“I really think that the key thing here in terms of helping students academically and professionally is to give them perspectives,” he said. “It’s about finding things that they want to do and helping them.”

He added, however, that it’s not necessarily a simple task.

“Sometimes I get students who have personal problems, and the challenge for me as an advisor is to know how involved [I should be] in them,” he said. “It’s difficult to know where the line should be.”

Other PMAs faced similar challenges in their advising, including Marian Adams ‘84 Ph.D. ‘93, clinical associate professor of pediatrics and neonatology at the Stanford School of Medicine.

“I think that the most difficult situation I find myself in was where one of my advisees was getting in over her head academically,” Adams said. “I was kind of trying to advise her to take it a bit easier, and I wasn’t quite getting through.”

Adams added that she could tell her advisee was struggling academically with the workload she set for herself.

“I think that the most difficult part is trying to be very supporting but not wanting them to fall without a safety net and getting everything connected to get them help,” Adams said.

Despite the challenges that arise from the no one-size-fits-all model of advising, surveyed PMAs agreed that the voluntary work is worthwhile for themselves and for the students they serve.

Contact Brittany Torrez at btorrez@stanford.edu.

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New GER requirements meet with diverse reactions https://stanforddaily.com/2013/09/30/new-ger-requirements-meet-with-diverse-reactions/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/09/30/new-ger-requirements-meet-with-diverse-reactions/#respond Mon, 30 Sep 2013 08:03:20 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1078912 As students started classes last week, the Class of 2017 freshmen did so with a new set of general education requirements (GERs) on their to-do lists.

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As students started classes last week, the Class of 2017 freshmen did so with a new set of general education requirements (GERs) on their to-do lists.

The Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing (WAYS) GERs, under which at least 390 courses qualify for credit, is intended to confer students greater flexibility by letting them fulfill requirements with classes from a variety of departments.

The new GERs will require students to take 11 total classes and at least one in each WAYS category: Aesthetic and Interpretive Inquiry, Social Inquiry, Scientific Method and Analysis, Formal Reasoning, Applied Quantitative Reasoning, Engaging Diversity, Ethical Reasoning and Creative Expression.

A variety of current classes can qualify for each category.

For example, PHYSICS 113: Computational Physics is certified to fulfill the Applied Quantitative Reasoning (WAY-AQR) requirement as is EARTHSYS 185: Feeding Nine Billion.

“I like the perspective it gives,” said MacArthur grant recipient David Lobell Ph.D. ’05, instructor for Feeding Nine Billion, of the new GERs. Before his class was certified, he made sure it fit the criteria of the AQR requirement.

“I’m making certain homework assignments and a lot of the in-class activities much more calculation based as opposed to reading and writing essays,” Lobell said. “I think that this will make me feel justified in doing it quite a bit more.”

Lobell’s class will focus on using numbers to reason through arguments, not just the qualitative nature of arguments.

“My expectations are that students will come in with a better understanding of why the calculations might be a useful way of looking at things,” he said.

Other instructors are working on adjusting their class to adapt to changes the requirement may pose, including Daniel Klein AB ’91, the instructor for TAPS 103: Beginning Improvising, which fulfills the Creative Expression requirement.

“The only challenge is really capacity and figuring out how to meet the need,” Klein said. “If my class is also meeting a requirement in the university then I’m anticipating having to turn away some students.”

In response to any capacity issues, Klein anticipates scaling his class by breaking it up into small groups. Despite these strains on capacity, however, he said he is excited for the new WAYS requirements.

“I like that the University is expanding the offerings to meet the needs of the entire student body,” Klein said. “I’ve seen a number of different attempts at these various graduation requirements, and I like this one.”

But not all freshman in the Class of 2017 were as excited for the new set of GERs.

“You have all the classes you have to do for your major, and you have to cram all of your WAYS in by the time you graduate,” said Grace Tam ’17.

However, Tam also said she liked that the requirements give students more room to explore and become a more well-rounded person.

Other students didn’t find the new GERs quite as daunting.

“I think that they intimidate us with it in the beginning, but once we start researching it, it’s actually easy to fulfill the requirements,” said Sharon Kam ’17, a potential biology major.

Brandon Schow ’15 said that, even though he isn’t required to fulfill the requirements as an upperclassman, he liked the range of classes the WAYS requirements allow students to take.

“I know that you’re able to use dance classes, and that could be really cool,” Schow said.

Contact Brittany Torrez at btorrez@stanford.edu.

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Q&A: Alice Petty, new director of Pre-Major Advising https://stanforddaily.com/2013/09/25/qa-alice-petty-new-director-of-pre-major-advising/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/09/25/qa-alice-petty-new-director-of-pre-major-advising/#respond Wed, 25 Sep 2013 08:11:32 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1078783 Alice Petty, formerly an academic director (AD) for Wilbur Hall, recently became the new director of Pre-Major Advising (PMA). The Daily sat down with Petty to talk about her new role and how she plans to reshape the program to address students’ concerns.

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Alice Petty, formerly an academic director (AD) for Wilbur Hall, recently became the new director of Pre-Major Advising (PMA). Petty will take on the task of organizing and revamping the expansive program. The Daily sat down with Petty to talk about her new role and how she plans to reshape the program to address students’ concerns.

 

The Stanford Daily (TSD): What is the role of a PMA?

Alice Petty (AP): Ideally, I see the PMA as a mentor and sounding board for students. I absolutely believe that the kind of connections that students can have with staff or faculty early on can be critical and profoundly valuable to their undergraduate experience.

I love hearing stories about students who are able to kind of share their decision-making process with their PMA to get insight, to have somebody push back and ask questions, to have them navigate decisions, figure out what their overall goals and values and plans are.

 

TSD: How will your experience as an academic director impact your role as director of the PMA program?

AP: When I was a post-doc here starting in 2006, I volunteered for a few years as a PMA, which is part of what attracted me to the position of academic director. I think as an academic director I saw how the AD and PMA programs really work in partnership to support students and that was really attractive to me.

 

TSD: What is the difference between a PMA and an academic director?

AP:  An academic director, or an ARC advisor, or a Sweet Hall advisor, they are full-time advising professionals who really very consciously and methodically pursue in-depth knowledge of every department and program on campus. There’s a lot of expertise and precision there.

Whereas, pre-major advisors, this is a volunteer thing that they do and it’s something that they bring to their experience as Stanford employees. The pre-major advisors come from all over the university. What they bring to their role as a pre-major advisor comes through the lens of whatever other responsibility they have on campus. In many ways, that is the strength of this program, because it’s a great opportunity for you to see the university from different perspectives.

 

TSD: How are students paired with PMAs?

AP: The ADs do a match. We have some information about the PMAs. Usually it’s their academic interests, but they also give us hobbies, recreational stuff – if they play an instrument, if they have a dog, if they like to run, that kind of thing. When students are coming to Stanford, they write a letter to their future advisor, and we have that. And the AD sits down and reads those student files and – keeping in mind the people that they have – they work some sort of alchemy and start matching.

One of the things I’ll be thinking about this year is how we do the match, what kind of information we solicit and what kind of questions we ask of PMAs and students that might help us make better matches.

 

TSD: What are the challenges you foresee having to deal with in this new position?

AP: I do want to talk more about what this relationship [between PMA and student] can be, and why it’s important and why it’s valuable and how it can work. I think recruiting is challenging. It’s a volunteer position, we don’t pay, it doesn’t count toward faculty tenure files and, because of that, we have a hard time convincing some people to give up their time, so I think that’s something I’m going to need to work on.

 

TSD: Some students experience frustration with the PMA program, either because their PMA can’t answer their questions or students choose not to interact with their advisor. How do you plan to address these scenarios?

AP: It’s frustrating to me when I hear that a student is disappointed in their relationship with their PMA because I know that these people are all volunteers. I know that they’re out there, and there must be some sort of pragmatic way to address that. I think if people have clear expectations of what the relationship is and how it should work, they are less likely to be disappointed.

I think part of that is we put the hold on students and the expectation is that you have to meet with your PMA to get the hold lifted…so your only reason for checking in with your PMA is to have someone proofread your study list and it’s unfortunate that those things are tied together.

TSD: What do you most look forward to in this new position?

AP: I am sometimes very nervous about stepping into this position. But I really believe in this program. I really believe that advising relationships and mentoring is a critical part of your college education.

I think that building connections with faculty and staff is the difference between being a consumer of community and a creator of community, and that is tremendous. It can be absolutely transformational for some students. I think that this program has so much potential.

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Four new academic directors serve undergraduate population https://stanforddaily.com/2013/09/17/four-new-academic-directors-serve-undergraduate-population/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/09/17/four-new-academic-directors-serve-undergraduate-population/#respond Tue, 17 Sep 2013 11:40:29 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1078544 In an effort to address the demands of a growing undergraduate population, Undergraduate Advising and Research hired four new academic directors this past spring.

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In an effort to address the demands of a growing undergraduate population, Undergraduate Advising and Research hired four new academic directors this past spring.

The 2012-13 school year revealed a 25-percent increase in scheduled and drop-in appointments with academic directors over the last four years, according to Kirsti Copeland, associate dean of residential and pre-major advising.

Copeland explained in a statement that a single academic director piloted the residential advising program nine years ago in Wilbur Hall. Since then the program expanded its initial focus on freshmen to the entire undergraduate student population with 10 academic directors serving this year.

“We know that the program’s working, and we also know the largest frustration with the program is people wanting more of it,” Copeland said.

Two of the four new academic directors are taking on newly established positions while the other two will fill in for the outgoing academic directors of Wilbur and Stern Halls.

The new hires come from diverse backgrounds with various areas of expertise. Here’s a glimpse of what they have to offer:

Courtesy of Vikram Prasad.
Courtesy of Vikram Prasad.

Katie Wang

Coming from a postdoctoral program in biochemistry at UC-San Francisco, Katie Wang said she was very excited to meet her students in Roble Hall. Wang advised undergraduate students in her lab at UCSF and also taught a course in macrobiology at the UC-Berkeley extension campus.

“The combination of mentoring in a lab and teaching in the classroom made me realize that I love working with students,” Wang said.

However, Wang is not only interested in advising students but also wants to “hear their stories.”

“As an instructor I developed some really special relationships with some of my students,” she said. “It’s incredible to me what students are willing to share with me about what’s going on in their own lives.”

Though Wang is ready to direct students to needed resources in all areas of study, her background in the sciences will prove beneficial for particular concerns. Her expertise includes advising students on how to write fellowship applications for grants and helping students find research positions.

Wang, and fellow newcomer Raymond Chen, provide an academic background that, according to Copeland, has been underrepresented among academic directors in the past. But out of this year’s nine academic directors with Ph.D.s, three have degrees in the sciences, two in social sciences and four in the humanities and arts.

Copeland added that while diversifying academic backgrounds is beneficial, what matters most is an academic director’s interaction with students across the curriculum—something for which Wang already has a plan.

“My philosophy is kind of to just talk about it with them and help them think about it from a different perspective,” Wang said.

Courtesy of Vikram Prasad.
Courtesy of Vikram Prasad.

Raymond Chen

Chen, also a biochemistry expert, completed a postdoctoral program in his field at the Stanford School of Medicine in 2012. Chen also worked as a postdoctoral research assistant the year before he signed on as an academic director last May.

But, before that, he taught a course in cell biology at Berkeley.

“I’ve been really interested in educational aspects of things and in the lab there are a lot of opportunities for mentoring students of all levels,” Chen said.

Chen will be advising freshman in the Wilbur Hall residences—Otero, Rinconada, Soto and Trancos—as well as undergraduate students in Munger, Rains and Escondido Village.

Chen received several eager advising questions in response to an introductory email he and his colleagues sent out to students on Aug. 20. His background in the sciences has already proven helpful when he had a productive conversation with a student who was deciding between various science majors.

“We were able to talk…and look at other directions and ways of coordinating her studies that she didn’t really think about,” he said.

Looking forward to the opportunity to work with energetic students, Chen said he wants to make sure his students know that he is there for them academically.

“It’s a really exciting time for students and for me to be able to be part of that and to have a chance to help is really rewarding,” Chen said.

Courtesy of C. Schmidt.
Courtesy of C. Schmidt.

Lara Tohme

Lara Tohme, who will serve as academic director for Stern Hall, comes from an entirely different background. Originally from Lebanon, Tohme speaks four languages—Arabic, English, Italian and French—and has a background in art history.

She has had nearly 10 years of teaching experience in her field at universities that include Wellesley College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also received her Ph.D. in the history of architecture.

“My greatest pleasure was working with students directly and mentoring them and advising them,” Tohme said of her teaching experience.

Tohme has been settling into her new job for over a month, corresponding with more than 100 students over email so far. Thanks to her experience working with a diverse student body, Tohme believes that she can offer a unique perspective on the academic director role and her interest in interdisciplinary studies will also prove to be useful.

“I have a good understanding of how different fields work together,” Tohme said.

That expertise could come in handy when advising students in Burbank, the Stern Hall residence that will house students in the science-humanities crossover in-residence program, SIMILE.

While Tohme is still learning the ropes at Stanford, she said her biggest priority right now is to make sure that she is serving her students in the way that they need to be served and want to be served.

“I’m just really excited to be a part of this very vibrant community and to really get to know the diversity that is at Stanford,” Tohme said.

Courtesy of Mitchell Stevens.
Courtesy of Mitchell Stevens.

Arik Lifschitz

Arik Lifschitz, the academic director for FroSoCo, Potter and Robinson, is more familiar with working on the Farm, serving as a consulting assistant professor in the Management Science and Engineering Department for the past four years.

Israeli-born Lifschitz moved to the United States in 2001 and completed a Ph.D. program in Management at Columbia University. He has also served in a variety of faculty positions at a few universities, including University of the People, a tuition-free online institution.

In his past work, Lifschitz felt that one-on-one interactions with students were most rewarding and stated he is ready to help students connect with faculty and enhance their Stanford education broadly—beyond just choosing courses and a major.

“I’m looking forward to helping people find their purpose in education and to navigate though the great opportunities and the challenges that a place like Stanford has,” Lifschitz said.

Nevertheless, he made it clear that he would not take a direct approach when advising students.

“I’m here to give them suggestions and also hold a mirror in front of them and help them figure out for themselves what’s going to be the best pathway,” he said. “I just try to truly understand the issues and also find the best solutions.”

Lifschitz commented that he is most excited about working with the students and seeing how they develop over the years.

“People come here, they create hopes and plans,” he said, “and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to help them pursue them.”

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New frosh programs bring arts and sciences to Burbank https://stanforddaily.com/2013/09/17/new-frosh-programs-bring-arts-and-sciences-to-burbank/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/09/17/new-frosh-programs-bring-arts-and-sciences-to-burbank/#respond Tue, 17 Sep 2013 09:37:32 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1078539 As the class of 2017 arrived at Stanford on Tuesday, 88 of its members moved into Burbank house in Stern Hall to take part in two new integrated learning environments for the upcoming academic year: ITALIC and SIMILE.

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As the class of 2017 arrived at Stanford on Tuesday, 88 of its members moved into Burbank house in Stern Hall to take part in two new integrated learning environments for the upcoming academic year: ITALIC and SIMILE.

The newly established programs center on a yearlong, residence-based learning experience similar to the existing Structured Liberal Education program (SLE) but with an emphasis on different subjects. Immersion in the Arts: Living in Culture (ITALIC) will focus on the arts, while Science in the Making: Integrated Learning Environment (SIMILE) will have curriculum based on the history of science.

Both programs, which were very popular among incoming freshmen, are intended to give students an opportunity to look at traditional subjects in fresh ways.

“We’re pretty excited about them and excited about the fact that they offer freshmen an alternative that might be right for them in terms of fulfilling requirements,” said Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Harry Elam.

Aaron Shukuda, assistant director of ITALIC, a new residential arts immersion program housed in Stern Hall's Burbank dorm, meets with students in a newly-renovated learning space. (Madeline Sides/The Stanford Daily)
Aaron Shukuda, assistant director of ITALIC, a new residential arts immersion program housed in Stern Hall’s Burbank dorm, meets with students in a newly-renovated learning space. (Madeline Sides/The Stanford Daily)

 

Arts opportunities embraced through ITALIC

Although Stanford is best known for its computer science and engineering departments, the Farm is also home to incredible arts facilities.

The Cantor Arts Center has one of the largest collections of Rodin sculptures in the world. The Bing Concert Hall, home to the Stanford Beethoven Project, boasts state-of-the-art technical capabilities and hosts renowned artists such as Yo-Yo Ma.

“Not every university has a world class concert hall and a museum that rivals major institutions of the city,” said ITALIC Assistant Director Aaron Shkuda. “It’s natural to integrate arts courses with these offerings.”

ITALIC will help increase student interaction with these facilities and potentially improve Stanford’s arts program overall — US News & World Report ranked Stanford as number one for computer science graduate program and number two for undergraduate engineering, but number 36 for graduate studies in fine arts.

Throughout their first year, the 44 freshmen in the program will study, create and analyze various forms of art, including visual, performing, film and design. The program is divided into three topics that will be explored throughout the year.

“The university wants to say, ‘Hey, this is really important, the arts matter,’” said ITALIC Faculty Director Janice Ross M.A. ’75 Ph.D. ’98.  “We’re at a moment where the arts and humanities have to be rethought, and this is one of the sharpest, boldest rethinkings I’ve seen.”

In the first quarter, lecturers will pose the question: Why art?

According to Ross, students will attempt to understand how art affects a human’s mind by examining cognition, neuroscience and what happens to the brain in the presence of art.

During winter quarter, students will confront issues of gravity and levity. Stand-up comic Tig Notaro is scheduled to visit students and discuss how to bring about comedy in serious situations.

Lastly, during spring quarter, students will investigate the boundaries of art. Ross described the theme of the quarter through the question: “What happens when art pushes so hard against the boundary that it becomes not-art?”

Throughout the program, students will meet with multiple artists and immerse themselves in a variety of arts experiences. Among other activities, ITALIC participants will be taught the art of turfing, a street dance that originated in Oakland, visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and check out the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

“It’s a deeply arts-based experience,” Shkuda said.

Although that may be true, program coordinators encouraged students of all prospective majors to apply for ITALIC.

“You just have to be willing to immerse yourself in the arts as a way of grasping knowledge for all disciplines,” Ross said. “We want to give people this creativity for all that they do at Stanford, for the next three years and after.”

In addition to fulfilling Thinking Matters and Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) requirements, ITALIC will also fulfill three of the new Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing requirements.

Ross said that in reevaluating school requirements, the arts were a recurring, valued subject that lacked an easily accessible format for students to explore it. She said the purpose of the program is “to create a new appetite for the arts, because the humanities have fallen off as becoming a destination major for students.”

“I think this is the humanities and the arts reimagined for the new moment that universities are in,” Ross said. “It’s a prototype for where the humanities and arts are going to be.”

 

Science for the humanities

At Stanford, students can often divide themselves into either humanities-only or science-only types, with the labels fuzzy and techie used to categorize the two groups. SIMILE blends the two sides together to give students a chance to experiment with both.

“It crosses the fuzzy-techie divide,” said Kristen Haring, the assistant director of SIMILE.

Haring said the program is designed for students who excel in math and science to ask historical questions or for students who are more interested in the humanities to learn about the role of science in their fields.

According to Ross, the goal of the program is to take students through the story of how science, technology and medicine merged.

This is not a science class,” said SIMILE faculty director Paula Findlen. “This is a humanistic approach to science, technology and medicine.”

Findlen said the class was not a substitute for introductory science classes.

“There are many students who come to Stanford who are interested in these subjects that might want to have a perspective that is complementary to but different from the perspective in their introductory science classes,” Findlen said.

The SIMILE curriculum is organized chronologically. As students progress throughout the year, they will immerse themselves in the history of science, technology and medicine. According to Findlen, the theme of the first quarter is invention and how these three subjects emerged. Winter quarter will focus on revolutions and how these subjects changed. During spring quarter, students will explore globalization and how these subjects shape and connect with each other.

“We’re trying to encourage people to do some hands-on learning,” Findlen said. “There are at least one or two opportunities to work with an ancient instrument, to learn what it is and learn about the making of things.”

Even with the forward-thinking mindset of many fields in the sciences, Findlen said understanding the past was crucial for students learning about science, technology or medicine.

“I think the tendency of people who are immersed in technology or medicine is to think only of the future,” she said. “If you don’t know how that happened, you’re missing understanding something very fundamental that will offer you a perspective on the world we live in today.”

In addition to adding depth to science and technology studies, SIMILE fulfills the Thinking Matters requirement, PWR requirement and three Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing requirements.

According to Findlen, it was not easy for freshman to get into the program.

“We certainly had many more apply than we could accept, which we took as a very good sign,” she said. “It was certainly competitive to get in to the program.”

Valerie Gamao ’17, a freshman from San Antonio, Tex., was one of the 44 students to make the cut for SIMILE. She said she is leaning towards majoring in environmental science and public policy.

“I [see] myself thriving in a small community where I can live and work and not feel lost in such a huge crowd at Stanford,” Gamao said.

Both SIMILE and ITALIC offer students the opportunity to expand their conversations from the classroom to the dining hall, where they will eat alongside their professors and peers.

“You’re going to have an intensity that comes from working with the same group of people and being able to push into questions much more deeply than you can in a quarter,” Haring said.

 

Breaking down the divide

In the shared space of Burbank, there will be plenty of room for collaboration. Students will be taking classes within their dorm building alongside the same peers they are living with, an environment that the faculty members think will expand the learning experience.

“We’ll find ways to really collaborate with each other within the two programs and also other programs such as SLE,” Elam said.

In the collaboratorium — the basement area of Burbank — students will be able to create art or scientific models and work together.

“The people who are interested in these programs are very hands-on enthusiasts,” Haring said. “I think there’s going to be a lot that happens in that space that is not planned but really wonderful.”

Ultimately, students in both programs were looking for the same thing — an intensive and immersive way to explore an area of interest.

“[SIMILE and ITALIC] offer an alternative for some students as something that is rigorous or focused in an area they’re interested in that will fulfill requirements,” Elam said.

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New lab aims to de-stress technology use https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/28/new-lab-aims-to-de-stress-technology-use/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/28/new-lab-aims-to-de-stress-technology-use/#respond Wed, 29 May 2013 06:57:41 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1077464 While technological devices like cell phones and laptops are ubiquitous in Silicon Valley, they can create stress for frequent users -- a problem that the members of Stanford’s Calming Technology Lab (CTL) are currently working to solve.

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While technological devices like cell phones and laptops are ubiquitous in Silicon Valley, they can create stress for frequent users — a problem that the members of Stanford’s Calming Technology Lab (CTL) are currently working to solve.

According to CTL Director Neema Moraveji Ph.D. ’12, the lab’s purpose is to “invent, study and implement technologies” that can induce calm in at least one of three areas — cognition, emotion and physiology.

The students and faculty who work at the lab run experiments on technology use that range from simulating the calming presence of nature through high-resolution images to tracking the way people breathe while using a computer.

“We’ve found that just using a computer activates the fight or flight response,” Moraveji said. “So just by using the computer all day, it’s kind of tiring.”

Moraveji created the lab in December 2010 while working on his dissertation about human-computer interactions at the Graduate School of Education. As part of his dissertation, Moraveji designed Breathwear, a sensor that tracks breathing patterns and can notify the user through a mobile device when he or she is becoming stressed.

“I dropped everything when I realized that what I really wanted to do was change the way the world breathes,” Moraveji said.

Breathwear, which Moraveji expects will be available on the commercial market in late 2013 or early 2014, is one of about a dozen projects that the CTL has created or is in the process of designing.

The lab’s other projects include Mail0, a calming email client that monitors email checking habits to help the user reach an empty inbox at the end of each day, and Morphine Drip, which helps athletes manage pain and stress through SMS mechanisms.

Mahmoud Saadat M.S. ’09 Ph.D. ’17, a hardware designer for CTL, noted that the lab’s product development process often involves brainstorming sessions and described the researchers’ discussions in the preliminary stages of Mail0 as particularly interesting.

“They talked about [email] and how we can redesign it in a calm way, to reduce the stress and leverage a very good user interface to have a calm environment for users,” Saadat said.

Researchers and designers at the lab represent a variety of disciplines, including computer science, mechanical engineering, psychology and symbolic systems. Moraveji described that diversity as crucial to the lab’s success.

“I think the reason that we’re able to create this lab is because it’s not just an idea that I like,” Moraveji said. “It’s an idea that is resonating with a lot of different people.”

The CTL has also collaborated with students in the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) through a class called d.compress: Designing Calm, where students can work with companies to improve their current products and design new forms of calming technology.

“We study how technology creates stress for us,” Moraveji said. “We do calming exercises as part of the class, we meditate in class — it’s part of the design process.”

One of the challenges that students in the course tackled was how to reduce the stress associated with using Gmail, as CTL Lead Strategist Stephanie Habif noted that the information overload created by email can be “a big problem.”

“To be able to evolve the domain of calming technology is really special and a wonderful opportunity that we’re really grateful for,” Habif said. “It seems like the right place to do the work.”

According to Moraveji, enrollment in the class doubled from last year, with more students taking an interest in both developing and using calming technologies.

“The further along society evolves, the more acknowledgement there is for… [the idea that] it’s not always [true] that more is better,” Moraveji said. “Technology’s not disappearing, so we need to do something else. Sometimes you have to create new technology.”

Moraveji predicted that future product designers will begin to consider how their technology can affect a user emotionally or cognitively, an approach largely missing from the market today.

“Now there’s a value put in place on how that [technology] makes me feel, how that technology makes me perform better, love better and build better friendships and a deeper life and more meaningful life,” Moraveji said.

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Friends remember Elizabeth Gao ’15 through Relay for Life https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/09/for-friends-of-elizabeth-gao-15-a-relay-to-remember/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/09/for-friends-of-elizabeth-gao-15-a-relay-to-remember/#respond Fri, 10 May 2013 06:58:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1077095 Throughout her yearlong battle with brain cancer, friends described Elizabeth Gao '15 as strong, positive and hopeful. Tomorrow, a team of friends will run in her memory at the American Cancer Society Relay for Life.

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Throughout her yearlong battle with brain cancer, friends described Elizabeth Gao ’15 as strong, positive and hopeful. Tomorrow, a team of friends will run in her memory at the American Cancer Society Relay for Life.

Jessia Hoffman ’15, a freshman dormmate and fellow singer in the a cappella group Mixed Company, created the Relay for Life team “Inspired by Elizabeth,” which had raised $3,900 for the American Cancer Society at time of publication.

“I was having a really hard time with the fact that Elizabeth was gone,” Hoffman said. “The only way to start to heal is by doing something proactive.”

Caroline Zhang ’15, Gao’s Delta Delta Delta sorority sister and close friend, urged not only participation in the 24-hour walking relay but also reflection on cancer’s ability to touch the heart of a community.

“I hope people can come out and, if people knew her, then remember her, and, if not, then they can get to know her,” Zhang said. “She was just a very beautiful, inspiring person, and she has a great story.”

When Gao arrived on the Farm as a freshman in 2011, she immediately made an impression on her peers with an upbeat attitude and easy smile.

“She’s just like a light,” Zhang recalled. “When you’re around her, you just want to smile. We joke that she just can’t close her lips. She’s always smiling.”

She drew people in effortlessly, continuing to be positive even after she was diagnosed with cancer.

“She was so strong, and she was always just so positive about everything,” said Patricia Costacurta ’13, Gao’s peer health educator in Trancos last year. “You couldn’t know Elizabeth without loving her.”

Her battle began in February 2012, when she had her first seizure the day of Mixed Company’s annual performance. When Gao returned to Trancos, Mixed Company welcomed her back with a surprise performance.

“She was like taking a shower, and she got out, and we started singing to her, and she started crying,” Hoffman said. “We all started crying — it was one of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever experienced.”

The reunion was short lived. Weeks into spring quarter, Gao experienced another seizure and was diagnosed with brain cancer. She took a leave of absence for treatment, while continuing to occasionally visit Trancos.

Throughout the summer, Gao continued her fight. Hoffman, who visited her for the last time in the fall of 2012, remarked on how chemotherapy had taken a toll on both her body and her spirit.

“Just a few months before, [Gao] had been this really vivacious, huge presence,” Hoffman said. “It was almost like this disease had condensed her spirit and squelched it a little bit. That was so hard to see.”

Jamie Kim ’15, another friend and dormmate, said that seeing Gao as she went through treatment was particularly difficult.

“I had kind of trained myself to kind of see it coming, but still,” Kim said. “Seeing her condition deteriorate and seeing her in a wheelchair, I couldn’t even look at her without crying.”

When Gao passed away on March 6, 2013, the news hit her friends and the Trancos community hard.

“It was just inconceivable,” Hoffman said. “I just started sobbing and I … yelled at the world.”

On May 8, a memorial service for Gao was conducted at Memorial Church, with speakers including her friends Zhang and Kim. Gao’s friends and family, some of whom had come from as far away as the East Coast, were present, and tears fell freely when Mixed Company performed.

For Hoffman, creating Gao’s Relay for Life team has helped her grieve personally while bringing community members together to fundraise for a good cause and celebrate Gao’s life together.

“I hope people are able to walk with their friends [tomorrow] and share memories about their loved ones like Elizabeth,” she said.

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University administrators review active threat policies https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/05/stanford-administrators-review-active-threat-policies/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/05/stanford-administrators-review-active-threat-policies/#respond Mon, 06 May 2013 06:29:15 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076962 In light of last month’s manhunt in Boston, which included a shooting on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus, University emergency management officials have sought to increase awareness within the University community of responses to such “active threat” situations.

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In light of last month’s manhunt in Boston, which included a shooting on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus, University emergency management officials have sought to increase awareness within the University community of responses to such “active threat” situations.

While the University has never had to deal with an active threat situation, Chief of Police Laura Wilson ’91 noted that the Department of Public Safety (SUDPS) has previously issued “stay away” warnings for specific areas.

In October 2012, students were warned to avoid the area surrounding the Stanford Golf Course because of a gas leak. A warning was also issued when shots were fired in the Lagunita parking lot after Blackfest in 2011.

Wilson said the police presence on campus increases when such warnings are issued, as well as on days when more students are present on campus.

“We generally try to match our staffing to the population as well as activities and events on campus,” Wilson said, noting that the number of SUDPS officers on campus can range from two to more than thirteen.

In an active threat situation, however, campus police presence could increase to hundreds of officers from surrounding agencies.

According to Wilson, SUDPS’ main role is to ensure the safety of the community by mitigating threats and teaching community members to promote campus safety through reporting suspicious behavior, taking safety precautions and having a personal preparedness plan.

Wilson suggested that students should create a communication plan for active threat situations and attempt to minimize the number of calls they make during an emergency, since excessive cellular communication might hinder emergency responders.

“One of my big concerns is that in a major crisis like an active shooter, people are going to start tweeting and sending photos and calling people,” Wilson said. “We could easily overwhelm our cellphone towers.”

 

Ongoing preparation

According to Associate Vice Provost for Emergency Health and Safety Larry Gibbs, University officials constantly re-evaluate their preparedness for any kind of emergency.

The current policy for dealing with an active threat, such as an on-campus shooter, has three components: taking direction from law enforcement, maintaining outreach to keep the community notified and personal preparedness.

Gibbs emphasized the importance of students informing themselves about proper protocol for emergency situations by reading the guidelines and procedures listed in the Stanford University Emergency Guide. He also recommended that students keep their contact information in Axess updated so they can receive AlertSU messages.

“With the very large population that we have here, it’s very important that individuals also become prepared and knowledgeable,” Gibbs said. “Information is very valuable, and periodically reviewing it to know what to do in those types of situations is one of the best things individuals can do to protect themselves.”

According to Gibbs, the first step in managing an emergency situation—taking direction from law enforcement—is crucial in keeping students safe in the midst of an active threat, as emergency situations are “very fluid in nature” and “can take many different pathways.”

Gibbs said that in the case of an active threat situation, students, faculty and staff would be asked to “shelter in place”—stay where they are and take action to protect themselves until more information is available.

A shelter in place order was recently implemented throughout the entire city of Boston, including Boston-area schools such as MIT and Harvard, following the shooting at MIT.

“One of the things we did learn [from the MIT shooting] was that because of the sheer magnitude of what occurred in the area that students did stay in the residences,” Gibbs said. “They did stay in until [the school] got clearance of what was going on from law enforcement.”

Though Wilson said that property crimes like bicycle and laptop theft are more common at Stanford than crimes like sexual assault, robbery and homicide, she recommended that students stay attentive to potential dangers.

“I do consider it a safe place for people to be around, but, with that said, I do think that people do need to take appropriate steps to ensure their own safety,” Wilson said. “This is an open campus—we allow the general public to come onto campus—so in order to make the community safe, everyone needs to play a role.”

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Digital humanities project maps European intellectual networks https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/24/digital-humanities-project-maps-european-intellectual-networks/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/24/digital-humanities-project-maps-european-intellectual-networks/#respond Thu, 25 Apr 2013 06:31:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076724 Networking, in its modern form, may be no stranger to Stanford faculty and students. A groundbreaking new digital humanities project, however, aims to explore the networking of the 18th century, delving into the routes, people and places that made up the Grand Tour of Europe.

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Networking, in its modern form, may be no stranger to Stanford faculty and students. A groundbreaking new digital humanities project, however, aims to explore the networking of the 18th century, delving into the routes, people and places that made up the Grand Tour of Europe.

The project’s researchers, led by Associate Professor of Classics Giovanna Ceserani, have worked for five years to discover the networks and patterns presented by the Tour, an educational rite of passage taken in the 18th century by male aristocratic students and their entourages to widen their understanding of topics they learned about in secondary school, such as art, culture and architecture.

The project to digitally map this intellectual journey began after Ceserani and some colleagues attended a conference on mapping the Republic of Letters, a century-long phenomenon of intellectual correspondence in Europe that existed from roughly 1400 to 1800.

Shortly after an initial meeting about the umbrella project– Mapping the Republic of Letters– with Dan Edelstein, professor of French, and Paula Findlen, professor of history, Ceserani began work on her specific case study: The Grand Tour of Italy.

“We thought that it would be nice to explore this information… in a geographical way, to map the information and look for patterns,” said Sarah Murray, a graduate student in classics and researcher for the Grand Tour Traveler’s project.

Their research has led them to discover patterns such as increased travel to Sicily as the 18th century progressed and variations in the travel patterns of different professions, such as merchants traveling to ports.

“The purpose was to see the parts of the Grand Tour that are hidden from traditional scholarship,” Murray said. “What are the patterns overall and who are the people we don’t usually hear much about?”

In answering that question, researchers relied extensively on the “Dictionary of British and Irish Travelers to Italy, 1701-1800,” a dictionary that includes the identities of over 6,000 Grand Tour travelers.

“There is this imbalance of attributing the importance of this phenomenon to affecting a large number of people but then the account of the phenomenon is still based on the few most prominent individuals,” Ceserani said, claiming that traditional accounts of the Grand Tour tend to focus on the most famous or wealthy travelers. “A challenge for us now is to think of visualizations that will account for all of these other people who were part of the phenomenon but for whom we can’t trace a complete route.”

As her research ventures into uncharted intellectual territory, Ceserani acknowledged the difficulty in mapping out the distinct academic and geographic routes of each traveler.

“It’s a chance for us to tell a story which keeps present how much is always missing from any story we tell about the past,” Ceserani said. “We want all of these 6,000 people to be there, but some of them are only a name and a place.”

As the project progressed, Ceserani and her researchers have addressed an evolving set of questions.

“When we started putting more than one person on the map… it became about how the people interacted in networks and now a lot of the project is about networks and ‘who met whom?’” Ceserani said.

Approaching those questions most recently took the form of focusing specifically on the role and travels of architects during the Grand Tour.

“We are building a story that becomes a story of architecture in the 18th century,” she said. “It’s a story of how networking changes.”

A historical change that researchers noted through their mapping was the shift from the travel of prominent people who viewed architecture as a hobby to architects who journeyed to Italy under travel fellowships from a university.

“By the very end of the century, Cambridge started giving fellowships and it’s a very different type of travel and the networks are very different,” Ceserani said.

“Here we see how this travel is not only about learning about the past but establishing contacts that will help you,” she added. “It’s social networking basically that helps you.”

 

A broader impact

Ceserani emphasized the project’s broader academic impact, noting that it had even inspired a Thinking Matters course–  THINK 29: Networks: Ecological, Revolutionary, Digital— taught in part by Edelstein.

“Something that is so important to convey is<\p>…<\p>the truly collaborative nature of the project,” said Nicole Coleman, a technology specialist with the project.

Coleman acknowledged the challenges of interpreting the data on hand and presenting it appropriately.

“It’s kind of a dance between the questions we want to ask and the data that we have to work with and figuring out between those two what we can do,” Coleman said. “And then we figure out what visualization techniques we can use that will best leverage the data that’s available.”

Coleman suggested that although these visualization tools may not be fully functional at this stage in the project, they have led regardless to important discoveries about data modeling.

“The idea is that these are tools for data discovery,” she said. “Having a visualization as an outcome is not necessarily the end goal.”

Eliza Lupone ’15, a research assistant on the project, said that she decided to join Ceserani’s team because she was interested in the opportunity to apply quantifiable research to the humanities.

“One of the reasons that I was so drawn to the project was that we live in Silicon Valley and we hear Big Data thrown around by so many people, but I never really thought that it could apply to the humanities,” Lupone said. “What’s important is not letting us be limited by the tools that already exist, but thinking about how we can build new ones.”

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Stanford creates ‘living archive’ of papers, real-time conversations https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/18/stanford-creates-living-archive-of-papers-real-time-conversations/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/04/18/stanford-creates-living-archive-of-papers-real-time-conversations/#respond Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:35:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076543 Stanford Libraries’ recent partnership with renowned environmental architect William McDonough will create a “living archive,” the first of its kind.

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Stanford’s archives might not be the first place one looks on the Farm for innovation and new technologies. However, Stanford Libraries’ recent partnership with renowned environmental architect William McDonough may change that with the creation of a “living archive,” the first of its kind.

The archive will hold not only all of McDonough’s papers but also– reflecting an era of increasing digitalization and technological innovation– recordings of all his meetings and phone calls, sent to the University in near-real time.

“It started when I first met Bill McDonough in relationship to working on a museum exhibition project with the Buckminster Fuller archive,” said Roberto Trujillo, head of the libraries’ Special Collections.

McDonough said that Fuller, who influenced McDonough’s work, and Fuller’s archive, which is also housed by Special Collections, inspired his participation in the project. He began his role as a living archive a few years after his initial meeting with Trujillo.

“I just can’t imagine a better place to do it,” McDonough said. “[Stanford] is so perfect.”

McDonough’s own personal physical archive– a collection of sketches, writings, and other various paper material– is estimated to be over 2,000 linear feet. It will take approximately three years to process all of the current material.

Rather than posing a challenge of time, however, compiling a digital archive has posed tests of technological innovation. Throughout the project’s preliminary stages, University archivists have worked to establish a archiving method for digital documentation in an effort led by Michael Olson, digital collections project manager.

“At this point what we’re doing is the scoping exercise for what it would take to do the software development,” Olson said.

Olson framed his role as determining the personnel and software needs posed by the project, as well as devising means of working with both the physical and digital archives.

“There’s all these new formats of media coming along,” Olson said. “What we’re trying to do is to hopefully be able to build in some emulations so you’ll be able to look at some of the older stuff and some of the newer stuff to create a more seamless environment.”

Olson said that he ultimately envisioned software that could be leveraged for other archives and made open source.

“This isn’t going to be a stand alone thing,” Olson said. “McDonough has hopes that other people can use this sort of infrastructure and that it will create new ways of collaborating in the architectural world and in environmental design.”

“We had worked a few years ago on an online delivery tool for born-digital material and money had run out,” said Glynn Edwards, head of technical service for Special Collections. ”But this is going to give us the opportunity to do interviews with… other people who are part of this archive and figure out what everybody’s needs and desires are when working with these materials online.”

Trujillo expressed hope that a variety of students would benefit from the archive’s content.

“His work… I felt was broad enough to have an interest to a student at Stanford working on an undergraduate paper, or a doctoral student working in School of Engineering or the design school or the art department or public policy [program],” Trujillo said.

“I’m hoping they can get their own archive out of it,” McDonough said, describing the archive as a gift that will keep on giving.

During a public talk on Wednesday, McDonough stressed the importance of leaving a legacy behind.

“If you give someone the notion that what they’re doing matters and they can record it and that somebody might care about it like their great-great-grandchildren, they’ll find out ‘Who was grandma?’” McDonough said.

Trujillo emphasized the potential for the archive’s expansion and the emphasis on sharing and collaboration with other institutions.

“We’re starting with Bill and we’re going to see how this goes,” Trujillo said. “I think in the archiving community, this is the next step.”

“We can’t do it all so somebody else should do it too,” he added. “Others will do others and between all of us there’s that much more access to this kind of content. It’s a public good in a bunch of ways.”

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CAPS struggles to serve diverse graduate community https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/27/caps-struggles-to-serve-diverse-graduate-community/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/27/caps-struggles-to-serve-diverse-graduate-community/#respond Wed, 27 Feb 2013 08:09:05 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075341 The diverse range of mental health issues experienced by graduate students has complicated efforts by the Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) to serve the graduate community, according to graduate students.

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The diverse range of mental health issues experienced by graduate students has complicated efforts by the Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) to serve the graduate community, according to graduate students.

Graduate students account for 40 percent of visits to CAPS counselors in 2011, though 31 percent of those using CAPS services declined to state their affiliation. The 1,054 graduate students who visited CAPS in 2011 make up 11.9 percent of the total graduate student population.

Wendy Ni M.S. ’12 Ph.D. ’17, the Graduate Student Council’s health advocate, said that the graduate community faces mental health struggles that are markedly different from those of the undergraduate community.

(MICHAEL LIU/The Stanford Daily)
(MICHAEL LIU/The Stanford Daily)

“We’re very, very diverse,” Ni said.

Ni cited the spread of graduate students across various degree levels and schools, as well the large international contingent, as complicating factors.

“They have different pressures, different plans, different challenges,” Ni said. “And we’re, in a way, decentralized.”

According to Ni, the current lack of a centralized feedback system for graduate students has hindered efforts to address graduate students’ mental well-being issues.

“As a whole I find it very difficult to know what overwhelming issues there are from graduate students,” Ni said.

However, she identified two challenges common among graduate students—obtaining funding and research positions—as contributing to mental health struggles.

In an effort to address those issues, the office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education has put on several workshops for graduate students. One such workshop, titled “How to Feel as Bright and Capable as They Think You Are,” addressed the issue of imposter syndrome, in which high-achieving students believe they are frauds and that their success is simply a fluke.

In addition to professional help, Ni said that student organizations and cultural groups within the graduate community provide graduate students with the kind of support they might not find elsewhere.

Even so, CAPS does offer a variety of resources to help struggling graduate students increase mental well-being and stay on top of their work, according to CAPS administrators.

Ron Albucher, director of CAPS, noted the presence of counseling staff at the Graduate Community Center two days a week—with tailored help for doctoral candidates who are struggling with procrastination—and increased outreach at the School of Engineering during qualifying exams.

Issues surrounding stigma from certain cultural groups within the international graduate community also play a role in addressing mental health issues, Albucher said.

“There are issues ranging from language, religion and ethnic backgrounds that play a role in the willingness to utilize CAPS services or potential shame or even acknowledgment of mental illness itself,” Albucher said.

Ni said she has talked with CAPS regarding ways to improve mental health outreach to the graduate community through CAPS’ resources.

The Bridge Peer Counseling Center has also worked on devising new ways to meet the needs of the graduate community.

“We do a big campaign in the beginning of winter quarter where we hand out giveaways with the Bridge number on it and we’ve talked about doing that in Rains and Munger and other graduate residences so that they know we’re there,” said Emily Cohodes ’13, a course coordinator at the Bridge.

According to Cohodes, many graduate students are simply unaware of the Bridge’s offerings, with only about five percent of calls received by the Bridge coming from graduate students.

“We often get contacted by grad students to see if they are able to come to us, which they absolutely are,” Cohodes said.

Cohodes also mentioned that the Bridge requires counselors to undergo training that includes how to respond to the specific needs of the graduate community. Some of these specific needs include stress over qualifying exams and marriage issues.

“We realize that this is sort of an untapped community that we’re not really reaching out to sufficiently and that’s definitely something that we’re focusing on in our outreach campaign,” Cohodes said.

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Two weeks of dancing culminates in Viennese Ball https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/21/two-weeks-of-dancing-culminates-in-viennese-ball/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/21/two-weeks-of-dancing-culminates-in-viennese-ball/#respond Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:56:34 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1075211 Leading up to Viennese Ball, dance lessons and workshops have been held as part of the Austrian Fortnight.

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The annual Viennese Ball is part of a long tradition of social dance at Stanford. First created by students returning from the now-defunct Stanford in Austria program in 1978 who sought to recreate Vienna’s social dance culture, the event has today nearly doubled in size from the 350 tickets sold for the first event.

BRIAN LEAHY/The Stanford Daily
BRIAN LEAHY/The Stanford Daily

According to Viennese Ball Steering Committee co-chair Jen Ying Zhen Ang ’13, Ball attendees can expect food and music this evening when the event is hosted at The Palace Hotel for the first time.

“It’s a registered historical landmark,” said Christina Krawec ’15, chair of the committee that oversees the night of the event. “It’s very swanky, very fancy and very high class.”

Leading up to Viennese Ball, dance lessons and workshops have been held as part of the Austrian Fortnight. At Bon-Bon Ball, the kick-off festivity held two weekends ago, organizers sold 221 tickets. According to Steering Committee chair Nick Enge ’09, they expect more than 600 people to attend.

For attendees who are not masters of the cross-step waltz or swing, lessons were held every night leading up to the event in the Black Community Services Center. Austria Fortnight– the two weeks leading up to the Ball– is filled with lessons in waltz, swing, salsa and tango.

“It involves almost two whole weeks of free lessons,” said Mario Cuevas ’13, Austria Fortnight’s co-chair.

In an effort to make all dancers comfortable come Ball night, some dancers wear a gold ribbon and dance with whoever approaches them.

“If you have a gold ribbon on it means that you’re willing to dance with anybody,” Krawec said. “This informality allows for the event to feel more open and allows dancers to get to know each other. I just hope people enjoy themselves.”

Richard Powers, a dance lecturer at Stanford who has advised Austria Fortnight for 20 years, said that the atmosphere of social dance at the Viennese Ball changed markedly after he starting teaching.

“[Before,] most people would stand in place and do prom dancing,” Powers said. “Then after I arrived, suddenly everybody knew how to waltz and travel around the room.”

Formal instruction through classes taught on campus by Powers and many others, as well as the student-taught classes during Austria Fortnight, have assisted in transforming the Viennese Ball into an exhibition of a wide variety of social dances as social dance becomes increasingly popular on campus.

Stanford dance groups such as the Salseros, Stanford Ballroom Dance team and Cardinal Ballet will perform, and the organizers have planned dance contests in Viennese waltz, swing, salsa and cross-step waltz for Ball attendees.

While the Viennese Ball has decades of history, its committees have continued to tweak its execution. Krawec said this year marks a new emphasis on “greening” the event.

Some of the initiatives that organizers have implemented include providing free shuttles to and from the event, selling locally grown flowers for corsages and boutonnieres, using only renewable wares and providing composting at the event.


Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

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CAPS usage increases as advisory board addresses mental health https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/06/caps-usage-increases-as-advisory-board-addresses-mental-health/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/06/caps-usage-increases-as-advisory-board-addresses-mental-health/#respond Thu, 07 Feb 2013 07:00:16 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074718 Amid increasing concerns about mental health awareness on campus and growing student usage of Stanford’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), subcommittees of the University’s newly established Mental Health and Well-Being Advisory Board will present a set of ideas and findings produced this academic year to a board meeting later this month.

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Amid increasing concerns about mental health awareness on campus and growing student usage of Stanford’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), subcommittees of the University’s newly established Mental Health and Well-Being Advisory Board will present a set of ideas and findings produced this academic year to a board meeting later this month.

The board, co-chaired by CAPS director Ron Albucher and Associate Vice Provost for Student Affairs Sally Dickson, was created last spring in response to the recommendations of a 2008 report on campus mental health. The board consists of 24 members — including students, faculty and staff — with a range of backgrounds and experience in mental health, and has met twice since its formation.

[Michael Liu]
[MICHAEL LIU/The Stanford Daily]

Albucher framed the approaching board meeting as a means of synthesizing the work of the board’s five subcommittees, which have addressed topics ranging from current issues and trends in mental health to student relationships and how those affect mental well-being.

“The goal of the upcoming meeting that we’re having is to kind of being to pull all of that together, look for areas of overlap, simplify things and then figure out our next steps,” Albucher said.

According to Alejandro Martinez, senior associate director for consultation and liaison at CAPS, challenges surrounding mental health are more prominent around week five of the quarter as academic stress accumulates, prompting further examination by the board’s subcommittees. Ultimately, however, the board will focus on the entirety of campus mental health issues, according to Dickson.

“We look at some of the experiences that Stanford students bring to campus and we look at what new stressors are created while being here,” Dickson said. “It’s something we have to be on top of at all times and this advisory board is an example of our effort to do that.”

The subcommittees’ reports will come at a time when interest in and awareness about mental health on campus has become increasingly widespread, according to University administrators.

“One of the biggest changes I’ve seen in the past year is the amount of interest and commitment that students have in the area of mental health,” Martinez said.

Martinez cited a surge in enrollment in EDUC 193P: Peer Counseling at the Bridge, a class that he teaches through the Bridge Peer Counseling Center and that instructs students on the basics of counseling and mental health, as evidence of that increased interest among students. Seventy-nine students are currently enrolled in the class, compared to 46 last quarter.
“That for me is really significant,” Martinez said. “It indicates to me an increased attention to the issue of psychological well being, but most importantly an interest on the part of students to want to help and make a difference.”
Students on the board not only indicated this interest to make a difference in mental health but also a commitment in discussing these issues, such as the case with Chris Herries ’15 on the resources and communications subcommittee.

Student members of the board framed their participation as an opportunity not only to make a difference in mental health but also to simply prompt further discussion of the issues at hand.

“I have a personal history of mental illness and so does my family and that’s sort of my personal motivation,” said Herries, a member of the resources and communications subcommittee. “But mostly I’m just interested in the health and happiness of the people around me.”

Herries, who is a Daily staffer, said the communications subcommittee is currently working on compiling a single directory of resources that students can go to for all mental health needs.

Rising CAPS usage

As the University devotes increased attention to issues surrounding mental health, the number of students utilizing the CAPS has risen steadily in recent years, from 11,560 CAPS visits in 2008-2009 to 14,681 in 2011-12.

Albucher framed the increased usage of the counseling service as partially a vindication of University efforts to increase mental health awareness and reduce associated stigmas. He also attributed the increase to increases in CAPS staffing and a more proactive mentality among CAPS staff.

“It’s hard to separate all of these different components out but we know that we’re similar to being in the top tier of schools,” Albucher said.

Even with this progress, the board is still hard at work at finding solutions to the continuing stigma surrounding mental health issues.
Despite the progress made, however, Albucher acknowledged that there is still work to be done on how the University approaches issues of mental health.

“I know there’s been some concern on campus about how the university communicates around theses issues,” Albucher said. “The University tries to walk this tightrope around health promotion, transparency, legal restriction and student privacy and is really struggling with this in trying to find a way to be more open and transparent and at the same time protecting student rights.”
Albucher also acknowledged the changing nature of mental health challenges as potentially impeding the University’s search for lasting solutions.

“It’s not a static thing,” Albucher said. “Mental health and well-being challenges are going to change over time.”

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Even after drop-in clinics, Vaden reports spike in flu https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/05/despite-surge-in-influenza-related-illness-vaden-and-the-stanford-flu-crew-meet-high-student-demand-for-vaccinations-by-holding-drop-in-clinics/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/02/05/despite-surge-in-influenza-related-illness-vaden-and-the-stanford-flu-crew-meet-high-student-demand-for-vaccinations-by-holding-drop-in-clinics/#respond Wed, 06 Feb 2013 07:30:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1074636 Vaden Health Center has reported four times as many cases of influenza-like illness compared to this time last year, according to Vaden Medical Director Robyn Tepper. Eleven true influenza-like illnesses had been reported at this time last year, while 45 have already been reported this season.

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Vaden Health Center has reported four times as many cases of influenza-like illness compared to this time last year, according to Vaden Medical Director Robyn Tepper. Eleven true influenza-like illnesses had been reported at this time last year, while 45 have already been reported this season.

Eighty-six viral illnesses have been reported so far this year, compared with the 45 that had been reported by the same time last year.

While Vaden does not plan on holding more emergency vaccination clinics, vaccinations are still available by appointment at Vaden and are being given through Vaden’s Travel Clinic. Students who visit Vaden for unrelated reasons are also offered the vaccine, according to Tepper.

Vaden Clinic Manager Nancy Masunaga noted the spread of influenza on campus has created a high demand for the influenza vaccine, prompting renewed efforts to make the vaccine more accessible to students.

“It was pretty stressful,” Masunaga said. “We were getting lots of phone calls from students asking to get the vaccine, and our immunization clinic was full and we couldn’t accommodate the individuals who wanted to get it by appointment. So then we thought, well, it’s time to have the drop-in.”

Vaden’s drop-in clinic was held on Jan. 16, accompanied by two drop-in clinics held by the Stanford Flu Crew in Arrillaga Family Dining Commons on Jan. 16 and 18.

MASON ALFORD/[The Stanford Daily]
MASON ALFORD/[The Stanford Daily]
“We had a little over 350 people vaccinated in a total of four hours,” said Catherine Zaw ’15, the undergraduate director of the Flu Crew. Zaw is a Daily staffer.

In total, the Stanford Flu Crew, which partnered with Vaden for a Power Influenza Week in October, has administered 5,116 vaccinations on campus. Vaden has administered 2,749 vaccinations, including 495 given during the Jan. 16 drop-in clinic.

Although the unusually high number of visits to Vaden created an increased demand for vaccinations, Vaden did not have to turn any student away due to vaccination shortages, according to Masunaga.

Zaw attributed the unusually high number of visits to the media’s coverage of flu season.

“After the whole news media scare and people had heard about the flu, Vaden was getting a little bit overbooked themselves, so we wanted to do [the clinics] again,” Zaw said. “The planning was pretty much in two or three days, which is pretty awesome because it ended up being a great success.”

Currently, neither Vaden nor the Stanford Flu Crew is planning to hold another emergency clinic.

“The demand, since we’ve had the emergency vaccination clinics, has definitely petered out,” Masunaga said.

Colin Campbell ’11, the head of the Peer Health Educator (PHE) program, credited PHEs for raising awareness about the vaccination within residential communities.

“During the first part of winter quarter when the flu was blowing up, we vaccinated hundreds of people in a few hours, and many had already been vaccinated,” Campbell said. “The PHEs are doing real prevention work.”

Besides encouraging residents to get vaccinated, many PHEs encouraged students to take preventative measures such as washing their hands often and thoroughly as well as discouraging residents from interacting with dormmates who have influenza.

“There’s just the constant messaging that the PHEs and the RAs do where they create this environment where they care about each other,” Campbell said.

Although Vaden and the Stanford Flu Crew are not planning to hold any more awareness events, PHEs are still encouraging students to get their flu shots all throughout flu season.

“The more people who get vaccinated, the better,” said Makiko Fujimoto ’14, a PHE in Soto, who estimated that approximately 10 Soto residents had experienced influenza-related illnesses. “And it takes two weeks for the vaccination to kick in, so you should get it done as soon as possible.”

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Haus Mitt theme plays on Arrillaga’s philanthropy https://stanforddaily.com/2012/10/23/haus-mitt-theme-plays-on-arrillagas-philanthropy/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/10/23/haus-mitt-theme-plays-on-arrillagas-philanthropy/#comments Tue, 23 Oct 2012 08:22:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1072146 A sign posted on the Upper Row may lead the gullible student to think that John Arrillaga ‘60 endowed yet another program at Stanford.

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Haus Mitt theme plays on Arrillaga's philanthropy
IAN GARCIA-DOTY/The Stanford Daily

A sign posted on the Upper Row may lead the gullible student to think that John Arrillaga ‘60 endowed yet another program at Stanford. But the Arrilläga Center for German Living and Culture is not the billionaire’s newest contribution to Stanford; it is the invention of Haus Mitteleuropa’s house staff.

“The theme is inspired by the ongoing joke on campus ‘It’s in Arrillaga,’ ‘Which Arrillaga?’ since John Arrillaga has been so generous to Stanford,” Resident Assistant (RA) Wesley Dunnagan ‘13 said. “So why not make Haus the Arrilläga Center for German Culture and Living?”

The self-op’s theme—which Community Manager Chrissy Scannell ‘13 said is Residential Education’s favorite this year—includes a kitchen that has been retitled the Arrillaga Center for Culinary Arts and a bar labeled the Arrillaga Center for Beer Education and Appreciation.

House staff said that they enjoyed themselves as they explored the creative possibilities that this theme offered.

“It just came up randomly during a brainstorming session,” Dunnagan said. “We were excited to have a theme that wasn’t a pun.”

Staff put fake bills on the wall surrounding plastic palm tree hang-ups. As residents enter the house, they can see “Haus Mitt” spelled out on the staircase in $100 bills. Haus Mitt staff also included basketball decorations to reference the fact that Arrillaga attended Stanford on a basketball scholarship in the late 1950s.

Some favorites of the staff include the Arrillaga Center for Fashion and Design (the laundry room) and the Arrillaga Center for Meditation and Music Appreciation (the lounge).

Every dorm room door is labeled with a signed check addressed to the residents of the room.

“We have had only positive reactions from everyone we’ve encountered,” Scannell said. “Some have thought it was actually a new center funded by Arrillaga, but as soon as they realize it’s the just house theme, they break out laughing.”

From the $100-bill-covered walls to the Arrillaga Center for Hygiene and Bodily Functions (the bathroom), some residents wondered if Arrillaga himself would enjoy the theme.

“I think he would take it for what it is: a joke,” resident Matthew Rios ‘13 said. “He would have a good laugh along with us.”

“We have no idea if he knows or not,” added Dunnagan. “But we hope that he knows that we appreciate everything he has done for this campus and that he himself will enjoy a nice chuckle.”

 A previous version of this article incorrectly cited that John Arrillaga ’60 earned his bachelor’s degree in 1992 and MBA in 1998. In fact, his son, John Arrillaga Jr., graduated in those years. Major donor John Arrillaga graduated in 1960 and, as stated correctly later in the article, attended Stanford on a basketball scholarship in the late 1950s. 

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