Austin Block – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Mon, 06 Apr 2015 03:56:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Austin Block – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Common Core: An imperfect improvement over the status quo https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/05/common-core-an-imperfect-improvement-over-the-status-quo/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/05/common-core-an-imperfect-improvement-over-the-status-quo/#respond Mon, 06 Apr 2015 03:56:10 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1098303 The evidence that does exist suggests that the Common Core represents a small, if shaky, step in the right direction. Critics would be better off recognizing the Common Core for what it is – an imperfect improvement over the status quo – and supporting its successful implementation than fighting a losing battle to repeal what has become a new national norm.

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In my last column, I attempted to clarify misconceptions about the Common Core, promising to take a more evaluative stance on the standards in my next column. This is that column. First, it’s probably necessary to rehash a few key facts. The Common Core is a set of educational standards (not a curriculum, not a standardized test) that was developed by educational leaders from 48 of the 50 states. The federal government did play a significant role in convincing states to adopt “college and career ready” standards like the Common Core, but it played no role in their development.

Although no one knows exactly how rigorous the standards are, a 2010 Fordham Institute Report estimates that the standards are more rigorous than those of about three-quarters of U.S. states. Though Common Core developers did conduct research and consult pre-existing standards, claims that the Common Core is “evidence-based” are probably overblown. Several educational leaders and professors have also criticized the content of the standards.

So where does this set of facts leave us? It leaves us with a set of standards that are imperfect but better than the national status quo. As mentioned above, there do exist critics who argue that the standards are a step backward, and support for the Common Core among teachers and the general public is declining. A few states have withdrawn their adoption of the Common Core in the face of public backlash.

That said, it would be hard to argue that the Common Core is not an improvement over many state standards. A national survey of school district leaders found that 90 percent of surveyed leaders believe that the standards are more rigorous than their state’s previous standards and that more than 75 percent of leaders believe that implementation of the Common Core will “lead to improved skills among students in [their] district.” A recent study from Michigan State University finds that the Common Core math standards are very similar to those of top-performing countries on the 1995 Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS), and it also finds a correlation between “proximity of a state’s standards” to the Common Core math standards and math achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Although this evidence is definitely not causal, when paired with the survey of school leaders and with the Fordham Institute Report, it at least suggests that the Common Core is better than many pre-existing state standards.

Moreover, even if the Michigan State study’s correlation is a spurious one, and even if the Fordham Institute’s report is, as some claim, biased or overblown, states are free to modify the Common Core or even drop the standards entirely (though states that drop the Common Core do face significant pressure to create new standards very quickly). In essence, then, the Common Core’s primary contribution to American public education is to create a lower bound for academic rigor. Though it may not be a godsend, as some would have us believe, it provides a solid set of standards that any state can adopt and adapt to fit its particular educational needs.

Two other critiques are also prominent in the backlash against Common Core. First, some critics highlight the cost of implementation. While a legitimate concern two or three years ago, at this point, complaining about cost is akin to crying over spilt milk. Implementation is underway nationwide, and although it is quite expensive, undoing the infrastructure that has been created in recent years is, for many states, far too late. It would be far more sensible to modify the standards than to revoke them entirely.

Second, some social justice advocates argue that the Common Core (or at least the tests aligned with the standards) will widen, rather than narrow, the achievement gap. In a certain sense, they are right. Preliminary evidence from Kentucky and New York does show that achievement gaps widened shortly after Common Core implementation. However, the fact that gaps expanded does not necessarily indicate that the standards exacerbate educational inequity. What seems much more likely is that the Common Core has uncovered disparities that already existed. Low standards can mask achievement gaps by making it easier for low-performing students to pass. If this is in fact what has occurred in recent years, then raising standards should, by making educational inequities more apparent, force policymakers to address these issues with greater urgency.

Ultimately, there is very little that is certain with regards to the Common Core. The research base is incredibly thin, and it is therefore impossible to say with confidence exactly how the Common Core will affect educational inequity and student achievement. That said, the evidence that does exist suggests that the Common Core represents a small, if shaky, step in the right direction. Critics would be better off recognizing the Common Core for what it is – an imperfect improvement over the status quo – and supporting its successful implementation than fighting a losing battle to repeal what has become a new national norm.

Contact Austin Block at aeblock ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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A clarification of Common Core misconceptions https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/01/a-clarification-of-common-core-misconceptions/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/01/a-clarification-of-common-core-misconceptions/#comments Mon, 02 Mar 2015 04:20:24 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1096747 In recent years, polemical critics on both sides have obscured the legitimate issues surrounding the Common Core. Rather than promote rational dialogue, they have caricaturized the issue, depicting the standards as confusing, developmentally inappropriate, and tyrannical on one hand and as near-flawless, research-based brilliance on the other.

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The era of good feelings in education is long gone. The optimistic, bi-partisan rhetoric that surrounded passage of No Child Left Behind has fallen away, replaced with a weird, difficult-to-parse battle that ignores typical partisan lines. As the mudslinging has escalated, perhaps the most divisive issue has been the Common Core, a set of math and English/Language Arts standards that have been adopted by 43 states, four territories and Washington D.C.

Supporters believe the standards will raise the academic bar by pushing teachers to develop students’ critical thinking skills and to prepare all children, not just the most privileged, for college and career. Critics attack the standards from a variety of angles. Some call them a federal takeover of public education, while others call them confusing, in conflict with child development research and likely to demoralize low achieving students, widen achievement gaps or lead more students to drop out of school. Ultimately, the primary problem in this debate is that hardly anyone knows what they’re talking about. According to a recent poll from Education Next, huge percentages of the American populace (including a good chunk of teachers) don’t know basic facts about the Common Core. Because the facts are so unclear, the goal of this column is not to take sides but to clarify important information about the Common Core standards.

Perhaps one of the most contentious questions surrounding Common Core is whether or not the standards represent national intrusion into state power over education. To a certain extent, both the critics and supporters are right: the federal government did not develop the standards itself, nor did it provide money for their development. However, it did play a role in their adoption. The Obama administration’s Race to the Top program granted priority to states that adopted “college and career ready standards,” and it has informally convinced other states to do the same in exchange for relief from No Child Left Behind accountability.

Although states could adopt standards other than the Common Core, it was easier to adopt the Common Core than to develop “college and career ready” standards of their own. And while the Common Core standards are not a curriculum and do not dictate teaching materials or techniques, standards do have influence over what is taught if they affect test design. Since about half of the states have adopted Common Core-aligned assessments, and since teachers have a tendency to teach to the test, these standards are influencing the material being taught in (and the curricula being developed for) American classrooms.

Another contested issue is whether or not the Common Core is more rigorous than existing state and international education standards. The short answer is that no one knows for sure. From an international perspective, Common Core supporters claim that the standards are “internationally benchmarked,” but all that really means is that drafters of the standards consulted other nations’ standards in the process of developing their own. The best information on how Common Core compares to previous state standards comes from a 2010 Fordham Institute report, which found that Common Core English/Language Arts standards were “clearer and more rigorous” than those of 37 states and that Common Core math standards were clearer and more rigorous than those of 39 states. However, the standards are also less rigorous than those of some states, and, as critic Frederick Hess has pointed out, the Fordham Institute endorses the standards. Whether or not Fordham’s endorsement biased the analysis is impossible to know.

The third major debate is over the extent to which Common Core is “evidence-based.” Critics claim that there is no evidence supporting Common Core, while supporters claim that the standards are deeply rooted in research. Unsurprisingly, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. In the development process, drafters of the standards did consult some existing research and look at pre-existing standards, and the Common Core development and feedback groups included a wide variety of educators, researchers, administrators and professors.

That said, a large group of experts has expressed concerns that the standards conflict with research on early childhood development, and it is probably the case that some Common Core proponents have exaggerated the research base supporting the standards in order to promote their adoption. Moreover, the research community has such a limited understanding of standards that we’re not even sure how much standards actually influence student achievement. They may have a significant effect on achievement, they may not or they may only have an influence when paired with other education reforms. Therefore, although significant research did go into the development process, Common Core supporters probably promise too much when they wax poetic about the benefits of “evidence-based” standards.

Unfortunately, in recent years, polemical critics on both sides have obscured the legitimate issues surrounding the Common Core. Rather than promote rational dialogue, they have caricaturized the issue, depicting the standards as confusing, developmentally inappropriate and tyrannical on one hand and as near-flawless, research-based brilliance on the other. Ultimately though, as is often the case, truths lie somewhere in the mean between the extremes. In my next column, I will build off of the analysis in this article to develop a more evaluative stance on the merits of Common Core.

Contact Austin Block at aeblock ‘at’ stanford.edu

 

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Why I worry about ed tech https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/01/why-i-worry-about-ed-tech/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/01/why-i-worry-about-ed-tech/#comments Mon, 02 Feb 2015 04:11:48 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1094710 Before we push technology into every domain of children’s educational lives, we must develop a more robust research base on the effects such technology might have on student learning. Moreover, we must also consider the opportunity cost of education technology.

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At Stanford, it’s easy to get excited about the potential for technology to revolutionize education. In recent years, the ed tech industry has grown from almost nothing into a multi-billion dollar industry, with many of its companies centered in Silicon Valley and some of them directly associated with Stanford itself. While Coursera attempts to open up massive open online courses to the world, companies like Knewton work on personalized learning and districts like Los Angeles Unified roll out initiatives to provide iPads for every child.

This column is not about why ed tech is awesome. In fact, it’s mostly the opposite: It describes some of the problems that technology can create in K-12 education. Let me be clear: I’m not a complete cynic about education technology. There are some good ed tech companies out there. For example, I love the way that Palo Alto School District uses a learning management software called Schoology to make it easier for students to keep track of assignments. With time, I do believe that schools will get better at using technology to enhance instruction.

But there are also a lot of unintended consequences that come along with bringing more and more technology into the classroom and into the home. As someone with experience tutoring middle school students in several different programs, I have seen how technology can prove harmful rather than helpful. The following list of concerns stems partially from my own observations and partially from other sources.

  1.     Technology is really distracting. For example, many students I have worked with are allowed to read homework assignments and take notes on an iPad. Although intended to boost student engagement, use of an iPad provides a host of opportunities for procrastination. Instead of reading efficiently and jotting down notes, students find themselves playing with the zoom function, agonizing over which color highlighter to use (so many choices!!!!) and swiping endlessly back and forth between note-taking apps, textbook apps and Internet apps. I have heard from more than one tutor that iPad use makes it harder, not easier, to help students learn. Even if safeguards are put in place to prevent students from going on Facebook or YouTube, the features of the academic applications themselves can lead to endless distraction.
  2.     Content-focused apps often forget who their audiences are (children). There are a lot of apps out there that provide endless streams of math problems at various levels and on a variety of topics. The questions are good, the interface is clear, fun and engaging; plus, when a student gets a problem wrong, there’s a detailed explanation of how to solve the problem. Unfortunately, however, when students sit down to use one of these apps, one of two things tends to happen: Either students avoid challenging themselves and only do problems that they know, or they resort to guessing and don’t read the explanations of the questions they get wrong. Either way, little learning happens. A well-designed app doesn’t change the fact that kids are kids. How many 12-year-olds are going to force themselves to do ever-more challenging problems when they could do the same easy ones over and over again?
  3.    Too many videos, not enough reading. Some new ed tech companies – like BrainPop – seem to focus on video-based learning rather than reading-based learning. While videos are a great way to get students interested and engaged, I fear for students’ reading skills. What happens when something they need to know can’t be found in video form? Will they have the critical reading skills to make meaning of a difficult text?
  4.     Too many screens, not enough books. There is some research that suggests that people who read on screens may comprehend less, skim more and/or get tired more easily. Although there are critics of this research, and although there are also studies that find no significant differences between screen and print reading comprehension, there are enough reputable studies casting doubts on screen-based reading to give us pause. It is in kindergarten through twelfth grade that we teach students the critical reading skills they’ll use for the rest of their lives. When I see students who no longer read any lengthy text on paper, I start to worry.

Before we push technology into every domain of children’s educational lives, we must develop a more robust research base on the effects such technology might have on student learning. Moreover, we must also consider the opportunity cost of education technology. Rather than blindly buying the newest technology (in the case of Los Angeles Unified, for hundreds of millions of dollars), school districts must carefully consider whether or not a particular ed tech investment is more worthwhile than other school improvement efforts. Education technology companies often want us to buy into the narrative that they provide silver bullet solutions to education reform. I’m not yet ready to make that discursive leap of faith.

Contact Austin Block at aeblock ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Obama’s community college proposal: Too early to judge https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/21/obamas-community-college-proposal-too-early-to-judge/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/01/21/obamas-community-college-proposal-too-early-to-judge/#respond Thu, 22 Jan 2015 06:29:23 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1094193 At first glance, it sounds misanthropic to criticize President Obama’s new community college plan. How could one possibly criticize a program whose goal is to make community college – a gateway to secure, middle class jobs – free for everyone? However, the implications of Obama’s proposal aren’t as clear as they initially seem. Although the plan is undoubtedly good politics, it is too early to tell if it is also good policy.

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At first glance, it sounds misanthropic to criticize President Obama’s new community college plan. How could one possibly criticize a program whose goal is to make community college — a gateway to secure, middle class jobs — free for everyone? However, the implications of Obama’s proposal aren’t as clear as they initially seem. Although the plan is undoubtedly good politics, it is too early to tell if it is also good policy.

On one hand, it is a populist policy: By increasing access to education for large swathes of the American public, Obama portrays himself as the champion of both middle- and low-income Americans. On the other, the policy can also be cast as a pro-business, patriotic investment in the American economy. Regardless of whether or not Congress actually funds his plan, the mere announcement of the proposal wins Obama a significant political victory.

However, while the plan is politically savvy, there are a few legitimate concerns about its policy implications. First, by offering subsidies to all community college students who attend at least half-time and maintain a 2.5 GPA, the plan could waste public dollars on students who do not need financial aid. A survey found that in the 2010-11 school year, 22% of students in households earning $100,000 or more attended community college, a number likely inflated by the recession (it was 12% a year earlier), but nevertheless significant. In light of this reality, some argue that it is irresponsible to spend a sizable chunk of a $60 billion plan on students who don’t really need financial aid.

Second, as two William and Mary economists point out, this program might not work exactly as planned. When low-income students earn admission to a four-year university, financial aid often does not cover the full cost of attendance. As a result, if Obama’s proposal becomes law, low-income students may choose to save money by attending community college for two years and then transferring to a university to finish their bachelor’s degrees. Unfortunately, however, the probability that a student will actually transfer is not particularly high. Thanks to a number of factors, including over-enrollment, large class sizes, bureaucratic obstacles, unstructured academic programs and abominable counselor-to-student ratios (as high as 1500-1), the national three-year graduation rate from community colleges is 20%. Although many low-income students already choose community colleges over universities in order to cut costs, Obama’s plan may exacerbate this trend, funneling even more low-income students into schools from which they are much less likely to graduate.

Third, subsidizing community college may place significant pressure on four-year public colleges. If the number of students attending community college rises, the number of students applying to transfer to public universities is also likely to rise. This will force universities to respond in one of two ways: Either they can increase selectivity in transfer admissions, or they can admit more transfer students and face higher costs and larger class sizes. In the first situation, the universities’ increased selectivity negates some of the benefits of attending community college in the first place. In the second, universities are forced to make a choice between raising tuition and diluting educational quality. In the absence of financial support for cash-strapped public universities, some of the promise of community college reform is lost.

As damning as these concerns might sound, the Century Foundation’s Richard Kahlenberg interprets the supposed flaws of the plan in a fundamentally different light. Rather than wasting money on middle- and upper-income students, Kahlenberg claims, the universality of the administration’s proposal will do something special: By luring middle and high-income students into community colleges, it will promote greater socioeconomic integration in these schools. Since middle- and high-income people tend to have more influence in state politics, increasing the number of middle- and high-income people who have a stake in the community college system could give those colleges greater leverage in state legislatures. Community colleges could then use this leverage to win more state funding and improve the quality of instruction.

In addition, Kahlenberg cites an author who argues that, as the percentage of low-income students at community colleges rises, teachers may reduce expectations and water down curricula. If greater integration can counteract this trend, then it may also have immediate educational value, even in the absence of changes in political bargaining power at the state level. Finally, Kahlenberg argues that the simplicity of the Obama plan could also work in its favor: If complex financial aid systems deter some low-income students from attending community college, then simplifying the process may induce more students to enter the system.

For now, the jury is still out: Whether or not Obama’s plan is good policy depends on the extent to which each of the above hypotheses will actually come to fruition. If free community college increases integration and enrollment without distorting the decision-making of low-income students, then it is probably a good plan. In contrast, if the plan does little to increase the power of community colleges and merely tracks more low-income students into poorly funded schools, then it may do more harm than good. Of course, the ultimate goal is to make both community colleges and four-year universities more accessible and more affordable to Americans of all income levels. However, in the absence of more comprehensive reform, the only thing voters can do is to compare the benefits and costs of a more limited, single-sector plan.

Contact Austin Block at aeblock ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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Why newspapers should not have columnists https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/09/why-newspapers-should-not-have-columnists/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/11/09/why-newspapers-should-not-have-columnists/#comments Mon, 10 Nov 2014 05:33:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1091689 The world might be a better place if newspaper columns didn’t exist. Same with news channel and talk radio punditry. The problem with each of these media is the same: they distract from genuine factual reporting while making overblown claims to legitimacy and credibility. In the process, they misinform more than they inform.

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This is going to sound hypocritical, but I’m going to say it anyway: The world might be a better place if newspaper columns didn’t exist. Same with news channel and talk radio punditry. The problem with each of these media is the same: They distract from genuine factual reporting while making overblown claims to legitimacy and credibility. In the process, they misinform more than they inform.

Disclaimer: I’m definitely not arguing that we ought to abolish public expression of opinion. That would be censorship. However, there should be a greater separation between news and opinion than currently exists. Newspapers and news channels should focus solely on reporting the news, while separate publications should be tasked with disseminating analytical opinion.

First, when published in a medium whose fundamental purpose is to share factual information (a.k.a. a newspaper or news channel), columns can become a substitute for actual news. Shorter, juicier and easier to read, they are likely to be the first pieces that people read and the first that they share on social media. People only have a limited amount of time, and when they focus more of that time on columns, they may reduce time spent on learning the facts. Without this basic factual grounding, people are less able to think for themselves or to think critically about the opinions and analyses they read. Making things worse, if columns regularly attract more readership than news articles, newspapers and news channels may reallocate time and resources toward opinions pieces, detracting from the quality and quantity of news publication.

Second, when newspapers hire regular columnists – or, by analogy, when news channels hire pundits – they give those select few people outsized, undeserved claims to intellectual authority on topics they aren’t always qualified to write or speak about. For example, when it comes to education reform, I would much rather read a blog post by Larry Cuban – a former teacher, district superintendent, and education professor – than I would a column by famed New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who has never worked in education and probably isn’t the best analyst of education reform. Nevertheless, people elevate the opinions of people like Kristof in large part (though not entirely) because they write for reputable newspapers. If separate, opinions-only media were the dominant forums for subjective analysis, those publications could hire a variety of specialized journalists rather than a smaller number of generalists who aren’t qualified to write about some of the topics they attempt to tackle.

This argument is not without objections. First, one might claim that academic journals and think tanks already disseminate expert opinion and that it is important to have newspaper journalists to write opinions columns that are more accessible to and engaging for the general public. To a certain extent, this argument makes sense: Journalists do play an important role in making the arcane (laws, research papers, etc.) understandable. However, they do not have to be linked to a news organization in order to serve that function. Separate opinions publications could hire journalists who write accessibly but are also very knowledgeable about their subject areas.

Second, one might argue that unifying opinions and news under a single publication draw in readers or watchers who would not otherwise engage with political and social issues at all. However, separate opinions publications would play the same role. Catchy headlines, bold claims and controversial opinions will always attract people’s attention, regardless of where they are published. Moreover, if people are turning on the news or reading a newspaper in the first place, they are probably interested in learning about the news, so it is difficult to see how opinions disseminated through news media might reach those otherwise uninterested in becoming informed.

A final possible objection is that news itself is often biased or opinionated, and that separating opinions from news might create a false perception that the news itself is always objective. While interesting, this argument is entirely speculative. One could certainly craft a narrative in which separating opinions from news creates a false perception of objectivity among news organizations, but one could just as plausibly craft the opposite narrative. Perhaps drawing a sharper line between news and opinions would increase public scrutiny of news outlets, because people would have greater expectations that their newspapers and news channels will report the facts alone.

I acknowledge that this column is extremely idealistic: Practically speaking, newspaper columns and news channel pundits aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. That being said, we ought to be legitimately concerned about the ways in which news and opinions are combined in today’s news media. Rather than blindly give special weight to the handful of regular columnists employed by The New York Times or The Washington Post, we ought to read the opinions of those who are truly knowledgeable about the areas in which they write. At the same time, newspapers must (1) make sure their columnists only write on topics about which they are knowledgeable and (2) if they truly have the public good in mind, be careful not to let the allure of high-readership columns detract from the more important business of reporting the news as objectively as possible.

Contact Austin Block at aeblock ‘at’ stanford.edu

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Why we should be skeptical of “corporate” education reform https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/26/why-we-should-be-skeptical-of-corporate-education-reform/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/26/why-we-should-be-skeptical-of-corporate-education-reform/#comments Mon, 27 Oct 2014 05:31:17 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1090654 Before jumping to conclusions and experimenting on schools with the highest-need students, we must proceed with caution, think carefully, and look at the available research. The scientific method – not the unproven theories of the private sector – provides the safest ground for the development of sustainable solutions to problems in public education.

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Like so many other political issues, education reform has, sadly, devolved into a battle between two polarized camps. First, there are the “corporate” education reformers, people like former DC Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and, to a certain extent, President Barack Obama.

Corporate education reformers apply the logic and incentive structure of the private sector to public education (hence the name). They focus on test scores as a measure of school and student achievement, and they tell a story in which bureaucratic schools hold back progress while mediocre teachers are protected by strong tenure laws and disincentivized from improving by compensation structures that fail to reward merit. They advocate for school choice (vouchers, charters, etc.) to inject competition and innovation into public education, and they attack teachers unions, pushing to end tenure laws, implement teacher evaluations based (in part) on student test scores, and use those evaluations to fire the worst and give bonuses to the best.

On the other side is everyone else. By no means a unified force, the second camp is defined as much by its opposition to corporate reform as it is by the solutions it promotes. Key members of this side include writer Diane Ravitch, Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten. They point to inequities in funding, severe poverty, an excessive focus on testing and insufficient support for teachers as primary obstacles to education reform.

As is so often the case, there is at least a grain of truth on each side. Corporate reformers are right to emphasize reform of stagnating schools, and there definitely are bad teachers out there who are protected by the shield of lifetime tenure. That being said, we ought to be deeply concerned about the general philosophy of corporate reform.

If one hopes to apply the ideas of one sector to inform decisions in another, one must assume that the two sectors are similar enough in substance for the ideas to be transferrable. This is a shaky assumption. In particular, there are three broad areas in which business and education are not comparable:

  1. Education outcomes are incredibly complex, so quality is much harder to define and to measure than it is in business, where profit (and perhaps customer satisfaction surveys) rule the day. The things we expect educators to teach our students (critical thinking, creativity, factual knowledge, intellectual curiosity, study skills, social skills, open-mindedness, etc.) are so nebulous and so diverse that we cannot develop (or at least have not yet developed) standardized metrics for learning in each of these areas. Moreover, even if we did develop such metrics, and we could use them easily, no two educators would agree on how to weight these learning goals in comparison to one another. Given these facts, the corporate reformer’s focus on test scores is myopic. While tests, if well-designed, can be a useful tool for measuring a certain type of learning, overreliance on their results may incentivize teachers to “teach to the test,” reduce time spent on un-tested subjects and even cheat on behalf of their students.
  1. In business, managers can link outcomes (success of a project, cost savings, etc.) to the actions of a particular person or group of people. In education, however, it is extremely difficult to connect student outcomes (i.e. test scores) to any particular teacher. Although value-added modeling attempts to do so, by controlling for student demographics and learning trends, the statistical science relies on several problematic assumptions, one of which is that students are randomly assigned to the classrooms in which they are taught. Therefore, at least in the current moment, it makes little sense to base hiring, firing and merit-pay decisions on teacher evaluations that rely in large part on value-added models. Evaluating professionals is necessary in any field, but evaluating them according to flawed metrics is a recipe for disaster.
  1. Finally, the dynamics of choice and competition play out differently in business than in schools. Good businesses grow and attract lots of interest, and bad businesses go bankrupt because consumers express their preferences through the products they buy. Although theoretically useful, this theory can be misleading when applied to public schooling. Schools are often highly valued centers of community. Thus, even if a school is failing, it is often better to reform it from the inside – and preserve that community hub – than to shut it down (like a failing business), as many corporate reformers would prefer. Additionally, as UCLA Professor Gary Orfield demonstrates in a new book, unregulated school choice can perpetuate inequality, because well-off families will continue to find ways to concentrate themselves in the highest performing schools. If managed correctly, systems of school choice can actually reduce segregation, but blindly applying principles of choice to public education will not lead to beneficial outcomes.

Ultimately, the goal of this article is neither to denigrate the corporate reform movement nor to prop up its critics. That being said, we need to be careful about the comparisons we make between business and education. In the years to come, some insights of business may prove useful in reforming American public education. For example, as mentioned earlier, carefully regulated systems of school choice could actually lead to greater racial and socioeconomic integration. However, before jumping to conclusions and experimenting on schools with the highest-need students, we must proceed with caution, think carefully and look at the available research. The scientific method – not the unproven theories of the private sector – provides the safest ground for the development of sustainable solutions to problems in public education.

Contact Austin Block at aeblock ‘at’ Stanford.edu.

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College students: Force Teach for America to narrow its scope https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/12/college-students-force-teach-for-america-to-narrow-its-scope/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/10/12/college-students-force-teach-for-america-to-narrow-its-scope/#respond Mon, 13 Oct 2014 02:43:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1089567 Until that day comes, though, say no to TFA, or apply only on the condition that you are placed in a school truly desperate for staff. Only by standing their ground can college students force the organization to change for the better. Low-income school districts don’t need under-qualified graduates to serve and then leave. They need well-trained teachers who are in the profession to stay.

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There are few organizations more controversial than Teach for America (TFA), a nonprofit that sends high-performing college graduates to teach in low-income neighborhoods for two years. While some applaud the organization for creating a pipeline for highly motivated students to teach in under-resourced schools, others criticize it for inadequately preparing its recruits, de-professionalizing the teaching force, perpetuating already-destructive cycles of rapid teacher turnover and embodying the problematic “white knight” complex (which drives “enlightened,” upper-middle class people to move into urban neighborhoods to “save” their low-income residents).

For many Stanford students, this controversy is immediately relevant. According to data from Stanford’s Office of Institutional Research and Career Development Center, TFA was No. 4 on the list of “top employers by positions offered” for the Class of 2013. Given this polarized context, a natural question arises: When that friendly TFA email pops into your inbox, how should you respond?

You should respond by saying, “No thank you, unless you promise to place me in a school with a critical teacher shortage.” It must first be said that neither TFA nor its corps members are evil. In fact, most people who join TFA are well-intentioned people, and some of them are even good teachers. Many of my personal education role models – researchers, teachers and government officials alike – are Teach for America alumni, and they certainly made positive impacts in the communities in which they served.

So what’s the problem with the organization? Fundamentally, the problem is that TFA is a distraction from and a drain on more meaningful education reform. While journalists, bloggers, advocates and researchers argue back and forth over whether or not TFA teachers perform slightly better or slightly worse than other teachers, public attention is diverted from the things that  really matter. How do we strengthen teacher preparation programs and improve teacher retention, especially in low-income communities? How do we make school funding more equitable? How do we support teachers with meaningful professional development and opportunities to work together? These are the questions we should be arguing about, and yet, outside of government and research circles, these questions, let alone answers, are nowhere to be found.

TFA does more than just consume the national spotlight. It also serves to steal government and philanthropic funds that could be better used on other, more clearly effective programs. The fact is that it is fairly expensive to hire from Teach for America. TFA charges partner districts for the cost of placing its teachers, and the high rate at which corps members leave the profession (especially among those who start TFA directly out of college) forces districts to constantly recruit new teachers, which imposes costs of its own.

Adding insult to injury, TFA’s under-qualified teachers sometimes replace fully credentialed teachers: While some recruits are placed in schools with critical teacher shortages, others go to work in cities like cities like Philadelphia and Chicago, which have been laying off teachers in reaction to severe budget cuts.

Of course, TFA hasn’t done it all wrong. The organization has brought much-needed attention to inequities in our school system, and its success in recruiting motivated students into careers in education may also have done some good (though some argue instead that even in this regard, the organization and its alumni have pushed education policy in the wrong direction)f.

Moreover, in an admirable show of humility, TFA seems to finally be acknowledging its flaws. Following a nationwide “listening tour” conducted by its two new CEOs, TFA recently announced a set of promising pilot programs that could lead to permanent organizational reform. For example, one pilot is trying out a model in which college seniors participate in a full year of “pre-service training” prior to entering the classroom. Finally, TFA provides an affordable pathway into teaching for those who cannot take on the financial burden of graduate school (although the new urban teacher residency movement is a better affordable route to alternative certification).

Ultimately, though, these caveats are too limited to support a decision to join TFA. For the current Stanford senior class, these basic facts remain: If you do TFA, you will become part of an organization that places underprepared teachers in high-need schools and then charges them for this placement. Some of those schools are suffering from a teacher shortage, in which case you’ll probably do a lot of good, but many others have no lack of hiring options, in which case you may not be a better teacher than the person you have replaced. Moreover, regardless of how well you teach, you will be siphoning away public and private dollars that could be better used on something else. Some day, Teach for America may, as the Harvard Student Labor Action Movement recommends, find a successful niche, as an organization that sends highly motivated graduates to alleviate critical teacher shortages while policymakers figure out how to fill those vacancies in a more sustainable way.

Until that day comes, though, say no to TFA, or apply only on the condition that you are placed in a school truly desperate for staff. Only by standing their ground can college students force the organization to change for the better. Low-income school districts don’t need under-qualified graduates to serve and then leave. They need well-trained teachers who are in the profession to stay.

Contact Austin Block at aeblock ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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College rhetoric can marginalize other paths to responsible citizenship https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/29/college-rhetoric-can-marginalize-other-paths-to-responsible-citizenship/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/29/college-rhetoric-can-marginalize-other-paths-to-responsible-citizenship/#respond Mon, 29 Sep 2014 17:24:05 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1088494 In my last column, I supported my arguments about race, gender and class studies by referencing two “primary goals” of a liberal arts education: to prepare ourselves to make the world a better place and to expose ourselves to a wide variety of perspectives and ideas. According to the undergraduate admissions page, the three main […]

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In my last column, I supported my arguments about race, gender and class studies by referencing two “primary goals” of a liberal arts education: to prepare ourselves to make the world a better place and to expose ourselves to a wide variety of perspectives and ideas. According to the undergraduate admissions page, the three main purposes of the Stanford general education curriculum are to expose students to a variety of fields of study, to help students “prepare to become responsible members of society” and to introduce them to “the major social, historical, cultural and intellectual forces that shape the contemporary world.”

These statements, especially the second one, are useful in a general sense, but they merit further interrogation. What exactly do we mean when we say that liberal arts education helps students become more responsible citizens? How exactly do classes – in many ways very divorced from reality – help us become better contributors to the world around us?

Stanford (and most colleges) would respond with the classic college cliché: College teaches you how to think systematically and rigorously and exposes you to a wide variety of ideas and problems to think about. “Who are the people who live in this world, what are their lives like and how do they think?” are questions a liberal arts education teaches us to ask, as we sit pensively in pristinely-maintained seminar rooms. “What are the biggest human problems, and how might we go about fixing them? And what is my role in that massive global project?”

Although I describe this viewpoint with some sarcasm, I do think it has a lot of merit. Liberal arts courses really do help us think more rigorously about important human problems, and they do a good job of humbling us, of making us aware of just how big the world is and how little we really know.

However, it seems more than a little arrogant to claim that those who receive a liberal arts education are somehow better prepared than others to lead responsible lives. Does four years of liberal arts coursework really make someone more likely to treat her neighbor with kindness or to work a job with integrity? Does knowledge of literary theory or of the laws of physics somehow elevate one’s moral stature? Of course not. Liberal arts college graduates are no more moral than their peers. It was these graduates, after all, who caused the financial crisis and who perpetuate a “revolving door” culture of elitist, anti-democratic influence in Washington.

So why does this sentiment exist that a liberal arts education prepares a person for responsible citizenship? And what exactly does it mean to be a responsible member of society, anyways? We can reasonably define “responsible member of society” as someone who, at the end of his or her life, leaves the society in which he or she lived somehow better than it started. The nuance lies here: A good liberal arts education (if properly consumed) prepares its students to exercise certain types of social responsibility. For example, a liberal arts education might provide one good path (there are of course others) for people to become more inclusive policymakers, more insightful philosophers or perhaps even more informed voters. However, a liberal arts education does relatively little to help a restaurant owner delight his patrons, to help a homeless shelter proprietor serve her guests or to help people become better parents, spouses, friends or community members. These roles are all just as important as that of the policymaker or philosopher in promoting societal well-being, and yet they are often dismissed in the college setting.

In the end, I write this column not to disparage liberal arts colleges or the students who attend them, but rather to open up discussion about the role colleges play in the greater picture: that of the development of a responsible citizenry. Obviously, college professors, students and administrators at liberal arts colleges do a lot of good work in preparing the next generation for lives of thoughtful social impact. However, especially in semi-insular (and sometimes self-congratulatory) places like Stanford, it is easy for high-minded liberal arts rhetoric to make students feel superior. In light of this fact, it is important that we (and the colleges we attend) examine our rhetoric about the benefits and purpose of college, which can, intentionally or accidentally, subordinate other, equally valid paths to responsible and ethical citizenship.

Contact Austin Block at aeblock ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford’s Engaging Diversity requirement needs to be strengthened https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/16/stanfords-engaging-diversity-requirement-needs-to-be-strengthened/ https://stanforddaily.com/2014/09/16/stanfords-engaging-diversity-requirement-needs-to-be-strengthened/#respond Wed, 17 Sep 2014 03:37:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1087983 Once the Class of 2016 graduates, Stanford’s transition to Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing general education requirements will be complete. This change is welcome, because the old system badly needed fixing: The Disciplinary Breadth obligation was superficial and unsatisfying, and the Education for Citizenship (EC) requirement was well-meaning but flawed (more on this later). Unfortunately, […]

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Once the Class of 2016 graduates, Stanford’s transition to Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing general education requirements will be complete. This change is welcome, because the old system badly needed fixing: The Disciplinary Breadth obligation was superficial and unsatisfying, and the Education for Citizenship (EC) requirement was well-meaning but flawed (more on this later). Unfortunately, however, the new regime is only somewhat better, for one reason: A Stanford student can still earn a diploma without engaging meaningfully with the ways in which race, class, gender and sexual orientation shape the modern world.

Education for Citizenship attempted to support the study of race, class, gender and sexuality by requiring students to take classes in two of four areas: ethical reasoning, American culture, the global community and gender studies. However, as the 2012 Study of Undergraduate Education at Stanford (SUES) humorously acknowledged, the requirement described “four broad areas as essential to responsible citizenship” and then “[asked] students to choose from only two of these areas.”

If students chose certain combinations of classes, they might never study race, class, gender and sexual orientation. To be fair, many pairs of classes address at least one of these ideas. For example, a student could satisfy the EC requirements by taking Economy and Economics of Ancient Greece (global community) and Justice (ethical reasoning), both of which probably touch on issues of class.

However, one of the key insights of critical race theory is that privilege and disadvantage are intersectional. It’s hard to understand race without studying the ways in which it interacts with class and gender. From this perspective, studying just class or just race (or even taking just African-American studies but not Asian-American studies) isn’t enough to meet the demands of a liberal arts education, which requires us to think across disciplines.

Unfortunately, Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing does little to fix this problem. Although the engaging diversity (ED) requirement pushes students toward studies in race, class, gender and sexuality, it is only a one-class requirement. It takes more than one class to really wrap one’s head around ideas like privilege and intersectionality. Moreover, there are still ways to get around this requirement without directly addressing these ideas. For example, while I’m sure it’s a great and valuable class, I’m skeptical that “Peruvian Archaeology,” which satisfies the ED requirement, would help students think rigorously about why the Michael Brown case has the country in an uproar or how incessant comments about female politicians’ appearance reify gender prejudices.

Although this problem is important, the solution isn’t particularly difficult. Create a more rigorous screening process for deciding which classes satisfy the ED requirement, and raise the number of required ED courses from one to two. Screening out classes like “Peruvian Archaeology” will force students into other classes that are more applicable to a 21st-century discussion on race, gender and class, and adding to the requirement will ensure that students study these ideas from at least two angles.

Admittedly, the schedules of engineers and pre-meds are already tight. However, thanks to the substitution of Thinking Matters (one quarter) for IHUM (three quarters), the new requirements are less burdensome than the previous ones. This should be a reasonable accommodation.

In addition to receiving pushback from pre-meds and engineers, a stronger race, gender and class studies requirement might also be viewed as overly paternalistic. However, it is no more paternalistic than any other general education requirement. To restrict students’ class choices in any way is to acknowledge that there are certain decisions that students should not make for themselves. Therefore, unless one rejects general education in its entirety, any criticism of a requirement must explain why its content is not important enough to be included in our general education system.

In my view, it is pretty easy to argue why race, gender and class studies ought to be included, for two reasons. First, responsible study of the humanities requires students to engage with a variety of contributors to human artistic, cultural, literary and philosophical achievement. Unfortunately, however, many humanities classes either present white, straight, cisgender, male, Eurocentric histories and perspectives as the invisible norm or omit other perspectives entirely. Therefore, if students wish to gain an honest and well-rounded liberal arts education, one in which multiple perspectives are thoughtfully and equitably explored, their education should include history, literature and philosophy classes offered through feminist, gender and sexuality studies, African and African-American studies, comparative studies in race and ethnicity and other departments that emphasize the study of race, class and gender.

In addition to helping students attain a more honest humanities education, a strengthened ED requirement would also help students work toward another important goal of a liberal arts education: to prepare students to make positive contributions to the world they inhabit. Sadly, we live in a society where privileges and burdens are unevenly distributed, often along lines of race, class, gender and sexual orientation. Thus, if we are to act responsibly in this world (i.e. if we are to act in such a way as to break down, rather than reinforce, this unfair distribution of advantages), then we need to be able to understand, critique and push back against the status quo. All it takes is a look at Google’s diversity numbers or at the underrepresentation of women in high-level surgery to highlight the relevance of this understudied field, whether you’re a political scientist, engineer or doctor.

 

Contact Austin Block at aeblock ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Golf: Women to host Stanford Intercollegiate, men hope to bounce back at U.S. Collegiate Championship https://stanforddaily.com/2012/10/17/golf-women-to-host-stanford-intercollegiate-men-hope-to-bounce-back-at-u-s-collegiate-championship/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/10/17/golf-women-to-host-stanford-intercollegiate-men-hope-to-bounce-back-at-u-s-collegiate-championship/#respond Thu, 18 Oct 2012 06:31:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1071976 Entering its final tournament of the fall season, the women’s golf team hopes to build on its recent third-place finish at the Edean Ihlanfeldt Invitational. The men’s team, on the other hand, is hoping to erase the past with a good finish at this weekend’s U.S. Collegiate Championship, hosted by Georgia Tech.

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Entering its final tournament of the fall season, the women’s golf team hopes to build on its recent third-place finish at the Edean Ihlanfeldt Invitational. The men’s team, on the other hand, is hoping to erase the past with a good finish at this weekend’s U.S. Collegiate Championship, hosted by Georgia Tech. The No. 23 Cardinal men struggled at the Pac-12 Preview, finishing eighth in a field of 12, a full 32 shots behind Cal, the nation’s top-ranked team.

“The team didn’t play their best, but we are still getting back into the groove,” senior Steven Kearney said. “Cal is having a really good season so far. We have just as much talent as they do, if not more. We just need to put it all together.”

Sophomore Patrick Grimes attributed the team’s disappointing finish to difficulties with their short game.

“We didn’t quite get everyone playing well at the same time,” he said. “For the most part, I think we struggled a little bit around the greens…So that was kind of our big focus heading into our next tournament.”

While the men’s team travels across the country, the No. 26 women’s team will host the Stanford Intercollegiate starting this Friday.

“It’s not only our home tournament, but it’s our last tournament of the fall, so we definitely want to finish strong,” junior Danielle Frasier said. “We’ve been getting better every week, and we’ve seen our scores go down, so I think we’re all just really looking forward to playing on our home turf.”

Senior star Sally Watson, who finished second in last week’s tournament, said that team members must continue to play competitively during the offseason in order to maintain momentum and avoid a slow start to the spring season.

If they do manage to maintain that momentum, this group has the potential to surpass the achievements of last year’s team, which tied for 5th in the NCAA Western Regionals before finishing 24th at the NCAA Championships.

Thanks to her recent strong finish, Watson is Golfweek’s top-ranked golfer, and highly touted freshmen Mariah Stackhouse and Lauren Kim are working their way up the rankings as well. Only two tournaments into their college careers, they are ranked 57th and 165th, respectively. Sophomore Mariko Tumangan, an honorable mention All-Pac-12 selection last year, should also be a force for the team this season.

Watson said the team has been practicing well.

“We’ve had a lot of rounds recently in qualifying where two or three girls have been under par, and if we can bring that into a tournament, then we’re going to start to compete with the best,” she said. “We’re definitely very close.”

Tumangan agreed with Watson’s assessment of the team’s potential.

“I think that we obviously didn’t do as great as we had hoped in Tennessee [where the Cardinal finished 11th], but we definitely played better in Washington, and that wasn’t even [reaching our] full potential,” she said. “We definitely have a large chance to win [at the Stanford Intercollegiate this weekend].”

The men’s team also sees itself as a contender. Players will have the chance to prove themselves in this weekend’s U.S. Collegiate Championship, a high profile tournament with a competitive field.

“We really need to make an effort with shooting lower scores on the first day,” Kearney said. “It seems that we fall behind and have to play catch-up a lot in our previous tournaments.”

Seven of the nation’s top 20 teams will compete this weekend, including No. 3 Washington and No. 4 Southern California. Both of those teams beat Stanford by more than 20 shots in the Pac-12 Preview.

“I think it’s good preparation to go up against teams that we’ll be competing against all year, hopefully for a national title, and then also get some experience on a tough [course], just like we’re going to see later on in the year,” Grimes said.

The Cardinal will benefit from the return of junior Cameron Wilson, out with a back injury for the start of the fall season. Wilson finished the spring season on a high note, qualifying for June’s U.S. Open.

Accompanying Wilson to Georgia will be Boote, Kearney, freshman Dominick Francks and sophomore standout Patrick Rodgers, who has already won a tournament this season. In the Oct. 15 Golfweek rankings, Boote was ranked No. 10 in the nation, while Rodgers was ranked ninth.

“As long as we get everyone playing well, we can compete with all of the best teams in the country,” Grimes said. “With as good as some of them are, we are definitely going to have to play some really good golf, but it’s definitely something that we’re capable of.”

 

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W. Golf: Minus Watson, young team struggles in season opener https://stanforddaily.com/2012/09/25/w-golf-minus-watson-young-team-struggles-in-season-opener/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/09/25/w-golf-minus-watson-young-team-struggles-in-season-opener/#respond Tue, 25 Sep 2012 07:50:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1071061 Senior Sally Watson is competing at the World Amateur Team Championships in Turkey, and the women's golf team struggled without her at the team's season-opening tournament in Tennessee.

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Missing senior star Sally Watson, the women’s golf team struggled in its first tournament of the season, finishing 11th in a field of 15 at Vanderbilt’s Mason Rudolph Women’s Championship this weekend. Watson, college golf’s 50th-ranked player as of last spring, missed the tournament to represent Scotland at the World Amateur Team Championships in Turkey.

Although the team didn’t score well, highly-touted freshmen Mariah Stackhouse and Lauren Kim acquitted themselves admirably in their first college starts, finishing 17th and 28th, respectively, to lead the Cardinal.

W. Golf: Minus Watson, young team struggles in season opener
Kristina Wong earned two All-Pac-12 honors in her first two seasons at Stanford, and will need to have a strong senior campaign if the Cardinal is to return to the postseason. (Stanford Daily File Photo)

“We have to work on short game–that was one of the big issues this time around,” Kim said. “I also think some of it was mental too, staying in the present moment, staying focused, committing to every shot and just trusting that we put in the work and that’s why we’re competing at the level we are.”

Players were generally disappointed with the result, but Stackhouse and junior Marissa Mar agreed that this first tournament was an important team bonding experience.

“I think it says a lot when [as] a team we didn’t perform as well as we wanted, but we still had a great time,” Stackhouse said. “That just shows what a great team we have and what a great bond everybody’s formed in just these past two weeks.”

Stackhouse joins the Cardinal having won 97 junior tournaments, including two Georgia Women’s Amateur Championships and the 2009 PGA Georgia Women’s Open. Entering the season, Golf World named her one of college golf’s Top 50 Players to Watch. Kim won the 2009 California State Junior Girls Amateur and has, along with Stackhouse, been named a top-10 high school prospect by Golfweek.com.

Also new is head coach Anne Walker, who comes to Stanford after four years as head coach at UC-Davis, where she won the Big West Coach of the Year Award three times. She replaces longtime head coach Caroline O’Connor, who took the team to 15 NCAA Championship tournament appearances in her 17 years as coach. The Cardinal’s best finish in that time was a second-place national finish in 2000.

“[Walker] has filled [O’Connors’] shoes with confidence [and] graciousness,” Mar said. “She’s taking this team and really building a championship team, and I could not be more confident in her ability to do so.”

Walker hopes to draw inspiration from famously successful Stanford coaches as she builds up the golf program.

“I’ve read a ton about Tara VanDerveer and Jim Harbaugh since I was hired,” she said. “I wanted to understand how they came here and turned programs around. They were tough and they went blue-collar, and this season is huge in setting the direction and values for this program for years to come.”

This year’s team is young, with the two freshmen and sophomore Mariko Tumangan likely to be consistent contributors in the lineup. Tumangan finished last season ranked 76th in the country and was, along with Watson, named an All-Pac-12 Conference honorable mention.

Anxious to rejoin her teammates as soon as she finishes next weekend’s tournament with Scotland, Watson said she sees a lot of potential in this year’s team.

“The team has a very strong chance this year to compete with the best teams in the country and contend for a national championship,” she said. “Everyone seems to have improved from last year, and the freshmen are already showing that they mean business and are going to challenge to be the number one player on the team.”

The Cardinal plays in two more tournaments before a winter hiatus. On Oct. 8, five players will fly to Washington to play in the Edean Ihlanfeldt Invitational at the famous Sahalee Country Club. The team will then host the Stanford Intercollegiate at the end of October. Walker will decide which five will journey to Washington after players complete qualifying rounds this week.

Stackhouse said Watson’s return to the lineup will be an important boost for the team.

“She’ll probably motivate us all to be a little better,” Stackhouse said. “Sally is a big part of the team, and she’s the one that pumps everyone up and lets everybody know that they can play good golf. I’m excited to have her come back.”

Although it is still early, Watson expressed confidence that the team can improve on its 24th-place finish in the NCAA Championships last spring.

“The team’s performance last spring was not what we had hoped for, despite giving 100 percent and doing all we could to raise our games to the next level,” she said. “Golf is a tricky sport in that hard work does not simply translate into better results. In order to achieve different, and better, results this year, I think we each just need to improve our ability to perform under pressure and bring it when it really counts.”

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M. Golf: NCAA championship not kind to Cardinal https://stanforddaily.com/2012/06/07/m-golf-ncaa-championship-not-kind-to-cardinal/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/06/07/m-golf-ncaa-championship-not-kind-to-cardinal/#respond Thu, 07 Jun 2012 08:48:30 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1068123 Weighed down by a poor second round, the Stanford men’s golf team stumbled to a 19th-place finish at the NCAA Championships at Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles.

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Weighed down by a poor second round, the Stanford men’s golf team stumbled to a 19th-place finish at the NCAA Championships at Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles. After three rounds of stroke play and three more rounds of match play, Texas won the national championship, narrowly defeating Alabama.

“We obviously had higher expectations,” said head coach Conrad Ray. “The guys fought hard. We had two really solid rounds, and then the middle round kind of shot us out of the water. In a competitive field [with] as many good teams as there are, you can’t afford to have that bad round.”

Although freshman Patrick Rodgers, a Ben Hogan Award finalist and the nation’s fourth-ranked college golfer, shot rounds of 69-72-73 to finish in a tie for ninth at one-over par, the rest of the Cardinal struggled on the difficult Riviera course. Junior Andrew Yun was the Cardinal’s second-lowest scorer, finishing at +10 to tie for 69th.

M. Golf: NCAA championship not kind to Cardinal
Senior David Chung (above) struggled in his final tournament as a Cardinal while the team faltered to a 19th-place finish in the NCAA championship in Los Angeles. (JOHN TODD/Stanfordphoto.com)

“It’s a tough golf course. I think we had a couple of guys that were struggling to find some confidence out there. It was difficult. There just weren’t too many places where you could really miss,” Rodgers said. “We knew all year that we had a good enough team to win the national championship. It’s just a matter of putting it all together at the right time, and obviously we don’t have any tournaments left to do that, so it’s disappointing.”

Ray said the breeze and tough pin locations made the course especially difficult during the second round of play. No Cardinal players broke par that day.

“We strung too many bad holes together,” Ray said. “I think our guys got off to maybe a little bit of a slower start than they wanted, and then sometimes if you’re trying to make birdies, you can make bogies in a hurry, especially at a course like Riviera. I think we probably pressed a little bit too much. It was just one of those days.”

Yun said the team’s poor performance could not be attributed to a lack of effort.

“I definitely think that everyone was working really hard. We didn’t have any excuses for playing badly — we just didn’t have our best stuff,” he said.

Despite the team’s disappointment, Ray said there are a lot of positives to take from the season.

“Golf is very competitive and unpredictable,” he said. “For our team, being fairly young really . . . to be in the top 10 in the national ranking most of the season and to have won a big tournament in Chicago [The Olympia Fields/Fighting Illini Invitational] in the fall and be competitive in a number of others, I think there’s a lot to be proud of and a lot to build on.”

In a welcome bit of good news, sophomore Cameron Wilson qualified for the U.S. Open, which starts next Thursday at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. Rodgers and senior captain David Chung also participated in sectional qualifying, but only Wilson made the cut.

“If we get through our finals, we’re definitely going [to the U.S. Open to support Wilson],” Rodgers said. “We’re all really happy for him, and I’m going to try to go up there at least one or two days to watch some practice rounds and just see how he’s doing and root him on . . . we’re all excited for him.”

Although the Cardinal won only one tournament as a team on the year, Yun won the Pac-12 Championships, and Rodgers, recently named a PING First Team All-American, won two tournaments in his first year of college golf.

Senior captain Chung is departing, but Stanford has signed two new recruits for next year: 2010 Washington State Golf Association Junior Boys Player of the Year Dominick Franks and David Boote, member of the Welsh National Men’s Amateur Squad and winner of the 2011 Welsh Boys Golf Championship.

Yun and Steven Kearney, who shot rounds of 74-77-73 to finish in a tie for 77th at Riviera, are the team’s rising seniors, while Andre DeDecker will be a redshirt junior.

“Losing David [is] obviously going to be a big loss and tough shoes to fill,” Rodgers said. “I know he struggled this year, but he’s a great player and he played great for Stanford for four years, so he should be really proud of what he’s done. We’re all really thankful to have him here at Stanford.”

Chung compiled an impressive list of honors in his four years on the team. He played in the 2011 Masters and U.S. Open and helped the U.S. team defeat Europe in the 2010 Palmer Cup. He won the 2010 Western Amateur and the 2010 Porter Cup, and in his sophomore year, he was named a Ben Hogan Award semifinalist and a PING Third Team All-American. He was also named to the All-Pac-10 first team that year.

Over the summer, players will compete regularly to stay sharp. Rodgers and Yun will travel to Northern Ireland to play for the United States in the Palmer Cup, which starts June 28 and pits top American college golfers against their European counterparts. Last year, Yun went 4-0 in Palmer Cup match play to lead the United States to its second straight victory.

Rodgers said the team is highly motivated to perform better next year.

“Here at Stanford, the goal never changes — it’s to win a national championship — and every year you don’t [win], you’re going to end the year disappointed,” he said. “We’re going to work hard and hopefully get back with a chance to win next year.”

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M. Golf: Stanford qualifies for NCAAs with fourth-place regional finish https://stanforddaily.com/2012/05/22/m-golf-stanford-qualifies-for-ncaas-with-fourth-place-regional-finish/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/05/22/m-golf-stanford-qualifies-for-ncaas-with-fourth-place-regional-finish/#respond Tue, 22 May 2012 10:03:29 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1067074 Despite finishing a distant fourth in the NCAA Western Regional, 17 shots behind tournament winner Cal, the Stanford men’s golf team qualified for next week’s NCAA Championships

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Despite finishing a distant fourth in the NCAA Western Regional, 17 shots behind tournament winner Cal, the Stanford men’s golf team qualified for next week’s NCAA Championships.

“It was a bit disappointing that we didn’t contend for the title as I thought we would … but we got the job done and we finished fourth, and the top five get to go to nationals,” said junior Andrew Yun, who shot a final round 66 to jump into a tie for 15th individually.

M. Golf: Stanford qualifies for NCAAs with fourth-place regional finish
Junior Steve Kearney (above) believes missing NCAAs last year helped spur the Stanford men's golf team to qualify for the NCAA Championships, which the Cardinal did by finishing fourth at its regional over the weekend. (SIMON WARBY/The Stanford Daily)

Playing at home, the Cardinal was in contention early, shooting an opening-round team score of three-under-par 277 to trail Cal by one.

Although the team actually shot a better score, 275, on the second day of play, Cal and San Diego State caught fire, shooting a 10-under 270 and a 15-under 265, respectively, to pull far into the lead.

That sizable deficit proved too difficult to make up, and Stanford fell further behind in the final round as Cal and San Diego State continued to tear up the Stanford Golf Course. Cal, ranked No. 6 nationally by Golfweek, finished with a team score of 25-under, and San Diego State, ranked No. 14, finished at 19-under.

Freshman Patrick Rodgers, the nation’s fourth-ranked golfer and a finalist for the Ben Hogan Award, was the Cardinal’s lowest scorer on the weekend, tying for 10th at four-under.

Yun said that the course played far easier than normal.

“I don’t feel like anybody really played that poorly, but I think it just kind of caught us off guard how easy the course was playing,” Yun said. “Scores were a lot lower than usual. It was probably some of the best conditions we’ve played in all year.”

Team captain Wilson Bowen has said that the team tends to thrive when playing more difficult courses. The team’s performance this weekend and sixth-place finish in the Pac-12 Championships at the relatively tame Oregon State golf course seem to validate this claim.

However, Stanford should have no further problems with regards to course difficulty starting next week. The NCAA Championships will be held at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, a tough course that has hosted three major championships and is the site of the PGA Tour’s annual Northern Trust Open.

Junior Steve Kearney said the Riviera course should suit the team well.

“It is a very long course, which is great because our team is known for power off of the tee,” he said.

In order to prepare for up to six days of play at this difficult course, the Cardinal played a practice round at Riviera a couple of weeks ago and has been watching film of the course.

“It was really cool just to get a sneak preview of the golf course. Not a lot of other teams got that opportunity,” said freshman Patrick Grimes, who shot three-over on the weekend. “You can just kind of get down there and get a feel for what it’s like and then remember some of the shots out there, and then that makes your preparation a lot more specific for the upcoming tournament … it just adds a layer of comfort that can make our practice for the tournament a lot more productive.”

Stanford will send five players to nationals: Rodgers, Yun, Grimes, Kearney and sophomore Cameron Wilson.

The top five teams in each of six NCAA Regionals qualified for the tournament. After three rounds of stroke play, which starts next Tuesday, the top eight teams in the field of 30 will be placed in a bracket and pitted against each other in a single-elimination match play tournament.

In each round of match play, all five golfers from each team will face off against the golfers of another team in 18-hole matches. The school that wins three consecutive contests will be declared NCAA champion on June 3.

Kearney said the Cardinal has greatly stepped up the intensity of its preparations with the NCAA championship right around the corner.

“Not going to NCAAs last year was a huge disappointment, so qualifying this year has motivated us to practice really hard this week,” he said. “Each guy is spending more than four hours a day on their own time on top of team practice. This is our chance to make a statement, and we are ready to do it.”

Grimes and Yun expressed confidence in the team’s chances next week.

“We’ve got as much depth as anyone in the country, and if we put it together, we showed in our first tournament of the year that we’re definitely capable of beating the best teams in the country,” Grimes said. “It’s a really long week, so it’s just a matter of who shows up with their ‘A’ game and can put it together for the whole week.”

“That last day [of regionals], we weren’t looking too good for a little bit. I think for a couple of holes or so we were outside the cut line looking in,” Yun said. ”I think we all … played our hearts out on the last nine holes … If we can start off with that same sense of urgency and that same focus and motivation, I think we can start off and finish out the tournament really well.”

The NCAA Championship begins on May 29th in Los Angeles.

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M. Golf: Stanford hosts regional looking to qualify for NCAAs https://stanforddaily.com/2012/05/17/m-golf-stanford-hosts-regional-looking-to-qualify-for-ncaas/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/05/17/m-golf-stanford-hosts-regional-looking-to-qualify-for-ncaas/#respond Thu, 17 May 2012 08:45:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1066563 After a disappointing fifth-place finish at the Pac-12 Championships, the Stanford men’s golf team has the chance to redeem itself at the NCAA Regionals, which start today at the Stanford Golf Course

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After a disappointing fifth-place finish at the Pac-12 Championships, the Stanford men’s golf team has the chance to redeem itself at the NCAA Regionals, which start today at the Stanford Golf Course.

M. Golf: Stanford hosts regional looking to qualify for NCAAs
Senior David Chung (above) hopes to end his college career at the NCAA Championships. To do so, the Stanford men's golf team must place in the top five in this weekend's 13-team NCAA Regional at the Stanford Golf Course. (SIMON WARBY/The Stanford Daily)

The Cardinal is seeded second behind Cal in the 13-team tournament. Stanford will be led by Pac-12 Freshman of the Year Patrick Rodgers and in-form junior Andrew Yun, who won the Pac-12 Championships two weeks ago and finished fourth at the Western Intercollegiate two weeks prior.

Golfweek lists Yun as the nation’s 12th-ranked collegiate golfer, and Rodgers is ranked third. Rodgers was recently named one of three finalists for the Ben Hogan Award, which is perennially awarded to the nation’s best college golfer. No sophomores and only one freshman, current PGA Tour star Rickie Fowler, have ever won the award.

If Stanford finishes in the top five of the regional tournament, the team will then travel to Los Angeles for the NCAA Championships at Riviera Country Club, which begins May 29. Following three rounds of stroke play in the 30-team tournament, the top eight teams will face off in match play to determine the NCAA champion.

For now, the Cardinal’s focus is on regionals. Fortunately for Stanford, this week’s field is not as strong as some of the other fields the team has faced this season. After No. 7 Cal, the highest-ranked teams the Cardinal will compete against are No. 14 San Diego State, No. 22 Central Florida and No. 23 LSU. Stanford is currently ranked eighth nationally.

Rounding out the lineup for regionals is sophomore Cameron Wilson, who started strong at Pac-12s before being disqualified for a scorekeeping mishap, freshman Patrick Grimes and senior captain David Chung. Players competed in four rounds of qualifying last week to determine which five would play this weekend.

“It was a difficult test for everybody and put the guys under a lot of pressure,” Rodgers said. “I think we have a great team and I really like our chances.”

But Yun said the weaker field and home-course advantage would not lull the team into a false sense of security.

“I don’t think we’re going to have that problem because we’ve only won one tournament,” Yun said. “I think everybody on our team understands that winning is a habit, like our coach always says, and I feel like if you want to get things rolling and go into nationals on a high I think we have to get that win under our belt … I think everyone wants to get that win and I think they’re really motivated to play well.”

Yun and Rodgers both agreed that playing at home puts no extra pressure on the team.

“Since we do have so much support, it’s very easy to have momentum on your side,” Yun said. “When you’re not playing that well, people are there cheering for you and encouraging you to do better, and when you are playing well, everybody is on your side.”

“I don’t see really any extra pressure playing at home, I just view it as we know the golf course better than most,” Rodgers said. “We still have to go out there, though, and hit the shots and get the job done, but I really like our chances.”

The course will play more difficult than usual, as the greens will be firm and fast and the rough has grown long. In light of these factors, team captain Wilson Bowen said players need to make sure they keep the ball in-play off the tee and that they leave themselves with uphill putts.

This tournament will mark the Cardinal’s first playoff appearance since last year’s NCAA Central Regionals, where the team stumbled to a sixth-place finish and narrowly missed out on the national tournament. Yun said last year’s disappointment is not on his mind.

“I feel like our team is a lot closer this year, our team is playing a lot better this year, and even the same guys that we had last year weren’t playing as well as they are this year,” Yun said. “It’s a totally different story, and I think we’re going to have a lot better result this regional.”

The three-day tournament begins at the Stanford Golf Course today.

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M. Golf: Yun wins Pac-12 title, team finishes sixth https://stanforddaily.com/2012/05/03/m-golf-yun-wins-pac-12-title-team-finishes-sixth/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/05/03/m-golf-yun-wins-pac-12-title-team-finishes-sixth/#respond Thu, 03 May 2012 08:50:26 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1065330 Andrew Yun shot a 4-under-par 68 on the final day of play over the weekend to secure a two-shot victory at the Pac-12 Championships, held at Oregon State’s Trysting Tree Golf Club

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Andrew Yun shot a 4-under-par 68 on the final day of play over the weekend to secure a two-shot victory at the Pac-12 Championships, held at Oregon State’s Trysting Tree Golf Club. However, Yun was one of the only Stanford golfers to play well, and the No. 8 Cardinal struggled to a sixth-place finish at 8-over-par, 20 strokes behind tournament winner Cal.

“It was a disappointing event for the team,” said sophomore Cameron Wilson. “We felt that everyone was playing well coming off [the Cardinal’s mid-April second-place finish at] Pasatiempo, and Stanford teams have been successful at Trysting Tree in the past.”

Yun, who shot rounds of 68-70-69-68 to finish at -13, is Stanford’s first conference champion since 2002, when Jim Seki won the Pac-10 Championship at the same course. This was Yun’s second collegiate tournament win: he won his first last year as a sophomore at The Prestige at PGA West in La Quinta, Calif.

M. Golf: Yun wins Pac-12 title, team finishes sixth
Junior Andrew Yun (above) won the Pac-12 title after shooting 13-under par, but the Stanford men's golf team only managed to finish sixth. (SIMON WARBY/The Stanford Daily)

Behind Yun, freshman Patrick Rodgers, the nation’s third-ranked college golfer, vaulted up the leaderboard with a tournament-low round of 65, but a final round 70 left him in eighth place.

From there, the drop-off was severe. Stanford’s next-lowest scoring golfer was senior David Chung, who finished 19 shots behind Rodgers at +13.

“Unfortunately we had the same problem we have been struggling with all year. We have a couple guys play really well but can’t get a good fourth or fifth score in there to capitalize,” said junior Steven Kearney. “In a game of addition, you are only as strong as your weakest link.”

However, Kearney refused to consider the Cardinal’s sixth-place finish a huge setback.

“Every tournament is simply just preparation for NCAAs,” he said. “We are in the position now where we may not be a favorite, but I think we will play better if we are considered underdogs. All of our focus is being put in regionals now.”

“I definitely don’t think [the sixth-place finish] shows how much talent we have, because I feel like we have the most talent out of any team in the Pac-12 and maybe even in the country,” Yun said. “We just have to have some confidence and I think we’re maybe lacking that a little bit.”

Perhaps the most disappointing moment of the weekend came from a pencil, not from a golf club, when Wilson, whose second-round 66 put him in a tie for seventh halfway through the tournament, was disqualified after he accidentally signed an incorrect scorecard for his third round of play.

“[His disqualification] was a little disappointing but it’s just a good thing it didn’t happen at NCAAs, and I think he learned from it and we all learned from it,” Rodgers said.

In addition to the reminder to be circumspect when signing a scorecard, the Cardinal now has a golden opportunity ahead of it, as Stanford hosts one of the six NCAA regionals at the Stanford Golf Course starting May 17.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled to play regionals at home,” Wilson said. “Often, players struggle to play in familiar settings as they place too much internal pressure on themselves … It will be important to focus on the inherent advantages that we have playing at our home course, as well as the great support we’ll enjoy all weekend from our fans and supporters.”

“It’s going to play a lot different from our home tournament,” Rodgers said. “Our home tournament was wet, it was playing long, now it’s going to be firm, it’s going to be playing really fast, the greens are going to be fast, the pins are going to be really difficult, the rough is going to be up, so Stanford will be all we can ask for … I think we’re all excited.”

A fifth-place finish or better will send the Cardinal to the NCAA Championships, held at Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, starting May 29. Riviera is the annual site of the PGA Tour’s Northern Trust Open and has hosted three PGA major championships, most recently the 1995 PGA Championship.

After three rounds of stroke play, the 30-team field at the NCAA Championships will be whittled to eight, and the remaining eight teams will then square off in a match-play bracket to determine the NCAA champion. Stanford last won the NCAA Championship in 2007, and the Cardinal finished second in the nation in 2008.

“I think [our disappointing finish at Pac-12s] was definitely good for us because I think we are going to work really hard, probably even harder than we ever have, going into regionals,” Yun said. “We’re extremely motivated and we want to get another win under our belts before we head out to nationals.”

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M. Golf: Rodgers wins Western Intercollegiate as Stanford places second https://stanforddaily.com/2012/04/19/m-golf-rodgers-wins-western-intercollegiate-as-stanford-places-second/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/04/19/m-golf-rodgers-wins-western-intercollegiate-as-stanford-places-second/#respond Thu, 19 Apr 2012 08:53:32 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1063890 In its strongest showing in months, the Stanford men’s golf team finished second to No. 1 Texas at the Western Intercollegiate, held at the famous Pasatiempo course in Santa Cruz

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In its strongest showing in months, the Stanford men’s golf team finished second to No. 1 Texas at the Western Intercollegiate, held at the famous Pasatiempo course in Santa Cruz. Freshman Patrick Rodgers, the nation’s third-ranked college golfer, won the individual tournament by two strokes, shooting 4-under-par through three rounds to claim his second victory of the 2011-2012 season.

“We were really happy with the result,” said head coach Conrad Ray. “Obviously we go to all these events trying to win, so second is second, but I think that there’s a lot to be proud of and I think that the guys were happy with the effort they put in … We really gave Texas a run for their money at the end, it was down to just a couple of shots with a few holes to play.”

Junior Andrew Yun finished three strokes behind Rodgers to take fourth and sophomore Cameron Wilson tied for seventh at 1-over-par. Heading into the final round, Texas led the Cardinal by eight shots. Buoyed by Rodgers’ third-round 68 and Yun’s 69, the Cardinal cut into the Longhorns’ lead but was unable to fully close the gap, finishing four strokes back.

“Texas is such a good team. They’re the No. 1 team for a reason,” Yun said. “They won seven times this year, and it is disappointing that we didn’t finish first, but we have so many positive things to take out of this … it just gives us confidence knowing that on any given day, we can beat anybody … we’re not that far off from being the No. 1 team in the country.”

“I think we’ve been playing well all spring, but it just kind of came together and our preparation started to pay off,” said senior team captain Wilson Bowen. “It was a really demanding golf course, and I think we play well on harder, championship courses just because the best teams tend to shine in those situations.”

The Cardinal, currently ranked No. 6 in the nation, beat out four highly ranked Pac-12 rivals at Pasatiempo: No. 3 UCLA, No. 5 USC, No. 7 Cal and No. 10 Oregon.

Stanford will soon take on these same teams and the rest of its highly competitive conference at the Pac-12 Championships, which start next Friday at Oregon State’s home course in Corvallis, Ore. The Cardinal has not won the conference championship since 1994.

No members of the team have played the Corvallis course, but players will benefit from the knowledge and experience of assistant coach Philip Rowe, who finished second in the Pac-10 Championships at the course as a Stanford senior in 2002. Rowe also won the U.S. Intercollegiate at Stanford that year.

On April 11, three days before the start of the tournament, freshman Rodgers was named one of 10 semifinalists for the Ben Hogan award, given each year to the nation’s best college golfer.

Rodgers has finished in the top 10 in seven of nine tournaments this year. On Saturday, he opened with a 67 and then shot 71 to drop into second place before his Sunday round of 68 won him the tournament. Rodgers outplayed both of the nation’s top two golfers: No. 1 Jordan Spieth and No. 2 Dylan Fritelli, both from Texas.

“It’s one of the strongest fields,” Bowen said. “He beat [UCLA golfer] Patrick Cantlay down the stretch, and Dylan Fritelli, and a bunch of other players who are up for the player of the year nomination,” Bowen said. “He made a bunch of great putts down the stretch and managed to pull it out, which was good to see.”

Yun said he and Rodgers, who played together all three rounds, fed off each other’s successes and supported each other through tough periods.

“We were giving each other a lot of positive vibes, encouraging each other throughout the whole tournament, and I think that helped both of us play really well,” he said.

Following Pac-12s, Stanford will host the NCAA Regional at the Stanford Golf Course starting May 17. A strong finish there would send the Cardinal to nationals, held at Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles. Stanford last won the NCAA Championships in 2007 and finished one stroke behind champion UCLA in 2008. Last year, however, the Cardinal missed out on nationals entirely after a poor showing at the regional tournament in Indiana.

Yun said the team’s recent strong finishes indicate that the Cardinal is peaking at the right time. He added that other teams have taken notice of Stanford’s recent success.

“Before, I think they would just write us off as a very good school with good players [that] all couldn’t play well at the same time,” he said. “At this time of year we’re having three, four, maybe even five guys playing well, which is going to be crucial — I think they’re definitely taking notice, and I don’t think we’re flying under the radar anymore.”

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M. Golf: Home cooking https://stanforddaily.com/2012/04/04/m-golf/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/04/04/m-golf/#respond Wed, 04 Apr 2012 08:34:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1062168 Hosting the U.S. Intercollegiate at the Stanford Golf Course last weekend, the Stanford men’s golf team–ranked No. 8 in Golfweek’s national rankings–was unable to recover from an early deficit, ultimately taking third at the tournament with a score of 849.

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M. Golf: Home cooking
Senior captain David Chung tied for 14th at the U.S. Intercollegiate, behind teammates Patrick Rodgers and Andrew Yun who finished fifth and 10th, respectively. As a team, the Cardinal finished third at the tournament. (ALISA ROYER/The Stanford Daily)

Hosting the U.S. Intercollegiate at the Stanford Golf Course last weekend, the Stanford men’s golf team–ranked No. 8 in Golfweek’s national rankings–was unable to recover from an early deficit, ultimately taking third at the tournament with a score of 849. No. 7 Oregon jumped out to a five-shot lead with a first round team score of -8 and was able to hold on for a one-stroke team victory–a 54-hole score of 841 (+1)–over the No. 4 Southern California.

 

Stanford freshman Patrick Rodgers, the No. 4 collegiate golfer in the nation, shot 68-67 to take a two-stroke lead into the last round, but a final round 75 dropped him to a tie for fifth place at even par. Senior Andrew Yun vaulted up the leaderboard on the final day, shooting a 68 to tie for 10th at +2, and senior captain David Chung also finished strong, shooting a final round 69 to tie for 14th at four over par. As a team, the Cardinal finished eight shots behind Oregon at +9.

 

“We had our chances but the lead that we gave the [Oregon] Ducks was just too tough to overcome,” head coach Conrad Ray said.

 

“I feel like we can take a lot of positives out of [the tournament]” Yun said. “Obviously we didn’t get the win like we wanted to, but I think we played well, especially coming down the stretch.”

 

Senior captain Wilson Bowen said the Cardinal was hurt by a stroke of bad luck: On the second day of play, players had to fight through rain and high winds before flooding greens forced a rain delay.

 

“We had bad luck with the draw on the second day because we ended up going off early, and the greens were really hard at the beginning of the round and it was very windy,” Bowen said. “Oregon and USC didn’t have to play through that. But I think our guys did a great job of grinding it out despite the conditions and posting good numbers.”

 

Although players were disappointed that the team was unable to pull out a win at home, the Stanford “B” team impressed, finishing in a tie for sixth out of 17 total teams and tying the “A” team in the first round with a team score of +4. The “B” team was led by freshmen Patrick Grimes and Marcel Puyat, who finished the tournament at +5 and +6, respectively. Coming back from injury, Bowen was the team’s third lowest scorer, shooting an even par 70 on the final day and finishing at seven over.

 

“Our ‘B’ team this week showed how good they can be, especially with the first round that they posted,” Yun said. “They finished sixth with that good of a field, so it just speaks to our depth [as a team].”

 

The U.S. Intercollegiate was the Cardinal’s second-to-last tournament before the Pac-12 Championships. In two weeks, the team travels to the famous, and difficult, Pasatiempo course in Santa Cruz, designed by Augusta National Golf Club designer Alister Mackenzie, for its final tournament of the season.

 

“It’s a course which has very undulating greens, and they’re going to be very fast, so there’s going to be an emphasis on lag putting and short game,” Bowen said. “It’s also going to be windy so you’re going to need to be able to hit the ball low and control your golf ball off the tee and into the greens.”

 

“We played [Pasatiempo] last year and we finished 11th so it was a bit disappointing. But we obviously have the experience, which is a good thing, and so I think a lot of the guys are preparing for the greens,” Yun added. “I think we have one of the best short games in the country, so if we just get that clicking then I think we’re going to have a really good tournament.”

 

Following the Western Collegiate at Pasatiempo, the team will journey to Corvallis, Ore., at the end of April for the Pac-12 Championships. The Cardinal has not won the highly competitive conference since 1994. As of April 1, the Pac-12 boasted six of the top-10 teams in the nation, including No. 4 UCLA.

 

No members of the Stanford team have played the course in Corvallis, but Bowen and Yun aren’t too concerned about the team’s lack of experience there. NCAA regional playoffs, held at the Stanford course, start on May 17, and Bowen felt this week’s experience of playing the Stanford course in tournament conditions would be helpful for the Cardinal.

 

“The course plays a lot differently in competition than it does [normally] because the rough is a lot longer and the greens are really fast, so there’s some different strategy that comes into play,” Bowen said. “Any time you get to play at a tournament on a course where you’ll play a tournament again later, you’re always going to learn how the course plays differently, how to best approach it and what holds up under pressure, which is very important, especially coming down the stretch at regionals.”

 

Yun said the team is building momentum, citing the team’s third place finish this weekend and its fifth place finish at the highly competitive Southern Highlands Masters in March, where the Cardinal beat out top-ranked Texas.

 

“I think we’re peaking at the right time. A lot of the guys had really good finishes this week,” Yun said. “I think it’s just a matter of time before we’re all playing well at the same time… Right now, we have like two or three guys playing really well, but it’s just a matter of time before we have all five guys clicking.”

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From Stanford to Stockton https://stanforddaily.com/2012/04/03/from-stanford-to-stockton/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/04/03/from-stanford-to-stockton/#comments Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:02:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1062022 Stockton faces looming bankruptcy, an unemployment rate of 16.6 percent, a failing education system and a high homicide rate. According to ABC News , 56 people were murdered in Stockton last year alone. To help fix these problems and reinvigorate Stockton, Tubbs decided to run for City Council, declaring his candidacy on Feb. 20 of this year. The election will take place on June 15.

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From Stanford to Stockton
Courtesy of Michael Tubbs

Senior Michael Tubbs reflects on his time at Stanford and his plans for the future

At 10 p.m. on a Wednesday night, Michael Tubbs ’12 sits behind a computer in the Black Community Services Center, working and occasionally checking Facebook.

Standing next to him is a portable whiteboard with an essay outline. After turning in the essay, Tubbs erases the board and fills it once more with his thoughts. He writes most of his papers about how to fix the problems plaguing his hometown, Stockton, Calif., which Forbes called “America’s most miserable city.”

Stockton faces looming bankruptcy, an unemployment rate of 16.6 percent, a failing education system and a high homicide rate. According to ABC News, 56 people were murdered in Stockton last year alone.

To help fix these problems and reinvigorate Stockton, Tubbs decided to run for City Council, declaring his candidacy on Feb. 20 of this year. The election will take place on June 15.

“I don’t like politics–I like impact,” Tubbs said. “I like making a difference for people, and the best way to do that in Stockton now, in my opinion, is through the political system.

“When I was thinking about what I wanted to do post-Stanford, to me it was really important to do something that might not be glamorous or easy, but I could go to bed at night thinking, ‘I’m doing something that’s making a difference,’” he added.

Tubbs said a long train of experiences led him to his decision to enter the political fray. His long involvement in community efforts in Stockton remained strong throughout his years at Stanford.

As a rising sophomore, he founded a youth advocacy group, Save Our Stockton, in the summer of 2009 with some friends. In May of his sophomore year, five murders in Stockton stirred him to found the Stockton Summer Success and Leadership Academy to help stem violence in the area.

During the fall of 2010, Tubbs worked at the White House under senior adviser Valerie Jarrett researching the most effective practices implemented by mayors and city councils around the United States to solve problems similar to those faced by Stockton.

Then, in November, Stockton’s struggles hit Tubbs on a more personal level when his cousin was murdered. He was not satisfied by the community and political response to the homicide.

“I was looking at the response from the person elected to represent my district, and it just was lackluster in my opinion,” he said. “I just saw the need, the lack of hope.”

Recently, Tubbs has returned home on a weekly basis to campaign, chat with members of the community and make his weekly Saturday walk through the district. His home is campaign headquarters, and his family, after some initial trepidation, strongly supports his campaign.

Cameron Henry ’12, Tubbs’ close friend, campaign marketing director and student organizer, said Tubbs’ engagement with the community makes him a strong candidate.

“[You can tell he is a good candidate by] looking at the man and the love he has shown for the town,” Henry said. “Literally every paper and every class he’s taken have been looking at how he can help Stockton.”

“I think he has the natural talent and charisma, as well as a real vision of what he’s trying to accomplish,” said Jim Steyer, a comparative studies in race and ethnicity (CSRE) lecturer who has worked closely with Tubbs.

Heading into his last quarter of his senior year, Tubbs said he hasn’t had much time for nostalgia. He’s simply been too busy.

In addition to running for city council and completing his bachelor’s degree in CSRE, he is working toward his co-terminal master’s degree in policy, organization and leadership studies, serving as a Resident Assistant (RA) in Ujamaa and running his various programs and initiatives.

These include the Phoenix Scholars Program, a program he founded in March 2010 that provides college counseling and mentorship to over-200 low-income, first generation and/or minority high school students.

“Today I looked at the Oval, and I [thought] ‘Yo, this is so pretty!’’’ he said. “It was the first time I had stopped to do that…I think I’m just going to get really sad in June. [Stanford] has been home.”

Although Tubbs regrets the lack of time he has had to reflect on his Stanford experience, he continues to pile his schedule with new activities. Instead of taking time off to relax over spring break or head home to campaign, he led a civil rights-focused Alternative Spring Break (ASB) service trip to Washington D.C.

“[Going on the trip] makes no sense in the middle of the campaign, but hey, this is what we do,” he said.

Even though he immerses himself in multiple activities, Tubbs still has time for fun. He has even missed classes to coach the Ujamaa basketball team in intramural playoffs and makes sure to find time to go out on the weekends.

While he is confident and optimistic about his City Council bid, Tubbs said he is concerned with keeping his energy, identity and commitment to the community admidst what he sees as the murkiness of politics.

“I’m not a politician; I’m a public servant,” he said. “I don’t want to be one of those public servants who sound great on the campaign trail, but then sit there and occupy space.”

He hopes to stay focused by setting aside time to interact with members of his community, particularly by taking time out of his schedule to read to Stockton children.

“If you’re only talking to political people, you lose sight of the regular people, the people you are doing it for,” he said. “Talking to kids, playing with kids, reading to kids, working with groups, just having tea with someone–that’s what gives me energy.”

If elected, Tubbs says his priorities will be threefold: to promote public safety, to stimulate economic development and to jumpstart Stockton’s floundering education system, which Stockton parents call a “dead end.”

He believes an important step in combating all three of these problems is to promote civic pride in Stockton.

“When you have a city that’s been kicked down almost as the black sheep of California, hope and civic pride is a huge thing that’s lacking,” Tubbs said. “In situations like these, government can’t solve everything. It takes communal sacrifice, communal love and civic pride.”

According to Tubbs, citizens of Stockton who have never before been involved in politics are walking, donating and running phone banks to support him. In the first three weeks of the campaign, he collected $8,000 in donations.

“I feel like we’re starting to fire up a lot of the home base and other people in Stockton who haven’t been engaged in local government in a long time,” Henry said.

When asked who inspires him, Tubbs lists his mother, his aunt, his grandmother and historical figures such as the Freedom Riders. But above all, Tubbs said he is inspired by the children of Stockton.

“We did a lesson in our summer program about the Freedom Riders…and then a week later there was a shooting and one of the kids posted on Facebook, ‘I don’t care if I get beaten, I don’t care if I get stomped on, I don’t care if I get spit on. Just like the Freedom Riders, I’m going to make a change in my community,’” Tubbs said.

Two weeks ago, in the middle of finals week, Tubbs went home to participate in a reading event at two local elementary schools. He was shocked by the familiarity the children had with violence.

“I read a book about Martin Luther King…towards the end, when he gets shot, it was actually harrowing in a way because almost every kid in that room knew someone that was shot, like it was normal, like ‘Oh, my uncle got shot in the head,’” he said.

Yet Tubbs left feeling inspired after having an emotional talk with the children about their dreams.

“They said, ‘I dream of a community with no guns, with no violence, with no bad people, with more cops,’” he said. “Even a six-year-old understands that it’s time to reinvent Stockton and change course.”

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M. Golf: Cardinal unable to hit it big in Las Vegas https://stanforddaily.com/2012/03/14/m-golf-cardinal-unable-to-hit-it-big-in-las-vegas/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/03/14/m-golf-cardinal-unable-to-hit-it-big-in-las-vegas/#respond Wed, 14 Mar 2012 09:05:53 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1061474 The Stanford men’s golf team struggled to escape the pack at the highly competitive Las Vegas Southern Highlands Collegiate Masters, finishing fifth in a field of 15 teams.

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Returning from a two-week break, the Stanford men’s golf team struggled to escape the pack at the highly competitive Las Vegas Southern Highlands Collegiate Masters, finishing fifth in a field of 15 teams. Senior captain David Chung tied for 15th, shooting an aggregate score of 5-over-par, and freshman Patrick Rodgers tied for 23rd at 6-over.

 

The Cardinal finished the tournament Sunday with a team score of 24-over, 16 shots behind tournament winner UNLV. Scores ballooned across the board on the final day of play as players fought high winds, firm greens and difficult pin positions. Cal, ranked fifth in the nation and the tournament leader through two rounds, shot 12-over on Monday to squander a six-shot lead, and the Cardinal shot 17-over after posting rounds of 4-over and 3-over on Friday and Saturday.

M. Golf: Cardinal unable to hit it big in Las Vegas
Sophomore Cameron Wilson (above) and the Stanford's men's golf team couldn't quite separate itself from the pack this past weekend, finishing fifth at the Las Vegas Southern Highlands Collegiate Masters. (SIMON WARBY/The Stanford Daily)

 

Four of the nation’s top five teams participated in the tournament, including top-ranked Texas, which finished sixth, fourth-ranked UCLA, which finished third, and Cal. Golfweek ranked the Las Vegas field the strongest of any college tournament held so far this season.

 

“The course played very difficult and we didn’t perform to our capability,” said junior Steven Kearney, who shot 13-over for the tournament and tied for 48th. “It was a very strong field and we did beat No. 1-ranked Texas, so there are some positives to take from the trip.”

 

Classmate Andrew Yun concurred, saying that the team did not perform as well as it could have, and the highly competitive tournament foreshadowed the level of competition Stanford will face in the NCAA tournament.

 

“Overall, it was a very tough course,” he said. “It’s probably about as similar as you can get to the NCAA Championship, so it was a good preview with a good field and a good course like that… We know exactly what we need to do to improve our game and take it to the next level.”

 

The March 11 Golfweek rankings, released shortly after the conclusion of the tournament, reflect Stanford’s mediocre performance in recent weeks. Entering the Feb. 12 San Diego Intercollegiate, Stanford was ranked fifth in the nation, thanks in part to Stanford’s third-place finish at the Amer Ari Invitational in Hawaii in early February, but in the current rankings, the Cardinal has dropped to 12th in the nation. Five Pac-12 teams — UCLA, USC, Cal, Oregon and Washington — are ranked in the top 10.

 

Yun believes Stanford is much better than its ranking suggests.

 

“We saw how good we could be in our first tournament of the year, even though it was a while ago back in September, before school started, we did win that tournament by 16 shots, and I think that’s where our potential is,” Yun said. “It’s a little bit more difficult [now] just with everything that’s going on in school, and we just can’t dedicate as much time as we want to practicing, but we’re going to have all of spring break to get ready, and I think most of us are going to have a little lighter load for spring quarter… we’re just waiting to peak at the right time, and I think everybody will be there when the time comes.”

 

Kearney agreed that Stanford is preparing for a postseason peak.

 

“I am happy with where we are right now,” Kearney said. “Obviously, I would have liked to have won more tournaments at this point in the season, but we are getting better each tournament. The way I see it, we are on pace to peak at NCAAs and bring home a national title.”

 

Stanford has only three tournaments remaining before the start of NCAA Regionals in mid-May. Starting March 30, the Cardinal will host the Stanford Intercollegiate at the Stanford Golf Course before traveling to the famous Pasatiempo Course in Santa Cruz to compete in the Western Intercollegiate in mid-April. Finally, the team will take on a highly competitive Pac-12 field in late April at the Pac-12 Championships.

 

In a stroke of luck for the Cardinal, the NCAA Regional will be held at the Stanford Golf Course this year. Last year, the Cardinal stumbled at the NCAA Central Regional in Indiana and failed to make the national tournament.

 

While players are currently scaling back their practice time as they prepare for finals, Yun said most members of the team will stay at school over spring break to prepare for the Stanford tournament.

 

“Since most of us are staying here for spring break, we’ll have the whole week to get ready for it, so I’m really excited, and I think our team is really excited and pumped too,” he said. “Playing a home tournament, I think we’re going to come with guns firing.”

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Freshman fights for education reform https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/23/freshman-fights-for-education-reform/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/23/freshman-fights-for-education-reform/#respond Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:01:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1059082 Larson, a freshman who intends to major in political science and pursue a coterminal degree in policy, organization and leadership studies at Stanford’s School of Education, was one of seven candidates who ran this week for three open positions on the Mequon-Thiensville Board of Education in Wisconsin.

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Freshman fights for education reform
(Courtesy of Roman Larson)

Roman Larson ‘15, a Wisconsin native who founded an education nonprofit while in high school, ran and lost this week in a primary race for a spot on the Wisconsin Mequon-Thiensville Board of Education. Larson said he plans to follow his passion for education reform despite the setback. 

 

It was finally Roman Larson’s turn to speak at the forum. With his fellow candidates looking on, Larson ’15, dressed in a dark suit and tie, leaned into the microphone and began his pitch.

It was finally Roman Larson’s turn to speak at the forum. With his fellow candidates looking on, Larson ’15, dressed in a dark suit and tie, leaned into the microphone and began his pitch.

 

“I honestly never understood this concept that we are not going to reward somebody for doing a good job, but we are going to reward them for being in the school system for 10 years, 20 years,” he said. “You know, in every other profession in America, you get rewarded for producing results. In education, that’s not the case.”

 

Larson, a freshman who intends to major in political science and pursue a coterminal degree in policy, organization and leadership studies at Stanford’s School of Education, was one of seven candidates who ran this week for three open positions on the Mequon-Thiensville Board of Education in Wisconsin.

 

Although Larson lost the primary, he remained upbeat, releasing a video statement stating, “Even though I am disappointed by the results of the election, I am encouraged by the enthusiasm and excitement shown by so many individuals in the community.

 

“While my campaign activities will come to a close this evening, I cannot overstate what an amazing learning opportunity this has been,” he added.

 

In the last few months, Larson had been traveling back and forth between Wisconsin and Stanford, alternating between campaigning, studying and catching red-eye flights in both directions. As part of the campaign process, he ran newspaper ads, advertised through social media, distributed flyers and campaigned door-to-door.

 

“I’ve learned so much about campaign finance laws, getting a campaign going, how to present yourself as a candidate, talking to individuals about your ideas,” he said. “All of that is just a great learning experience in itself…beyond the actual winning or losing of the election.”

 

Larson traces his interest in education policy back to his ninth-grade Eagle Scout project, in which he started an after-school tutoring program for middle-school students in his area.

 

Working with his former middle school principal, he developed a tutoring model in which high-school students mentored middle school students in one-hour sessions.

 

Over the course of his high school career, Larson grew this program into Dimensions Learning Inc. , a nonprofit corporation that has logged over 10,000 hours of volunteer service and now serves several Wisconsin school districts.

 

Dimensions Learning is composed of three main programs: 9th Dimension, the original tutoring program; 10th Dimension, a private one-on-one tutoring program; and 11th Dimension, a summer school program. In addition to using high-school volunteers, Dimensions Learning employs teachers and tutors to operate 10th Dimension and 11th Dimension.

 

Larson estimated that at least 500 students have participated in Dimensions Learning programs.

 

After Larson moved to Stanford, a new executive director was brought in to run the organization’s daily operations, although Larson still serves on the board of directors and advises the new executive.

 

Larson began to develop an interest in running for the school board due to controversies at his high school during his senior year, including an attempt to cut the foreign language program. He was further motivated by the turmoil caused by Wisconsin’s Act 10, which limited the collective bargaining rights of unions–including teachers’ unions.

 

In his vision of education reform, Larson emphasizes promoting fiscal responsibility in the school district and focusing on maximizing the quality of teaching for the approximately 3,500 students in Mequon-Thiensville schools.

 

He said a more comprehensive teacher-evaluation system to more accurately assess teacher performance is needed, although he does not advocate basing teacher pay on merit alone.

 

Mequon-Thiensville School District Superintendent Demond Means, who advised Larson and worked with him on 9th Dimension, praised his work.

 

“He has demonstrated himself to be a very wise young man when it comes to understanding the components of running supplemental support programs to public schools,” he said. “I think Roman is a very talented young man with a very bright future in politics and public service.”

 

Reflecting on his work thus far, Larson said, “I’m on the track of where I think I want to go in life. I’ve considered doing other things or if I have other passions, and I’ve realized I don’t, so why not go after what I love right now?”

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M. Golf: Up and down https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/15/m-golf-slow-starts-plague-card/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/15/m-golf-slow-starts-plague-card/#respond Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:03:09 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1058275 In its first tournament of the spring season, the Stanford men’s golf team took third place at the Amer Ari Invitational on the strength of freshman Patrick Rodgers’ third-place finish and junior Andrew Yun’s final round 65.

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M. Golf: Up and down
(SIMON WARBY/The Stanford Daily)

In its first tournament of the spring season, the Stanford men’s golf team took third place at the Amer Ari Invitational on the strength of freshman Patrick Rodgers’ third-place finish and junior Andrew Yun’s final round 65.

 

Heading into the final round of the tournament, held at the Kings’ Course on Hawaii’s Big Island, Stanford was nine-under and tied for fifth, but the team posted an 11-under 277 on the last day to vault into third place and finish at -20. Yun’s seven-under 65 was tied for the lowest round of the tournament. No. 1 Texas, which won the tournament by 10 shots, and No. 4 USC were the only schools to finish ahead of the Cardinal.

 

“We got off to not the greatest start, but to come back and finish the way we did with such a good field is very promising, a good way to start the winter season, so that’s always nice,” said senior captain Wilson Bowen. “I think we were the low team if you look at the last two days, so just not quite the best start.”

 

A few days after the tournament, the Golf Coaches Association of America honored both Yun and Rodgers by placing them on the 28-player Ben Hogan Award watch list. The Hogan Award, given annually to the best men’s collegiate golfer, is awarded at the end of the spring season.

 

Entering this week’s San Diego Intercollegiate, the Cardinal was ranked No. 5 in the nation by Golfweek, but the team stumbled in its opening round at the San Diego Country Club, shooting a team score of +19 on Monday. This time, the Cardinal was unable to recover from its slow start and finished eighth, 32 shots behind tournament-winner No. 11 Washington.

 

Rodgers, currently the nation’s No. 3 college golfer, led the team with an individual score of six-over and finished 17th. It was his first finish outside the top 10 in six college tournaments. Junior Steven Kearney, a native of San Diego, called the course “extremely difficult.”

 

“So far this season it seems that we always manage to have three guys play really well, but our fourth and fifth man struggle to post low scores,” Kearney said. “In a game where you must count four out of five total scores, we need to have everyone play well on the same day. That is how you win golf tournaments as a team. We are only as strong as our fifth man.”

 

The team now has a two-week break before traveling to Las Vegas for the Southern Highlands Collegiate Masters, which starts March 9. Bowen said the event, which the Cardinal does not usually play, attracts a strong field every year. Following the Las Vegas tournament, the Cardinal plays two more tournaments before competing in the Pac-12 Championship and NCAA Regionals.

 

Despite the team’s disappointing finish in San Diego, Kearney believes the Cardinal can win the national championship.

 

“There is no doubt in my mind that we are the best team in the country,” Kearney said. “Many guys on the team have had very glorified junior careers, and we all know how to win. We won our first tournament of the season by 16 shots, which is almost unheard of in college golf.”

 

He pointed out the strengths of teammates like Rodgers and Yun, who he said “play consistently well every tournament,” and the elite tournament experience of the team’s starting lineup as evidence of the squad’s potential.

 

“If we can all put together the round that we are capable of, there is no team that can beat us,” Kearney added. “It’s only a matter of time before it happens, and I have a feeling it is going to be very soon.”

 

Despite the recent setback, he defended his team’s chances come May, particularly against those who doubt Stanford’s ability to perform in high-pressure situations.

 

“The way I see it, we are the underdog right now,” he said. “We haven’t played our best yet this season, and the media questions our ability to play well under pressure after not making it through Regionals last year in Indiana. I have seen every guy on this team shoot in the mid-60s on difficult courses, so there is no doubt that we can pull it off.”

 

“But most of all,” he added, “nothing would be better than beating [No. 3] UCLA and USC on their home track to bring home an NCAA Championship.”

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M. Golf: Swinging into spring https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/01/m-golf-swinging-into-spring/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/01/m-golf-swinging-into-spring/#respond Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:32:42 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1056389 Four years removed from a national championship, and three years after finishing as the nation’s runner-up, the Cardinal finished sixth in the NCAA Central Regionals last year... But if the fall season is any indication, the Cardinal will not falter again this spring.

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M. Golf: Swinging into spring
(SIMON WARBY/The Stanford Daily)

Last spring, the Stanford men’s golf team saw its season end in disappointment. Four years removed from a national championship, and three years after finishing as the nation’s runner-up, the Cardinal finished sixth in the NCAA Central Regionals last year. In a tournament that saw the top five teams move on to the NCAA Championship, the Cardinal, seeded fourth heading into the tournament, stayed home.

 

But if the fall season is any indication, the Cardinal will not falter again this spring. In its first tournament of the fall, the team dominated a strong field, winning the Olympia Fields/Fighting Illini Invitational by 16 shots. Freshman Patrick Rodgers stormed onto the college golf scene, shooting 68-70-68 to win the individual title in his first intercollegiate competition. Close behind were teammates junior Andrew Yun and sophomore Cameron Wilson, who finished third and fourth, respectively.

 

Three weeks later, the Cardinal, then ranked No. 1 in the nation, took third place at The Prestige tournament in Palm Springs. Although the Cardinal cooled off in its next few tournaments, team captain Wilson Bowen is convinced that the team is ready to make a statement this spring.

 

“We kind of showed everyone right off the bat that we’re the team to beat, so that was good,” Bowen, a senior, said. “It was a good start and then kind of disappointing the way we played the last three tournaments, but I think we’ll learn from the experience.”

 

“Any time you go out [and] you don’t play well, as long as you learn from it, it can be a positive,” he added. “So I think we’re going to draw on that and go forward and have a great spring.”

 

Currently ranked No. 7 in the nation, the team is loaded with talent and has been boosted by three strong freshmen–Rodgers, Patrick Grimes and Marcel Puyat. Rodgers, who recently played on the U.S. Walker Cup team, has yet to finish outside the top 10 in a college tournament and is ranked No. 4 in the country as an individual. He has compiled a gaudy 70.5 scoring average through four tournaments and will play in the team’s No. 1 slot in the upcoming University of Hawaii-Hilo tournament.

 

Senior captain David Chung is also projected to have a solid year. In 2010, Chung won the Western Amateur and the Porter Cup before finishing second in the U.S. Amateur. He went on to earn spots in the 2011 Masters and U.S. Open tournaments.

 

Wilson, junior Steve Kearney and Yun, a 2010-2011 PING All-American who collected seven top-10 finishes last year, round out the team’s lineup for the UH-Hilo tournament.

 

“This first event of the new year is a big one,” head coach Conrad Ray said. “There’s [sic] a lot of teams from all over the country that will be there, teams that we’ll eventually have to come up against if we want to win the championship this year.”

 

Ray added that most of all, the team needs to work on its consistency. Bowen emphasized the importance of getting into a winning habit and peaking at the right time.

 

“One of the key things for us is to start winning tournaments, because it’s going to be evidence to us that we’re putting the time in on the right things and practicing correctly,” Bowen said.

 

“I think when we won our last national championship in [2007] we won like six or seven times during the year,” he added. “When you are in a pressure situation [and] you have to make par on the last hole to win, or you have to make a birdie, you have the confidence that you can do that because you’ve done it before. You can draw on that previous experience.”

 

Adding to the Cardinal’s bright outlook for the season is the fact that the team will play this year’s NCAA Regional at the Stanford Golf Course. Aided by home-course advantage, the Cardinal can count on familiarity and fans in its bid for a berth to the NCAA Championship, which will be held at Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles.

 

“We can go all the way for sure,” Bowen said. “We have an unbelievably talented team. We won our first event at Olympia Fields this year by a bunch of strokes over one of the best fields in the country, so anytime you can do that, you obviously have a great chance to win a national title. So that’s our goal, that’s what we’re going to work towards all spring, and then I think we’ll be ready come June.”

 

Ray is equally enthusiastic about the team’s national title hopes, but recognizes that June is still several months, and many tournaments, away.

 

“I’m excited about our chances,” Ray said. “There’s so much that needs to happen before we can really get to the ultimate prize, but we have a competitive team, we have some depth, we have a good schedule lined up, the guys are a close-knit group, which always helps… We feel like we have a chance, and at the end of the day, that’s all you can really ask for.”

 

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W. Golf: Card hopes improvements enough to compete in rugged Pac-12 https://stanforddaily.com/2012/01/24/w-golf-card-hopes-improvements-enough-to-compete-in-rugged-pac-12/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/01/24/w-golf-card-hopes-improvements-enough-to-compete-in-rugged-pac-12/#respond Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:34:03 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1055188 It didn’t take long for freshman golfer Mariko Tumangan to make her presence felt on the Stanford women’s golf team. On Oct. 28, barely a month into her college career, she shot a women’s course record 63 on the Stanford course

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It didn’t take long for freshman golfer Mariko Tumangan to make her presence felt on the Stanford women’s golf team. On Oct. 28, barely a month into her college career, she shot a women’s course record 63 on the Stanford course. It was two shots better than the previous record, which had been set six years earlier by Duke golfer Liz Janangelo—now a professional on the LPGA Futures Tour.

 

Led by Tumangan, the lone freshman, and junior captains Sally Watson and Kristina Wong, the team should be stronger than it was last year. In the fall, the Cardinal took third in the Rainbow Wahine Invitational and finished second in the Cougar Cup. Watson won the individual title at the Cougar Cup, sinking a 40-foot putt on the last hole to clinch first place. However, the team did not perform well in its other two fall tournaments.

 

But although the team seems to have improved, the Cardinal’s results in major tournaments may not fully reflect that improvement. The Pac-12 Conference is perhaps the most competitive in the country, with three teams ranked in the top 10 in the nation and eight in the top 20—Stanford is currently No. 42.  Among those top teams are No. 4 USC and top-ranked, defending national champion UCLA, which won the Rainbow Wahine Invitational by 20 shots and is led by two of the top six players in the nation.

 

“We’re in a conference that I would say is absolutely the strongest in the country. The SEC is sometimes there to rival us, but [the Pac-12 is] a tough conference,” said head coach Caroline O’Connor. “We have to be on our games every single day, every single event when we get out there … We haven’t been to an event yet where we haven’t seen a bunch of top-10 programs.”

 

Last season, the Cardinal tied for fifth in the Pac-10 Championships and finished seventh in the NCAA Regional Tournament before stumbling in the national tournament.

 

“There were flashes of brilliance—we were tied for the lead after one round of the Pac-10 Championship, and I think at the time there were six teams ranked in the top 10, not including Stanford,” O’Connor said. “We went in, and we shot six under in the first round, and we were leading, and we were I think two or three strokes back going into the final round and didn’t play great in the final round of the conference championship. [We] sort of played OK to get out of regionals, finishing seventh … and then just didn’t play great at nationals.”

 

“I think that we learned a lot,” she continued. “Now we’ll have more experience—we’ll know what it feels like again to be there, and I think that those lessons will serve us well come this spring.”

 

Last year marked the Cardinal’s second straight trip to nationals after a two-year hiatus. Prior to that period, the team had made the national championship for 12 straight years.

 

In preparation for their first tournament, the Arizona Wildcat Challenge in early February, team members have been playing qualifying rounds to simulate the pressure of competitive golf and to determine the order in which members of the team will be seeded.

 

Five players will represent Stanford in the tournament, and a sixth player will play individually. Sophomore Marissa Mar, Watson and O’Connor agreed that this type of competitive practice is important, especially since the team has not played in a tournament since early November.

 

“I think qualifying definitely brings a sense that every shot counts, every mental process counts toward your shot as well. Making the most of each shot is a main goal for preparing ourselves mentally for the tournament,” Mar said.

 

Following the Wildcat Challenge, the Cardinal will play at home in the Peg Barnard Invitational before heading to Los Angeles to play in the Bruin Wave Invitational on March 5 and 6. The Pac-12 Championship begins on April 27, and NCAA regional play begins on May 10. If the Cardinal finishes in the top 8 in the 24-team regional tournament, it will advance to the 24-team national tournament in Tennessee in late May.

 

Watson said that the team has difficulty under pressure. To remedy this weakness, players work with a golf psychologist and with the coaches and imitate pressurized situations in practice.

 

“I think everyone has the skill and the ability to compete with the best in the country, it’s just a matter of building up our confidence as a team, building up our confidence as individuals and going to tournaments with the right attitude to allow ourselves to perform,” she said.

 

O’Connor was optimistic that the team could capitalize this year on what she believes characterized as an ample helping of potential.

 

“We’ve got some really, really talented players,” she said. “[Sally Watson has] had a win this year. Kristina [Wong] finished off the fall with, I think, a fourth-place finish down in Hawaii. Kristina had a run last year where, for six months, she didn’t finish out of the top seven, so if we can get those two playing to where we know they can play and where they have played in addition to [getting] Mariko Tumangan, our freshman, playing where we know she should be playing then I think that we’re competing with all of those schools.

 

“There’s not a doubt in my mind.”

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Speakers Bureau aims to collaborate with other groups https://stanforddaily.com/2011/11/28/speakers-bureau-aims-to-collaborate/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/11/28/speakers-bureau-aims-to-collaborate/#respond Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:04:12 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1052205 In response to the success of past collaborations, the Stanford Speakers Bureau intends to co-sponsor more speakers this year.

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In response to the success of past collaborations, the Stanford Speakers Bureau intends to co-sponsor more speakers this year.

 

The Speakers Bureau received $175,162 in Joint Special Fees last spring and has activated an additional $25,300 from its reserves for use this year. Its official Special Fees application sets aside $24,000 for co-sponsorships.

 

Speakers Bureau aims to collaborate with other groups
The Stanford Speakers Bureau co-sponsored a talk by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan with Stanford in Government at the Freeman Spogli Institute. (MEHMET INONU/The Stanford Daily)

About 1,400 individuals attended the bureau’s Nov. 10 co-sponsorship with Stanford In Government (SIG) and the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) of a talk by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

 

“Past collaborations worked really well,” said Speakers Bureau Co-Director Rahul Sastry ’12. “I think collaboration is a good way to make sure that more voices are heard in deciding who comes to speak here and increasing the number of people who hear about these events and are therefore motivated to come out and watch them.”

 

Sastry also mentioned a lack of awareness about the bureau’s ability to co-sponsor speaking events. While it usually only allocates a maximum of $1,000 dollars per speaker event and a maximum of $1,500 per year for a co-sponsorship with a particular campus organization, Sastry said it sometimes exceeds that limit to co-sponsor a marquee event such as the Annan talk.

 

“Last year, we had a lot more people applying spring quarter relative to fall and winter. I think that might [have] to do with the fact the word didn’t get out,” he said.

 

Stanford in Government Chair Otis Reid ’12 called the Annan event a success. He said Annan was SIG’s most important speaker since Pervez Musharraf spoke at Stanford in Jan. 2009 shortly after being deposed from the presidency in Pakistan.

 

Both Reid and Sastry said they were pleased with the collaboration. They are currently planning to bring Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to Stanford in January.

 

Sastry said the Speakers Bureau’s goal is to hold two to three major events per quarter. In addition to co-sponsoring Annan’s visit to campus, the bureau also independently funded documentary filmmaker Michael Moore’s October lecture, which attracted about 400 attendees.

 

The bureau does not fund all speakers who come to campus. For example, Stanford Students for Queer Liberation did not interact with the Bureau when bringing speakers to campus for its Intersections Week.

 

Last year, the bureau collaborated with SIG, Students for a Sustainable Stanford (SSS) and the Hillel Foundation for Jewish Campus Life to bring New York Times columnist and Middle East expert Thomas Friedman to campus. It also co-sponsored the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture, which brought CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and David Bohrman to campus.

 

“Members of SIG leadership, including myself, noted the importance of partnering with an environmental organization on campus, since Friedman would be talking significantly about his vision of a clean-energy economy,” said Siddhartha Oza ’11, last year’s SSS Co-President and SIG Vice Chair. “The partnership between SIG, SSS, Hillel and the ASSU Speakers Bureau was beneficial for all parties and ran rather smoothly.”

 

Last year’s ASSU Elections Commissioner Stephen Trusheim ’13 said that because the Bureau is considered an ASSU “service organization,” it has “more regulations and restrictions than a normal student organization.”

 

Article IX, Section 5 of the ASSU Joint Bylaws details the bureau’s organizational structure and spending, fundraising and budgeting rules. Section 5 also spells out the organization’s charge: “to promote intellectual, political, social and cultural awareness of differing viewpoints in the Stanford community.”

 

“On controversial issues, every attempt shall be made to provide a balanced presentation of speakers to the community, although this balance need not be present in each individual event,” Section 5 continues. The Bureau is invested with the “sole authority to invite, on behalf of the entire Association, individuals to speak at Stanford.”

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Philosophy of a prize-winning procrastinator https://stanforddaily.com/2011/10/26/philosophy-of-a-prize-winning-procrastinator/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/10/26/philosophy-of-a-prize-winning-procrastinator/#respond Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:02:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1051094 Perry is well known in philosophy circles as an influential, widely published author. He has published over 100 books and articles on topics ranging from philosophy of language to philosophy of mind to metaphysics.

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Joining the elite company of the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania (who rolled a tank over a parked car in an attempt to deter illegal parking) and a group of doomsday forecasters (who have all incorrectly predicted the end of the world), professor emeritus of philosophy John Perry was awarded a 2011 Ig Nobel Prize.

Philosophy of a prize-winning procrastinator
(Courtesy of John Perry)

“Well, it’s about as prestigious as a Nobel Prize, but much rarer,” Perry joked. “It’s just like the Nobel Prize except the cash isn’t quite as much — as a matter of fact, it’s zero.”

Perry won the award for an essay published 15 years ago titled “How to Procrastinate and Still Get Things Done.” The essay explains how procrastinators can exploit their procrastinating tendencies, delaying seemingly more important tasks by doing less important ones, to make themselves “effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time.”

“For some reason the essay seems to have been liked by a lot of people, many of whom write me every week and say it has helped them,” Perry said. “I didn’t write it to help people, I just wrote it to get through a dark and depressing afternoon when I was down about being a procrastinator…so that’s nice that people like it.”

While the Ig Nobel Prize is Perry’s latest claim to fame, Perry is well known in philosophy circles as an influential, widely published author. He has published over 100 books and articles on topics ranging from philosophy of language to philosophy of mind to metaphysics. His work is so well respected that in 2007, other authors published a compilation of essays about his work.

In the introduction to the book, “Situating Semantics: Essays on the Philosophy of John Perry,” the editors praise Perry as one of the few modern philosophers who has bridged the gap between the modern approach to philosophy, which emphasizes highly specialized study over “larger syntheses” of ideas into a unified worldview, and the broader approach to philosophy used by philosophers like Immanuel Kant, John Locke and Martin Heidegger.

After 37 years of teaching at Stanford, Perry recently retired, but he is still working on several projects and plans to keep an office at the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI). He co-wrote a book about the philosophy of language, entitled “Critical Pragmatics: An Inquiry into Reference and Communication,” which was published in September. He is now working on a book in which he argues that freedom and determinism are compatible.

“If the laws of nature say if you have a strong desire to do something and can’t see any reason not to do it, you will probably do it. Does that mean you didn’t do it freely? That’s what the book will be about,” he said.

Additionally, Perry is preparing the second edition of his book “Reference and Reflexivity” for publication and researching the properties of questions with linguist Daniel Flickinger Ph.D. ’88. He plans to teach weekly graduate seminars at UC-Riverside in the winter and spring and continues to co-host “Philosophy Talk,” a radio show in which he and fellow philosophy professor Kenneth Taylor discuss a wide array of philosophical issues.

“We’ve discussed free will, Confucius, Buddha, Plato, Descartes, skepticism, the existence of God–everything,” Perry said. “We’re working on a show…called ‘Thinking Inside the Box’ which is to try to discover if there’s anything philosophically interesting on television…so far we’re looking at House, Terra Nova…that’s a lot of fun and we really appreciate Stanford for supporting our endeavor to do it.”

As extensive as Perry’s philosophical work is, his participation in the Stanford community has gone and continues to go beyond his papers and books. Perry was a resident fellow in the Wilbur dorm Soto in the late 1980s and early 90s. He served on a freshman education committee in the late 1970s that started the Western Cultures program, a precursor to the Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) program. He encouraged senior research scholar Edward Zalta to take on a project that became the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and he continues to advise graduate students. He has also served as director of CSLI and chair of the philosophy department.

“Probably people have told you that Perry is really entertaining, he’s really funny…but also on the other side he’s a really serious and dedicated teacher and advisor,” said Wes Holliday, a fifth year Ph.D. student who took many of Perry’s classes and was his undergraduate thesis advisee. “He’ll read your work in full, give really thoughtful comments, be really supportive and encouraging even if you’re arguing against his views.”

Holliday also praised Perry for the way his views on individual philosophical subjects fit together into a comprehensive general philosophy that complements the findings of science. He said “Situating Semantics” explains the way Perry’s philosophy forms into a coordinated whole.

“[The book’s essays] describe in some broad way this idea that Perry has talked about all these different philosophical issues, but his views fit together,” Holliday said. “He’s trying to make sense of these concepts like consciousness, free will [and] identity, in a way that jives with what science tells us.”

Associate professor of philosophy R. Lanier Anderson called Perry a leader in the philosophy department, praising his “amazing talent for bringing philosophical ways of thinking to the wider public.”

Despite his many contributions to philosophy and to the Stanford community, some know him only as the humorous author of “Structured Procrastination.”

Does this bother Perry?

“No,” he said. “It neither rankles nor pleases me. It’s just kind of intriguing. Would I love for something I wrote in philosophy to suddenly become a cult item and make me incredibly famous? Well, yes, that would be sort of a blast, but it would probably get old quick. But no, I don’t think it demeans my more serious work. I have a sense of humor.”

 

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Majestic cats of Jasper Ridge (in the night) https://stanforddaily.com/2011/10/13/majestic-cats-of-jasper-ridge-in-the-night/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/10/13/majestic-cats-of-jasper-ridge-in-the-night/#comments Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:03:14 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1050685 Until late 2009, it had never been seen. The only clues of its existence were fecal matter, slain deer and some paw prints discovered in 2005. Motion-activated cameras set up in 2006 never snapped a photograph of it. But in late 2008, Trevor Hebert, Jasper Ridge geographic information systems and data manager, began an experiment, installing a new motion-activated camera. Almost a year later, a photograph finally surfaced. The clues were confirmed. There was at least one mountain lion roaming Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.

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Majestic cats of Jasper Ridge (in the night)
A mountain lion is captured on camera at the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. An interdisciplinary group from the Woods Institute for the Environment is studying the presence of lions and their impact on the local ecosystem. (Courtesy of Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve)

Until late 2009, it had never been seen. The only clues of its existence were fecal matter, slain deer and some paw prints discovered in 2005. Motion-activated cameras set up in 2006 never snapped a photograph of it. But in late 2008, Trevor Hebert, Jasper Ridge geographic information systems and data manager, began an experiment, installing a new motion-activated camera. Almost a year later, a photograph finally surfaced. The clues were confirmed. There was at least one mountain lion roaming Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.

“It was amazing,” Hebert said. “I don’t think anyone believed that we would ever see one for some reason, and we’re still not sure why we didn’t see any mountain lions for those several years. Everyone was quite amazed when we saw that first picture.”

The photos started to, in Hebert’s words, “trickle” in. Through the winter and following spring, occasional pictures of the lion appeared on the cameras. Then, at the end of May 2010, the trickle intensified. Pictures flowed into the Jasper Ridge database for the rest of the summer. The stream finally slowed at the end of the season, although it never stopped.

In Sept. 2010, members of the Woods Institute for the Environment’s Rising Environmental Leaders Network (RELN) took on the project. Inspiration for the network came from two sources. First, the team was modeled on the Leopold Leadership Program (LLP), which brings together mid-career faculty from across North America to put environmental research to public use.

The second inspiration for the team came from a general recommendation made by the 2005 Stanford Commission on Graduate Education, said LLP program manager Margaret Krebs.

Jasper Ridge offered the interdisciplinary team of five graduate students and postdoctoral researchers three projects to pick from, and the team picked the mountain lion project. Team member and mechanical engineering graduate student Lena Perkins said an earlier encounter with a mountain lion sparked her interest.

“I saw a mountain lion 10 years ago up in Desolation Wilderness, and once you see them, I think everybody’s bitten by a little bit of fascination,” Perkins said.

According to the Jasper Ridge website, the team was assigned to answer how the risks from a mountain lion presence should be evaluated, managed and conveyed to Jasper Ridge users; how the camera trap data on mountain lions should be used and shared — and on what timeframe — for scientific, educational or management purposes; and if there were unique opportunities for Jasper Ridge to contribute to research and communication on mountain lion ecology in ways that are consistent with Stanford’s research policies.

The team gathered information by interviewing 15 experts in “mountain lion ecology, risk assessment, graphic communication, institutional liability, University policy on research on wild animals and regional conservation and coordination.”

Perkins said the team synthesized this information, along with additional material gathered from study of United States Fish and Wildlife policy and from correspondence with California Fish and Game, UC-Santa Cruz researchers, Audubon California Starr Ranch Sanctuary and Orange County Parks and Recreation, into a comprehensive report. They turned the report in for revision in July 2011, and it was recently published online on the Jasper Ridge website. A Stanford news article quoted the report’s conclusion that “there are likely at most only one male, one female and possibly several cubs whose territory includes the preserve.”

Perkins said two important opportunities that Jasper Ridge could pursue involve lion scat genetic analysis, which could help researchers find out the exact number of mountain lions in the area, and radio collaring. Both UC-Santa Cruz and a Bay Area non-profit organization are interested in helping Stanford start a radio-collaring project.

Perkins added that the presence of even a single mountain lion has major consequences for the Jasper Ridge ecosystem. By limiting the size of the deer population, mountain lions prevent deer from overgrazing, and the resulting increased number of plants in the area curbs erosion, improving the area’s water quality.

“The impact of a single mountain lion as a keystone species really shapes a lot of the topography essentially, and therefore the higher water quality and clarity means generally healthier fish populations,” she said. “It has really far-reaching implications, and certainly Jasper Ridge is uniquely poised to… do something there.”

Jasper Ridge Administrative Director Philippe Cohen said the preserve has already implemented a few of the team’s suggestions and said the preserve will “likely implement others” at some point.

In response to the report, a preserve protocol was created that restricts activities to daytime hours “unless staff is informed and approves of the activity.”

“This also includes our requiring that nobody goes out alone at night,” Cohen said. “There must always be at least two people present unless there are extenuating circumstances and require my explicit approval.”

Jasper Ridge Research Coordinator Nona Chiariello added that during the daytime, Jasper Ridge has “implemented strong, routine recommendations that users follow a buddy system, especially researchers who might be working crouched down for extended periods or might be in the field near dawn and dusk.”

In addition to this change, a wildlife photo gallery was created for the Jasper Ridge website, and the preserve also changed the wording of its waiver form.

“[The team] brought a fresh perspective based on expertise in other areas ranging from engineering to economics to marine biology to soil science; they thought hard, with open minds, and researched the subject carefully,” Chiariello said.

While the investigation has concluded, Hebert’s cameras continue to take pictures of the preserve’s wildlife. Since receiving a grant from the National Science Foundation, Hebert has installed more cameras — there are now 16 still cameras and two video cameras.

While the lion has been discovered, another question remains: how many lions are there? Hebert believes all the pictures are of the same lion, but he said it is difficult to know for sure. The lion photographed last year was smaller and less muscular than the lion that was photographed this year. Has the same lion grown? Probably. Could it be a different lion entirely? Possibly.

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