6.13.24
The team behind Stanford’s Our Voice citizen science research initiative explains the community-driven research practice being implemented in communities across the globe.
The NASA GLOBE Observer app allows anyone to become a citizen scientist by collecting observations of clouds. | NASA GLOBE Observer
Scientific research isn’t just about laboratory work. With just a few quick photos or observations, anyone who is interested in working with others to improve their community can be a citizen scientist.
Citizen science is a form of research that uses crowdsourced knowledge. This often involves community data-gathering for interpretation and use by researchers, which Stanford’s Our Voice citizen science research initiative refers to as citizen science “for” or “with” the people.
By contrast, their work, which focuses on health equity, enables citizen science “by the people” through engaging community members not only in data collection but also in analysis and use of their collective findings. The Our Voice method emphasizes collaboration with community-engaged researchers and community-based organizations to support residents in becoming agents of local change during their projects and beyond.
The team has found that their approach elicits critical local wisdom (in the form of data) that may not be accessible through traditional research methods. In many cases, data from citizen science projects can also be leveraged by the community itself to inform changes that are both relevant and sustainable.
Here are tips from Our Voice for engaging with and understanding citizen science:
1. Anyone can be a citizen scientist
Every person has valuable lived experiences that can inform research, educate others, and drive meaningful change. These lived experiences can include insights from daily activities, like picking up the kids from school or crossing a busy street.
Becoming a citizen scientist starts with recognizing that people already use observation in their everyday lives. An example is when you observe things that make it harder or easier to walk to your local community center. These observations, when combined with the observations of others, can help groups to identify high priority concerns that can be improved upon relatively easily.
Citizen science opportunities
Abuzz: citizen-based mosquito monitoring system
Worldwide, over 3 billion people are at risk of contracting mosquito-borne infectious diseases, such as malaria, dengue, and Zika. A simple recording of a mosquito’s buzz on a cellphone could contribute to a global-scale mosquito tracking map that addresses the public health crisis rapidly spreading across continents with devastating consequences. All that’s required to participate is a cellphone to record and submit the buzz of a mosquito, which means almost anyone from around the world can take part in this work.
Foldscope – the paper microscope
Bioengineering Professor Manu Prakash and his students have designed a paper microscope – the Foldscope – that can be assembled easily and inexpensively. The Foldscope beta instrument has been distributed all over the world. There are many kits to choose from, including individual kits and the Basic Classroom Kit, which includes 20 Foldscopes. Each Foldscope comes with a cellphone attachment module, a nylon carrying pouch, and a set of reusable paper and tape slides. The kit costs $35 plus shipping.
Folding@Home
Folding@Home is a distributed computing project. People from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world to help calculate how proteins fold (or misfold). Every computer that participates brings the project closer to its goals.
Investigating ant colony searching
Join a citizen science project to investigate how ants work together, without a plan, to explore new areas. Replicate a simple, easy experiment with inexpensive materials that was done in microgravity on the International Space Station. In addition to instructions for running the experiment, this website includes a lesson to help students explore ants and their behavior, ask scientific questions, collect and analyze data, and develop explanations about ant colonies.
Land Talk
Land Talk is a citizen science and environmental history project that collects and presents conversations with observers about changes outdoors over time in places they know well. The observers are usually older people who describe changes in a place they have observed for a long time, at least 20 years. Volunteers submit audio and/or video of their conversation with an observer, along with writing about the themes discussed during the conversation, and photographs or drawings of the changes through time. The goal is to provide an opportunity for conversations between generations, and a chance to learn from observers about changes they have seen.
Content from: Education & STEM Outreach in the Office of Community Engagement
Another opportunity not included in this article:
For anyone interested in getting involved in real experimental science work there is an easy way to do it on your desktop computers. You can join in many experiments in universities and other institutions by donating unused computer time in project using the BOINC [Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing software from U.C.Berkeley. Visit BOINC; follow the instructions to put a BOINC client on your desktop machine [Windows, Linux, Mac]; look at the projects ; attach to any project(s) you find interesting; set your “Computing preferences [“default” is the best option]; set up your
“Community preferences” and BOINC will do the rest. The project will download work units to your computer which your computer will process with no interruption of your normal work. When each work unit is finished BOINC will upload it to the project scientists and you will be rewarded with BOINC credits and receive new work units. If you have any problems, there are Message boards where you can get help.
My BOINC
There are projects in practically every science and in mathematics and gaming.
I am not very computer literate. If I can do it, you, too, can do it. Give it a shot.
2. No observation is too small
The Our Voice team advises citizen scientists to err on the side of capturing more data – even what may initially seem insignificant. The team has found that when citizen scientists share their findings with other residents and discuss them together, the result is often more than the sum of its parts.
Through group discussions and analysis of collective experiences around specific local environments and settings, community members can meet other like-minded individuals and work together to broaden community impact. Community change comes from uniting together, and this type of process can also support new understandings and group connections.
3. It’s a win-win for individuals and their communities
Citizen scientists often report gaining new knowledge about their communities, new ways of activating change, and new connections that they can carry into the future. Our Voice projects have not only led to changes in local life, such as better traffic safety or improved health programming; they have also led to increased community cohesion, policy-level change, and individual-level changes in feelings of agency and connectedness.
The Our Voice team also has found that after completing an Our Voice project, citizen scientists may generate ideas for additional projects to address other issues that they deem important to their community.
One example of this phenomenon comes from a San Mateo County Our Voice project called FEAST, Food Environment Assessment using the Stanford Tool, which was initiated in 2013 by Stanford postdoctoral fellows Jylana Sheats and Sandra Winter. The initial FEAST project focused on barriers to food access in older, culturally diverse seniors living in San Mateo County. Then, during the next several years, this group of seniors initiated several more citizen science projects on their own, which focused on additional health and well-being issues, including pedestrian safety and senior affordable housing.
4. Citizen science can contribute to better health care
The Our Voice team has found that citizen science can act as a “gateway” for communities to pinpoint important issues and identify relevant stakeholders to drive positive change. For example, the team has seen how this type of community-engaged citizen science can lead to improvements in health care delivery.
A recent health clinic success story has been a project led by Holly Tabor of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford Medicine. The project is part of IDD-TRANSFORM, which strives to prioritize the perspectives and needs of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) across different aspects of health care. Through this work, individuals with IDD have been able to team up with caregivers and health care providers to collect data on what makes it harder or easier for people with IDD to have successful experiences with their health care provider or clinic.
Such efforts to bring together clinics and communities to advance a more comprehensive perspective on health is a priority area for Stanford Medicine’s Department of Epidemiology & Population Health, where Professor Abby King’s Health Equity Action Research & Technology Solutions (HEARTS) Lab and Our Voice are located.
See the full article here.
Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct.
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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.
Leland and Jane Stanford founded Stanford University to “promote the public welfare by exercising an influence on behalf of humanity and civilization.” Stanford opened its doors in 1891, and more than a century later, it remains dedicated to finding solutions to the great challenges of the day and to preparing our students for leadership in today’s complex world. Stanford, is an American private research university located in Stanford, California on an 8,180-acre (3,310 ha) campus near Palo Alto. Stanford faculty, staff, and alumni have won the Nobel Prize, including some current faculty members.
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university located in Stanford, California. Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford is consistently ranked as among the most prestigious and top universities in the world by major education publications. It is also one of the top fundraising institutions in the country, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.
Leland Stanford was a U.S. senator and former governor of California who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Stanford University struggled financially after the death of Leland Stanford in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates’ entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would later be known as Silicon Valley.
The university is organized around seven schools: three schools consisting of 40 academic departments at the undergraduate level as well as four professional schools that focus on graduate programs in law, medicine, education, and business. All schools are on the same campus. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of two private institutions in the Division I FBS Pac-12 Conference. It has gained many NCAA team championships, and Stanford has won the NACDA Directors’ Cup for many years. In addition, Stanford students and alumni have won many Olympic medals including many gold medals.
A number of Nobel laureates, Turing Award laureates, and Fields Medalists have been affiliated with Stanford as students, alumni, faculty, or staff. In addition, Stanford is particularly noted for its entrepreneurship and is one of the most successful universities in attracting funding for start-ups. Stanford alumni have founded numerous companies. Stanford is the alma mater of presidents of the United States, a number of living billionaires, and a number of astronauts. It is also one of the leading producers of Fulbright Scholars, Marshall Scholars, Rhodes Scholars, and members of the United States Congress.
Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford, dedicated to Leland Stanford Jr, their only child. The institution opened in 1891 on Stanford’s previous Palo Alto farm.
Jane and Leland Stanford modeled their university after the great eastern universities, most specifically Cornell University. Stanford opened being called the “Cornell of the West” in 1891 due to faculty being former Cornell affiliates (either professors, alumni, or both) including its first president, David Starr Jordan, and second president, John Casper Branner. Both Cornell and Stanford were among the first to have higher education be accessible, nonsectarian, and open to women as well as to men. Cornell is credited as one of the first American universities to adopt this radical departure from traditional education, and Stanford became an early adopter as well.
Despite being impacted by earthquakes in both 1906 and 1989, the campus was rebuilt each time. In 1919, The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace was started by Herbert Hoover to preserve artifacts related to World War I. The Stanford Medical Center, completed in 1959, is a teaching hospital with over 800 beds. The DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), established in 1962, performs research in particle physics.
Land
Most of Stanford is on an 8,180-acre (12.8 sq mi; 33.1 km^2) campus, one of the largest in the United States. It is located on the San Francisco Peninsula, in the northwest part of the Santa Clara Valley (Silicon Valley) approximately 37 miles (60 km) southeast of San Francisco and approximately 20 miles (30 km) northwest of San Jose. In 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped.
Stanford’s main campus includes a census-designated place within unincorporated Santa Clara County, although some of the university land (such as the Stanford Shopping Center and the Stanford Research Park) is within the city limits of Palo Alto. The campus also includes much land in unincorporated San Mateo County (including the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve), as well as in the city limits of Menlo Park (Stanford Hills neighborhood), Woodside, and Portola Valley.
Non-central campus
Stanford currently operates in various locations outside of its central campus.
On the founding grant:
Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a 1,200-acre (490 ha) natural reserve south of the central campus owned by the university and used by wildlife biologists for research.
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is a facility west of the central campus operated by the university for the Department of Energy. It contains the longest linear particle accelerator in the world, 2 miles (3.2 km) on 426 acres (172 ha) of land. Golf course and a seasonal lake: The university also has its own golf course and a seasonal lake (Lake Lagunita, actually an irrigation reservoir), both home to the vulnerable California tiger salamander. As of 2012 Lake Lagunita was often dry and the university had no plans to artificially fill it.
Off the founding grant:
Hopkins Marine Station, in Pacific Grove, California, is a marine biology research center owned by the university since 1892., in Pacific Grove, California, is a marine biology research center owned by the university since 1892.
Study abroad locations: unlike typical study abroad programs, Stanford itself operates in several locations around the world; thus, each location has Stanford faculty-in-residence and staff in addition to students, creating a “mini-Stanford”.
Redwood City campus for many of the university’s administrative offices located in Redwood City, California, a few miles north of the main campus. In 2005, the university purchased a small, 35-acre (14 ha) campus in Midpoint Technology Park intended for staff offices; development was delayed by The Great Recession. In 2015 the university announced a development plan and the Redwood City campus opened in March 2019.
The Bass Center in Washington, DC provides a base, including housing, for the Stanford in Washington program for undergraduates. It includes a small art gallery open to the public.
China: Stanford Center at Peking University, housed in the Lee Jung Sen Building, is a small center for researchers and students in collaboration with Beijing University [北京大学](CN) (Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University (CN) (KIAA-PKU).
Administration and organization
Stanford is a private, non-profit university that is administered as a corporate trust governed by a privately appointed board of trustees with a maximum membership of 38. Trustees serve five-year terms (not more than two consecutive terms) and meet five times annually. A new trustee is chosen by the current trustees by ballot. The Stanford trustees also oversee the Stanford Research Park, the Stanford Shopping Center, the Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University Medical Center, and many associated medical facilities (including the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital).
The board appoints a president to serve as the chief executive officer of the university, to prescribe the duties of professors and course of study, to manage financial and business affairs, and to appoint nine vice presidents. The provost is the chief academic and budget officer, to whom the deans of each of the seven schools report.
As of 2018, the university was organized into seven academic schools. The schools of Humanities and Sciences (27 departments), Engineering (nine departments), and Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (four departments) have both graduate and undergraduate programs while the Schools of Law, Medicine, Education and Business have graduate programs only. The powers and authority of the faculty are vested in the Academic Council, which is made up of tenure and non-tenure line faculty, research faculty, senior fellows in some policy centers and institutes, the president of the university, and some other academic administrators, but most matters are handled by the Faculty Senate, made up of 55 elected representatives of the faculty.
The Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) is the student government for Stanford and all registered students are members. Its elected leadership consists of the Undergraduate Senate elected by the undergraduate students, the Graduate Student Council elected by the graduate students, and the President and Vice President elected as a ticket by the entire student body.
Stanford is the beneficiary of a special clause in the California Constitution, which explicitly exempts Stanford property from taxation so long as the property is used for educational purposes.
Endowment and donations
Only Harvard University, the University of Texas System, and Yale University had larger endowments than Stanford.
In 2006, President John L. Hennessy launched a five-year campaign called the “Stanford Challenge”, which reached its $4.3 billion fundraising goal in 2009, two years ahead of time, but continued fundraising for the duration of the campaign. It concluded on December 31, 2011, having raised a total of $6.23 billion and breaking the previous campaign fundraising record of $3.88 billion held by Yale. Specifically, the campaign raised $253.7 million for undergraduate financial aid, as well as $2.33 billion for its initiative in “Seeking Solutions” to global problems, $1.61 billion for “Educating Leaders” by improving K-12 education, and $2.11 billion for “Foundation of Excellence” aimed at providing academic support for Stanford students and faculty. Funds supported a large number of new fellowships for graduate students, a number of newly endowed chairs for faculty, and some new or renovated buildings. The new funding also enabled the construction of a facility for stem cell research; a new campus for the business school; an expansion of the law school; a new Engineering Quad; a new art and art history building; an on-campus concert hall; a new art museum; and a planned expansion of the medical school, among other things. In 2012, the university raised $1.035 billion, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.
Research centers and institutes
DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Stanford Research Institute, a center of innovation to support economic development in the region.
Hoover Institution, a conservative American public policy institution and research institution that promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, and limited government.
Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, a multidisciplinary design school in cooperation with the Hasso Plattner Institute of University of Potsdam [Universität Potsdam](DE) that integrates product design, engineering, and business management education).
Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, which grew out of and still contains the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project.
John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists
Center for Ocean Solutions
Together with University of California-Berkeley and University of California-San Francisco, Stanford is part of the Biohub, a new medical science research center founded in 2016 by a $600 million commitment from Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg and pediatrician Priscilla Chan.
Discoveries and innovation
Natural sciences
Biological synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) – Arthur Kornberg synthesized DNA material and won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1959 for his work at Stanford.
First Transgenic organism – Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer were the first scientists to transplant genes from one living organism to another, a fundamental discovery for genetic engineering. Thousands of products have been developed on the basis of their work, including human growth hormone and hepatitis B vaccine.
Laser – Arthur Leonard Schawlow shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn for his work on lasers.
Nuclear magnetic resonance – Felix Bloch developed new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements, which are the underlying principles of the MRI.
Computer and applied sciences
ARPANET – Stanford Research Institute, formerly part of Stanford but on a separate campus, was the site of one of the four original ARPANET nodes.
Internet—Stanford was the site where the original design of the Internet was undertaken. Vint Cerf led a research group to elaborate the design of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP/IP) that he originally co-created with Robert E. Kahn (Bob Kahn) in 1973 and which formed the basis for the architecture of the Internet.
Frequency modulation synthesis – John Chowning of the Music department invented the FM music synthesis algorithm in 1967, and Stanford later licensed it to Yamaha Corporation.
Google – Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford. They were working on the Stanford Digital Library Project (SDLP). The SDLP’s goal was “to develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated and universal digital library” and it was funded through the National Science Foundation, among other federal agencies.
Klystron tube – invented by the brothers Russell and Sigurd Varian at Stanford. Their prototype was completed and demonstrated successfully on August 30, 1937. Upon publication in 1939, news of the klystron immediately influenced the work of U.S. and UK researchers working on radar equipment.
RISC – ARPA funded VLSI project of microprocessor design. Stanford and University of California- Berkeley are most associated with the popularization of this concept. The Stanford MIPS would go on to be commercialized as the successful MIPS architecture, while Berkeley RISC gave its name to the entire concept, commercialized as the SPARC. Another success from this era were IBM’s efforts that eventually led to the IBM POWER instruction set architecture, PowerPC, and Power ISA. As these projects matured, a wide variety of similar designs flourished in the late 1980s and especially the early 1990s, representing a major force in the Unix workstation market as well as embedded processors in laser printers, routers and similar products.
SUN workstation – Andy Bechtolsheim designed the SUN workstation for the Stanford University Network communications project as a personal CAD workstation, which led to Sun Microsystems.
Businesses and entrepreneurship
Stanford is one of the most successful universities in creating companies and licensing its inventions to existing companies; it is often held up as a model for technology transfer. Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing is responsible for commercializing university research, intellectual property, and university-developed projects.
The university is described as having a strong venture culture in which students are encouraged, and often funded, to launch their own companies.
Companies founded by Stanford alumni generate more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue, equivalent to the 10th-largest economy in the world.
Some companies closely associated with Stanford and their connections include:
Hewlett-Packard, 1939, co-founders William R. Hewlett (B.S, PhD) and David Packard (M.S).
Silicon Graphics, 1981, co-founders James H. Clark (Associate Professor) and several of his grad students.
Sun Microsystems, 1982, co-founders Vinod Khosla (M.B.A), Andy Bechtolsheim (PhD) and Scott McNealy (M.B.A).
Cisco, 1984, founders Leonard Bosack (M.S) and Sandy Lerner (M.S) who were in charge of Stanford Computer Science and Graduate School of Business computer operations groups respectively when the hardware was developed.
Yahoo!, 1994, co-founders Jerry Yang (B.S, M.S) and David Filo (M.S).
Google, 1998, co-founders Larry Page (M.S) and Sergey Brin (M.S).
LinkedIn, 2002, co-founders Reid Hoffman (B.S), Konstantin Guericke (B.S, M.S), Eric Lee (B.S), and Alan Liu (B.S).
Instagram, 2010, co-founders Kevin Systrom (B.S) and Mike Krieger (B.S).
Snapchat, 2011, co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy (B.S).
Coursera, 2012, co-founders Andrew Ng (Associate Professor) and Daphne Koller (Professor, PhD).
Student body
Women comprised 50.4% of undergraduates and 41.5% of graduate students. The freshman retention rate has been 99%.
The relatively low four-year graduation rate is a function of the university’s coterminal degree (or “coterm”) program, which allows students to earn a master’s degree as a 1-to-2-year extension of their undergraduate program.
As of 2010, fifteen percent of undergraduates were first-generation students.
Athletics
Stanford had 16 male varsity sports and 20 female varsity sports, 19 club sports and about 27 intramural sports. In 1930, following a unanimous vote by the Executive Committee for the Associated Students, the athletic department adopted the mascot “Indian.” The Indian symbol and name were dropped by President Richard Lyman in 1972, after objections from Native American students and a vote by the student senate. The sports teams are now officially referred to as the “Stanford Cardinal,” referring to the deep red color, not the cardinal bird. Stanford is a member of the Pac-12 Conference in most sports, the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation in several other sports, and the America East Conference in field hockey with the participation in the inter-collegiate NCAA’s Division I FBS.
Its traditional sports rival is the University of California-Berkeley, the neighbor to the north in the East Bay. The winner of the annual “Big Game” between the Cal and Cardinal football teams gains custody of the Stanford Axe.
Stanford has had at least one NCAA team champion every year since the 1976–77 school year and has earned many NCAA national team titles since its establishment, the most among universities, and Stanford has won many individual national championships, the most by any university. Stanford has won the award for the top-ranked Division 1 athletic program—the NACDA Directors’ Cup, formerly known as the Sears Cup—annually for the past twenty-four straight years. Stanford athletes have won medals in every Olympic Games since 1912, winning a large number of Olympic medals in total, many of them gold. In the 2008 Summer Olympics, and 2016 Summer Olympics, Stanford won more Olympic medals than any other university in the United States. Stanford athletes won 16 medals at the 2012 Summer Olympics (12 gold, two silver and two bronze), and 27 medals at the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Traditions
The unofficial motto of Stanford, selected by President Jordan, is Die Luft der Freiheit weht. Translated from the German language, this quotation from Ulrich von Hutten means, “The wind of freedom blows.” The motto was controversial during World War I, when anything in German was suspect; at that time the university disavowed that this motto was official.
Hail, Stanford, Hail! is the Stanford Hymn sometimes sung at ceremonies or adapted by the various University singing groups. It was written in 1892 by mechanical engineering professor Albert W. Smith and his wife, Mary Roberts Smith (in 1896 she earned the first Stanford doctorate in Economics and later became associate professor of Sociology), but was not officially adopted until after a performance on campus in March 1902 by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
“Uncommon Man/Uncommon Woman”: Stanford does not award honorary degrees, but in 1953 the degree of “Uncommon Man/Uncommon Woman” was created to recognize individuals who give rare and extraordinary service to the University. Technically, this degree is awarded by the Stanford Associates, a voluntary group that is part of the university’s alumni association. As Stanford’s highest honor, it is not conferred at prescribed intervals, but only when appropriate to recognize extraordinary service. Recipients include Herbert Hoover, Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard, Lucile Packard, and John Gardner.
Big Game events: The events in the week leading up to the Big Game vs. UC Berkeley, including Gaieties (a musical written, composed, produced, and performed by the students of Ram’s Head Theatrical Society).
“Viennese Ball”: a formal ball with waltzes that was initially started in the 1970s by students returning from the now-closed Stanford in Vienna overseas program. It is now open to all students.
“Full Moon on the Quad”: An annual event at Main Quad, where students gather to kiss one another starting at midnight. Typically organized by the Junior class cabinet, the festivities include live entertainment, such as music and dance performances.
“Band Run”: An annual festivity at the beginning of the school year, where the band picks up freshmen from dorms across campus while stopping to perform at each location, culminating in a finale performance at Main Quad.
“Mausoleum Party”: An annual Halloween Party at the Stanford Mausoleum, the final resting place of Leland Stanford Jr. and his parents. A 20-year tradition, the “Mausoleum Party” was on hiatus from 2002 to 2005 due to a lack of funding, but was revived in 2006. In 2008, it was hosted in Old Union rather than at the actual Mausoleum, because rain prohibited generators from being rented. In 2009, after fundraising efforts by the Junior Class Presidents and the ASSU Executive, the event was able to return to the Mausoleum despite facing budget cuts earlier in the year.
Former campus traditions include the “Big Game bonfire” on Lake Lagunita (a seasonal lake usually dry in the fall), which was formally ended in 1997 because of the presence of endangered salamanders in the lake bed.
Award laureates and scholars
Stanford’s current community of scholars includes:
Many Nobel Prize laureates
Many members of the National Academy of Sciences
Many members of National Academy of Engineering
Many members of National Academy of Medicine
A large number of members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Many recipients of the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology
Recipients of the National Humanities Medal
Members of American Philosophical Society
Fellows of the American Physics Society (since 1995)
A number of Pulitzer Prize winners
A large number of MacArthur Fellows
Some Wolf Foundation Prize winners
A Few ACL Lifetime Achievement Award winners
A number of AAAI fellows
Some Presidential Medal of Freedom winners
Stanford Land Acknowledgement
We recognize that Stanford sits on the ancestral land of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. This land was and continues to be of great importance to the Ohlone people. Consistent with our values of community and inclusion, we have a responsibility to acknowledge, honor and make visible the university’s relationship to Native peoples.
sciencesprings 