(LARRY GE/The Stanford Daily)

“Stanford is known for its bold entrepreneurial spirit,” said President John Hennessy in welcoming Bloomberg, describing the New York City Mayor as sharing that trait.

“As a young boy, Mike Bloomberg learned the importance of service and giving back,” Hennessy went on to note. “Over the past 12 years, he has been the city’s champion…One of the things I most admire about Mayor Bloomberg is his willingness to take a stand, especially on issues that are divisive.”

“Really I just came to try and get Stepfan Taylor ['13]‘s autograph,” Bloomberg jested in opening, before later noting that ”I did see the guy dressed up [for the Wacky Walk] as the Big Gulp. Very funny.”

Bloomberg briefly touched on distinct aspects of Stanford culture, from Full Moon on the Quad to the abbreviations of campus locations, but noted that he felt “right at home” on campus given the quality of higher education and Stanford’s entrepreneurial spirit.

He subsequently touched on Stanford’s historic role in driving Silicon Valley’s growth, before briefly addressing the University’s failed bid for a New York City campus.

“No hard feelings,” he said. “It didn’t work out, but I think, in the end, it will.”

Bloomberg suggested that Stanford graduates interested in entrepreneurship may eventually make their way across the country to New York’s “Silicon Alley” — in part because “there’s more to do on a Friday night than go to the Pizza Hut in Sunnyvale” –before he turned back to the present and encouraged graduates to seek their own path in the world.

“Stanford is more than a world-class university,” he said. “It attracts people who are trying to discover and shape the future…You leave [Stanford] with the wind of freedom at your back and a world of possibility at your feet.”

“Those who do what they love often find more riches than they ever imagined possible,” he added.

Bloomberg recounted his own employment experience, singling out being laid off from Salomon Brothers — after attempting to reform the firm’s use of financial information — as a turning point in his career and one that ultimately enabled — despite the fear of starting anew — his later success in business.

“The idea that you can find a way to do something better, faster and cheaper has driven American innovation for centuries,” he noted. ”I had a dream that I believed in, and thankfully I had the courage to follow it.”

“If you won’t risk failure, you won’t fulfill your potential,” Bloomberg added. “You’ve got that opportunity, and it’s the most valuable thing you’ll own in your life. Don’t waste it.”

Bloomberg reiterated that sentiment in encouraging graduating students to challenge themselves and fulfill their potential no matter what field they plan to enter.

“Roll up your sleeves every day and get down to work,” he emphasized. “The secret of success isn’t much of a secret…The American Dream has no shortcuts and no endpoint…It is up to you to embrace that opportunity for yourself.”

Turning to a more national issue, Bloomberg castigated the United States’ current immigration laws, calling them nonsensical and suggesting that “every STEM student should have a green card stapled to their diploma.”

“If those in Washington [D.C.] had any sense at all, they’d be begging you to stay in the United States,” he told graduating international students. “It’s the most backwards economic policy you could possibly come up with.”

He struck an optimistic tone, however, when reviewing the progress of efforts to bring about comprehensive immigration reform, noting that one such attempt is currently under serious consideration in Congress.

“We have a real chance of passing sensible, comprehensive immigration reform this year,” he said. “If we are going to win the future, we’ve got to keep the future here.”

Bloomberg also cited the efforts of two Stanford faculty members — Professors of Law Pam Karlan and Jeff Fisher — in advancing another civil rights issue by arguing for same-sex marriage in front of the Supreme Court.

“In the whole history of the United States, no law limiting the rights of a particular class of people has ever stood the test of time, and neither will [laws like the Defense of Marriage Act],” he said. “Marriage equality is the civil rights issue of our time.”

Framing American history as a series of struggles to live up to the ideals enshrined in the nation’s founding documents, Bloomberg called on graduating students to continue the fight.

“Today, that struggles continues,” he said. “It’s your turn to lead it…Go out and pursue your American Dream and help make it a reality for others.”

According to Hennessy, the University conferred 1,701 bachelor’s degrees, 2,325 master’s degrees and 1,055 doctoral degrees.

1. Flagbearers prepare to lead the procession before Baccalaureate (LINDA A. CICERO/Stanford News Service)

2. Students assemble in Memorial Church before Baccalaureate (LINDA A. CICERO/Stanford News Service)

3. Valerie Kaur ’03 delivered the Baccalaureate’s keynote address (LINDA A. CICERO/Stanford News Service)

4. Jonathan York ’13 delivered the Baccalaureate’s student reflection (LINDA A. CICERO/Stanford News Service)

5. Professor of Computer Science Mehran Sahami ’92 M.S. ’93 Ph.D. ’99 delivered the Class Day lecture  (LINDA A. CICERO/Stanford News Service)

6. Commencement took place in Stanford Stadium (BOTAO HU/The Stanford Daily)

7. Graduating students entered the stadium to perform the Wacky Walk (BOTAO HU/The Stanford Daily)

8. Some students weren’t quite ready to leave (LARRY GE/The Stanford Daily)

9. One student thanked his parents rather prominently… (LARRY GE/The Stanford Daily)

10. …as did another (LARRY GE/The Stanford Daily)

11. One family caught sight of their graduate entering the stadium (LINDA A. CICERO/Stanford News Service)

12. President John Hennessy delivered the ceremony’s opening speech (LARRY GE/ The Stanford Daily)

13. Provost John Etchemendy Ph.D. ’82 and Bloomberg share a laugh (BOTAO HU/The Stanford Daily)

14. Bloomberg subsequently gave the keynote address (LARRY GE/The Stanford Daily)

15. (LARRY GE/The Stanford Daily)

16. Students rose by school to acknowledge their graduation (LARRY GE/The Stanford Daily)

17. The Band concluded the ceremony (BOTAO HU/The Stanford Daily)

18. The Class of 2013 buried some memories in a time capsule (LINDA A. CICERO/Stanford News Service)

19. A newly-minted graduate embraces a relative outside the stadium (BOTAO HU/The Stanford Daily)

Find photos from this year’s Wacky Walk here.

Contributing photographers: Luis Aguilar, Larry Ge and Botao Hu (The Stanford Daily) and Linda Cicero (Stanford News Service)

Find more photos from Commencement Weekend here.

Stanford juniors Nicole Gibbs (left) and Kristie Ahn (right) led the women’s tennis team to the national championship and helped Stanford keep the Directors’ Cup on the Farm for the 19th straight year. (DAVID ELKINSON/stanfordphoto.com)

With all sports except baseball completed, Stanford finished with 1261.25 total points, just 41.50 points ahead of second-place Florida. Michigan, UCLA and Penn State rounded out the top five.

The winner of the award is determined by assigning points based on a university’s finish in up to 10 women’s sports and 10 men’s sports. Since the award’s inception in 1992-93, the Cardinal has won every title except the inaugural edition, which went to the University of North Carolina.

A few weeks ago, there was some concern on the Farm that this could be the year when the streak ended. The Cardinal was in first place after a fall season marked by Stanford football’s Rose Bowl victory and a Final Four finish for the women’s soccer team, but fell to second behind Michigan after the winter season.

However, strong performances by women’s tennis (No. 1) women’s water polo (No. 2), women’s track and field (No. 6) and women’s golf (No. 13) allowed Stanford to hold off the competition by the slimmest of margins.

The women’s tennis team’s national championship — which came after dispatching No. 1 Florida in the semifinals — both locked up the Directors’ Cup and kept alive Stanford’s streak of 37 years with an NCAA team national championship.

Final Directors’ Cup standings will be released after the completion of the College World Series, but regardless of that result, Stanford will win the award.

Contact Jana Persky at jpersky ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Trina Patterson (above), who spent two years as assistant coach for Stanford women’s basketball  (DON FERIA/isiphotos.com)

“I would like to thank Tara VanDerveer for the opportunity to work with her, her staff and this amazing program at Stanford,” Patterson told GoStanford. “It has been an incredible past two years filled with many great memories of working with a top-notch staff as well as a top-notch group of student-athletes. It is such a unique experience at Stanford being surrounded by the excellence of the university and the athletic department. I am looking forward to the opportunity to go back home and work with an Old Dominion program that owns such a rich women’s basketball tradition.”

Before coaching at Stanford Patterson served as head coach at Albany, The College of William and Mary and Maryland Eastern Shore. During her four year playing career at the University of Virginia her team made it to the NCAA Tournament every year, capturing three Atlantic Coast Conference titles. Patterson also led the Cavaliers to the Sweet Sixteen as captain her senior year after a posting a 26-5 record.

“Trina has done a fabulous job for us here at Stanford. I hate to see her leave, but I am one-hundred percent supportive of her pursuing this great opportunity at Old Dominion and having the chance to return home to Virginia. This is a slam-dunk hire for Old Dominion,” Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer told GoStanford.

Head coach Jim Harbaugh’s practices meshed well with strength and conditioning coach Shannon Turley’s workouts; they weren’t about aimlessly breaking players down so much as putting a common plan into action, and his determination was contagious. He was known for his eagle-eyed focus, and it came straight from a love of football. During a film session, running back Anthony Kimble once asked Harbaugh about his own aspirations as a young player.

“He looked at me in the most serious face that I’ve ever seen on the man,” Kimble remembers, “and he told me, ‘Growing up, I wanted to play football as long as I can, coach football as long as I can and then die.’ And he turned back to the film and kept watching like nothing had ever happened.”

It only took a few months for new head coach Jim Harbaugh (above) to change the culture of the Stanford football team. While Walt Harris had chosen to break his players down, Harbaugh motivated the team by bringing competition into every facet of his workouts and practices. (Stanford Daily File Photo)

Harbaugh was known as a memorable quote within the program, even though he was notoriously tight-lipped with the media. Behind closed doors or out on the practice field, his sayings would range from motivational — “Football isn’t particularly fun. Winning is fun.” — to bizarre — “I’m frying the fish,” which meant he was singling out a weak player. And he had the booming voice to back it up.

Always a man of metaphor, Harbaugh now draws on preindustrial farming technology (what else?) to describe the work he needed from his players that first offseason.

“You took yourself back to the 17th century, back when they had flywheels in mills and things,” he says. “Big, 2,000-pound rock flywheel. And the hard part is to get it started, to get it moving. And once you get it moving, that thing just gets faster and faster and faster and faster. And it does great work, it accomplishes what it’s supposed to accomplish. But when it’s at a stop, the force that it takes to get it moving [is huge].”

There was no proof that his model would work, no tangible evidence that a football team with a reputation as soft would become one of the toughest in the country. But that didn’t stop the players in Harbaugh’s locker room from latching on.

“They were doing it on faith,” Harbaugh says. “You couldn’t see it, you know? The definition of faith: belief without seeing. They were actually pushing. They had the hands on it and were driving it. So those will always be, to me, the true blue-collar guys that did the heavy lifting.”

No group embraced that challenge better than the former recruiting class of 2005, rising juniors like offensive tackle Chris Marinelli, tight end Jim Dray and safety Bo McNally. Walt Harris’ breakdown tactics had proven especially ineffective against those players, who were known for their pride and competitive spirit. Marinelli, after all, had been among Harris’ most outspoken critics at the end of 2006.

The same attributes that led those players to resist Harris made them thrive under Harbaugh and Turley, who brought competition into every workout, every practice and every drill.

“Coach Harbaugh did an unbelievable job from day one of creating this ultra-competitive atmosphere,” McNally says.

Harbaugh’s practices started with the Oklahoma Drill, which pits two players against each other in a full-contact battle to win the line of scrimmage. That’s not unusual in and of itself, but Harbaugh’s rendition included the entire team — not just linemen, but skill players too — and went on for what Dray calls an “unheard-of” 20 minutes.

“I had to come out ready to compete every day,” Dray says. “If you didn’t, everyone could see it. It was just you against the other guy. If you didn’t want to come out and compete every day, then you weren’t playing.”

Most importantly, though, Harbaugh remained supportive of the players who were willing to put in the effort he demanded.

“If you got in a fight in a back alley you wanted Coach Harbaugh with you,” says Tavita Pritchard, another member of the 2005 class. “That’s what I love about this staff and what he brought here. They are guys that, first of all, they care about their players. They cared about us — you could feel that right away. And they wanted to teach. They wanted to teach the game.”

To learn more about “Rags to Roses,” check out the book’s preface or an excerpt on 2006, which was published last week. To contact the authors, send an email to ragstoroses ‘at’ stanforddaily.com.

Board Chair Steven Denning MBA ’78 framed the University’s fiscal status in positive terms, noting a projected growth of 7 percent in revenues over this year’s total.

“The good news is we’re running a surplus both at the aggregate level and at the general funds level,” Denning said.

Denning singled out an increase in the amount allocated for undergraduate financial aid as particularly significant.

“This University has a strong commitment to financial aid and maintaining that financial aid so that we can keep net tuition increases basically flat,” Denning said.

Direct financial aid for students will total $254 million next year.

Turning to the capital budget for the 2013-14 fiscal year, which will total $658 million, Denning drew attention to the planned renovation of the historic Old Chemistry Building, which will incorporate seismic safety and other structural improvements.

“It’s really [a renovation] that is oriented towards adding classrooms and teaching facilities…for a number of the sciences [and] not just chemistry,” Denning emphasized.

Planned construction will also include the expansion of undergraduate housing through new facilities in Manzanita Park, which will add 128 beds, and Lagunita Court, which will add 216 beds. Denning described the developments, which are scheduled for completion in 2015, as intended to address recent “packing” of undergraduate residences rather than accommodate any planned expansion of the undergraduate population.

“That’s the first time we’ve really addressed undergraduate housing in some significant period of time,” Denning said. “It’s a significant increase.”

“[The population increase] is something the administration is seriously exploring,” he added later. “It’s something the Board endorses.”

Other planned or ongoing construction projects include the construction of 180 housing units on Mayfield Avenue and the addition of a contemplation center and the McMurtry Building for the Department of Art and Art History to campus.

“I’m looking forward to going up there [to the contemplation center],” Denning said.

Turning to Minor’s presentation, Denning framed it as intended to offer a contextualized sense of Minor’s vision and priorities, especially given the financial importance of University hospitals and the School of Medicine to Stanford as a whole, and to inform the Board.

“You’re dealing with two hospitals that are very significant in terms of their revenue,” Denning emphasized. “They operate on clearly a different business model…than the University does.”

“It’s the beginning of a dialogue [and] not the end of one with regards to discussing those kind of issues,” Denning added.

Revisiting a report from Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Harry Elam to the Faculty Senate earlier in the day, Denning remarked on the scale of the reforms made to the undergraduate experience.

“I commend…the innovation and forward-thinking thought to implement the elements of the [Study of Undergraduate Education at Stanford report] in an extremely creative way,” he said. “I thought what they were doing, frankly, is fantastic and really quite expansionary.”

“It was surprising to me in terms of the breadth of the activities that we’re forging ahead on,” Denning added. “It’s one [area] where the planning that has gone into redesigning what we’re offering our students is really conceptually very strong and something that as an institution we should be extremely proud of.”

Denning also noted the interest in the University’s judicial process after the emergence of a critical case study, but downplayed the Board’s involvement in rectifying issues raised therein.

“We’ve been apprised, but it’s not one we’re getting into in any specific way other than endorsing the actions that are moving forward today with the Office of Community Standards,” Denning said.

Senate Chair Raymond Levitt M.S. ’73 Ph.D. ’75 opened the meeting by thanking members of the outgoing Senate for their work throughout the year, a sentiment that was subsequently reciprocated by the Senate’s Steering Committee.

President John Hennessy briefly drew attention to the recent accomplishments of Stanford’s female student-athletes, citing both Kori Carter ’14’s record-setting performance in the 400-meter hurdles at the NCAA Outdoor National Championships and the women’s tennis team’s victory in their own NCAA Championship.

“That was a close call,” Hennessy noted. “It would have been the first time in 37 years we hadn’t won an NCAA championship.”

Emeriti Council President David Abernethy, professor emeritus of political science, briefly reviewed the council’s work, singling out the offering of a quarterly lecture series entitled “Autobiographical Reflections” that has to date featured speakers such as Professor Emeritus of Management Science and Engineering William Perry ’49 M.S. ’50, Professor Emerita of English Nancy Packer and Professor Emeritus of the Graduate School of Business William Miller.

Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Harry Elam subsequently reported on the success of various changes to the undergraduate academic experience made in recent years.

Elam framed the introduction of the Thinking Matters requirement as allowing students to access a broad range of perspectives from across the University in a quarter of their choosing. According to Elam, 90 percent of freshmen were admitted to either their first or second choice Thinking Matters course.

Elam also drew attention to student interest in Education as Self-Fashioning (ESF) seminars, which satisfy both Thinking Matters and Program in Writing and Rhetoric freshman requirements. 123 students enrolled in 5 ESF seminars over the course of the year.

“It made [students] think deeply and differently about what they were going to do at Stanford,” Elam noted.

For the 2013-14 academic year, nine fewer Thinking Matters courses will be offered, due to insufficient student interest in some courses.

Turning to Introductory Seminars (IntroSems), Elam noted that the removal of the three-quarter Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) program had naturally led to more scheduling room in which freshmen could enroll in IntroSems, inducing a slight increase in the proportion of freshmen taking at least one IntroSem.

Reviewing other academic programming reforms, Elam pointed to the creation of two new residential learning programs – “Immersion in the Arts: Living in Culture” and “Science in the Making: Integrated Learning Environment” — in Burbank next year and the embedding of writing specialists from the Program in Writing and Rhetoric into specific departments.

“It’s worked successfully,” Elam said, referencing trials with the history and human biology departments and the public policy program. “It’s something we’ll look to expand.”

According to Elam, academic departments have made great strides towards registering their classes under the new Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing requirement, which will take effect next year.

Elam also singled out wholly new initiatives undertaken by the University, including the creation of a Stanford Leadership Institute and a Stanford in New York City program. The latter would follow a similar format to that of the Stanford in Washington program, with daytime internships in arts, urban studies or finance followed by classes focused around creative entrepreneurship.

“We’re looking to have a pilot of this in the spring or summer of 2015,” Elam said.

matchTHIRTEEN, a service sponsored by the Senior Class Presidents’ Cabinet and members of the Stanford Design Program that launched on June 10, aims to play cupid with graduating seniors by pairing them through an anonymous and private ranking system.

Students can choose up to five matches, and – if the choice is mutual – will be notified via email of the mutual attraction. From that point, the progress of the match hinges on the couple’s discretion.

The three students behind matchTHIRTEEN, all of whom are members of the Class of 2013, designed the service after being inspired by the “last chance dance tradition” of many East Coast universities, which gives graduating seniors the potential to connect with their crushes before they leave campus. The matchTHIRTEEN service retains that initial design, but has also incorporated an option for friends to play matchmakers and suggest potential couples.

The service’s creators were also motivated in part, however, by the recognition that opportunities to find love after graduation would become increasing difficult as the dating pool narrows.

“As graduation is approaching there’s this fear that after you leave Stanford, how are you going to meet the special someone?” one team member said.  “At Stanford you meet a lot of incredible people, and a lot of people at Stanford have that friend or that person from afar that they feel they might have chemistry with, but at the end of senior year you don’t want to go up to that person and profess your love out of fear that you’ll tarnish that friendship.”

The design team, who chose to remain anonymous, assured participants that there is no human involvement in the matchmaking process, with the creators unable to view or interfere with matches. In fact, the site is controlled exclusively by an encrypted computer algorithm that the founders hope will produce a private, stress-free experience.

“This is a completely anonymous system where you’re able to input your top five crushes, and if those people crush you back, you’ll both get an email saying you have a match, and if not, then no worries,” the first team member said. “You continue along your friendship without having to have that awkward interaction that may have ended in failure.”

The team expressed confidence that their project will be widely used by seniors taking one last chance to connect with crushes from throughout their time at Stanford. Students have 72 hours to rate their preferences from the site’s launch on Monday morning, before emails revealing matches are released on June 13 during Senior Dinner on the Quad.

“There’s some comfort in knowing that there’s a mutual attraction,” a second team member said. “It kind of gets rid of the insecurity of ‘oh I have a crush on that person but do they like me back?’ It would be nice to bring that to our community.”    “We’re kind of that middle man that facilitates that interaction,” the first team member added.

Students can only choose up to five crushes, which the creators suggested offers people a balance between flexibility or strategy but also reassurance, particularly if their choices don’t reciprocate. Only members of the senior class can participate.

“If there were 20 or 30, and you listed 30 people and none of them crushed you back, that would be devastating to that person, but since it’s only five, that’s less of a deal,” the third team member said.

The creators expressed confidence that the service will be successful even in its first year, but emphasized the lack of obligation for seniors to participate.

“There [will] definitely be some matches made, so we’re pretty excited about this,” the first team member said. “[But] you don’t have to do it — no one is forcing you to do it — and if you aren’t approving of it, by all means there is no need to do it. However, for those that are interested, who think they could benefit from these services, there really is very little risk involved.”

On top of potentially finding love through the site, the team predicted another purpose of matchTHIRTEEN, describing it as the ideal studying distraction.

“It’s a perfect distraction during Finals Week for a lot of kids,” the third team member said. “We expect a lot of engagement based on that fact as well.”

President John Hennessy

Whether during the school year or over the summer, Hennessy likes to work on a rotating queue of books.

“I always work on three books at once: normally one fiction, one nonfiction, and then one on my iPod — usually fiction,” he said.

Hennessy has just started three books that will carry him at least part of the way into the summer. His fiction choice is The Orphan Master’s Son, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Professor of English Adam Johnson that Hennessy has found “fascinating” so far. Hennessy is currently listening to Adam Bede by George Eliot on his iPod, and he’s also started Peter the Great: His Life and World, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography by Robert K. Massie that Hennessy undertook in order to prepare him for a trip to St. Petersburg in July.

“If I’m traveling, I always try to read something about the history of an area or the biography of a person who was influential in the area,” he said. “I found that it really gives you a much better background of the place.”

Hennessy framed his tastes in fiction as a little more “mix and match.”

“It varies back and forth between classics and more modern things,” he said. “But I’ll read more modern things either by authors I’ve enjoyed, or that get strong reviews. So I read the New York Times Book Review, and I read the New York Review of Books, and if I see something that’s really interesting then I’ll put it on my wish-list and it’ll work its way up there.”

Summer, according to Hennessy, is a time suitable for more fiction.

“I’ll read something lighter in the summer often because it’s…well, I deserve it,” he said. “It’s summer vacation!”

Hennessy put forward two works revolving around mystery as his suggestions for students.

“If people like Dickens, try Wilkie Collins—try The Woman in White. It’s just a wonderful, exciting book,” he said. “If you want to read something fact-stranger-than-fiction…[try] The Devil in the White City [by Erik Larson]. It’s the true story of Chicago World’s Fair and a big murder mystery surrounding that…it’s a fascinating story.”

Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Harry Elam

In addition to reading the Three Books assigned to the incoming freshman class, Elam reads a book with his wife each summer.

“My wife and I usually like to find a book that we can read to each other, so it has to be a book that has dialogue and…that’s somewhat fun in the process,” he said.

This summer’s book will probably be The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen Carter, an author whose work they have read in this format before.

“Summer, for me, is a time to read novels,” Elam said. “Most of the reading I do during the year is nonfiction.”

This summer, he hopes to pick up The Orphan Master’s Son, a novel that he was pleased to see honored earlier this year, and Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. “I’ll look for writers — [they] may be writers of color, [they] may not be — that can transport me to a different place away, but also I like people that can work in a social commentary even as they tell a good narrative story,” he said.

Even as Elam peruses more pleasure reading in the summer, however, he never strays too far from his interests as an academic.

“The idea of social commentary mixed with art…in some was, it’s [an] escape, but in other ways it’s what I’m interested in as a scholar anyway — how art and activism, art and politics, art and social change [and] how they can work together, and [be reflected in] novels that can really make you think about social issues,” he said.

Elam suggested a book included in the Three Books selection a few years ago – Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell — for undergraduates’ summer reading.

“He takes some of the research from people here like [Dean of the Graduate School of Education] Claude Steele and also [Professor of Psychology] Carol Dweck, and he puts it in a different form, but he thinks about the things that are critical to us in academia, or to students at Stanford who are so successful,” Elam said. “He thinks about that success and how it comes into being — what makes it? How does privilege figure in it? How does practice figure in it? How do you expand, in a sense, in intelligence? So I’d say that’s a good start.”

Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences Richard Saller

Saller has a few pleasure reads planned for this summer, including at least one with a Stanford connection.

“Richard Powers is a phenomenal novelist who we’ve just recruited here,” Saller explained, noting that he plans to read Powers’ novel Generosity: An Enhancement in the coming months. “It’s a kind of science futuristic book about a geneticist who is able to locate a gene for happiness, and so this strikes me [as] a really interesting kind of idea about genetic manipulation and its limits.”

Also on Saller’s list is Roger Crowley’s City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas, a book he plans to read to prepare for leading an alumni travel trip to the Dalmatian Coast in June.

“I have a broad range of taste, and so there are times when I read things that are really page turners for entertainment,” Saller said. “It kind of depends on what happens to come to my attention and since we have an extraordinary creative writing program here, I get good suggestions from them.”

Saller has also enrolled in a class on social psychology offered by Coursera in the hopes of getting the student experience of online teaching.

“That will involve some reading,” Saller noted, “though I’m not sure exactly what yet.”

Saller singled out a work praised by both Hennessy and Elam as his suggestion for students.

“The Orphan Master’s Son is a terrific novel. I was pleased to see that it was picked out for the Pulizer Prize as well, confirming my sense of just how good it was,” Saller said. “It’s really a kind of wild, imaginative story about North Korea.”

Professor of English Tobias Wolff M.A. ’78

“I don’t make a distinction much between summer reading and the reading I do the rest of the time,” Wolff said. “If I had the kind of job where I could only read in the summer, you know, that would be different, but I can read all the year round, so summer reading doesn’t mean anything to me. I try to read good books all the time.”

Wolff’s reading list might include anything from poetry — including Stag’s Leap, a Pulitzer Prize-wining book of poetry by Sharon Olds — to history, like William Prescott’s The Conquest of Mexico. His list also features Wild, a nonfiction book by Cheryl Strayed, and Rachel Kushner’s novel The Flame Throwers.

“To tell you the truth, everything I read, I read for pleasure. And also, I don’t enjoy stupid books,” Wolff said. “I don’t enjoy badly written books. I find myself editing them in my head all the time, so the kind of books I read feed my interests and also feed my art in that they themselves set a standard of writing, and storytelling…that whether I’m conscious of it or not, feeds into my own art.”

Wolff said that he often picks up new books based on recommendations.

“Word of mouth is pretty important to me. If I hear a couple people say, ‘hey, you really have to read this book,’ I’ll generally look it up,” he said, noting that he will often peruse both reviews and book jackets. “Just because a book is well reviewed doesn’t always make me want to read it, but it’s something about the description of the book that intrigues me.”

Professor of English Eavan Boland

“I think the summer lets you look at things that you’d like to read closely,” Boland, director of Stanford’s Creative Writing Program, said. “So I often keep for the summer things that I would really like to take time over.”

For Boland, that’s almost always poetry. She plans to take up Now All Roads Lead to France, a book by an English author Matthew Hollis, once school lets out.

“It’s about the meeting of poets in London in the First World War, especially Robert Frost when he meets Edward Thomas, and it’s a very exceptional book in its way of trying to make an atmosphere real again, and show what small bookstores they met in, what they were thinking,” Boland said. “So that’s a really, really exceptional book. It’s very rare to get a very literary writer who can write about poetry, but also can write about the history of the time.”

Boland also recently completed an introduction for the collected poems of Denise Levertov, a poet she hopes to return to this summer.

“I’m just going…to sit down and read all her work because she’s an incredibly interesting poet,” she said. “I have read many of her poems over the years, but there is something very different about looking at a poet when all their work is done. It’s like going to an art gallery and seeing a retrospective of a painter — something changes when you see all their paintings together, and something really changes when you see all the collected poems of a poet.”

Boland described the summer as an ideal time to catch up on things set aside during the chaos of the school year.

“I think in the summer I would read just really for pleasure, but the books would always connect with what I’m interested in,” she said. “I’m not a particularly light reader.”

Boland suggested that exploratory students turn to former Stegner Fellow Justin Torres’ We the Animals.

“It’s about growing up with his brothers in a family where his father was Puerto Rican, his mother was American, and the study of the different cultures in the house, the different allegiances in the house, the dependence of the brothers on each other,” she said. “It’s just a really beautiful book. And it’s written about…an age group they’re not too far away from — [his] teenage years.”

Though I know the charred notes come from nearby campground fires, it’s easy to imagine that they come from the pieces of blackened wood that surround my lakeside perch. The forests of Lassen have always been shaped by fire: Almost everywhere you can find scarred trees, half-burned branches, and other signs of wildfire disturbance.

This year, especially, evidence of fire is rampant. Last summer, the Reading Fire burned through the park. I remember watching helicopters dance with plumes of smoke from the lightning-ignited forest fire when I summitted Brokeoff Mountain in August. Today, a large portion of the park’s trail system remains closed, pending damage and safety inspections.

It’s easy to see these fires as little more than harbingers of destruction. The devastation they leave in their wake is undeniable and, when people’s lives and homes are involved, deeply personal. And for many years, our country’s forest fire management policy reflected these attitudes, especially after devastating wildfires like the Wisconsin Peshtigo Fire, which killed upwards of 1,500 in 1871. When the United States Forest Service was established in 1905, one of its primary missions was suppressing forest fires. This mission served two purposes: protecting lives, and protecting resources. During World War II, the loss of valuable timber to wildfire was deemed unconscionable; in general, wildfires were seen as wasteful.

But over the decades, accumulating scientific evidence began to change authorities’ minds. Beginning in 1924, Aldo Leopold – an ecologist whose writing became a foundational part of the American conservation ethic – began arguing for fire’s critical role in many North American ecosystems. Scientists studying fire suppression noted dramatic changes to the plant and animal systems involved. Without fire to press a “reset” button every once in a while, certain plant species might come to dominate a landscape in which they historically had been rare. As vegetation changes, so too did habitat for birds, insects, and mammals: Some might receive a glut of food, others a shortage of nesting space. And, since fire helps release and recycle nutrients locked up in woody debris, in its absence the function of an entire ecosystem could change.

Besides these changes to the natural system, there were also increasing safety concerns. By actively – and often successfully – fighting fires, the Forest Service and associated agencies had inadvertently allowed dry, dead organic matter to accumulate where it might otherwise have been periodically burned off. That meant that, should a fire actually ignite, it would have plenty of fuel. So fires were burning hotter, longer, and subsequently becoming more dangerous and harder to control.

By the 1970s, to their credit, the Forest Service realized the flaws in their fire control plans, and started to change their ways.

They started by changing their language: from “fire suppression” to “fire management.” Management today focuses on ecosystem restoration. Where manpower is available, fuel on the forest floor is reduced using prescribed burning in well-contained fires, or physically gathered up and removed. When wildfires do ignite (usually by lightning strikes), they are allowed to burn unless they threaten human lives or property. And the National Park Service and other agencies are working to change our attitudes about fire, noting its important role in ecosystem restoration and highlighting the amazing adaptations that many plants and animals have to wildfire.

As our open spaces slowly return to a “natural” fire balance, though, we have to ask ourselves what exactly that word means. Given the long history of humans on the continent, some ecosystems’ fire frequency has long been controlled by human hands. Today’s managers must choose their goals carefully. What baseline are they trying to re-create? How will increasing human usage of all these spaces continue to change the land, and its ability to sustain and recover from fires?

Even if we wanted to, we cannot remove the hand of humans from these landscapes. And, looking out on Mount Lassen at sunset, as a human myself, I’m glad that we are here.

Holly welcomes a firestorm of reader feedback at hollyvm “at” stanford “dot” edu.

The most telling moment of the next game, a home loss to Washington State, came not on a run, but on a punt. On the first Stanford possession of the game, with the Cardinal facing a third-and-7 from its own 5-yard line and the game still scoreless, head coach Walt Harris had quarterback Trent Edwards quick kick rather than try to get the first down. The play worked, as Edwards’ punt went for 56 yards and no return, but that didn’t stop the decision from crushing the offense’s morale. The 36-10 loss put Stanford at 0-4 and changed the question from, “Will Stanford make a bowl?” to, “Can this team win a game?”

And that’s when Harris lost the team.

Junior center Alex Fletcher (60) lines up at center as Stanford takes on Navy in the first game at the new Stanford Stadium in 2006. (Stanford Daily file photo)

“Walt couldn’t hold the team together,” says junior center Alex Fletcher, “so what he would do is he would make us do bear crawls.”

A bear crawl, done properly, is one of the most grueling conditioning exercises for a football player. Players get down in pushup position and crawl down the length of the field. They aren’t allowed to arch their backs. They aren’t allowed to let their knees touch the ground. And with the massive size of some of the players combined with the unforgiving nature of the artificial turf field, the toll on the players’ bodies was devastating.

As the fans in the crowd wondered if Stanford could win a game, the players on the sideline couldn’t shake their focus off those bear crawls. Every turnover meant 100 yards of bear crawls the next day. Every penalty added 100 more yards. Suddenly, the games didn’t even seem to matter — only the bear crawls did.

“We’d be counting during the game,” offensive lineman Chris Marinelli says. “We’d have like two fumbles, two picks and like a hundred yards of penalties; you’re doing, however many, 1,400 yards of bear crawls.”

“I remember being on the sideline,” tight end Jim Dray says. “Guys were like, ‘Okay, there’s another 100 yards of bear crawls. There’s another 100 yards of bear crawls.’”

The preoccupation with bear crawls wasn’t just limited to time spent on the sidelines. The players in the trenches also couldn’t shake the thought of bear crawls from their minds.

“It got to a point where we were so bad,” Fletcher remembers, “that we were thinking about how you would not do bear crawls. [You wouldn’t] play to win the game; you’d play to not do bear crawls.”

These bear crawls didn’t happen on Monday or Tuesday. They didn’t come after practice in the middle of the week. Harris made the team pay its debt on Sunday, the day after the game.

“Guys on Sunday would be so sore and their hands would be bleeding from the game,” Fletcher says. “We’d be bear crawling, bear crawling, bear crawling. And [Harris] just lost the team.”

And even with five days to recover — if practice can count as recovering — the bear crawls were so difficult that players were still sore for the next week’s game.

“I think [former Athletics Director Ted Leland] had told Walt that things had been pretty lax [under former head coach Buddy Teevens], and he wanted him to bring some accountability,” Dray says. “So I think Walt came in with the mentality that he was really going to be like a drill sergeant and hold us accountable for everything, and I think he went a little too far overboard there.”

It wasn’t just the bear crawls. That punishment may have been the physical manifestation of the tension between the players and their head coach, but Harris’ verbal clashes were sometimes even more demoralizing.

“He always mentioned Stanford guys,” Fletcher says. “He was always mad. ‘Stanford football players always ask why,’ [Harris would complain]. ‘Do it. If I tell you to run through a wall, you do it.’ And he didn’t know how to talk to us, he didn’t know how to motivate us, he didn’t know how to do anything. He thought just by belittling us, Stanford guys would respond to that, and we didn’t respond to that very well at all.”

To learn more about “Rags to Roses,” check out the book’s preface, which was published last week.

Junior Chiney Ogwumike (13) is spending spring quarter abroad interning in Nigeria. (DON FERIA/isiphotos.com)

In a blog I wrote for espnW, I explained that “the experience” was fear. “Stanford is a place where you slowly grow out of your fears and discover yourself.” Fear, and more specifically for Stanford students, fear of failure, can be one of the greatest motivators in life. So in that darkest moment when we experience the possibility of failure, what pulls us through? The degree. We all want that piece of paper so bad! Why? No matter who we are, from athlete to activist, engineer to entrepreneur, we all have the goal of getting a degree from Stanford University; we want to give our best to a school that will give us the world.

What I love about our school is that no matter who you are, you can leave your legacy. You can find your passion. You can pursue countless opportunities. As an athlete, one of the toughest realizations (true or not) is that your chance for finding your passion and exploring such opportunities is under a time crunch. In other words, there are certain constraints on the athlete lifestyle. Most of us wake up at 6 a.m., go to weights and conditioning, proceed to class, rejoin our teammates for practice or a game, grab dinner, and then head back to the dorms to do our homework and wake up to do it all over again. I am not trying to generate any sympathy or provide excuses.

This is the reality for student athletes or any student with stringent extracurricular activities. We love this lifestyle because we love our sport and the doors that it has opened up for us. What I am trying to say is any athlete, or student for the matter, can have the best of both worlds; you don’t have to sacrifice your passions for academics, and vice versa.

Today I am currently in Nigeria fulfilling my international relations major requirement for studying abroad. As a basketball player, the idea of taking a quarter to study abroad seemed quite impossible. Our season is nearly year-round and it hasn’t really been done that often. But my academic and athletic advisers, coaches, athletic director, major advisers and teammates have been nothing less of supportive and enthusiastic of me pursuing this opportunity. It has been an experience of a lifetime.

I have been working in the Ministry of Petroleum and the Nigerian National Assembly, departments that are at the heart of the Nigerian political economy. It’s sad that when one person usually thinks of Nigeria, they tend to think of 419 scams, the USA-Nigeria Olympic basketball game beat down, or simply corruption. So for me to be able to witness the government first hand has been liberating. No matter how much you read about it in books or listen about it in lectures, seeing it first hand helps put all the pieces together. I have watched officials work tirelessly in offices preparing and proposing legislature that will better share the oil wealth in the economy. I have participated in human rights retreats that challenge traditional notions of women’s, children’s and even prisoners’ rights.

In short, I have been pleasantly surprised by the country’s progress and am so fortunate to have been a fly on the wall. For a student with a primary specialization in Africa and a secondary specialization in Comparative International Governance, I could not have had a better spring quarter.

But the icing on the cake is what I will be able to do with my free time. Soon, I will work with a charity that runs a basketball camp for under-privileged African youth. So far they have built a school, established an after-school program, and now they hope to build a basketball court. Whether this is possible or not, I am extremely excited to use the platform that I have been blessed with to provide hope for kids and their futures through sport. I will be leaving Nigeria on cloud nine.

To sum up, this article has been longer than I had ever imagined but if you are still reading this I hope that the following messages come clear. I do not think if I were at any other school, I would be chasing my wildest dreams. I believe that one of the greatest motivators in life is our fear of failure. But, I also believe the other is love. Forget what you fear, and work for what you love, because if you do, it will propel you to new heights, unleash the ceiling of your imagination and push you to excel.

To my dear student-athletes, do not let the misconception of a ‘time crunch’ dissuade you from achieving what you want to achieve. To all my friends, please realize that the athlete community is as dedicated as the rest. For we all share the same love of the Quad, Oval, Full Moon, and Cardinal red. But most importantly, we all wholeheartedly agree with what John F. Kennedy said, “Ask not what Stanford can do for you, but what you can do for Stanford…together.” Well, I might have made that up a little bit but you get what I mean.

Everything went according to plan in 2011-12, and Stanford’s outgoing seniors were the ones leading the charge. Senior Andrew Luck led football to perhaps the most dominant season in school history. Seniors Teresa Noyola and Lindsay Taylor won Cardinal women’s soccer its long-awaited first national title. Senior Nneka Ogwumike took women’s basketball back to the Final Four. Senior Pallavi Menon scored late in the women’s water polo NCAA final to secure another Stanford championship. Senior Andrew Zimmermann fueled men’s basketball to an unexpected NIT title with an unexpected resurgence in his final season.

2012-13 hasn’t gone that smoothly. The football team lost two early road games. Women’s soccer and water polo fell just short of defending their title. Women’s basketball missed the Final Four for the first time in six years, while men’s basketball couldn’t make it out of the second round of the NIT. And the baseball team, fresh off two Super Regional appearances, missed the postseason altogether despite the return of Mark Appel, who yesterday was picked first overall by the Houston Astros in the MLB Draft.

The senior leadership has still been there, I’m sure of it; look no further than fifth-year football players Chase Thomas and Sam Schwartzstein. But some of the biggest on-field performances on the Farm this year have come courtesy of freshmen and sophomores, inexperienced student-athletes who stepped up in key moments to put together one of the most exciting seasons of Stanford athletics in recent memory.

Football’s Kevin Hogan was thrown into the fire perhaps more suddenly than any other young Cardinal athlete this past fall. While redshirting as a true freshman in 2011, he had played the role of Oregon quarterback Darron Thomas on the Stanford scout team; just a year later, he took over as the Cardinal’s starter and stunned the No. 2 Ducks at Autzen Stadium to get his team within two games of a Rose Bowl berth, which it would eventually clinch.

Freshman Krista Hardebeck was a better-known commodity in the tennis world than Hogan was in football spheres; she was the top high-school recruit in the country and earned a top-five national ranking by the start of the dual match season. But nobody knew how she would perform in the pressure-cooker of postseason team tennis. All Hardebeck did was bounce back from a 6-7, 1-5 deficit in the decisive match of the national semifinal to keep her team alive for another day, allowing Stanford to capture its first NCAA title of the academic year and to stay in contention for a 19th straight Directors’ Cup.

No freshman, however, put together a season like women’s golf superstar Mariah Stackhouse. Besides breaking the Stanford Golf Course record by shooting a 10-under-par 61 back in February, Stackhouse was the Cardinal’s low scorer at seven of its 11 events, came within four strokes of winning the Pac-12 individual title and paced the team to its best performance at the NCAA Championships (tied for 13th) in sixth years — a finish that could have been even better if it wasn’t for a disastrous final round for Stanford.

So much of the college athletics experience is about the maturation of student-athletes over their four-plus years, which is why we love stories about seniors whose hard work has finally paid off at the tail end of their college careers. But there’s also something uniquely exciting about seeing players who have just walked onto campus dominate. It’s the same feeling we got when we first saw the Lopez twins dunk, Chris Owusu return a kick or Luck throw a pass; the potential for greatness was palpable, and it seemingly came out of nowhere.

Next year may be even more impressive for Hogan, Hardebeck and Stackhouse; they may also fail to live up to our new expectations. But in either case, it will be hard to forget their first forays into the college spotlight: performances that not only defined their respective teams’ seasons, but Stanford athletics’ 2012-13 campaign as well.

Joseph Beyda once heaved a football fifty yards when he was just five years old. Ever since then, he’s been maxing out at five yards. Tell him that it might be time to give up at jbeyda ‘at’ stanford.edu and follow him on Twitter @DailyJBeyda.

I can hear Skip Bayless now: “How does the United States, the greatest and richest country in the world, lose to Belgium? Belgium? The universal footnote of Europe?”

(No—I’m probably being a little generous to Skip.)

After getting thrashed by a strong Belgium squad, the Americans beat Germany’s B team. Admittedly, Germany’s B team is not a poor lineup by any means and would probably be ranked around No. 20 to No. 25 in the world, but the important match was the Belgium one, and there the US showed that it still has a very long way to go before it can be considered elite on the international stage.

Paradoxically, soccer has been the most popular youth sport in America for over a generation now, but nevertheless, once those youths become adults, soccer takes a back seat to NASCAR. Should that be surprising? Probably not.

The athletic culture of the United States is not centered on soccer, and the national squad gets results commensurate to that national interest.

As such, the incoming director of player development for the US Soccer Federation ought to be less concerned with producing players that can immediately contribute to the squad and more focused on building a soccer culture in the United States.

But that task presents issues of its own. The short-term and long-term incentives of American soccer are somewhat skewed. The national team coach obviously needs to have a say in player development, since he needs players who can achieve his athletic vision, but at the same time international soccer is a coaching carousel; national coaches rarely keep their jobs for longer than four years.

If changing national coaches, each with their own different styles and philosophies, keep on trying to put their imprint on the program, then it’s hard to imagine how American soccer will improve in any conceivable way. Other nations have managed to deal with this issue by having a broadly national style of play, such as Brazil’s dribbling attack to the intricate passing of Spain. But America has no such unifying attitude.

Given the scope of the problem, even if an elite coach comes in and puts his mark on the program, it will be difficult to see the full magnitude of his accomplishment until he has long since left the team. Jurgen Klinsmann was brought in from Germany to introduce European technical mastery to the American game, and I wish him the best, but realistically he has little chance of coaching the USMNT to a World Cup trophy. If he is introducing innovations to the American game that will resonate throughout the entire youth system, we probably won’t be able to tell the difference for at least a decade, probably more.

What Klinsmann needs to do is create something that will survive him—but that sort of long-term view is very difficult to stomach.

For example, I find Gary Bettman’s plan to expand hockey to warm-weather cities absurd. Does it make sense that the Los Angeles metro area has two professional hockey teams? That Florida has two? Hilariously, Bettman remains insistent on keeping the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes in Arizona, which will probably cost the NHL millions of dollars a year for the foreseeable future. Put simply, while southern hockey teams have good attendance for the most part, they don’t command major followings. Hockey isn’t a standard youth sport in California or Texas like it is in, say, Quebec or Minnesota. Indeed, the recent NHL lockouts have been aimed primarily at making these less lucrative franchises more financially viable.

But when I want to mock Bettman, I have to acknowledge that his mentor, the NBA’s David Stern, successfully did the exact same thing.

Stern has been working for the NBA in some capacity since 1966; during this time, the NBA has expanded from 10 teams to 30. He has also personally overseen the addition of seven new franchises to the league. Despite four lockouts, under Stern’s watch the NBA has risen from American afterthought to the second most popular league in the country (by TV ratings).

The NBA achieved this popularity first and foremost by tapping into a treasure trove of marketable stars, but it also embedded the sport throughout the country through expansion. The NBA has never been shy to place teams in small markets and cities such as Sacramento have rewarded its loyalty appropriately. Other Western franchises such as the Lakers and the Sonics (once upon a time) actually predate their cities’ evolution into full-fledged basketball strongholds.

Though Stanford’s football team has had recent success, three years does not a dynasty make, the basketball team is a case in point. A national power for the better part of a decade, it hasn’t even been mentioned in the March Madness conversation for the last few years. As Stanford Athletics ends one year and prepares for another, then, its fans should keep in mind that despite its success in so many sports, it will take time to build something that will truly last.

The good news, folks, is that Winston Shi still has three more years of undergrad ahead of him, three more years to subject you to his weekly musings. Look forward to next year and help him build his Daily dynasty at wshi94 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Senior starting pitcher Mark Appel (26) was selected first overall by the Houston Astros in the MLB Draft Thursday. (MADELINE SIDES/The Stanford Daily)

Appel was selected eighth overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates in last year’s draft, but decided not to sign for a reported $3.8 million dollars. Instead, Appel returned to Stanford for his senior season, dazzling with a 10-4 record and a 2.12 earned run average. Appel also struck out 130 hitters to become Stanford’s all-time career strikeouts leader.

Under the system introduced by the MLB for last year’s draft, each pick has a slotted value for the signing bonus. Teams that exceed the total bonus pool allotted — the bonus pool is the sum of the slotted value for all of a team’s picks — face penalties including taxes and potential loss of draft picks.

Last year, the Pirates reportedly offered Appel $1 million above slot to reach the $3.8 million mark. The slot value of the first overall pick is just under $7.8 million; it looks like Appel’s decision to come back to Stanford will pay off monetarily.

Appel has made no secret of his desire to play in Houston. Though Appel went to high school in California, he grew up in Houston and his parents moved back to Houston this spring.

In the second round, the Seattle Mariners picked junior centerfielder Austin Wilson at No. 49 overall. Wilson was listed as a top-15 prospect by ESPN’s Keith Law and a top-30 prospect by Baseball America. The slot value for the 49th overall pick is $1.1 million.

Should Wilson decide not to sign with Seattle, he would be eligible to play for Stanford in 2014. The deadline for underclassmen to sign is July 12.

After the conclusion of the second round Thursday night, the MLB Draft will continue Friday with rounds three through 10. The final 30 rounds will take place on Saturday.

Junior first baseman Brian Ragira, senior relief pitcher Garrett Hughes, junior pitcher A.J. Vanegas and junior shortstop Lonnie Kauppila are the Stanford players most likely to be drafted after Appel and Wilson.

Contact Sam Fisher at safisher ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Senior righty Mark Appel (above) is projected as a high first-round pick in Thursday’s MLB Draft, but after Appel slipped to eighth last season, it’s hard to tell for sure which team will pick the Cardinal ace. (SHIRLEY PEFLEY/StanfordPhoto.com)

In Thursday’s first two rounds, senior starting pitcher Mark Appel and junior centerfielder Austin Wilson should hear their names called.

After reportedly turning down $3.8 million from the Pittsburgh Pirates after being selected No. 8 overall in 2012, Appel is projected as a top-five pick. Most draft experts have Appel as either the No. 1 or No. 2 prospect available, but the MLB Draft is wildly unpredictable.

Last season, most expected Appel to be drafted first overall by the Houston Astros, his hometown team. But the Astros opted for Carlos Correa — spending less money so they could afford to sign later picks — and Appel began a shocking slide.

That has made everyone more cautious when projecting where Appel will land this time around. The Astros hold the top pick again, but most expect them to again go for a cheaper option, especially considering the pitching depth in their minor-league system.

The Cubs select next, and many experts, including ESPN’s Keith Law, see them taking Appel. Cubs President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein was in attendance for Appel’s last start, bringing along former Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood.

But Epstein has also been linked to Oklahoma pitcher Jonathan Gray, widely considered to be the only prospect that a significant number of teams rank ahead of Appel. If the Cubs take Gray, Appel could slide as far as fourth to the Minnesota Twins or fifth to the Cleveland Indians, given the propensity of the Colorado Rockies, who own the third pick, to take hitters for a hitter-friendly ballpark.

Once Appel comes off the board, Wilson should be next. Coming off an elbow injury that limited his playing time, Wilson is an intriguing prospect. Some rumors have a team like the Philadelphia Phillies taking him as high as the middle of the first round, but others believe Wilson could slide into the second round. The Yankees, who have three picks near the end of the first round, have been mentioned as having a strong interest in the big slugger.

Junior first baseman Brian Ragira and junior pitcher A.J. Vanegas could come next. Baseball America has Vanegas as its 78th-ranked prospect in the draft, while it ranks Ragira 142nd. Vanegas was thought to be a potential first-round pick after wowing scouts with his velocity in the Cape Cod Baseball League last summer.

But a back injury and then mononucleosis cost Vanegas almost his entire junior season, making it much more difficult to judge his value. That will give Vanegas a tough decision. If he is not drafted as highly as he thinks he deserves, the junior could come back to Stanford for one more year.

Ragira is also a tricky case, but more of it has to do with his position. Scouts have commented that Ragira needs to show more power if he wants to make it to the majors, and might have to switch to a corner outfield position as well. Ragira did improve his power, hitting a career-high eight home runs, but teams will be looking to develop his slugging capabilities more in the minor leagues.

The remainder of draft-eligible players could land in a variety of different places in the unpredictable MLB draft. Seniors Justin Ringo and Garrett Hughes both had strong senior years after overcoming struggles in their first three years on the Farm to inflate their stock.

Senior pitchers Sahil Bloom and Dean McArdle, junior catcher Brant Whiting, junior second baseman Danny Diekreoger, junior pitcher Sam Lindquist, junior outfielder Brian Guymon, junior shortstop Lonnie Kauppila and junior utility player Brett Michael Doran are the other draft-eligible players on Stanford’s roster. Kauppila is the only one of the group ranked in Baseball America’s top-500 prospects, coming in at 361st.

The 2013 MLB Draft begins Thursday with the first two rounds, continues with rounds three through 10 on Friday and finishes with the final 30 rounds Sunday.

Contact Sam Fisher at safisher “at” stanford.edu.

The end of the school year means it’s time to say goodbye to another class of Stanford student-athletes.

It’s hard to believe that this moment has come up again so quickly; last year’s graduation just doesn’t seem that long ago.

2012 was a brutal graduation for Stanford Athletics. Quarterback Andrew Luck, offensive lineman David DeCastro, women’s basketball forward Nneka Ogwumike and leftfielder Stephen Piscotty all left the Farm as first-round draft picks in their respective sports.

Though football survived the loss of Luck and DeCastro to win the Pac-12 and the Rose Bowl Game, baseball and women’s basketball struggled without its departed stars.

But I’m not here to just talk about the stars — or success on the field for that matter. For me, the toughest part of graduation isn’t the fear of how teams will fare next season, it’s the pain of saying goodbye to another group of both friends and awesome people to cover for The Daily.

I could make wide-sweeping generalizations here to cover everyone in both categories, but that’ll just get boring. Instead, I want to focus on two people who I will miss the most when they’re not back on campus in the fall: women’s basketball’s Joslyn Tinkle and football’s Sam Schwartzstein.

Joslyn is one of the most fun people I’ve ever been around. From the moment I started going to women’s basketball games as a freshman to support my dormmate, junior forward Chiney Ogwumike, I’ve been a fan.

Last year, I had the honor of spending the entire season with the women’s basketball team as its radio broadcaster. With just a few exceptions, I went to every game, which meant many weekends spent in some random Pac-12 city with just the team around me.

And that’s when I really got to know Joslyn, on and off the court. The thing that impressed me most about her is how positive and energetic she always was. The basketball season is a grind — November to April is a long time — and there are many ups and downs. But somehow, no matter where we were, Joslyn always seemed so happy. When I got on the bus to start a trip, she would always shout my name. Joslyn made me feel welcome, and I’m going to miss her.

Sam and I became friends in one of the craziest ways. At Stern Dining my freshman year, Sam sat with a group of football players, including Luck, DeCastro and Owen Marecic, across from me. I couldn’t help but notice they all seemed to be looking at me and laughing, which was pretty intimidating for a freshman in their company. As I stood up to leave, Sam walked over and asked, “Is your name Sam? We were all joking that you looked like me and were acting like me, and then Owen was like, ‘I know that guy. His name is Sam too.’”

Believe it or not, even with that corny of a start, we became friends. Spending time with Sam and DeCastro was hilarious — and not just because of Sam’s jokes. I had always felt like one of the bigger kids, but they were enormous; seeing a picture of the three of us together made me feel tiny for the first time in my life.

Then, this past year, I got to cover Sam’s fifth-year senior season. Without DeCastro or Luck around, Sam captained Stanford football to a Pac-12 title and a Rose Bowl Game win — he was quick to remind both DeCastro and Luck that they had never achieved either — and I got to be there for all of it.

The one moment that captured it best came after Stanford won the Pac-12 Championship. For our postgame interview on the field, I knew Sam had to be the guest. And as the drizzle turned into rain at the end of our interview, Sam put his arms around my co-host’s and my shoulders. He was a champion, and he shared that with us.

I’m going to miss those two when they leave here after graduation. It’s crazy to think that our three years together are already gone, and even scarier to think that one year from now, I’ll have to say goodbye to everyone when my graduation cap flies into the air at Stanford Stadium.

Hopefully there will be a few more celebrations — and even more great moments with friends like Sam and Joslyn — before the cap hits the ground.

Sam Schwartzstein has never told Sam Fisher why he, Luck, Marecic and DeCastro were actually laughing at him. Tell Sam (Fisher) the truth at safisher “at” stanford.edu and follow him on Twitter at @SamFisher908.

Consider the team’s progression over the years.  After flaming out in horrific fashion at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, the identity of US soccer was very much in question. Then came a startling Confederations Cup run in which we unseated powerhouse Spain and a World Cup campaign in South Africa that was marked by—you guessed it—a performance worthy of the cardiac kids. Early concessions of goals, followed by dramatic fight-backs and scintillating victories—this was US soccer, for better or worse.

After watching the US fight and scratch to a wild, wacky and wantonly ebullient 4-3 win over Germany this past weekend, there is no doubt: US soccer is the wild card, the mystery flavor, the “you-never-know-what-you’re-gonna-get” international team. As a partial bystander, I would be overjoyed; as a fan, I am terrified.

Today, the position of the team stands at a crossroads. Under coach Jurgen Klinsmann, the US Soccer Federation has pursued a style of soccer difficult to create even in the best of circumstances—beautiful flowing attacking, backed up by dominant, direct midfield play and a stout back line. However, these are skills and attributes that must be honed and trained from impossibly young ages; without famed academies drilling these tactics into young impressionable athletes until they become second nature, there is no chance for a team to mesh in this mold.

As far as US soccer is concerned, in recent years, it remains an eclectic mix of transplanted internationals and a few transcendental native-born superstars, patched together with duct tape and quick words of coaching. The cohesiveness that so defines the Spains of the world is lacking.

In contrast, the team that let Klinsmann go, Germany, has seen its youth-development reach new heights. Other than evergreen striker Miroslav Klose, the entirety of the German B-team that voyaged to Washington, D.C., this weekend to play the US (the A-team is still recovering from the all-German Champions League final and league cup) was under the age of 23. Even with this depleted lineup, the Germans probably would have won had it not been for some heroic defending and some shoddy finishing by many a player (I’m especially looking at you, Per Mertesacker).

Why? Quite simply, their players, even lacking experience, know exactly what style of play they are supposed to espouse. The turns they make on the ball, the runs they execute off of it, everything is simply natural. They know exactly who they are and what they are doing. The US is still hashing that out.

The US qualifying for the World Cup is far from assured; as the win pointed out, the defense remains shaky and generating offense remains a hit-or-miss deal. However, the one thing that can be said is that the popularity of US soccer is steadily growing. Right now, the priority of sports that a typical athlete elects to pursue is football, then basketball, then baseball, then hockey and then soccer as a last resort.

But in the future, who knows? Maybe soccer will ascend to a place higher on the pantheon of sports.

Until then, I fear that watching US soccer, while incredibly entertaining, may also be hazardous to my health.

Vignesh Venkataraman is trying to will himself into a soccer fan, but with the upcoming release of “Rags to Rose: The Rise of Stanford Football,” football will reign supreme in his mind. Convince him otherwise at viggy’at’stanford.edu.

DURAN ALVAREZ/The Stanford Daily

The large size of the graduate student population—8,871 students compared to 6,999 undergraduates—marks a sharp reversal from the enrollment trends that have dominated much of Stanford’s history.

In every decade until 1990, the undergraduate population exceeded the graduate one. The gap narrowed by 1980, when the student body was about evenly split. Since then, the graduate population has continued to grow rapidly while the number of undergraduates has remained relatively constant.

Jeffrey Wachtel ’79, senior assistant to President Hennessy, noted that Hennessy sees several benefits in attempting to expand the undergraduate population and believes the expansion can be accomplished without “sacrificing the quality of the undergraduate experience.”

“We want to retain our identity as both an undergraduate and a graduate institution,” Wachtel said. “Although the numbers are relatively small that we can add, we think it’s sort of an obligation for the University.”

Hennessy said that he would like the undergraduate population to expand soon to counteract the growth of the graduate and postdoctoral populations over the last few decades.

“If we assume that there’s going to be some continuing growth in the graduate population, perhaps at a slower rate, then we will, over the next 20 years or so, completely make it impossible to contemplate increasing the undergraduate population, because the grad population will have taken up all the space on campus,” Hennessy said.

More housing

Though the expansion could begin as early as 2014, according to Wachtel, the growth in the population would also need to be accompanied by new facilities to maintain the University’s guarantee of housing to all undergraduates. The University, fresh off a Draw that left a record number of students unassigned after the first round, already plans to build new housing at Manzanita Park and Lagunita Court.

“Since we believe strongly in a residential education system, we have to make sure there are adequate housing and facilities,” Wachtel said. “It depends on the planning of the housing and raising the money for it.”

Once housing options are adjusted, Wachtel said that the University will begin increasing the size of the undergraduate population by approximately 100 students per year, with a plan to reevaluate the rate of expansion over time.

According to Hennessy, the upper bound on the population expansion would be 25 percent, as growth that is too dramatic could alter the undergraduate experience.

“Everybody has that sense that at some size the experience would change in a qualitative way, but nobody knows what that size is. If we had 16,000 [students], it would be very different to be an undergraduate on campus,” he said. “That’s far beyond what we’re thinking—but the nice thing of doing this gradually is that you can get some sense of what’s changing.”

Role of admissions

University officials noted that it is easier to target a specific number of admits for the undergraduate population compared to graduates, as the nature of graduate admissions makes it difficult to systematically increase or decrease the number of students admitted each year.

“Admissions at the graduate level is very decentralized to departments,” said Vice Provost for Graduate Education Patricia Gumport M.A. ’82 M.A. ’86 Ph.D. ’87. “At the undergraduate level, it’s very centralized—there’s one admissions office. So that’s why the enrollment can be managed at the undergrad level.”

While undergraduate enrollment has remained fairly constant over the last three decades, the number of applications received by the Office of Undergraduate Admission has skyrocketed.

Hennessy cited this increase in applications as a key reason behind the decision to expand the undergraduate population, estimating that the number of highly qualified applicants has roughly doubled during his tenure.

“The acceptance rate has plummeted,” Hennessy said. “A general sense that the number of students who are prepared to do work at a place like Stanford has grown significantly is reflected in our application pool.”

According to Hennessy, the University had previously planned to begin offering more spots to these applicants, but the 2008 financial crisis set back the idea. The gradual recovery of the endowment has prompted a renewed focus on expansion.

“For many years, growth was accommodated by the public institutions, namely the [University of California schools], but given the state dilemma over finances I don’t think we’re going to see tremendous expansion of the state system,” Hennessy said. “So I feel there’s some obligation [on] the private institutions to step forward and see what they can do.”

More faculty, internationals

An expansion in the undergraduate population may ultimately prove beneficial for graduate programs as well, with more undergraduates necessitating the hiring of additional faculty members.

“Graduate enrollment expands keeping pace with faculty growth, because as new faculty come in, we have a certain number of doctoral students that we can anticipate,” Gumport said. “As we grow the undergraduate enrollment at whatever pace the President deems appropriate, it’s likely that there will be some faculty growth, and with faculty growth there could be some grad student growth.”

However, Hennessy noted that the faculty population would likely not grow at the same rate as the undergraduate population. He added that the University is not looking to add faculty in all areas.

“Exactly how much the faculty would grow by depends on a lot of issues,” Hennessy said. “It’s varied up and down over time. There’s been a lot more faculty growth over the last 30 years than there has been undergraduate growth.”

Approximately seven percent of undergraduates are international students, while a third of graduate students come to Stanford from abroad, a difference that Hennessy said was a factor to be considered with respect to expanding the undergraduate population. “We slowly, over time, would like to introduce more international students, depending on what happens with international student recruiting and the shift in demographics on that side,” he said.

Ultimately, the University hopes to serve more students without reducing the quality of the education provided to both undergraduates and graduates, according to Hennessy.

“I think the goal would be to do this in a way that did not interfere with or hamper the current experience,” he said. “That will obviously mean that there will be have to be some fundraising done for it. I think it’s doable.”

Nikhita Obeegadoo and Neel Thakkar contributed to this article.

Rice will replace Tom Donilon, who is expected to step down in early July, in the post. She will become, after Condoleezza Rice, the second Stanford-affiliated African-American woman to serve as national security advisor.

Rice, who graduated from Stanford with Phi Beta Kappa honors, received serious consideration as a replacement for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last year — a position for which she was widely reported to be Obama’s first choice – but withdrew her name from consideration in December in the face of strong Republican opposition and a potentially contentious and lengthy confirmation process.

Republican criticism focused on Rice’s public statements in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2011, Benghazi terrorist attack, in which four Americans — including Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya — were killed. Five days after the attack, Rice claimed on several Sunday news shows that the attack was a spontaneous incident prompted by an amateur anti-Muslim video.

“She has proven that she either doesn’t understand or is not willing to accept evidence on its face,” said Senator John McCain on “Fox and Friends,” in opposing Rice’s potential nomination.

Obama sustained a robust defense of his potential pick before ultimately accepting her withdrawal from consideration and successfully nominating Senator John Kerry for the post.

“The American people can be proud to have a public servant of her caliber and character representing our country,” Obama said in a statement at the time.

Despite the extensive influence over foreign policy afforded the national security advisor, Rice will not be required to undergo a Senate confirmation process.

Former Obama aide Samantha Power will likely succeed Rice as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

In one such instance, the San Jose State University Department of Philosophy wrote an open letter in April to Harvard professor Michael Sandel, explaining their refusal to offer his edX course, Justice, as a part of their curriculum.

“The thought of the exact same social justice course being taught in various philosophy departments across the country is downright scary—something out of a dystopian novel,” the letter read. “Departments across the country possess unique specialization and character, and should stay that way…Diversity in schools of thought and plurality of points of view are at the heart of liberal education.”

That same month, the faculty of Amherst College voted against joining edX, a nonprofit founded by Harvard and MIT that has since merged with Stanford’s Class2Go platform, saying that doing so would run counter to its mission to be a “purposefully small residential community.”

Conflict in the humanities

The debate over MOOCs has been particularly contentious within the humanities, where classes are typically taught in smaller groups or seminars.

Humanities courses are among the least represented on both Coursera, a Stanford-developed online learning platform, and edX. While seeking to rectify that underrepresentation, administrators have also grappled with whether subjects like philosophy—which are largely open to interpretation, including in the grading process, and dependent on methods such as the Socratic dialogues—are suitable to become MOOCs.

Richard Saller, dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, suggested that there are certain qualities of the humanities that are better suited to an intimate classroom setting than to a massive online format.

“The humanities have to deal with ambiguity [and] with multiple answers,” Saller said. “The humanities, I think, benefit hugely from the exchange of different points of view [and] different arguments.”

In an effort to raise the visibility of the humanities among Stanford’s online course offerings, Saller and Senior Associate Dean for the Humanities and Arts Debra Satz approached five top faculty members last year with the intent of encouraging experimentation in an online format.

Four of the five—including Professor of English Eavan Boland and Professor of Classics Ian Morris—expressed enthusiasm for the idea. Some have committed to developing MOOCs over the next few years, while others have expressed interest in putting materials or lectures online but not necessarily going so far as to use a platform such as Coursera.

“I think there will be experiments,” Satz said. “What will fully come of this for the humanities, I think we don’t fully know.”

Saller plans to take a MOOC himself this summer—Social Psychology—to see what the experience is really like.

“I guess my hunch is that the kinds of platforms that are available now can provide a forum for exchange among students with different ideas,” Saller said. “But I doubt that that will come anywhere near the quality that we have in our introductory seminars.”

 Losing the personal touch

The one professor who was not interested in the proposition, Professor of Art History Alexander Nemerov, reiterated his opposition to offering his courses online.

“I think that part of the beauty of [giving a lecture] is how ephemeral it is,” he said. “I feel that the lecture is there for the people who are in the class. That is to say that it’s based on a face-to-face interaction between people all in one room. I don’t know how I feel about taking out the personal quality of it.”

Nemerov admitted that he was not certain whether there would always be a firm place for the brick-and-mortar classroom because “the momentum for this kind of thing seems so relentless.” He maintained, however, that he didn’t anticipate his own feelings changing.

“I know that I’ll continue to believe in the importance of public lectures, public speaking, the classroom experience,” he said. “It would be a sad day for me if it were all sort of farmed out and just made into online, on-demand education. It would seem that something very human would have been lost in that.”

Gavin Jones, chair of the English Department, said he is excited about the ways in which online education can supplement the work that faculty members are already doing.  The English Department recently hired a new academic technology specialist whose role, according to Jones, is to help faculty explore online education.

“I think it’s very easy for people to see the humanities as either against [online education] or skeptical of it, and I think you need some healthy skepticism” Jones said. “I don’t think all of it is good. But it’s a question of recognizing what is good about it and using that to improve the educational resources and the pedagogical mission that already exist.”

Daphne Koller Ph.D. ’94 and Andrew Ng, professors of computer science and Coursera’s co-founders, said that courses in the humanities and social sciences—in which the material is more open to interpretation—have proven more complicated to translate into an online format, especially when it came to the assessment and grading of the students.

“I think if you use computer-based grading, clearly you need to restrict the dimensions to things that more or less have a right answer or several right answers,” Koller said.

Nevertheless, she added that some of the most popular classes on Coursera have been humanities courses, including a philosophy class from Duke University, entitled Think Again: How to Reason and Argue, which is the single most popular course offered by the company.

“I think that humanities classes can be taught incredibly effectively online,” Koller said.

Both Ng and Koller said that new technology has made it progressively easier to simulate the classroom experience online. One new development is the introduction of peer grading, in which each assignment is graded by five different students using a rubric supplied by the professor.

According to Ng, research has shown that the grades students give each other are generally in line with the grades a professor would give. The qualitative feedback, however, is the more variable factor.

“Realistically, I have to admit that that feedback is not as insightful as is [the feedback of] a highly skilled professor,” Ng said. “On the flip side, it’s also useful to get five different perspectives.”

Satz said that she is open to the idea of peer grading but remains cautious of its limits.

“I think that writing is one of the most important skills that people learn in the humanities, and, in my experience, it tends to happen by people going line by line over essays and giving detailed feedback,” she said. “And that’s unlikely to happen in a course that has 150,000 students.”

She added that while peer grading may be a solution to this problem, it is necessarily an imperfect one.

“I think there’s some benefit to peer grading, but it’s different than having your work read by an expert,” she said, noting that in her own classes she brings years of experience to the grading process.

Coursera also offers students the opportunity to participate in online discussion forums, which Ng said are an attempt to mimic as closely as possible the experience of the intimate classroom discussion fundamental to many humanities courses. Ng described the forums as very successful so far but also limited.

“I think there are certain seminar classes where an instructor walks around a room, very discussion-based courses—I think we’re still figuring out the technology of how to offer that,” Ng said. “An online discussion forum is different. It is definitely different…I think we still have a long way to go, frankly, to simulate more of the average classroom discussion.”

Retaining valuable aspects

Satz said that she sees immense value in online education platforms such as Coursera, especially in their potential to lower the cost of higher education.

“To the extent that some online education helps bring the cost curve down and make education more affordable, that’s a good thing,” she said. “And if you can do it without sacrificing quality, or, where you need it, debate and diversity, that’s also a good thing.”

Satz added that she recognized the concerns raised by the San Jose State philosophy faculty, citing the risk of valuable parts of the learning experience being lost in online dissemination.

“One of the most important things is to not just deliver information [to students] but to teach them how to reason,” Satz said. “And if we don’t teach our students how to make knowledge, not just how to consume knowledge, then we’re not doing what higher education is supposed to do.”

Saller also emphasized the importance of offering students a range of perspectives.

“Diversity of ideas, like genetic diversity, I think is a good thing in certain subjects,” Saller said. “In Beginning Algebra, that’s probably not what you want, but in most humanities subjects, I think that is what you want, whether it’s literary interpretation or philosophy or historical interpretation.”

“I think we need to be cautious about overstating what this form of knowledge transfer can deliver,” Satz added.

Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Larry Diamond ’73 M.A. ’78 Ph.D. ’80 currently teaches a Coursera course entitled Democratic Development, which he said he has found rewarding and worth repeating. Nevertheless, he claimed that there will always be parts of the undergraduate experience that cannot be replaced by online learning.

“[Online education] is going to change higher education, and great universities are going have to adapt,” he said. “[But] we want to be sure we don’t lose what’s precious and irreplaceable about the undergraduate educational experience by becoming too infatuated with technology.”

For new assistant professors, however, another clock begins to tick immediately after they are hired: the tenure clock. Though policies vary slightly from university to university, Stanford assistant professors generally have seven years to show their colleagues that they deserve the security of tenure.

Nearly 50 percent of assistant professors who are hired at Stanford will go on to obtain tenure, according to Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences Richard Saller, who noted that around 80 percent of those faculty members who reached the point of being considered for tenure are granted it. Those seven years in between being hired and being reviewed for tenure, however, prompts scholars to frenetically juggle the demands of teaching, research, networking and life.

Tenure’s significance

Saller framed obtaining tenure as a means of ensuring job security and acquiring greater latitude for academic investigation.

“[It’s about] having the sense of freedom to pursue research directions that are high-risk,” he said. “It surprises trustees from the corporate world that our faculty continue to work and to be as productive as they are given that they have jobs for life after receiving tenure…The incentives at a place of this caliber are much more peer recognition and just [the] sheer joy of research and teaching.”

“You are freed up to do research in whatever you want,” said Claire Jarvis, assistant professor of English. “You have a place in the department even if the people in charge change.”

For Chris Lowe, assistant professor of biology, tenure allows a researcher doing basic scientific work the chance to ride out periods of low funding.

“You have the security to build a risky research project that’s high-yield but risky,” Lowe said. “Not only don’t you have to worry about job security, you might take more risk with research than you would otherwise. Tenure gives people a little more space to take risks and create more ambitious research goals.”

For Aliya Saperstein, assistant professor of sociology, tenure “is there to protect innovative scholarship. Once you have tenure, you don’t have to worry about losing your job [if] you’re doing something cutting edge or a little risky…In theory, you can do better work because you’re not constantly seeking approval in advance.”

Working towards tenure

Assistant professors teach two to four classes each year, along with working on their own research in labs and trying to get their work published in order to show their impact and worth as professors. Expectations for good academic work differ from department to department.

“The main goal of tenure is to make certain that the people given tenure are the best in the world at what they do,” said Jim Plummer M.S. ’67 Ph.D. ’71, dean of the School of Engineering.

To that end, according to Lowe, the biology department focuses on the quality and broad impact of its assistant professors’ work.

“One way to evaluate if you have an impact is the kind of publications you produce,” Lowe said. “Some universities are really interested in how many publications you’ve produced, whereas other universities are more interested in if you’re published in high-profile journals, which have brought interest to not just your immediate field but a much broader range of scientists.”

In the English department, the assistant professors are told from the beginning what they are expected to do in order to gain tenure.

“You must have one book in print and be working towards publishing a second [after seven years],” Jarvis said. “It has to have an impact…Plus, you have to have good course evaluations in the classes you teach and show service to the University.”

“In your day to day, you focus on classes, on grading, on students,” Jarvis added “But you’re still trying to get a book published. It’s still in the back of your mind, always.”

“[At Stanford], what matters is the quality and the impact of your work and if you are seen as someone who is an expert in your subfield or specialty…within your age cohort,” Saperstein said. “Have you made yourself stand out in your age cohort?”

Typically, assistant professors are aware of their progress and whether they are on track for being granted tenure, having been given feedback when they are reappointed after four years.

“You get an initial contract and then are reviewed after three or four years,” Saperstein said of the department of sociology’s process. “At that point, your department lets you know if you’re on track or not, if you need to do more work. Then you’re given another temporary contract and after that you come up for tenure.”

“After the mid-career review, you typically take a sabbatical the next year to give you more time to get ready for tenure,” she added.

“The way the process works in biology is that there is a three-year period where you are evaluated in a formal way by the department,” Lowe said. “They evaluate whether or not you’re getting grant funding and whether you’re getting published…You’re given a heads-up about any obvious problems you need to focus on in terms of proceeding.”

Tenure review

According to Saller, the process for earning tenure at Stanford is similar to that of peer institutions.

“The only thing that varies much [between universities] is the use of external committees at various points in the process,” he said. “Harvard has this elaborate process with an ad-hoc review by the president of the university with a committee that’s made up of half internal faculty, but from outside the department, and half external faculty.”

At Stanford, department chairs appoint committees of departmental faculty, who solicit external letters and other assessments. If the department as a whole votes to support a positive committee recommendation, the candidacy is forwarded to an appointment and promotion committee in the school’s dean’s office.

That committee was recently changed to be made up of department chairs from the appropriate academic cluster—social sciences, natural sciences or humanities—for each candidate, according to Saller.

“What that means is that the committee is made up of people closer to the area of expertise of the person under consideration,” he said. “That provides a more sensible committee.”

The dean of the school then decides whether to forward the application on to the Provost’s office, where it is reviewed by an advisory board and the Provost.

Each committee considers every case for tenure in that academic cluster, evaluating the assistant professors primarily on two major areas: research and teaching.

“It’s a combination of things,” Plummer said. “Some are semi-quantifiable, such as the number of publications or awards, talks that may have been given at conferences in his or her field…On the teaching side, we look at student evaluations, the amount of teaching done…along with letters from external senior people in the field of the candidate.”

These letters are solicited from 12-15 external people in a leadership position within the assistant professor’s field, according to Plummer. The professors are also evaluated as compared to a peer group of four to six of their peers.

“Ideally, [the peer group is composed of] recently tenured people in peer institutions in similar fields,” Plummer said. “We can make a specific comparison of the impact and contributions the Stanford candidate has had with respect to their peers. Where does the Stanford candidate fit?”

“More people are working in interdisciplinary fields or multiple fields and it becomes more difficult to choose the right set of letter writers if someone works in multiple areas or in between areas,” Plummer added. “It can be hard to find peers in peer institutions or finding referees who can write about the whole spectrum…You have to just recognize that someone is working in multiple fields and find people who can write for those fields.”

Course evaluations are included in the tenure process, an input that Saller described as flawed.

“It’s something less than a nuanced response,” he said. “Students will pick out one number in the column and mark it off down the page.”

“We would like to assign as much weight to teaching as to research—and we do take it seriously—but if we don’t feel as if we’ve got good information about [the professor’s teaching], it’s hard to know what to make of it,” Saller said.

That lack of information has a broader impact on the way in which the committees weight research and teaching.

“You can’t be a bad teacher and get tenure,” Saller said. “You can’t be an average researcher and get tenure…With teaching, we can probably identify the 10 percent who are brilliant and the 10 percent who are duds, and the 80 percent in between [are] very hard to rank in order.”

If a professor is denied tenure, they are given a year to find another job, either elsewhere in academia or in the corporate world.

“[The year] gives them the time to do a careful job search, time to figure out how to deal with Ph.D. students who haven’t finished up their research, helping them find another advisor or getting them closer to finishing,” Plummer said.

The future of tenure

As public funding for research and for education diminishes, many institutions across the country have cut back on the number of tenured positions they maintain. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported in 2010 that the proportion of college instructors who either had tenure or were on the tenure track dropped from 57 percent in 1975 to just 31 percent in 2007.

Despite such national trends, Saller and Plummer said the University, which currently has 1,995 tenured or tenure-line faculty, remained committed to maintaining the system of tenure.

“There’s a periodic question about whether we keep the tenure system, but I think it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future,” Saller said. “It’s hard to imagine, [because] the competition for top faculty is intense, which of our peer universities would do away with the tenure system and continue to try to recruit faculty.”

In competing with its peer institutions for talented faculty, Saller said Stanford focuses its energies on attracting young academics with high potential, with around 75 percent of professorial appointments going to assistant professors rather than tenured faculty from other institutions.

“When we make decisions about authorizing searches [for new faculty], we presume it’s going to be an assistant professor search unless there’s some kind of programmatic need for someone more senior,” Saller said. “We see it as our responsibility and goal to recruit young people who are of the quality to make tenure and then to nurture them in a way that they will succeed.”

Marshall Watkins contributed to this report.

Every seat in the room was occupied, and a line of students stood along the walls while others sat in the aisles. Just as Sahami was about to speak, a fire marshal entered the classroom and ordered people who were not seated to leave.

“I definitely felt a little overwhelmed since you see people sitting all the way down the stairs and corridors and basically everywhere you could fit a human body,” An said. “But it felt really cool to be a part of something so big. Knowing that [computer science] is becoming such an important part of campus and a field with so many possibilities, it was exciting to get involved in the community early.”

While An said that the fire hazard incident was joked about for weeks afterward, it serves as a somewhat ominous illustration of the problems associated with a significant trend that has irrevocably shaped Stanford’s perception—the rise of the Computer Science Department.

A department under pressure

Enrollment in CS106A: Programming Methodology, the department’s most popular class, has steadily increased over the past four years, reaching a record 1,817 students in the 2012-2013 academic year.

The number of students declaring a computer science major also rose substantially over that time period, with a projected 273 computer science declarations this academic year topping last year’s record-breaking figure of 246. Even graduate students have become involved, employing computer science skills for tasks as diverse as writing scripts to analyzing DNA base-pair dislocations or building models to represent market simulations.

While more students have benefited from an exposure to programming, Department of Computer Science Chair Jennifer Widom said the department has been hard-pressed to match the growth in student interest with faculty members and administrative resources.

“The department is actually under a serious amount of stress. We have faculty teaching classes with over 600 students quarter after quarter,” Widom said. “You might see Keith [Schwarz '10 M.S. '11] or Mehran up there smiling, but behind the scenes they’re working really hard. We are almost in crisis mode trying to deal with all these students.”

Schwarz, a lecturer who was hired in 2011, taught a total of 830 students during winter quarter in CS106A and CS103, the largest number of students any individual professor taught on campus.

Schwarz described the administrative issues involved in teaching so many students as taxing. He estimated that five percent of students had some type of administrative problem such as a scheduling problem or illness, which resulted in approximately 41 students needing special accommodations.

“I will try to meet with people, and I want to help out, but it gets to a point where I just can’t,” Schwarz said. “And it’s pretty terrible to have to tell someone, ‘I know you’re struggling and I really want to help out, but I just can’t.’ It’s not personal. I just hit the physical limit of what I’m capable of doing, and there’s no more time in my day.”

Fluctuations in popularity

While some computer science classes have experienced enrollment spikes, the trend is not universal. Other introductory classes, such as CS101: Introduction to Computing Principles and CS105: Introduction to Computers, have seen a substantial decline in enrollment since 2008.

According to Sahami, diverging enrollments in introductory classes can be attributed to interest in exploring higher-level computing. While CS106A leads to CS106B: Programming Abstractions, CS101 and CS105 are considered terminal classes in HTML and CSS.

Interest in the department itself has also has fluctuated over the years. Computer science reached a then-record 171 major declarations during the dot-com bubble of the late ’90s, only to plummet after the bubble burst, seeing just 71 declarations in 2006.

The most recent surge in the department’s popularity occurred after Sahami and a faculty curriculum committee redesigned the major in 2009. According to Sahami, curricular adjustments were made to underscore the growing synergy between computer science and other fields.

Major changes included a refocusing of the core to six classes—three theoretical and three with an emphasis on programming and systems—and the creation of a track system that gives students the ability to specialize in a certain area.

The department is still undergoing changes, as next year’s introductory classes will be likely be split into two lectures per class. Instead of having one 600-person CS106A class, both a morning and an afternoon section will be offered.

Schwarz said that the department also hopes to hire additional staff in order to teach more students.

“If we use last quarter as a data point, then yes, things are looking a bit strained here,” Schwarz said. “However, I don’t think we are hitting a breaking point where it’s like, things will actually start to disintegrate. It’s not like if you add one more person into a class, everything breaks.”

Though Schwarz said that the department is not yet facing a crisis, he noted that a continued growth at current levels would become unsustainable over a long period of time.

“The classes are still operational and going really well. If things continue to grow at this rate, then things are going to have to change,” he said. “I don’t anticipate next year being something where all hell breaks loose. We’re looking at this year and thinking, ‘Okay, we’re going to double up on these classes and it’s going to be okay.’”

Looking toward the future

Earlier this year, Professor of Computer Science Eric Roberts, the department’s associate director, proposed a plan to implement a formalized double major program with less stringent computer science requirements in which students obtain degrees in computer science and another subject.

Although it will take more than a year for the proposal to take full form, faculty members described the proposal as an opportunity to make the largest department on campus more accessible and flexible to students.

“Maybe it’s what we owe the students,” Widom said. “It’s a great major if students can major in CS and something else, and shouldn’t Stanford be offering its best degrees to its students that we can? We should, so I’m hoping that will come through.”

However, Widom noted that additional provisions to account for continued interest in computer science will force faculty and administrators to consider how the rise of the computer science department will impact Stanford.

“There’s a major question of, what does Stanford want to be? Does Stanford want to be a school comprised 40 percent of engineers and half of those in computer science?” Widom said. “That’s fine if that’s what Stanford wants to be, but Stanford has always been such a broad school. If half the students are majoring in engineering or some large fraction, I just think it will change the character of the University a little bit, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.”

While Widom said that she believes the current balance of majors is not unhealthy, Professor of History Jack Rakove was more critical of how many students are majoring in computer science.

“If you’re a humanist, you really worry that we’re churning out a large number of people who don’t really know how to read a book and are historically ignorant of the relationship between present and past,” Rakove said.

Rakove, who has taught humanities and social sciences at Stanford for 33 years, said that he supports technological innovation and doesn’t believe Stanford’s strong engineering presence is necessarily negative. He expressed concern, however, that an emphasis on engineering and computer science detracts from the traditional liberal undergraduate experience.

“The fact remains that some students who come in here and come out spend an awful lot of time programming and doing problem sets and are really in some fundamental sense ignorant about some things they probably ought to know,” he said.

However, Sahami argued that as technology increasingly becomes a significant presence in everyday life, computer science has developed into an integral part of a liberal education.

“It’s somewhat of a misnomer to say that an education in computing is not a liberal education,” Sahami said. “If you think about it, a liberal education is being able to be a well-educated person generally. I think the fact that everyone needs to know something about computing these days makes them a well-rounded person. If you didn’t know anything about computing, that’d be a little bit odd in the 21st century.”

Schwarz agreed that computing skills have become increasingly important and emphasized his hope that “cross talk” between disciplines at Stanford will allow for new computing discoveries that incorporate the wide array of knowledge and expertise on campus.

“It would be fantastic for Stanford to get on the map where there were headlines every week that Stanford scientists do ‘blank’ with computers,” he said. “The story will not be an extremely complex technological solution, but instead an extremely obvious technological solution that nobody thought to try before because nobody actually knew it would work [or] knew how to do it and now all of a sudden they do.”

The size of next year’s cabinet marks a significant increase over this year’s cabinet, which consisted of three members. It remains smaller, however, than the cabinet of former ASSU President Michael Cruz ’12 and Vice President Stewart Macgregor-Dennis ’13, which had 16 members.

“Essentially Dan and I thought that offering a spot to anyone [like Cruz and Macgregor-Dennis did] wasn’t going to work as well, but we did feel like we wanted a bigger body than [outgoing ASSU Executives] Robbie [Zimbroff '12 M.A. '13 and Will [Wagstaff '12 M.A. '13] had,” Gallagher said. “Fifteen was the number we came up with to keep the cabinet small and focused with tangible objectives.”

Unlike Zimbroff and Wagstaff, who waited until summer before making cabinet appointments, Gallagher and Ashton started their search immediately after being elected.

In addition to sending out a campus-wide email with an application, the co-presidents sought out former colleagues—from Ashton’s time in the ASSU Undergraduate Senate and Gallagher’s time at The Daily—and other outstanding students. They also sought out individuals from several endorsement groups involved in the ASSU election process.

“Ultimately, we looked for individuals who were very motivated, very self driven, and able to deliver a project totally by themselves,” Gallagher said. “We also wanted a cabinet that represented a good breadth and depth of the student body.”

Using a basic scoring process, Gallagher and Ashton selected 25 students to interview and eventually gave positions to 15 people, slightly more than their initial target of 10 to 12 people. The final 15 include a coterminal student, a law student, a student at the Graduate School of Business and a mixture of undergraduates.

“More than 15 would be too much for us to manage, and less than 15 would be denying too many good candidates,” Gallagher said. “We felt like these really talented people are willing to help the ASSU and work with it, and there was not really any compelling reason to deny them from doing that.”

Cabinet appointee and former ASSU Senator Viraj Bindra ’15 described the incoming cabinet as the right size.

“I think that three people precludes the cabinet from doing much else when you already have one person who is in charge of all of the financial stuff on the Exec side,” he said. “I think that [having] 15 [members] allows a lot of us to pursue our own smaller initiatives and also come together and put all hands on deck for bigger things that we want to get done.”

Unlike the outgoing cabinet, none of the new cabinet members will have formal titles. Members will each work on individual projects, but the co-presidents expressed hope that the absence of titles will give members the flexibility to work on several different types of projects.

“I think it allows us to adapt more to the student body instead of pigeonholing everyone in something that’s static for the whole year,” Gallagher said.

Susie Choi ’12 J.D. ’15, a first-year law student who is returning to the Executive cabinet for the third time in her Stanford career, expressed surprise at the lack of teams or chairs, which had been used in her two previous years on cabinet (2008-2009 and 2010-2011). She noted, however, that the change might prove useful.

“In the past I was solely working on projects pertaining to a single issue, which was a little bit limiting in a sense,” she said. “While the team structure could definitely be useful, I think that not having it could really help us branch out into areas that pop up during the year.”

Gallagher expressed hope that this structural change will eliminate any hierarchy within the cabinet.

“We really feel that any of these people could have been an ASSU Exec,” Gallagher said. “I can emphasize the fact that these are all equal members.”

The only exception to the lack of hierarchy is Chief of Staff Alon Elhanan ’14. Elhanan, a former ASSU senator, will be responsible for helping Ashton and Gallagher with day-to-day business and overseeing the cabinet members.

“My number one goal is making sure the cabinet is a well-functioning organization,” he said. “[It] is a project that in itself…needs to have clear goals and clear outlines. My job is to check that the rest of the cabinet are staying on their game, are motivated and have all of the resources that they need to complete their tasks.”

While that will be Elhanan’s main responsibility, he is also committed to making sure that the ASSU’s various institutions work together better.

“I’m really going to try to make it a focus of my position to make sure that Dan and Billy as Exec are interacting with the Senate and class presidents in a way that creates synergy,” Elhanan said. “To be practical, the ASSU is sometimes not on the same page. I think that there can really be a lot of good done by sharing information and sharing resources.”

The new cabinet’s first meeting Monday reflected a broad desire to work with the Undergraduate Senate and Graduate Student Council to achieve mutually desirable goals, and a general consensus developed around being more accessible to students and creating a campus community that will allow more student overlap beyond residential environments and student groups.

“We are going to consolidate all of our ideas within the next couple of weeks and work will definitely start this summer,” Bindra said. “Everyone is really raring to get started.”

For most, the honors thesis journey accounts for one of the most challenging—and enriching—experiences of their academic careers.

From research to thesis

Cody Aros ’13, a biology major, wrote his thesis on long non-coding RNAs and their role in coetaneous squamous cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer. The goal of Aros’ project was to identify, from a clinical standpoint, the novel therapies of this skin cancer through a genomic characterization of the disease and by looking for RNA species that are important in regulating epidermal homeostasis.

“It’s quite a mouthful,” he said. “I joined the lab at the end of my freshman year and the [post-doctoral student] that I worked closely with had the foundations for the project,” he said. “After we performed the sequencing on patient samples we had, I studied one candidate RNA that was interesting to us.”

Aros spent about 9-10 hours per week in the lab during his freshmen year and continued into his sophomore year. During his summers he worked for 40-50 hours a week and then spent closer to 20 hours a week in the lab his junior and senior years. As a junior, he realized that what began as a research assistant position could turn into something more integral to his academic experience.

For Aros, the entire process—as opposed to simply the end product—was enjoyable.

“Having done the research beforehand…the process of writing all of what I had done throughout my undergraduate experience was rewarding,” he said. “It was both reflective and I felt that I was learning how to best convey my results…I felt like everything came full circle—everything came together and there was a finality to it.

Despite his gratification, Aros’ process, like that of many other students, was not without difficulties.

“I started working on this one project during my sophomore year, and I could kind of see it turning into a thesis project, but I’d say by the end of my sophomore year, beginning of junior year, the project kind of failed,” he said. “It was part of the process and I used the skills I learned in that project to guide my next project.”

For Aros, the most challenging part was coming to the realization that one of the projects he was working on was not going to make it into his thesis.

“The thesis experience is not just the project that succeeded and what you ultimately end up writing on,” he said. “For me, it’s from the start of my research to the end of it.”

Much in the same vein as Aros, Ruby Lee ’13 was inspired to embark on her honors thesis after joining her professor’s lab.

Lee’s honors thesis focuses on a data process platform she built that allows the user to extract data from any slice of a simulation, giving a visual representation drawn in real-time with the data that is being regenerated.

“I took a class [with] my advisor, [Assistant Professor of Bioengineering] Markus Covert, who taught BIOE 101…and was compelled by him, so I talked to him more and joined his lab,” she said. “I was given flexibility in what I wanted to do, so I spent the academic year talking to people, getting a handle on the work they were doing…With the data visualization project, I felt like I had a good handle on how I could approach it and I had an idea about the end product.”

According to Lee, a goal of the project was to develop a tool that would help the lab and make it possible to communicate the data to the public.

“Originally, I was just going to do research without honors,” Lee said. “[Bioengineering] is a new major and this was the first year they offered the option…I thought it aligned really well with what I was going to be doing.”

In Lee’s opinion, the most captivating part of her experience was the multidimensionality of her finished work.

“In my case, [the honors thesis process] was interesting because the main goal is the website and the thesis is more of a way to explain how it works and the process that went into it, why we chose to implement or deny things,” she said. “It’s nice to have the thesis and the written process, with the website as a second component.”

One of the challenges facing Lee was conveying the relevancy of such conceptual—as opposed to practical—research.

“From the perspective of people in the lab, it’s clear why we’d be motived to create this,” Lee said. “It was harder to get the general public to see it…putting into words to explain the rationale of something we’d thought about very intensely but never put into writing. There are not very many other data visualization platforms…so finding similar software programs to compare to…and drawing parallels was challenging.”

Pursuing passions

For Michael Hughes ’13, a history major, one challenge presented by his thesis was time management. Hughes, who wrote his thesis on the New Deal-era Supreme Court, conceded that he was prone to procrastination.

“It’s human nature to procrastinate,” he said. “It’s about making yourself, ahead of time, get something done, and then you can circle back. In the fall [in a class for students working on honors theses], I wrote about half to a third…It wasn’t really a thesis but more of a template, heavily based on secondary sources…It was immensely helpful to write that part of it and incorporate it into a longer document. I had something I could use as a guiding post.”

Hughes used his honors project as a means of combining two of his academic interests: the Supreme Court and economics.

“I was interested in the Supreme Court and the Court’s approach to government in general history, in respect to economics,” he said. “[The Great Depression] was a pivotal time. The court wasn’t completely against governmental regulation but would defer to the legislature when it came to economic issues…I wanted to complicate things by looking at early cases that didn’t fit that narrative.”

Hughes also cited the value of an honors thesis in providing a capstone project for his undergraduate career.

Matthaeus Weinhardt ’13 M.A. ’13 decided to forego taking fewer classes as a senior to focus on his thesis, instead choosing to coterm and take 45 units of graduate level courses.

“I decided on psychology fall of my freshmen year,” Weinhardt said. “It’s a pretty small major and left me with space, so I started thinking about what else I could do…It was a nice opportunity to do something more in-depth, either with honors or a coterm. I had heard that it was possible to do a coterm in four years, so I decided to try.”

Weinhardt’s research focuses on intuitive decision-making and integration of value. He led different psychological experiments that involved gambling games played on a computer, such as choosing between different colored shapes.

“We can infer the intuitive decisions people are making…and whether intuition picks up on shapes that pay more or less,” he said.

Weinhardt began thinking about doing his own original research project early on and applied for the Chappell-Lougee research grant.

“I ended up doing four or five experiments,” he said. “Some worked and some did not, but I was fortunate that the most recent did work.”

Like Aros, the most challenging part for Weinhardt was when the first study did not work out.

“It was supposed to be a replication of another study, with some changes made to it,” Weinhardt said. “Everyone agreed they were good changes and that it would work better, and then it didn’t. The results were confusing and didn’t make sense with the possible theories we were considering. We had to go back to the drawing board and figure out why the results looked this way.”

In order to avoid a similar situation, Weinhardt recommended careful deliberation and an early start.

“If your ideas are good and you have some persistence, then you will find what you’re looking for, even if it’s not the original way you thought of it,” he added. “You will contribute to the field.”

Forging a distinct path

As a junior, Ty Olson ’14 has only just begun the research into his thesis project but has a clear idea of what he wants to do: a short narrative film that takes place in North Dakota, where Olson is from, and focuses on a Norwegian-American family.

“Where I’m from is heavily populated with Norwegian immigrants,” Olson said. “It’s ethnocentric, but not in a bad way…It perpetuates old world traditions and cultures, values and ideals…[The film] is a portrait of an overlooked part of our society.”

Olson, whose cinematic project diverges significantly from most other honors theses, is interested in studying themes of foreignness in America.

“I had an idea for a short film and American Studies was the only place that allowed me to do it,” he said. “[An honors project] gives me academic support…I can get professional and technical support elsewhere, but it’s great discussing the themes I’m talking about and having the support of an advisor and a department at Stanford.”

In addition to a 22-minute film, Olson’s project will include a 10- to 15-page reflection paper that will tie in some of the academic questions he studies in his movie, exploring his questions more and bringing in some of the other materials he has been studying in preparation.

Olson has some experience making short films and filming professional music videos for Scandinavian artists, but he hopes to gain more experience with an endeavor for which he will travel to North Dakota to conduct filming.

“It’s a short film that will be comprised of a lot of family members and locals,” he said.

The biggest challenge Olson envisions will be fundraising for the project. Although he has some leads, he concedes that recruiting community members for financial support will not be easy.

Still, Olson is hopeful that his project will succeed, citing his stalwart devotion to the inspiration—his Norwegian heritage—that encouraged him to pursue an honors thesis in the first place.

“People start to lose track of why they are interested [in their topic],” he said. “You need to hone in on it and what it is that made you interested in the first place…you’ll inject more of a personal connection to your thesis, since you live with it for a year.”

Aros echoed this perspective.

“Pick something you are interested in,” Aros said. “It’s a long road and it can be challenging. If you’re not doing something you’re interested in, it will be harder.”

Several accounting and finance courses are offered through the management science & engineering (MS&E) and economics departments, and undergraduates are sometimes allowed to enroll in Graduate School of Business (GSB) elective classes, according to GSB Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Madhav Rajan.

“If you look at the top five MBA programs, the only one with an undergraduate program is the Wharton [School of the University of Pennsylvania],” he said. “That is more of an exception than the rule. I think that it is not necessarily appropriate for undergraduates.”

Rajan, who was a professor at Wharton before coming to Stanford, has taught undergraduates in several of his classes and said they were “exceedingly smart.” Though willing to teach undergraduates if given the opportunity, Rajan said that creating a business major at Stanford would be difficult.

“I’m sure undergrads here are great and a lot of faculty would enjoy teaching them. That is not an issue at all,” he said. “The difficulty for us would be getting the faculty to do it because right now we are at capacity. So the biggest cost of doing an undergrad major would be expanding the faculty significantly.”

 A liberal education

GSB Assistant Professor of Economics Nicolas Lambert M.S. ’09 Ph.D. ’10 allowed 10 seniors—all computer science majors—to enroll in his GSB class on intermediate microeconomics this year. Almost 250 graduate students also took the class.

“I targeted people with a certain background because there is a fair amount of technical content,” he said. “My group this year is really great. There is no difference in quality, which is because I got people who want to be there. It’s not like we had to sell the course to them.”

Though Lambert said that it would be a “good thing” to bring business school classes to undergraduate students, he advised against creating a business major, as he believes that undergraduates need a background in broader subjects.

“Having a general background is a strength, not a limitation,” he said. “It’s good not being too specialized because it’s the only time in your life when you can afford to do so. Anytime after that, you have to be more focused.”

Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Harry Elam agreed, noting that Stanford strives to provide students with a well-rounded liberal education.

“We want students to come here and explore in their freshman year, then declare a major in their sophomore year that they’re passionate about and can delve deeply into, not just as a means to an end,” he said. “An undergraduate business major is not something we see that can identify with Stanford.”

Elam noted that there are other opportunities for students to “dip their feet into business,” and emphasized the importance of skills that cannot be taught in business courses.

“How you get life experience, how you understand people’s relationships to one another, how you think critically—all of that informs how you approach business,” he said. “It’s not simply knowing accounting or any aspect of business.”

However, Elam said that in the future, the University will look into facilitating more formal business education experiences for undergraduate students.

“Our hope is that we can offer students additional business classes, like a course in marketing for undergraduates,” he said. “With the new requirements, we want to create a course with the business school that satisfies the ethics requirement, for example. We’ll see if that course develops.”

Alternative opportunities

According to Rajan, only about 17 percent of the approximately 396 students in each incoming class at the GSB have an undergraduate business major, with the majority of students having received undergraduate degrees in majors such as economics, engineering and math.

While a business major is not a requirement for admission to business school, many undergraduates interested in business often search for alternative educational opportunities through campus organizations such as Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE), the Stanford Pre-Business Association (SPBA) and Stanford Women in Business (SWIB).

Every year, SSE holds a Business Leadership Program (BLP), an intensive five-day conference for 50 rising seniors and coterm students. According to BLP General Manager of Development Miller Aaron ’15, the program gives students the opportunity to meet with corporate sponsors, participate in case study workshops and attend lectures by Stanford business professors.

“The BLP is designed to provide students interested in business as a career field the exposure that they are looking for,” Aaron said.

SPBA, Stanford’s largest undergraduate community of business leaders, also offers educational opportunities for prospective business students. SPBA hosts several programs in partnership with the GSB, and holds consulting workshops with representatives from firms including Deloitte, Parthenon and Accenture.

“This group is good for underclassmen who are looking to get their feet wet,” said SPBA Co-President Feyi Lawoyin ’13. “We work as a resource to give students who want some kind of experience.”

Despite her personal interest in business, Lawoyin said that she is not concerned by Stanford’s lack of an undergraduate business major.

“I don’t think that they’re necessarily looked upon very highly in a lot of circumstances,” she said. “I know people at USC who have done well with an undergraduate business major who have said that their major didn’t really do anything.”

Courtesy of Amanda Martinez

From hosting monthly barn dances to contributing to Stanford’s developing sustainable agricultural efforts, Pie Ranch, a working farm in Pescadero, Calif., has rapidly assumed an important role in the Stanford community.

Located about an hour’s drive away from campus, the ranch recently partnered with the Stanford Food Project in an effort to educate students about more nutritious and environmentally friendly farming practices, as well as co-hosting Stanford’s first annual Barn Dance at the Black Community Services Center (BCSC) last month.

“It is so successful there and so popular among Stanford students that the Stanford Food Project and I decided to have a barn dance here on campus,” said Amanda Martinez ’14, a member of the Stanford Food Project.

According to Martinez, the event was modeled after a Pie Ranch monthly event, including a potluck at the Lake Lagunita fire pit and a barn dance featuring the same caller that calls all of the Pie Ranch dances. Martinez also brought in the County Line Kickers, the band that usually performs at Pie Ranch.

“If it is as successful as we think it’s going to be, maybe we’ll make it a quarterly event—once a quarter or twice a quarter, we’ll have to see how it goes,” she said before the event.

Roots of a ranch

Located in the coastal town of Pescadero, Pie Ranch has at its heart the values of community and education through fresh, local food.

“One of the reasons I’m so grateful to be working at Pie Ranch is that [we are] so invested in working with these communities where youth are gaining exposure to alternative food systems and learning about what health and nutrition mean for them personally,” said Alexandra Villegas, youth development coordinator for Pie Ranch. “[We] teach them about cooking…and about the farm and where we source our food.”

Pie Ranch has operated as a working farm since 2005, three years after founders Nancy Vail, Jered Lawson and Karen Heisler purchased the pie-shaped plot of land with the intention of creating a model center of sustainable farming and education.

“The co-founders of Pie Ranch have always been invested in the idea of creating a space where students and youth can learn about the food system from seed to plate,” Villegas said. “That’s always been part of the vision of Pie Ranch.”

Work and dancing

Although some students—like Margaret Rawson ’12, who co-founded a Stanford Pre-Orientation Trip (SPOT) that educates incoming freshman about sustainable farming on the ranch, and Martinez—have worked closely with Villegas and Pie Ranch, others may be drawn more by the ranch’s monthly barn dances.

“They’re a lot of fun—it’s a relaxed environment [and a] beautiful space,” Rawson, The Daily’s chief operating officer and business manager, said. “I love the story of Pie Ranch—it’s shaped like two pieces of pie that meet in the middle, and of course, they make pie.”

Some students, such as Annie Osborn ’14, even serve as musicians during the festivities, assuming positions typically filled by older members of the Pescadero community.

“The barn dances have been going on for as long as Pie Ranch has been operating, and they tie into Pie Ranch’s vision because Pie Ranch is all about building community,” Villegas said.

According to Villegas, the barn dance begins with a “work day” at 2 p.m., followed by a 5 p.m. potluck and then the evening line dances.

“All three of those events are about getting to know your neighbors, talking to someone that you’ve never talked to before and having a dialogue about what food means to you and connecting over food,” Villegas said. “Food is a language that we all speak with and communicate with each other around.”

Having attended her first barn dance during her freshman year, Martinez suggested that the event has only increased in popularity on the Farm since.

“Every time I go, the barn is just packed and I see a ton of familiar Stanford faces, which is awesome,” she said.

In addition to barn dances, the ranch also offers farm tours for those curious about the inner workings of sustainable agriculture.

“They’re a great opportunity for people to learn all about the history of the farm,” Martinez said. “[The owners are] very transparent. They really like to talk to people all about their financial journey with Pie Ranch—how they’ve been able to fund it—because they want people to know that it is possible and they want people to feel empowered to start their own sustainable farms.”

Martinez noted that the range of crop and livestock offerings has gradually expanded to include everything needed—wheat for flour, chickens to produce eggs and berries to provide fillings—to bake a pie.

“[It’s] a really great experience…to see every step in the process, growing everything and then making it into a pie,” she said.

Martinez plans to intern at the ranch this summer while conducting research on carbon intake in the farm’s soil for her earth systems honors thesis.

“Not only are they a sustainable farm, but they also incorporate several different types of educational programs, like their internship and apprenticeship program[s], to train future farmers,” Martinez said. “They’re just creating this awesome culture around food, and they’re changing the local food system for the better.”

Mahmoud will retain her position for, unusually, a third year. Eitan Winer Pinkas ’12 M.S. ’12 was initially appointed to the position but a human resources issue prevented him from taking the job.

Additionally, Senate Chair Ben Holston ’15 announced that, the Senate’s remaining discretionary funds for the 2012-13 academic year will be allocated, under the supervision of Treasurer Ryan Matsumoto ’16, to the Governor’s Corner Dining Society to help support legal fees stemming from its reincorporation into the University. While Senate bylaws do not require the Senate to pass a bill to allocate discretionary funds, other senators supported the decision.

The latest investment follows a 2009 gift of $5.75 million that created the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory on campus. The laboratory has already successfully introduced an autonomous Audi TTS, among other breakthrough research projects.

The new funds will go towards initiatives in artificial intelligence, data security and vehicle dynamics research. Martin Winterkorn, chair of Volkswagen’s board of management, will join the advisory board to add a corporate perspective on issues facing the School of Engineering.

The contribution comes as part of Volkswagen’s plans to invest more than $5 billion in North America over the next three years.

“Through partnerships like the one with Stanford University, Volkswagen Group is actively investing in the future of automotive innovation, paving the way for the development of next-generation solutions that will transform the vehicles of tomorrow,” said Peter Oel, executive director of the Volkswagen Group Electronics Research Laboratory, to The Chatanoogan.