Stanford University: President Hennessy reflects on major successes of his tenure
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| President John Hennessy talks with faculty members before his annual address to the Academic Council on Thursday. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero) |
In addition to restoring the original grand plan of the
university and fostering a culture of multidisciplinary research, President
John Hennessy said that his proudest achievement was making a Stanford
education affordable for all admitted students.
By Bjorn Carey
“I hereby convene the 48th annual meeting of the Academic
Council,” President John Hennessy said as he rapped on the lectern at Cemex
Auditorium on Thursday, before stopping himself with a chuckle. “I love saying
that, and I won’t get another chance.”
In his annual address to members of the Faculty Senate
and the campus community, titled “President Hennessy on the State of the
University,” he took the audience down memory lane, ticking off some of the
major ways that the university has changed during his 16-year presidency.
Hennessy will step down as president in August.
There were countless high notes, but when pressed for the
best moment of his presidency, Hennessy quickly pointed to boosting financial
aid to make Stanford affordable to all.
“That was the moment where I felt like we were doing the
right thing, and I was really proud of what we were doing as an institution,”
Hennessy said. He knew that so many students of lower-income families simply
saw Stanford’s sticker price and didn’t think about applying, and he looked
forward to being able to explain to those bright students that it needn’t be a
worry.
Financial aid has been a focal point of fundraising
efforts and has made a huge impact in shaping the student body, he said. The
average award is $40,000, and for the average student on financial aid it’s
cheaper to come to Stanford now, adjusted for inflation, than it was 16 years
ago.
“The root of the success of our institution is providing
access for the very best students to attend,” Hennessy said. “Our key goal was
to ensure that the best students could come. This is a vision we’ve kept alive
for a long time.”
The Stanford financial aid program continues to be one of
the strongest in the nation, Hennessy reminded the audience. Families with
incomes less than $125,000 pay no tuition, and Stanford covers tuition, room
and board for families with income below $65,000. Since he took office in 2000,
the median indebtedness of graduating undergraduates has dropped from $23,000
to $16,000, and 78 percent of undergrads last year graduated with no debt at all.
Even during the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the
university didn’t waiver from its commitment to financial aid, an achievement
Hennessy attributed to heroic budget management by Provost John Etchemendy.
“No institution in the country has been blessed by a
provost as good as John Etchemendy,” Hennessy said of his leadership partner of
16 years.
Restoring
the original vision
If a president’s tenure can be graded simply by tons of
sandstone and concrete, no one could compare to Hennessy. Enabling much of the
multidisciplinary, collaborative research he champions required modern
buildings and facilities to match.
The James H. Clark Center, with its open architecture
that encourages chance encounters between faculty, very appropriately became
the home for the interdisciplinary Stanford Bio-X institute. This was one of
Stanford’s ice-breaking experiments, Hennessy said, because housing faculty
from different departments together just wasn’t done decades ago, but is common
now, with Stanford leading the way.
Nearby, the Lorry I. Lokey Stem Cell Research Building is
the largest stem cell research facility in the country, and itself is just a
stone’s throw from teaching space in the Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and
Knowledge.
The John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building provided space
for attracting new economics faculty who used big data to understand complex
social problems, and the Knight Management Center changed the way Stanford
teaches business. The William H. Neukom Building, he said, allowed the Stanford
Law School to build the best law clinics in the country.
Many of these moves were made with an eye toward
restoring the original vision of the campus, Hennessy noted. Nowhere is the
original symmetry and beauty better captured, he said, than the Science and
Engineering Quad. Each of the four buildings revolves around an important
research theme – thus supporting collaborations – and each features incredible
advances in sustainability.
Hennessy’s tenure as president has also seen an
unprecedented expansion to the university’s arts facilities, such as the
state-of-the-art Bing Concert Hall, the Anderson Collection at Stanford, and
the McMurtry Building housing the Department of Art and Art History. Exposing
students to high-quality arts and making space available for them to perform
provides for a more well-rounded academic experience.
“Art talks about deeply human things, cross-culture,
ambiguity, interpretation,” he said. “It’s critical that our students have that
exposure and sophistication in their education.”
It’s not just the new construction that Hennessy is proud
of, but the renovation of old spaces. The Peterson Lab, once a mechanical
support building, now famously houses the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design,
known as the d.school. Soon, Roble Gym will re-open to provide critical theater
and dance performance space.
“When I started as president, one thing I really hoped
I’d get done is turning Old Chem back into a useful building,” he said. “We’ll
dedicate it later this year as the Science Teaching and Learning Center, giving
undergrads a set of lab spaces of quality they really deserve.”
Improving
student spaces
Several key buildings have also made campus a better
place to relax as a student. Stanford Stadium was a fantastic renovation in the
athletics complex, and facilities such as the Arrillaga Outdoor Education and
Recreation Center and the Arrillaga Center for Sports and Recreation reflect
the university’s commitment to recreational health for its students, faculty
and staff.
Ensuring that students have a quality experience is
crucial, he said, highlighting improvements such as the Windhover contemplative
center, new undergraduate dorms at Lagunita, the Munger and Kennedy graduate
residences, and several other buildings aimed at enriching student life.
The campus has also become greener, both literally,
through the introduction of grassy, open spaces such as the O’Donohue Family
Stanford Educational Farm and Meyer Green, the site of the former Meyer
Library, and figuratively, through the construction of the Central Energy
Facility, which is part of the Stanford Energy System Innovations (SESI)
program. SESI was a significant financial investment, but it is quickly paying
off in energy and water savings. It will soon allow Stanford to surpass California’s
2030 targets for greenhouse gas emissions, and has become a model system for
college campuses around the world.
“It cost half a billion dollars and disrupted campus, but
we’re the greenest large research-intensive campus in the country,” Hennessy
said. “As a university, we try to lead and show that we can do things
differently in the future.”
Hennessy attributed much of Stanford’s success during his
tenure to extraordinary support from the Stanford community – alumni, parents
and friends of the university. The impact has been realized in every corner of
the university, particularly through three historic fundraising campaigns. The
Campaign for Undergraduate Education enhanced undergraduate education, mainly
through improvements to financial aid and faculty support in the undergraduate
schools. The Stanford Challenge produced incredible financial support for
multidisciplinary research initiatives, financial aid and facilities. And the
Campaign for Stanford Medicine yielded support for the new Stanford Hospital
and other medical research initiatives.
“These are all things that we did together,” he stressed.
“The reason we were so successful in fundraising is that so many faculty and
students had so many great ideas about how to change the world and make it a
better place. That’s what’s so inspiring.”
Looking
ahead
As proud as Hennessy is of the university’s
accomplishments during his tenure, he’s equally energized by the challenges
that lie ahead. He is excited to see Cardinal Service, an initiative led by the
Haas Center for Public Service, grow to new heights, with more students engaged
in community service, an experience he believes will help them think about how
they’ll give back to society in the years ahead.
There are new residences to build so that the university
can continue attracting the very best students, especially as local rents
continue to climb (an unfortunate downside of Stanford’s role in the success of
Silicon Valley, he remarked). Two new hospitals, one for adults and one for
children, will open in the coming years, and along with other facilities and
institutes will bring new opportunities for developing the next wave of
therapies and solving neurocognitive diseases.
Circling back to affordability, he singled out graduate
financial aid as a future area of concern. As government aid declines, Stanford
will have to find new ways to support the financial needs of graduate students
to continue attracting the very best scholars.
Personally, Hennessy will help address this through his
role in launching the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program that will annually
identify and fund 100 graduate scholars from around the world per year. The
program is named for alumnus Philip H. Knight, MBA ’62, philanthropist,
American businessman and co-founder of Nike Inc., who will give $400 million.
The program has a $600 million financial aid endowment.
The university faces a unique challenge. Historically,
Stanford has thrived by growing, and has grown faster than most of its peer
institutions. That growth will likely have to slow some, in order to maintain
focus and preserve the look and feel of the university. But it took creativity
and hard work to become No. 1, and Hennessy urged the university to continue in
that direction.
“I have absolutely loved being the president of Stanford
the last 16 years. Loved being here for 39 years,” Hennessy closed. “I’ve been
so lucky and fortunate to be supported by so many colleagues and work with so
many terrific people, all working on behalf of future students for whom
Stanford will be a transformative experience. And when they go out and change
the world, we can all remember that we were a part of making it able for them
to do that, and I think that is the magic of a university.”
Source : http://news.stanford.edu