Pascale Elisabeth Eenkema van Dijk – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Fri, 20 May 2016 06:48:11 +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 Pascale Elisabeth Eenkema van Dijk – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Classy Classes: POLISCI 336: “Introduction to Global Justice” https://stanforddaily.com/2016/05/19/classy-classes-polisci-336-introduction-to-global-justice/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/05/19/classy-classes-polisci-336-introduction-to-global-justice/#respond Fri, 20 May 2016 06:48:11 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1115454 POLISCI 336: “Introduction to Global Justice,” taught by Prithviraj Datta, a post doctoral researcher in Ethics in Society, offers students the opportunity to investigate core ethical issues in the realm of international politics.

The course is split into three distinct sections. Students first explore the content of global justice, then zoom into the obligations global justice creates in areas such as global poverty, climate change, immigration, warfare and the well-being of women. The course ends by examining the question of whether a democratic international order is needed in order to reach global justice.

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POLISCI 336: “Introduction to Global Justice,” taught by Prithviraj Datta, a post-doctoral researcher in Ethics in Society, offers students the opportunity to investigate core ethical issues in the realm of international politics.

The course is split into three distinct sections. Students first explore the content of global justice, then zoom into the obligations global justice creates in areas such as global poverty, climate change, immigration, warfare and the well-being of women. The course ends by examining the question of whether a democratic international order is needed in order to reach global justice.

“The way the class works is we read essays and come to class and debate the pros and cons of those philosophical positions,” said Grace Hultquist ’16. “We then typically apply those to real-world situations.”

In a recent class, Datta focused on the justice and well-being of women. The lecture portion of the class centered on a comparison of two American philosophers, Martha Nussbaum and John Rawls. Throughout the class, Datta presented Rawls’ opinions and Nussbaum’s counterarguments.

For example, Rawls found that state action to ensure that women get fair treatment is entirely just, but rejected the idea that liberal states could intervene in the practices of illiberal ones to improve the rights of women.  Nussbaum criticizes this approach, highlighting that Rawls switches from using individuals as units of justice to treating states as units of justice. She instead argues that liberal states can spur change in illiberal states through mechanisms that do not involve violence or invasion, such as drawing up international treaties or creating trade incentives.

Datta then asked the class why this issue was a problem of global justice. He noted how women in the world are extremely disempowered and are often held back from reaching their true potential. Datta argued that the United States must not only investigate its own institutions, but also care about how more patriarchal states treat their women.

The feedback on the class has been positive.

“This class has been a really great outlet to talk about global justice issues that are so prevalent in our society, but to look at them from a theoretical, more philosophical standpoint,” said Sophie Fisher ’19. “It has definitely challenged a lot of my views on what is just and why, and has really made me think deeply about the extent of my own duty to the rest of the world.”

Fisher further noted the value she received from the discussions in class, explaining how the comments of her peers as well as her own thoughts served to challenge and add on to the works the class was reading. The discussion section of the class has also encouraged her to speak up, helping her feel more engaged and active.

Hultquist agreed that the class serves as a way to challenge people’s preconceptions about global justice. She explained how the class helped her rethink her position on helping others globally.

“My intuition coming into the class was that, obviously, people have a moral obligation to help as many people around the world as they can,” Hultquist said. “A lot of the readings we have read have challenged that assumption, bringing up the issue that blindly giving aid to other countries doesn’t always do what is intended. [The class] has given me a much more nuanced perspective on what I thought was a very obvious question.”

 

Contact Pascale Elisabeth Eenkema van Dijk at pevde@stanford.edu.

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Seven Stanford affiliates named Soros Fellows https://stanforddaily.com/2016/04/13/seven-stanford-affiliates-named-soros-fellows/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/04/13/seven-stanford-affiliates-named-soros-fellows/#respond Wed, 13 Apr 2016 07:42:17 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1113533 Seven Stanford-affiliated scholars were recently named Paul and Daisy Soros Fellows, joining 23 other people in the fellowship’s 2016 cohort.. The fellowship provides tuition and living expenses for immigrants and children of immigrants for up to $90,000 over two years and aims to award students who demonstrate creativity, drive and academic success. The awardees have the opportunity to study in any degree-granting graduate school in the United States.

The Stanford-affiliated awardees include Abubakar Abid, Binbin Chen, Sharada Jambulapati B.A. ’12, Zihao Jiang, Veronica Manzo, Jenna Nicholas and Suhas Rao. Each will be attending graduate school at Stanford in the 2016-2017 school year or have previously attended Stanford.

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Seven Stanford-affiliated scholars were recently named Paul and Daisy Soros Fellows, joining 23 other people in the fellowship’s 2016 cohort. The fellowship provides tuition and living expenses for immigrants and children of immigrants for up to $90,000 over two years and aims to award students who demonstrate creativity, drive and academic success. The awardees have the opportunity to study in any degree-granting graduate school in the United States.

The Stanford-affiliated awardees include Abubakar Abid, Binbin Chen, Sharada Jambulapati ’12, Zihao Jiang, Veronica Manzo, Jenna Nicholas and Suhas Rao. Each will be attending graduate school at Stanford starting in 2017 or have previously attended Stanford.

Abid, the son of two Pakistani immigrants, will utilize the fellowship in order to pursue his Ph.D. studies in electrical engineering at Stanford. Abid plans to build edible medical devices that monitor biomedical signals that will not only diagnose diseases but also supply patients with real-time feedback.

Chen, another awardee, is a Chinese immigrant who plans to use the fellowship to support his M.D. and Ph.D. studies at Stanford Medical School. Currently, he is developing bioinformatics tools that analyze patient responses to immunotherapy.

The fellowship will help Jambulapati, the daughter of Indian immigrants, continue her legal studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Sharada is passionate about civil rights and racial justice, and received the John Gardner Public Service Fellowship, which allowed her to work at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama. She studied international relations in her time as a Stanford undergraduate.

Jiang, an immigrant from Shaoxing, China, will utilize the fellowship to support his Ph.D. studies in physics at Stanford. Currently Jiang is participating in the ATLAS experiment, operating the ATLAS detector and analyzing massive amounts of physics data produced at the Large Hadron Collider.

Manzo, the daughter of two Mexican immigrants, plans to use the fellowship towards her studies at Stanford Medical School. Last summer, she helped aid the development of preventive medicine programs at the Ravenswood Family Health Center in East Palo Alto. Currently, she is focusing on cancer biology and community health.

The fellowship will aid Nicholas in her studies at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Nicholas co-founded Phoenix Global Impact, a consulting firm aimed at supporting leaders in the field of impact investing. She also worked as a project manager for Divest-Invest Philanthropy and expanded the organization’s membership to more than 150 foundations.

Rao, the son of two Indian immigrants, will use the fellowship to fund his medical and doctoral studies at Stanford Medical School. Rao studied the three-dimensional structure of the genome, helping to create the highest resolution maps of the 3D genome to date.

 

Contact Pascale Eenkema van Dijk at pevd ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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“The Psychology of Stoked” class explores science behind a mindful life https://stanforddaily.com/2016/03/28/the-psychology-of-stoked-class-explores-science-behind-a-mindful-life/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/03/28/the-psychology-of-stoked-class-explores-science-behind-a-mindful-life/#comments Mon, 28 Mar 2016 08:29:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1112546 PSYC 60N: “The Psychology of Stoked,” a winter quarter course taught by associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral science Shashank Joshi, offers students an opportunity to explore the new field of positive psychology and the true meaning of living a mindful life.

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PSYC 60N: “The Psychology of Stoked,” a winter quarter course taught by associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral science Shashank Joshi, offers students an opportunity to explore the new field of positive psychology and the true meaning of living a mindful life.

Throughout the course, students delve into the cultural, biological, psychological and social aspects of having a fulfilling and positive life, while simultaneously rethinking any initial assumptions about the field. In this participatory seminar, students read pieces from Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walt Whitman and Ernest Hemingway in order to study life satisfaction and the psychiatry of stimulation.

According to Charlotte Poplawski ’13, a guest lecturer in the class, the concept of the psychology of happiness was a response, roughly 30 years ago, to the lack of references to positive coping mechanisms and happiness in the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual” (DSM), a textbook used by psychologists that classifies mental illnesses.

“I feel like there are three main tenants to happiness,” Poplawski said. “One of them is, of course, positive emotional states. The second tenant is meaning, purpose and fulfillment, so having a deeper sense of well-being in your life. The third one, which I was talking a lot about today [in class], is coping constructively with stress, negative emotions and trauma.”

Poplawski is also a course assistant for Pediatrics 106: “Exploring Health and Happiness,” and said that the teaching mechanisms between the two classes are similar. “We teach a lot of what the research has proven, and then we focus on the application. What can be learned from these studies that can be personally applicable to our lives? What methods can we develop to be able to do this?”

In one class, Poplawski focused on the themes of play, laughter and humor, incorporating a number of fun activities in her lecture to support her points. Students played “rock, paper, scissors” and meditated about a childhood experience in which they were lost in play. Poplawski focused on the properties and usefulness of play, further expanding on the topic by outlining the eight play-personas in life, including the joker, the competitor, the explorer and the storyteller. Students were then asked to reflect on which play-persona best fit with a particular memory they had in mind.

When she moved on to laughter, Poplawski explained the importance of laughter and its effect on the body, incorporating a case study and having students participate in a stare-down activity. She urged students to deliberately and consistently find reasons to laugh and learn to laugh at themselves, dubbing this “humor fitness.”

Beyond Poplawski’s lesson, other topics in the course include the neuroscience of joy, mood states, addictions and spirituality. According to students in The Psychology of Stoked, the class has helped them rethink their understanding of happiness.

“Now, I take at least five minutes out of my day to concentrate on not-thinking and focus on my breathing,” said Edan Armas ’19. “It made me appreciate things around me more because I realized I didn’t really pay attention to the moment. Having that exercise fully implemented in my life after we did it in class influenced me to live more in the moment.”

Another member of the class, Meredith Manda ’19, felt similarly.

“I definitely think [this class] has changed my personal definition of happiness,” Manda said. “Before, I think I thought of happiness more of just a pure feeling of positive emotion, but now I see it more in terms of meaning, friendships and relationships. It’s about the things you really value in life rather than just the emotions that are tied with those things. It’s definitely made me more appreciative of people and experiences in my life.”

 

Contact Pascale Eenkema van Dijk at pevd ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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ClassDojo and PERTS launch growth mindset toolkit https://stanforddaily.com/2016/02/17/classdojo-and-perts-launch-growth-mindset-toolkit/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/02/17/classdojo-and-perts-launch-growth-mindset-toolkit/#respond Wed, 17 Feb 2016 08:12:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1110977 ClassDojo and Stanford University’s Project for Education Research That Scales (PERTS) have created a teaching toolkit to incorporate the “growth mindset” into elementary and middle school classrooms.

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ClassDojo and Stanford University’s Project for Education Research That Scales (PERTS) have created a teaching toolkit to incorporate the “growth mindset” into elementary and middle school classrooms. The toolkit includes a five-part animated video series that aims to engage students directly with the growth mindset.

Professor Carol Dweck played an integral part in the popularization of the idea of growth mindset, which centers on the concept that intelligence and abilities are not fixed but rather may grow with practice.

“Through research, we discovered that students’ mindsets were at the heart of these very different patterns in how students deal with setbacks and struggle,” Dweck said. “When students believed their intelligence was something they could develop, they took on challenges so that they can learn. When setbacks occurred, it wasn’t about something deep and permanent happening to them.”

Those with a fixed mindset, on the other hand, constantly worried about how they were perceived and how they measured up to their peers.

Dweck also studies the effect of growth mindset training on school performance. In one study, students were randomly assigned to a growth mindset workshop or a workshop on the brain. The students that received the growth mindset training often become more motivated and earned higher grades in school. Another study showed that students earned higher grades when adults praised their learning process rather than the students’ ability.

Dr. Dave Paunesku, executive director of Stanford PERTS, explained that there are many misconceptions of the growth mindset.

“The growth mindset is not just about effort and trying hard. People lose track about the fact that the strategies behind the growth are really important,” Paunesku said. “They also seem to forget the growth part — it’s the idea that you fundamentally improve your ability, not just that you can succeed at one thing. PERTS wants people to understand the nuance behind it.”

To combat these misconceptions and spread knowledge of the idea, PERTS has developed online modules to help teachers implement effective growth mindset practices. These suggestions aim to narrow the gap between what researchers have found to be successful exercises and the tools that teachers actually have.

“At a really high level, the goal of Stanford PERTS is to get more evidence-based practices into the hands of teachers,” Paunesku said.

ClassDojo, a communications platform, reached out to PERTS after discovering one of their online modules. The partnership is part of ClassDojo’s “Big Ideas” Initiative, which brings research into the classroom in simple and engaging ways. PERTS and ClassDojo collaborated on the scripts for the growth mindset videos and PERTS provided general feedback, but ultimately ClassDojo developed the videos.

Dan Greene, a doctoral student at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, works with PERTS to lead the research portion of the project. Greene plans to gather survey data from teachers and students and link the results with the data that ClassDojo has found. The teachers and students will complete the survey over the next several weeks.

“When the partnership with ClassDojo began, we saw it as a good opportunity to learn more about the behaviors of teachers in classrooms that affect student’s mindsets,” Greene said.

In order to control for validity when teachers answer questions, Greene has ensured the questions are concrete, making it harder for teachers to be subjective about how effective their practices are. Some of the questions are designed to be tricky — for instance, the answer that may seem “right” is not necessarily correct.

“For example, giving students an opportunity to struggle is an important step to get a growth mindset, but we ask a question like: do you hate to see your students struggle? What kind of teacher would want to say they want their students to struggle?” Greene said. “But to a certain degree it could be valuable to give your students a chance to productively struggle with difficult material.”

While PERTS explores teacher practices through survey collection, ClassDojo has been spreading knowledge of their videos. The videos feature friendly monsters Mojo and Katie, who explore the growth mindset together.

The videos serve as an introduction to the fixed mindset idea, but teachers can also follow through on the concept through the lesson guides that ClassDojo provides with each video.

“We want teachers to think about the kind of norms they want to set in the classroom so that growth mindset is integrated in it,” Paunesku said.

Each video ends with a question, such as: What do you think? Can Mojo become smarter?

“This is a very effective tactic,” Dweck said. “It motivates students to endorse the message. Of course he can do it if he tries!”

The videos also explain the neuroscience behind the fixed and growth mindsets. Paunesku believes that this strategy increases the credibility of the message and helps students visualize the idea better.

“The videos are engaging and can be really focused. They have a high degree of fidelity: you can be sure that everyone gets the same message,” Paunesku said.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that ClassDojo is an “interactive software company” instead of a communications platform. It also misstated the “Big Ideas” Initiative mission as “fostering conversations between parents, teachers and students about student behavior” rather than bringing research into the classroom. The Daily regrets these errors.

 

Contact Pascale Elisabeth Eenkema van Dijk at pevd ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Gas leak discovered behind Arrillaga Family Dining Commons https://stanforddaily.com/2016/01/29/gas-leak-discovered-behind-arrillaga-family-dining-commons/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/01/29/gas-leak-discovered-behind-arrillaga-family-dining-commons/#respond Fri, 29 Jan 2016 10:08:52 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1109963 Early Thursday morning, a gas odor coming from the Arrillaga Family Dining Commons parking lot prompted an investigation by PG&E. The odor was confirmed to be a small gas leak.

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A gas odor coming from the Arrillaga Family Dining Commons parking lot prompted an investigation by PG&E early Thursday morning. The odor was confirmed to be a small gas leak, but due to its minimal size no evacuation of the area was necessary.

All students were notified of the leak via Stanford’s emergency alert system and students living in Toyon, Branner and Crothers received frequent updates via email on the status of repairs throughout the day.

In order to find and fix the leak, a section of the Arrillaga parking lot was excavated by PG&E workers and students were asked to avoid the area. Students were also offered ear plugs by the R&DE Student Housing front desk in order to help them cope with the noise coming from the maintenance site.

At around 12:30 p.m., PG&E announced that they were shutting off one of the gas lines, which cut off heating in Branner and Toyon, though it did not prevent hot water from running. However, in the midst of repairs, a water line was accidentally hit, temporarily shutting off water in Toyon and Branner in the early afternoon.

The water line was again functioning after an hour, and plumbing in Toyon and Branner was restored. The R&DE Student Housing front desk reported that the gas leak would be repaired by 11:30 p.m., with heating becoming fully functional shortly afterward.

 

Contact Pascale Elisabeth Eenkema van Dijk at pevd ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

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Stanford senior Kara Fong wins Churchill Scholarship https://stanforddaily.com/2016/01/28/stanford-senior-kara-fong-wins-churchill-scholarship/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/01/28/stanford-senior-kara-fong-wins-churchill-scholarship/#respond Thu, 28 Jan 2016 11:21:19 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1109912 Kara Fong ’16, a Stanford senior and chemical engineering major, is one of 15 students from across the nation to be awarded the prestigious Churchill Scholarship, which will allow her to pursue a master’s degree in material sciences and metallurgy at the University of Cambridge next year.

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(Courtesy of Kara Fong)
(Courtesy of Kara Fong)

Kara Fong ’16, a Stanford senior and chemical engineering major, is one of 15 students from across the nation to be awarded the prestigious Churchill Scholarship, which will allow her to pursue a master’s degree in material sciences and metallurgy at the University of Cambridge next year.

The Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States grants the award annually to students passionate about science, mathematics and engineering in an attempt to promote scientific exchange between the United States and the United Kingdom.

With the funding provided by the award, Fong plans to conduct research on polymer-based supercapacitors, an energy storage technology that has major potential for application in novel electronics.

According to the Stanford News, chemistry has always been a mesmerizing topic for Fong, and she views it as a channel through which she can improve society.

“Chemical processes form the basis for a myriad of energy technologies that we use daily,” Fong told the Stanford News. “Now, as I look towards graduate school and my ultimate goal of professorship, my aim is to use a fundamental understanding of these chemical systems to improve the ways in which we produce and store energy.”

Fong’s love for chemistry has developed through a variety of extracurricular activities that have allowed her to explore her own interests and help others uncover a passion for chemistry.

Fong has been especially effective in working with undergraduate engineers. She is the co-chair of a peer advising program that hosts tutoring events for first- and second-year engineering students and serves as a TA for CHEMENG 20: “Introduction to Chemical Engineering” and CHEMENG 12SC: “An Exploration of Art Materials: the Intersection of Art and Science.”

In 2014, she was named a Goldwater Scholar in Mathematics, Science, and Technology. Fong has also conducted research as a member of the Thomas F. Jaramillo Research Group and as a research intern at the Jülich Research Center in Germany.

Now, Fong is excited to continue her development in the field.

“I am thrilled to go to Cambridge next year and make the most out of the incredible scientific and cultural opportunities provided by the Churchill Scholarship,” Fong said.

 

Contact Pascale Eenkema van Dijk at pevd ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Student athletes balance sports and academics https://stanforddaily.com/2015/12/09/student-athletes-balance-sports-and-academics/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/12/09/student-athletes-balance-sports-and-academics/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2015 17:00:02 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1108214 Stanford student athletes have a lot to manage with 20 hours per week of practice, weight training, conditioning and games -- plus the normal academic requirements of any other student. Though student athletes are supported through their academic advisors, coaches and teachers, along with the numerous programs and policies Stanford has implemented, there is still room for improvement.

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(NINA ZUBRILLINA/The Stanford Daily)
(NINA ZUBRILLINA/The Stanford Daily)

Stanford student athletes have a lot to manage with 20 hours per week of practice, weight training, conditioning and games — plus the normal academic requirements of any other student. Many wake up as early as 5 a.m. and practice for three to four hours, six days a week. Though student athletes are supported through their academic advisors, coaches and teachers, along with the numerous programs and policies Stanford has implemented, there is still room for improvement.

Academic assistance

The University has implemented a number of policies and programs to help athletes balance their different commitments.

Stanford’s assistant athletic director Austin Lee said Stanford strives to create a supportive environment that prevents students from being deterred from difficult classes because of their challenging schedules or fear of being barred from sports competitions because of NCAA academic requirements.

Academic programs for athletes include regular group tutorial sessions, intentionally scheduled to be convenient for athletes’ schedules, as well as drop-in hours for athletes. Group tutorials are usually offered twice a week for two hours in several popular subjects such as economics and computer science.

Hideki Nakada, assistant coach of the women’s soccer team, explained that coaches, athletic academic advisors and professors also work together to aid student athletes.

“Some players cannot make certain practices because school is the first priority,” Nakada said. “We have one player who misses every Wednesday.”

When Sameer Kumar ’19, a member of the men’s tennis team, traveled to Seattle for a tournament, he missed classes from Wednesday through Friday.

“[Professors] do a very good job of helping you make up your work if you miss class,” Kumar said.

Professors and coaches have even figured out a system for when student athletes have to miss midterms — coaches often proctor the exams for the athletes.

Academic conflicts

A major conflict that occurs for student athletes is finding classes that do not conflict with practice schedules.

“When scheduling for the fall, we didn’t get our practice schedule until after we signed up for classes,” Kumar said. “So we had to go back and change our schedules accordingly.”

Kumar has learned to accept the fact that sometimes his first choice for a class is simply not feasible.

Helen Stroheker ’18, a sophomore on the rowing team, has had to meet with her professors multiple times to figure out timelines for her work and to discuss pushing back deadlines whenever she’s in season. Last year, her course CEE 31Q: “Accessing Architecture Through Drawing,” which had 16 students, was moved up by one hour so that she would be able to attend.

Lee explained that the athletics department tries to help students organize their schedules.

“Very often we [the academic advisors] meet with students to see what their options are in terms of taking this class in another quarter or taking it at a different time with a different instructor. And if there is a more of a discussion that needs to happen with the coaching staff, we help facilitate those discussions,” Lee said.

But according to Lee, advising athletes academically is more than just talking to students about class schedules.

“There’s a whole set of NCAA rules and regulations that the varsity athletes have to follow, and how we track that is different from other students,” Lee said.

Lee said the NCAA rule that six units a quarter must be “degree-applicable” creates a burden for certain athletes. For example, pre-med students must take many required classes that are considered optional electives courses and not degree-applicable. Thus, pre-med students could find themselves in a situation in which they are not meeting the NCAA requirements while still taking a full course load.

Academic performance: stigma, stats and reality

According to Kumar, athletes can also sometimes feel as though there are lower academic expectations for them.

“[Professors] definitely try to help you a lot and want you to do well,” Kumar said. “But they might think, ‘You didn’t get into this school completely off academics.’”

Kumar also got a similar sense from his peers. In his first quarter here, he has heard non-athletes say things like, “If a class is full of athletes, it’s probably going to be an easy class,” or “There’s an athlete in my class who got a B, which means I can get an A.”

Despite these stigmas, evidence suggests that Stanford student athletes are some of the most academically high-performing college athletes in the country.

The most recent Graduation Success Rate (GSR) report released by the NCAA revealed that Stanford student athletes had an overall graduation rate of 98 percent. Eleven women’s programs and eight men’s programs achieved GSR scores of 100 percent, and Stanford football’s GSR of 99 percent, is significantly higher than the next best Pac-12 school, UCLA, with a score of 89 percent.

According to Lee, student athletes are not overrepresented in the population of students on academic probation either.

Behind these positive statistics, however, many student athletes still find themselves struggling.

Stroheker, who is taking 19 units this quarter and spends about 24 hours a week rowing — including traveling back and forth to the boathouse — is generally working during all of her free time between classes.

“You do have to choose to prioritize athletics and academics over your social life and other extracurriculars,” Stroheker said.

“I think that Stanford does a great job of helping academically balance school with sports without giving athletes too much help,” she added. “Where I see the biggest need for improvement is helping people find balance in their lives and achieve mental health.”

Areas for potential improvements

One of the actions Stanford has taken to help athlete mental health in the last year is hiring a dedicated nutritionist and a sports psychologist to work with student athletes.

Kumar suggested that tutoring could meet more often and be available for more classes. The only tutoring relevant to his classes this quarter was economics tutoring, which met only once a week from 6-8 p.m.

“If you miss a class or have midterms coming up, it can get pretty tough because it’s only once a week,” Kumar said.

Although student athletes see areas where academic support could be improved for athletes, quitting or regretting their participation in a sport seems to be rare.

Nakada has been a college coach for nine years, and during his three years at Stanford, there have been no cases in which a women’s soccer player has quit. In Lee’s seven years at Stanford, he reported that only about four or five recruited students decided to quit early in their freshman fall quarters.  

Evidence suggests the passion athletes feel for their sport, combined with the resources Stanford provides, is enough to preclude student athletes from quitting.

“I love tennis; it’s my passion so I wouldn’t give it up,” Kumar said. “I made a lot of sacrifices for it, but it’s also given me a lot of rewards.”

 

Contact Pascale Elisabeth Eenkema van Dijk at pevd ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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New digital humanities minor combines technology and the humanities https://stanforddaily.com/2015/10/16/new-digital-humanities-minor-combines-technology-and-the-humanities/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/10/16/new-digital-humanities-minor-combines-technology-and-the-humanities/#respond Fri, 16 Oct 2015 10:01:57 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1105065 In September, Stanford’s English department launched the digital humanities (DH) minor, a program which allows students to use digital tools to enhance their understanding of the humanities and generate new questions for innovative research.

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(Courtesy of Mark Algee-Hewitt)
(Courtesy of Mark Algee-Hewitt)

In September, Stanford’s English department launched the digital humanities (DH) minor, a program which allows students to use digital tools to enhance their understanding of the humanities and generate new questions for innovative research.

Students in the minor choose between one of three focuses, or clusters: geospacial humanities, text technologies or quantitative textual analysis. Each track has a corresponding introductory class that is partly method-based but also exposes students to the larger themes of the digital humanities.

The minor, which was proposed in April 2014 and approved last May, requires students to complete 20 units, including one core class of five units and five other courses with a minimum of three units each. Some of the specific courses provided include Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages 122: “The Digital Middle Ages,” English 150: “Poetry and the Internet” and English 180C: “Technologies of Enlightenment.”

Professor of English Elaine Treharne, who co-directs the digital humanities minor and directs the program’s text technologies cluster, indicated that profound student interest in the field was one of the main reasons for the minor’s creation. During January 2014, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences held a small symposium on campus where Treharne and a few of her colleagues gave speeches about their work.

“At that point we realized we have all this expertise and all these innovative, ground-breaking projects that really benefit research and Stanford’s various articulations of that research, but it doesn’t benefit the undergraduates in a cogent way,” Treharne said.

Mark Algee-Hewitt, assistant professor of English and director of the quantitative textual analysis cluster of the minor, shed further light on the topic.

“The minor came about because the digital humanities is an area at Stanford where a lot of interest is already happening,” Algee-Hewitt said.

“The Center of Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA), the Literary Lab and the Stanford University Libraries are very active in researching and working in the forefront of this new emerging field,” he added.

Algee-Hewitt explained that prior to the creation of the minor, undergraduates were getting exposure to the digital humanities solely through research opportunities and various courses related to the digital humanities’ goals.

Treharne and Algee-Hewitt, along with linguistics lecturer Sarah Ogilvie and associate professor of history Zephyr Frank, worked to create the digital humanities minor, which gives students a framework to bring together these courses and opportunities into a coherent program.

According to Treharne, about 20 students have expressed interest in the digital humanities minor so far, but the process for declaring has not yet been finalized online.

For Mirae Lee ’17, the new digital humanities minor was exactly what she was looking for in a degree. During her sophomore summer, Mirae joined the Literary Lab, which ignited her interest in textual analysis before the opportunity for a class in the subject was even available.

“For a long time, I was considering the CS+X joint major program, but there wasn’t enough overlap between taking English and CS classes through this program,” Lee said. “The digital humanities classes I have pursued now are very emphatic on the connection between my interests.”

At first, Lee was concerned that performing quantitative analyses of texts would destroy the beauty of reading them. However, once she obtained a deeper understanding of the process of textual analysis, she began to view it as simply another tool through which to appreciate literature.

“The DH minor teaches humanities students how to use digital tools in ways that enrich their primary humanities specialism,” Ogilvie said.

According to Algee-Hewitt, the research in digital humanities has been vast and innovative. He explained how analytical methods were used to deal with “messy” humanities problems.

For example, the head of Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Michael Burger, utilized the methods developed for examining 19th century Victorian novels in order to examine Supreme Court case decisions on environmental law.

Burger assessed the difference between Supreme Court decisions that were viewed as environmentally protective and those that were not. The language differences he measured pointed towards the way the Supreme Court functions while making decisions.

Through the Global Currents project run within CESTA, students and professors are currently analyzing 100,000 images of 12th century medieval manuscripts. Using feature modeling, a computer is being trained to read the way that information is being laid out in these manuscripts, explained Treharne.

“Big questions such as how we recognize what constitutes a text, how we recognize different components of texts, how we recognize where books were made and what materials were made in their production are all being answered,” Treharne said.

“This tells us the expectations manuscript makers had of their readers,” she added.

Through this and various other projects, students in these digital humanities classes are participating in real, ongoing research that in many cases hasn’t been done before.

“The minor in DH will be a bonus to any humanities graduate’s CV because it will signal that you are able to engage seriously in your field while also applying to the it the latest innovative and cutting-edge digital methods and tools,” Ogilvie said.

 

Contact Pascale Elisabeth Eenkema van Dijk at pevd ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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