Cara Reichard – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Tue, 02 Jul 2013 04:12:45 +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 Cara Reichard – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 MOOCs face challenges in teaching humanities https://stanforddaily.com/2013/06/04/moocs-face-challenges-in-teaching-humanities/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/06/04/moocs-face-challenges-in-teaching-humanities/#comments Wed, 05 Jun 2013 06:58:03 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1077675 Even as massive open online courses (MOOCs) continue to assume an increasingly prominent role in education, regularly enrolling thousands of students from around the world in classes taught by professors from dozens of universities, their rapid growth has sparked a backlash focused on the potential loss of diversity and interaction in education.

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Even as massive open online courses (MOOCs) continue to assume an increasingly prominent role in education, regularly enrolling thousands of students from around the world in classes taught by professors from dozens of universities, their rapid growth has sparked a backlash focused on the potential loss of diversity and interaction in education.

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

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

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

Conflict in the humanities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Losing the personal touch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Retaining valuable aspects

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Professor debunks theories of skeleton’s alien origins https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/20/professor-debunks-theories-of-skeletons-alien-origins/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/20/professor-debunks-theories-of-skeletons-alien-origins/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 06:04:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1077325 Alien and UFO enthusiasts were left disappointed again last month, as Professor of Microbiology and Immunology Garry Nolan Ph.D. '89 P.D. '89 debunked theories of extraterrestrial origins surrounding a skeleton found in Chile’s Atacama Desert and instead identified it as a humanoid.

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Alien and UFO enthusiasts were left disappointed again last month, as Professor of Microbiology and Immunology Garry Nolan Ph.D. ’89 P.D. ’89 debunked theories of extraterrestrial origins surrounding a skeleton found in Chile’s Atacama Desert and instead identified it as a humanoid.

The skeleton was featured prominently in the recent documentary “Sirius,” produced by Steven Greer, founder of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Disclosure Project. The film is based on Greer’s efforts to reveal government cover-ups of UFO sightings and extraterrestrial encounters.

Nolan was given the opportunity to examine the skeleton after contacting the makers of “Sirius.” The skeleton in question is only six inches long and possesses several unusual characteristics, including an abnormally shaped head and an irregular rib count, as it only has 10 ribs while most humans have 12.

The producers agreed to send Nolan pictures of the figure, which Nolan described as “pretty spectacular,” after he offered to provide genomics tools that could examine the skeleton’s DNA.

Though Nolan believed that the Atacama skeleton, called “Ata,” could not possibly belong to an alien, part of his agreement with the filmmakers was to not be “pathologically skeptical” while conducting his research.

“I wouldn’t enter this and at the first sign of humanity throw everything out,” Nolan said. “There were anomalies and they needed to be tracked down.”

Beyond his curiosity in determining the origin of the skeleton, Nolan had personal motives for undertaking the project. When he contacted the film’s producers, Nolan was about to begin the process of setting up his lab for cancer research, which he said would “require sequence analysis of a very similar, very comparable approach.”

“I literally hadn’t touched a pipette…for 20 years,” Nolan said. “So it was kind of like, ‘do I still have the hands?’”

Nolan took the pictures provided by the filmmakers to his colleagues in the neonatal care unit, who referred him to Clinical Professor of Pediatric Radiology Ralph Lachman, a specialist in dwarfism.

Lachman runs the International Skeletal Dysplasia Registry, which contains information on about 15,000 different cases of dwarfism worldwide. Despite managing this enormous database, and seeing 700 or 800 cases of dwarfism every year, Lachman was not sure what he was looking at when first saw Ata.

“At that time, we didn’t know if it was an alien,” Lachman said. “It didn’t look, even on the pictures, like a normal human.”

After gathering sufficient DNA from the skeleton, Nolan ran the DNA through an analyzer and compared the sequence with a human reference genome, which he described as “sort of an average of all of the genomes that have been analyzed.”

Nolan said that it was clear that the specimen was human after the genome analysis, though the researchers could still not explain the skeleton’s unusual characteristics.

Upon Lachman’s request, Nolan asked to see X-rays and CT scans taken of the skeleton in Barcelona, where it was stored. The images allowed Lachman to more accurately understand the specimen’s many abnormalities.

One of the most perplexing questions Lachman encountered was the age of specimen at its time of death. Its small size matched roughly that of a 22-week-old fetus, but the high level of calcification observed in the legs suggested it was more likely a child between the ages of five and eight years old.

Lachman subsequently investigated several similar cases of dwarfism throughout history and found several, including a 19th century “circus freak” named Tom Thumb and an Italian woman who was six inches when she was born and 19 inches when she died at age eight or nine.

According to Lachman, another possible explanation for the skeleton’s small size and advanced calcification is natural mummification, a process that would have made the skeleton appear older than it is.

“The mummification process in the Egyptians has produced calcification like this in the intervertebral spaces,” Lachman said. “Natural mummification is probably a process that occurs if you in a very dry desert place. The body is lying there for several years, and it dries out and salts are deposited. That can lead to calcification occurring.”

Both Nolan and Lachman emphasized that their research is not complete, as they proved that the specimen is human but still cannot explain all of its unusual characteristics.

Nolan, who said that the skeleton displays a “rare mutation, if not one-of-a-kind,” has contacted a researcher from Germany in hopes of getting access to similar specimens in order to compare their DNA with Ata’s.

“If I do the sequencing of those as well, we could actually determine the cause of this,” he said. “If it had a similar mutation, similar genes, that would be fantastic…we would be able to sort of solve the mystery.”

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MasterCard to sponsor five students from sub-Saharan Africa each year https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/06/mastercard-sponsors-five-freshmen-from-sub-saharan-africa/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/05/06/mastercard-sponsors-five-freshmen-from-sub-saharan-africa/#comments Tue, 07 May 2013 05:05:16 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1076993 According to Director of Financial Aid Karen Cooper, MasterCard will disburse $500 million in an education initiative for sub-Saharan Africa.

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When the Class of 2017 arrives on campus this fall, there will be a unique group of students among them. Five students from sub-Saharan Africa will join Stanford as the inaugural class of MasterCard Foundation Scholars, receiving full financial aid through the MasterCard Foundation.

Though the Foundation was established through funding from MasterCard Worldwide, it remains an independent organization that, according to Director of Financial Aid Karen Cooper, will disburse $500 million in an education initiative for sub-Saharan Africa.

As one of nine schools chosen to participate in the initiative, Stanford will receive a total of $6.5 million in funding– enough to support scholarships for five students each year for the next eight years.

“They’re thinking about the big picture,” Cooper said. “Their aim is to really make a difference on the continent, to create real leaders and real change.”

As part of that effort to make a broader difference, scholarship recipients commit to spending the summer between their junior and senior years working at an internship somewhere in Africa, supported by Foundation funding.

“One of their goals is that these students who are receiving this funding in the United States will eventually go back to Africa and make a real difference,” Cooper said.

The Foundation is also working with the African Leadership Academy in South Africa to help develop networks for post-graduation career opportunities.

 

Bridging a gap

According to Cooper, the Foundation first approached President John Hennessy in February 2012. Cooper subsequently worked with Dean of Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid Richard Shaw to put together a proposal, which was approved last June.

“They reached out to us because they saw a natural fit between a lot of their aims and what Stanford tries to do,” Cooper said. “And that’s what our proposal was really about– fleshing out why Stanford is such a great place for people to come here and learn how to be leaders, and the special opportunities they have here.”

Cooper noted the value offered by the program considering the lack of need-blind admission for international students.

“The admissions committee gets some instruction from us as to how many students from what parts of the world we have funding available for,” she said. “Over the last five to ten years, typically we’ve had three to five students in every freshman class who are from sub-Saharan Africa and are receiving financial aid.”

One aspect of the agreement with the MasterCard Foundation is that the funding be in addition to whatever Stanford was previously giving to students from the region.

“So now we really needed eight to 10 students from sub-Saharan Africa, so it was a pretty big increase,” Cooper said.

According to John Pearson, director of the Bechtel International Center, Stanford currently has 82 students from sub-Saharan Africa. The number of undergraduates from that total is in the “mid-thirties,” Pearson said.

Part of the grant from the MasterCard Foundation was designated to support Stanford’s recruitment efforts in the sub-Saharan region. Last fall, an admissions officer was able to use these funds to travel to Africa and connect with students.

“She was able to make contacts with high schools and meet actual prospective students in person and answer their questions,” Cooper said.

Stanford will now be able to fund a trip from the Office of Undergraduate Admission to Africa every year, as opposed to every five years or so as had been done in the past. Cooper said that future trips will ideally be able to target high schools often overlooked by admissions visits, including schools with high numbers of low-income students.

“We’re always looking for ways to reach out to the right people,” she said. “One of the goals with this program is to be able to reach out to students who might not have other opportunities without the scholarship.”

Pearson acknowledged the difficulty of expanding Stanford’s outreach in sub-Saharan Africa.

“The issue is, how do you communicate with these students,” he said. “How do they know about these opportunities? How do they take the SATs? I think it’s a slow process of building these networks.”

Both Cooper and Pearson agreed that even after the students arrive at Stanford, they are likely to face a unique set of challenges as they adjust to life on the Farm.

“These students are really coming from a different world in a lot of ways,” Cooper said. “There’s the typical [process of] international students getting acclimated to US culture, but these students are also coming from very low-income backgrounds.”

She noted that some of these students have grown up “in rural villages in Africa that don’t have electricity. They literally grew up in mud huts that families had built, doing subsistence farming to support themselves. So it is a huge transition to come to Stanford at that point.”

“It’s a long way to come,” Pearson agreed. “Stanford is a remarkably welcoming but affluent place. So it’s that sense of not just academic changes but broad culture shock about coming to an environment like this.”

Cooper and Pearson emphasized the variety of projects being put into motion to ensure as smooth a transition as possible, both for these students as well as for other low-income and international students.

“We’re working with various groups in Student Affairs and in [Student] Housing and Dining to make sure support systems are in place not just for the five MasterCard students but really for all of our international students who come here receiving aid,” Cooper said.

According to Pearson, their efforts will be helped by the designation of some Foundation funding to help provide a support system for students once they arrive in the United States.

Pearson attended a conference at Arizona State University last month with representatives from other universities participating in the program. Those schools include Arizona State, Michigan State, Duke and UC-Berkeley.

“[The conference] was really getting to the practicalities of learning from each other, sharing best practices,” Pearson said. “It was actually quite interesting, because what you realize is that every school is very different about how it structures itself, how students live, how they interact, how they form communities.”

According to Pearson, the various institutions will meet again in June to discuss data analysis.

“MasterCard really wants to show, at the end, that they’ve had some impact,” he said. “So they’re very much into data collection and analysis.”

Though the scholarship’s inaugural recipients have been chosen, Cooper declined to release their names by time of publication.

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Office of Diversity and First-Generation Programs reflects on founding, first year https://stanforddaily.com/2012/10/08/office-of-diversity-and-first-generation-programs-reflects-on-founding-first-year/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/10/08/office-of-diversity-and-first-generation-programs-reflects-on-founding-first-year/#respond Mon, 08 Oct 2012 08:00:35 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1071573 There is one issue of diversity that is almost entirely ignored: socio-economic diversity.

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Stanford is a school that prides itself on diversity, but according to Director of the Office of Diversity and First-Generation Programs, Tommy Lee Woon, there is one issue of diversity that is almost entirely ignored: socio-economic diversity.

“There is visible support here for students of different races, for women, for students with disabilities, different religious backgrounds, sexual orientations,” Woon said. “The shadow population is people from different socio-economic backgrounds.”

Nearly 15 percent of this year’s incoming freshman class associated with the phrases “first-generation” or “low-income,” but according to Woon, discussions of class issues are often viewed as taboo.

“We as a society don’t know how to talk about socio-economic class,” Assoc. Vice Provost for Student Affairs Sally Dickson said.

Established in April 2011, the Office of Diversity and First-Generation Programs is a new addition to Stanford. It is not, however, the first time the University has made an effort to reach out to low-income or first-generation students.

According to Dickson, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions began to notice a growing number of incoming first-generation students seven years ago.

“The Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education at that time became cognizant of that and discussion started to grow,” Dickson said. “What are their needs, and is Stanford really providing the environment they need?”

A short while later, the issue was thrust into greater prominence by a Stanford undergraduate student, Siobhan Greatorex-Voith ’08, who was working on an honors thesis on the experience of first-generation students at elite universities. The administration took notice and decided to hire her.

“She was the first person hired whose responsibility was to identify the needs of first-generation and low-income students,” Dickson said. “But Stanford could not hire her the following year because it was 2008 and there was the economic downturn.”

In 2009, an anonymous donor who had read about the university’s efforts in this area approached Stanford with a gift – which led to the founding of the Office of Diversity and First-Generation Programs.

Woon, who runs the office almost entirely by himself, said one of its main goals is to create an environment where everyone – students, staff, and faculty – feels comfortable acknowledging and discussing the socio-economic diversity that surrounds them.

“There isn’t obvious support for discussion or community building,” he said. “We want to systematically create support for learning and engaging in conversation about socio-economic diversity.”

By encouraging discussion, the office hopes to build a system of support for students from the whole spectrum of socio-economic backgrounds.

“When students [who] come from diverse socio-economic backgrounds show up on campus and go through their lives here, there isn’t obvious support for them,” Woon said. “And I’m talking about everyone. People who are poor can’t see any evidence that there is anyone who can understand where they’ve come from. Some of the rich kids feel like they can’t admit they’re rich.”

“What’s been challenging is that there are certain identities one more readily accepts,” Dickson said. “When it comes to issues of class in this country, it’s much more complicated and nuanced.”

In its inaugural year, the office focused on establishing itself as a presence on campus.

“In our first year, we tried to communicate that we exist, that there is an abundance of support here,” Woon said.

They started last year off with a welcome dinner, which brought in about 135 students – mostly freshmen. They also held small group meetings, called “chill-outs,” once a month throughout the year. In addition, they organized a variety of conversations to try and get students – and the rest of the Stanford community – to start talking about issues of class.

Along with its own programs, the office is also focused on establishing relationships with other groups on campus.

“Behind the scenes, we tried to create campus partnerships, develop on-campus support for students,” Woon said. “We want to develop a higher awareness and capacity to support students. This is a one and a half person office – it’s a lot of action with a lot of partners.”

The office’s projects include getting faculty members involved to discuss class issues and organizing an alumni mentorship program. But they also lean heavily on other programs on campus that could advance their goals, like workshops, on campus jobs or student efforts to make life on campus more affordable.

“They don’t have to be our programs, but we’re probably going to use them,” Woon said.

Both Woon and Dickson emphasized that the office is not doing anything the students aren’t capable of doing for themselves, but exists to establish a system of support and to help ease the transitions that students face when they come to college.

“We’re here just to provide enrichment. We mostly just want them to know that they’re not alone,” Dickson said. “What we’re doing is engaging students, faculty and staff to think about how class affects their experiences.”

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Overseas Seminars here to stay, after hiatus https://stanforddaily.com/2012/10/02/bing-overseas-seminars-summer-program-successful-after-hiatus-here-to-stay/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/10/02/bing-overseas-seminars-summer-program-successful-after-hiatus-here-to-stay/#respond Tue, 02 Oct 2012 09:39:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1071333 The Bing Overseas Studies Program’s (BOSP) newly reintroduced Stanford Overseas Seminars are here to stay, according to Naoko Sakata, BOSP external programs coordinator. “We are scheduled to offer seminars for foreseeable future years,” Sakata wrote in an email to The Daily. According to Sakata, funding has been approved for the eight 2013 summer seminars in […]

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Overseas Seminars here to stay, after hiatus
(Courtesy of Robert David Siegel, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Microbiology and Immunology)

The Bing Overseas Studies Program’s (BOSP) newly reintroduced Stanford Overseas Seminars are here to stay, according to Naoko Sakata, BOSP external programs coordinator.

“We are scheduled to offer seminars for foreseeable future years,” Sakata wrote in an email to The Daily.

According to Sakata, funding has been approved for the eight 2013 summer seminars in Vienna, Rio de Janeiro, Costa Rica, Israel, India, the Republic of Palau, Madagascar and Wales.

BOSP offered three more seminars than last year and only two fewer than the peak number of ten seminars in years previous to the 2010-2011 hiatus.

A total of 460 students applied for 75 available spots last year, according to BOSP Enrollment Services Coordinator Alyssa Geiger. This year 120 spots are available.

The Overseas Seminars, three-week two-unit courses open to undergraduates, were put on hold in 2010 due to budgets cuts. Following a two-year hiatus, five seminars were held in India, Turkey, Tanzania, the Netherlands and Brazil last summer. Each seminar is limited to 12 to 15 students and costs $600, covering lodging, meals and course activities but not transportation and incidental costs.

Robert Siegel, associate professor of microbiology and immunology, who led this year’s Issues of Development in Northern Tanzania seminar, was disappointed when the program was cancelled three years ago but expected the cut.

“I was always surprised it existed,” Siegel said. “It’s much cheaper to teach a big class.”

Siegel led two trips prior to the program’s hiatus–the same one to Tanzania in 2006 and a trip to England to follow the path of Darwin’s life.

BOSP offers the seminars to provide a study-abroad opportunity for students who are not necessarily able to fit a full quarter-length overseas trip into their undergraduate schedule, according to Sakata.

“Overseas Seminars are specifically designed to integrate course content and location,” she said.

Thomas Hansen, an anthropology professor who led his first Overseas Seminar this year in India this year, echoed this sentiment.

“The place you go is not just the site where you take your courses–the course is about that place,” Hansen said.

“I feel like I learned more during those three weeks on-site than I did from years of reading articles,” said Lananh Le ’15, a participant in the Tanzania seminar who described it as her “greatest experience at Stanford so far.”

“You get to be completely immersed in the place and its culture for three weeks, and have a hands-on experience with the subject that you are exploring,” Le added.

Each year, the selection of seminars covers a wide variety of topics. Their unifying feature is the level of engagement they draw from their participants, Siegel said.

“They’re all radically different except for this mode of learning, this engagement of students and faculty.”

Hansen’s seminar, Minority as Cultural Form in South Asia, was intended to introduce students to the “cultural diversity and complexity in India.”

“Most people in India experience life as being one form of minority or another, whether by way of religion, caste, whatever,” Hansen said. “It’s important to understand what that culture is all about.”

Hansen will be offering this same seminar again in the summer of 2013 and hopes it becomes a regular class in the Bing program.

The application deadline for summer 2013 Overseas Seminars is Oct. 21, a full quarter earlier than last year’s Jan. 29 deadline. Selection results will be released on Nov. 16.

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Stanford soulmates https://stanforddaily.com/2012/04/30/stanford-soulmates/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/04/30/stanford-soulmates/#comments Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:02:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1064996 Of the many Stanford myths repeated to freshmen, one of the most common is that up to 70 percent of Stanford students meet their life partners at the Farm. According to the Stanford Alumni Association and as reported by The Daily , in fact no more than 15 to 20 percent of Stanford students marry fellow trees. The Daily spoke with Stanford couples of all ages about romance on the Farm.

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Stanford soulmates
(AUBRIE LEE/ The Stanford Daily)

On love, marriage and beer vending machines on the Farm

Of the many Stanford myths repeated to freshmen, one of the most common is that up to 70 percent of Stanford students meet their life partners at the Farm.

According to the Stanford Alumni Association and as reported by The Daily , in fact no more than 15 to 20 percent of Stanford students marry fellow trees. The Daily spoke with Stanford couples of all ages about romance on the Farm.

Barbara Beck Garton ’79 was on the swim team with her husband-to-be Dan Garton as an undergraduate at Stanford. The couple met through the team during their freshman year, although they did not know each other very well at the time because, as Barbara put it, “I was in the fast [swimmers’] lane and he was in the slow [swimmers’] lane.”

In their senior year, the pair became better acquainted. By chance, they lived in the same house, where Dan was the president.

“He was the one who assigned the rooms,” Barbara said. “He remembered me from swimming and put me around the corner from himself.”

Their courtship began, but was not an immediate success. During fall quarter their house put on a medieval party, in which Dan’s actions put a strain on their budding relationship. Dan went dressed as Prince Charming while Barbara dressed as the Lady of the Lake from the Arthurian legends.

“He had a big crush on me, but unfortunately he overindulged and ended up stripping down to his tights,” Barbara said. “It took a few more months to repair the damage he did at that party.”

Eventually, however, Dan managed to win his future wife over. According to Barbara, he impressed her with his ingenious method of stocking the house vending machine with beer, despite it being against the rules.

Claiming that her case is not unique, Barbara recalled that there were two marriages from her freshman dorm alone. Both couples remain married today, including her hallmate–who was also her best friend on the swimming team–and her best friend from freshman year.

The marriage trend has continued even in Garton’s family.

“A girl from Dan’s freshman dorm became my sister-in-law by marrying Dan’s brother Michael, a Business School student.”

Keeping the Cardinal tradition strong, all three of the Garton’s daughters attended Stanford. One, a graduate of the class of 2007, met her husband at Stanford.

Some students, however, meet their spouses years after their time at Stanford, as was the case for Hilary Lieberman Link ’91. Link and her friends hosted a Passover Seder in April 1989, which her future husband attended with a group of friends.

“We met that one night and never saw each other again,” Link said. But 10 years later in New York, a mutual friend set them up on what was supposed to be a blind date.

“I called my friend and asked if Jeff Link was the guy from Hawaii who came to our Passover Seder,” Link said. “She said ‘Yes, it was and he was cute. You should go.’”

Although their relationship didn’t start until years after they had both left the Farm, Link said she feels that their shared connection to the school played a large role in the formation of their relationship.

“[The Stanford connection] runs through our relationship,” she said. “I think the fact that we met here had a huge impact. When we re-met, that was sort of it from then on.”

While hook-ups and flings are prominent on campus, there are many couples that envision being together for the long-term. Such is the case with Megan O’Brien ’14, who met boyfriend Michael Crayne ’12 through the archery team at the beginning of her freshman year.

Between schoolwork and extracurricular activities, many Stanford students feel they are too busy for a relationship. O’Brien said she doesn’t think this is reason not to commit to one.

“Ideally, you’ll both be involved in some of the same activities, so you can spend that time with them,” she said.

Both O’Brien and Crayne are members of the archery team and share their Catholic faith.

“You should be helping each other do what you already do better, not hindering them or taking over their life,” she said.

For O’Brien and many other students who find love at Stanford, the connection they make with their partners is more than good chemistry, but something that is deep and profound.

“To most, love is a warm, fuzzy feeling that you have when you’re close to a person and want to be with them a lot and enjoy spending time with them,” O’Brien said. “Love is, above all, a choice to be with someone and care for them and give yourself up entirely for them.”

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Re-evaluating writing: 10 years later https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/21/hume-celebrates-10th-anniversary/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/21/hume-celebrates-10th-anniversary/#respond Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:02:29 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1058830 Most Stanford students are familiar with the Hume Writing Center (HWC). As a hotspot for freshmen struggling with Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) assignments as well as graduate students plugging away at their dissertations, the Center seems to be going strong as it celebrates the tenth anniversary of its opening.

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Re-evaluating writing: 10 years later
(Courtesy of the Hume Writing Center)

Most Stanford students are familiar with the Hume Writing Center (HWC). As a hotspot for freshmen struggling with Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) assignments as well as graduate students plugging away at their dissertations, the Center seems to be going strong as it celebrates the tenth anniversary of its opening.

 

However, many students would be surprised to discover that the Center is only 10 years old. Andrea Lunsford, former HWC director, joined the Stanford faculty in 2000 with instruction to “think about undergraduate writing.” She was surprised, but pleased, when she discovered that Stanford did not already have a writing center.

 

“If there wasn’t one already in existence, we could make it exactly how we wanted,” Lunsford said.

 

According to Lunsford, upon the HWC’s founding in 2001, the Hume Writing Center−originally the Stanford Writing Center−was the most cutting-edge writing center of its kind.

 

“It was designed to address any issue of writing−from the very first thinking about writing to the last dotted ‘i’ for everybody on campus,” Lunsford said. “What made it unique at that time was its focus on celebrating writing.”

 

This outlook on writing meant that the Center was tasked with being more than just an academic resource−it also works to promote writing outside of academia.

 

The Center hosts events during Parents’ and Admit Weekends to highlight student writing, co-sponsors art of writing workshops with the Creative Writing Program and hosts regular performances by spoken word artists.

 

“We’re committed to celebrating writing in all its forms, from traditional writing to new media writing and doing all we can to help Stanford’s culture of writing thrive,” said Sohui Lee, associate director of the Center.

 

The HWC includes consultants of many different kinds. Undergraduate students, graduate students and Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) lecturers are all available for consultations to help students with their work.

 

“We are unique in that we offer students opportunities to work with several kinds of tutors with writing expertise and training,” Lee said.

 

Patricia Ho ’14 has had experience with various types of tutors.

 

“I used to do drop-in appointments and I worked with mostly peer tutors,” Ho said. “Now I sign up for appointments, so it tends to be more graduate students and PWR instructors. It’s nice to get the different perspectives.”

 

“People can come in and sign in and I’ll work with anyone who shows up to go over essays or applications or anything they’ve written,” said Elena Ayala-Hurtado ’14, a drop-in peer tutor.

 

The Center is not just an undergraduate resource. It is available to anyone at Stanford looking for help or consultation relating to his or her writing. Ayala-Hurtado said she works mostly with undergraduates, including freshmen in IHUM and PWR, while Donna Hunter, an HWC writing consultant, explained that the Center sees a lot of graduate students as a result of outreach efforts.

 

“We’ve done a lot of summer stuff working with graduate students,” Hunter said. “It’s called Dissertation Boot Camp… we’ve gotten a lot more graduate students for that reason.”

 

Regardless of who uses it, the Center is a resource provided for free to all students. According to its website, the Center offers around 6,000 consultations each year.

 

“It’s a completely free service available to everyone on campus at almost any time,” Lunsford said. “Students have support for writing right at their fingertips.”

 

Hunter explained that she likes to think of it as “talk therapy.” The consultants are not just there to fix a student’s essay, but to help them talk through their own ideas.

 

“Oftentimes by articulating what you’re thinking about, you get a lot clearer,” Hunter said.

 

Ho echoed this idea, based on her experience working with tutors.

 

“It’s helpful just to talk out loud and think about what I’m trying to make into an argument,” Ho said.

 

According to Lee, the Center’s popularity rises each year as the number of tutoring sessions increases. Many students return to the Center regularly.

 

“We believe that our writing programs are important to the University and to students because they increase students’ chances for academic success in their majors,” Lee said. “Good writing is good thinking.”

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Cyberschool https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/01/cyberschool/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/01/cyberschool/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:02:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1056336 The Stanford Online High School (OHS), previously called the Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY), was established in 2006 and currently serves more than 400 students, including both full- and part-time students.

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Stanford Online High School grants diplomas to academically advanced students

Powerhouse high schools hardly bring to mind virtual spaces, but an online high school operated by Stanford could alter that perception.

 

The Stanford Online High School (OHS), previously called the Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY), was established in 2006 and currently serves more than 400 students, including both full- and part-time students.

 

EPGY was founded to provide classes that academically talented students could use to supplement their regular high school curriculum.

 

“Typically students who come to us are students who haven’t been able to get [a] level of challenge academically wherever they have been,” said Jovana Knezevic, OHS director of information and communication.”

 

“It is also students for whom this schedule is far more appealing and conducive,” she added. “They have no illusions about the amount of time they’re going to spend doing their work but at least they can take it with

them wherever they go.”

 

Cyberschool
(SERENITY NGUYEN/The Stanford Daily)

In 2006, EPGY expanded into a fully accredited, independent school and updated its name. The standard class holds sessions for two hours per week, conducted through real-time video conferences. Raymond Ravaglia, the executive director of EPGY, compared the classes to undergraduate seminars.

 

Students and the teachers all log in to a central system that is similar to the video conferencing program Skype, adapted to a teaching environment.

 

Within the video chat, there is a whiteboard on which the teacher and students can write. The teacher can also upload slides, as in a PowerPoint presentation. There are icons for the students to press that are the equivalent of raising their hands, or answering yes or no to a question. Additionally, there is a text chat that students use to make short contributions to the class discussion.

 

“We’re looking for academically advanced students who are looking for a rigorous course of study,” Ravaglia said. “The thing they all have in common is that they are academically advanced [and] serious minded in their studies.”

 

OHS senior Nick Benson made the decision to attend because the schedule was more flexible and therefore better able to accommodate his acting career.

 

“I’ve done alternative online programs simply because I need flexibility in school,” Benson said. “The online nature got me to look at the school but it also seemed like it would be a quality education.”

 

The Stanford Online High School emphasizes the quality of its education, like the institution from which it takes its name.

 

“Students who come and think this is an easy alternative — that illusion is quickly dispelled,” Knezevic said. “The work is very hard. The students who do best are students who are intellectually curious, students who really do like to learn.”

 

One of the biggest differences between an online high school such as this one and a typical brick-and-mortar school is the social experience. Not only are all of the classes and extracurricular activities online, but students also attend from around the world, making it difficult to “hang out” like normal high school students.

 

Instead, students have to find alternative ways to socialize.

 

“Skype is the unofficial social hub of OHS,” Benson said. “That and Facebook.”

 

“There are clubs and other sorts of online social things where we bring the kids in to interact with each other,” Ravaglia said.

 

“They spend a lot of time on Facebook, Google Chat, things like that,” he added. “They develop a sense of rich personal social experience. The friends they’re making are the best friends they have anywhere.”

Knezevic echoed a similar sentiment.

 

“Because the instruction and the academic experience takes place in these online seminars, a sense of online community gets started in the classroom and then it spills beyond the classroom,” she said.

 

Benson also emphasized that having a social experience so centered around the Internet means that there is nearly always something to do or someone to talk to.

 

“For me, the social experience is really always on,” he said.

 

According to Benson, he and his friends can do all sorts of things online that would normally be done in person. In a process he described as “simul-watching,” students will pull up a movie on Netflix or YouTube and watch it at the same time, talking over the Internet as it plays.

 

Benson conceded that this sort of high school experience might be hard for some people to handle.

 

“That sort of distance and the limitations that come with it is not for everybody,” he said.

 

While there are many online high schools around the nation, Stanford is the first university of its caliber to sponsor such a program. Knezevic emphasized that this program is very different from what normally comes to mind when one thinks of online schools.

 

“People hear online and they think of using technology to increase efficiency,” she said. “But the technology isn’t the focal point of what we do, it enables what we do. We use technology to bring students together that otherwise wouldn’t have access to the education and wouldn’t have access to each other.”

 

Knezevic also noted that OHS teachers are often unique among their peers.

 

“Close to 70 percent of the teachers have doctorates in their disciplines,” she said. “They’re really in a position to challenge students, to model for them the kind of scholarship and the kind of engagement with the material and discipline that’s done at the professional level.”

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Picturing nature https://stanforddaily.com/2012/01/26/picturing-nature/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/01/26/picturing-nature/#respond Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:02:53 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1055620 One Saturday morning this fall, a cluster of Stanford students stood, knelt and crouched with cameras strapped around their necks, exploring the California redwoods. They peered down into the grass and up the enormous trunks in search of the perfect photo -- and for students enrolled in the sophomore seminar “Photographing Nature” fall quarter, this was just a typical day in the classroom.

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One Saturday morning this fall, a cluster of Stanford students stood, knelt and crouched with cameras strapped around their necks, exploring the California redwoods. They peered down into the grass and up the enormous trunks in search of the perfect photo — and for students enrolled in the sophomore seminar “Photographing Nature” fall quarter, this was just a typical day in the classroom.

 

“The objective of the class was to explore the use of the camera as a tool for understanding the natural world around us,” said Robert Siegel, associate professor of microbiology and immunology, who taught the class. “The key to the class was combining a lot of science with photography.”

 

Every weekend, the class went on a field trip to somewhere new. They explored different parts of the Stanford campus and traveled to the Baylands, Pescadero State Beach and other parts of the Bay Area.

Picturing nature
Members of autumn quarter's "Photographing Nature" class shoot photos at Felt Lake. (IVY NGUYEN/The Stanford Daily)

 

One week, they were instructed to pick an object as the subject of their photographs and then change every setting on the camera. Another week, they had to change the perspective with which they focused on a particular object–from close up, far away, underneath or more–and the assignment changed each trip.

 

“My favorite part of the class was going on these excursions and getting to know Northern California better and learning to take better nature photos,” said Zack Gold ’15.

 

On Thursdays, the class would meet to share their photos from the previous weekend.

 

“We would choose five or six to make into a PowerPoint,” said Sushmita Sridhar ’14. “We would use those to talk about a particular plant or animal.”

 

Along with presenting their photographs, students were expected to have done research on whatever aspect of nature these photos were showing.

 

“The actual products that the students were producing were weekly reports on some aspect of nature that they would use to communicate information,” Siegel said.

 

Within the bounds of the assignment, the students were free to photograph whatever they wanted.

 

“One week, someone did a whole presentation on clouds,” Siegel said. “One person did a presentation on bird feed. It’s fascinating to me what sort of things they pick up on.”

 

Because of this freedom of focus topic, students were able to work on subject matter that really interested them.

Picturing nature
An acorn woodpecker on campus. (IVY NGUYEN/The Stanford Daily)

 

“I was really fond of more macro photos, when I was able to get really close to something,” Sridhar said. “There was this western spotted cucumber beetle that I was following around–that was really cool because of its colors and how close I was able to get to that.”

 

In addition to shaping students’ perspectives of nature, the presentations sometimes affect Siegel’s as well.

 

“We were up at Jasper Ridge and somebody did a report on hover flies,” Siegel said. “Hover flies were not in my radar screen; but now whenever we go out, I’m very conscious of hover flies.”

 

According to Siegel, what often made the photographs most interesting was the perspective.

 

“One of the most memorable ones was a picture of this rabbit outside,” Siegel said. “It’s through a window, and then you realize there’s a silhouette of a cat looking outside at the rabbit. It’s sort of the perspective of the cat. You would immediately be struck by the emotion of it.”

 

While the class sought to emphasize the thematic aspects of the photos taken for assignments, the photography naturally was a key component.

 

“The most challenging part was learning to use the camera, figuring out the technical aspects of it,” Sridhar said. “I’ve never taken a digital SLR [single-lens reflex camera] photography class; I’ve never used one before.”

 

Picturing nature
A common brown pelican, photographed at Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf. (IVY NGUYEN/The Stanford Daily)

Nonetheless, Siegel hoped to distance the course from just learning the mechanics of operating a camera, emphasizing that this was much more than simply a digital photography class.

 

“Only about half the class had their own SLR,” Siegel said. “Although we did a lot of how-to things, they were how-to in terms of communicating your message.”

 

The course’s focus on photography had more to do with understanding the way in which a picture can communicate a message or idea than it did with the technical aspects of photography.

 

“We understand how to communicate in a written fashion,” Siegel said. “But we live in a world that is more and more dominated by pictures. One of the things we tried to do was deconstruct a picture. We were looking at those elements of a picture in conjunction with trying to communicate about science.”

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Professor Undergraduate https://stanforddaily.com/2011/11/09/professor-undergraduate/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/11/09/professor-undergraduate/#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:02:36 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1051569 The SIC program allows students to plan, organize and teach their own one- or two-unit course on any subject of their choosing.

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Students design and teach own classes through Student Initiated Courses program

Stanford students can browse through Explore Courses and be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of classes available to them. A small group, however, find the selection lacking in some way. Perhaps there is a course they wish were offered but isn’t. Perhaps there is simply a subject they care deeply about and wish to share with others. In either case, that’s where student initiated courses (SICs) come into play.

Professor Undergraduate
(SERENITY NGUYEN/The Stanford Daily)

The SIC program allows students to plan, organize and teach their own one- or two-unit course on any subject of their choosing.

“The whole purpose of the program is to allow students to teach a course that’s not found anywhere else on campus,” said Samir Siddhanti ’12 M.S. ’12, president of the SIC program. “That’s probably the number one requirement, that the course can’t be found in any other department.”

There are six courses offered this quarter, including “Beginner Ceramics,” “Sport and Disability” and “Neil Gaiman: International Man of Mystery.”

“It presents an opportunity for students who are very passionate about certain fields or a certain area of expertise to spread their knowledge with other students,” Siddhanti said.

Any student is welcome to apply to teach a SIC, although he or she must be willing to invest a significant effort in the application process, the preparation and the teaching itself.

“If an applicant fulfills all their requirements, they should be able to teach a course,” Siddhanti said. “We’re not trying to be limiting in any factor except that they fulfill the necessary requirements–which are substantive.”

In order to be considered for a teaching position, students must fill out the application found on the SIC website. In addition, they must have a faculty sponsor who is willing to write a letter on their behalf.

“It’s important that students [who] are interested in doing this are in good academic standing before they apply,” Siddhanti said.

After they apply, the students must attend two workshops to prepare them for the experience; one focused on leading discussions, the other on building a syllabus.

“Creating a working syllabus and having something that is prepared each week is important,” said Lena Schoemaker ’12, co-instructor of the “Sport and Disability” course this quarter.

“It makes it more beneficial to narrow down your focus of what you want to talk about each week, and how that contributes to the overall class,” she added.

SICs have proven very popular among students. Susannah Poland ’12, former president of the Stanford Ceramics Club, wrote the application for the “Beginner Ceramics” course, which ran for the first time last spring. The class was a success, receiving 50 applications for its 10 spots.

While the interest in “Sport and Disability” was not overwhelming when it was first offered, also last spring, Schoemaker felt that students who enrolled benefited from the class.

“They really enjoyed it because it was something different than what they were used to,” she said. “It was a safe space that they could ask questions they weren’t so sure about.”

Siddhanti sees no reason why the program would be met with anything but positive responses.

“It’s for the students,” he said. “All of our money that we have goes directly back to the students. I think it’s a useful service for the University. It’s something that all the teachers seem to enjoy, and obviously students sign up voluntarily.”

Nonetheless, the SIC program still sees room for improvement. This year, it wants to establish a system in which students offer feedback on the classes they have taken. That way, classes that are repeated from quarter to quarter, or from year to year, can make necessary changes for the future.

Additionally, Siddhanti has attempted to make it easier for prospective teachers or students to find information on the program by centralizing information on a new website.

“It’s…a one-stop shop for any application questions, what courses are being taught, stuff like that,” he said.

A significant distinguishing factor between SICs and regular classes is the fact that the students are being taught by their peers, which can lead to a laid-back, discussion-based atmosphere.

“A lot of times you don’t even know what the students are going to be interested in,” Schoemaker said. “They might be interested in a different direction than what you were planning on, but allowing for that digression…that’s okay.”

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