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Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a
private Private or privates may refer to: Music * " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
research university A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are the most important sites at which knowledge production occurs, along with "intergenerational kno ...
in
Stanford, California Stanford is a census-designated place (CDP) in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is the home of Stanford University. The population was 21,150 at the United States Census, 2020, 2020 census. Stanford is ...
. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considered among the most prestigious universities in the world. Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland and
Jane Stanford Jane Elizabeth Lathrop Stanford (August 25, 1828 – February 28, 1905) was an American philanthropist, co-founder of Stanford University in 1885 (opened 1891) along with her husband, Leland Stanford, as a memorial to their only child, Leland St ...
in memory of their only child,
Leland Stanford Jr. Leland Stanford Jr. (May 14, 1868 – March 13, 1884), known as Leland DeWitt Stanford until he was nine, was the only son of American industrialist and politician Leland Stanford and his wife Jane. Following his death from typhoid at age 15, h ...
, who had died of
typhoid fever Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several ...
at age 15 the previous year. Leland Stanford was a
U.S. senator The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and powe ...
and former
governor of California The governor of California is the head of government of the U.S. state of California. The governor is the commander-in-chief of the California National Guard and the California State Guard. Established in the Constitution of California, the g ...
who made his fortune as a
railroad tycoon ''Railroad Tycoon'' is a business simulation game series. There are five games in the series; the original ''Railroad Tycoon'' (1990), ''Railroad Tycoon Deluxe'' (1993), ''Railroad Tycoon II'' (1998), ''Railroad Tycoon 3'' (2003), and ''Sid Mei ...
. The school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a
coeducational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to t ...
and
non-denominational A non-denominational person or organization is one that does not follow (or is not restricted to) any particular or specific religious denomination. Overview The term has been used in the context of various faiths including Jainism, Baháʼí Fait ...
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 At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...
. Following
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, provost of Stanford
Frederick Terman Frederick Emmons Terman (; June 7, 1900 – December 19, 1982) was an American professor and academic administrator. He was the dean of the school of engineering from 1944 to 1958 and provost from 1955 to 1965 at Stanford University. He is widely ...
inspired and supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism to build a self-sufficient local industry, which would later be known as the
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
. The university is organized around seven schools on the same campus: three schools consisting of 40 academic departments at the undergraduate level as well as four professional schools that focus on
graduate programs Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate ( bachelor's) degree. The organization and stru ...
in law, medicine, education, and business. The university also houses the public policy think tank, the
Hoover Institution The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace; abbreviated as Hoover) is an American public policy think tank and research institution that promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, and ...
. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of two private institutions in the
Division I FBS The NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A, is the highest level of college football in the United States. The FBS consists of the largest schools in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). A ...
Pac-12 Conference The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its College football, football teams compete in the NCAA D ...
. As of May 26, 2022, Stanford has won 131
NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...
team championships, more than any other university, and was awarded the
NACDA Directors' Cup The NACDA Directors' Cup, known for sponsorship reasons as the NACDA Learfield Directors' Cup or simply as the Directors' Cup, is an award given annually by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics to the colleges and univers ...
for 25 consecutive years, beginning in 1994–1995. In addition, by 2021, Stanford students and alumni had won at least 296 Olympic medals including 150 gold and 79 silver medals. As of April 2021, 85
Nobel laureates The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make ou ...
, 29
Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...
laureates, and 8
Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award ho ...
ists 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, which combined produce more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue and have created 5.4 million jobs as of 2011, roughly equivalent to the seventh largest economy in the world (). Stanford is the alma mater of
U.S. President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...
Herbert Hoover Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...
, 74 living billionaires, and 17 astronauts. In academia, its alumni include the current presidents of Yale and MIT and the provosts of Harvard and Princeton. It is also one of the leading producers of
Fulbright Scholars The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...
,
Marshall Scholars The Marshall Scholarship is a postgraduate scholarship for "intellectually distinguished young Americans ndtheir country's future leaders" to study at any university in the United Kingdom. It is widely considered one of the most prestigious sc ...
,
Rhodes Scholars The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...
, and members of the
United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...
.


History

Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford, dedicated to the memory of 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 Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
in
Ithaca, New York Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named a ...
. Stanford was referred to as the "Cornell of the West" in 1891 due to a majority of its faculty being former Cornell affiliates (professors, alumni, or both), including its first president,
David Starr Jordan David Starr Jordan (January 19, 1851 – September 19, 1931) was the founding president of Stanford University, serving from 1891 to 1913. He was an ichthyologist during his research career. Prior to serving as president of Stanford Univer ...
, and second president,
John Casper Branner John Casper Branner (July 4, 1850 – March 1, 1922)Memorial Res ...
. Both Cornell and Stanford were among the first to make higher education accessible, non-sectarian, and open to women as well as men. Cornell is credited as one of the first American universities to adopt that radical departure from traditional education, and Stanford became an early adopter as well. From an architectural point of view, the Stanfords, particularly Jane, wanted their university to look different from the eastern ones, which had often sought to emulate the style of English university buildings. They specified in the founding grant that the buildings should "be like the old adobe houses of the early Spanish days; they will be one-storied; they will have deep window seats and open fireplaces, and the roofs will be covered with the familiar dark red tiles". This guides the campus buildings to this day. The Stanfords also hired renowned landscape architect
Frederick Law Olmsted Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the USA. Olmsted was famous for co- ...
, who previously designed the Cornell campus, to design the Stanford campus. When Leland Stanford died in 1893, the continued existence of the university was in jeopardy due to a federal lawsuit against his estate, but Jane Stanford insisted the university remain in operation throughout the financial crisis. The university suffered major damage from the
1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...
; most of the damage was repaired, but a new library and gymnasium were demolished, and some original features of Memorial Church and the
Quad Quad as a word or prefix usually means 'four'. It may refer to: Government * Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a strategic security dialogue between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States * Quadrilateral group, an informal group which inc ...
were never restored. During the early 20th century, the university added four professional graduate schools.
Stanford University School of Medicine Stanford University School of Medicine is the medical school of Stanford University and is located in Stanford, California. It traces its roots to the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, founded in San Francisco in 1858. This ...
was established in 1908 when the university acquired
Cooper Medical College Stanford University School of Medicine is the medical school of Stanford University and is located in Stanford, California. It traces its roots to the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, founded in San Francisco in 1858. This ...
in San Francisco; it moved to the Stanford campus in 1959. The university's law department, established as an undergraduate curriculum in 1893, was transitioned into a professional
law school A law school (also known as a law centre or college of law) is an institution specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for becoming a lawyer within a given jurisdiction. Law degrees Argentina In Argentina, ...
starting in 1908 and received accreditation from the
American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of acad ...
in 1923. The
Stanford Graduate School of Education The Stanford Graduate School of Education (also known as Stanford GSE, or GSE) is one of the seven schools of Stanford University, and is one of the top education schools in the United States. It was founded in 1891 and offers master's and doc ...
grew out of the Department of the History and Art of Education, one of the original 21 departments at Stanford, and became a professional graduate school in 1917. The
Stanford Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business (also known as Stanford GSB) is the graduate business school of Stanford University, a private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective business schoo ...
was founded in 1925 at the urging of then-trustee
Herbert Hoover Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...
. In 1919, The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace was started by
Herbert Hoover Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...
to preserve artifacts related to
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. The
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford Univers ...
(originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), established in 1962, performs research in particle physics. In the 1940s and 1950s, an engineering professor and later provost
Frederick Terman Frederick Emmons Terman (; June 7, 1900 – December 19, 1982) was an American professor and academic administrator. He was the dean of the school of engineering from 1944 to 1958 and provost from 1955 to 1965 at Stanford University. He is widely ...
encouraged Stanford engineering graduates to invent products and start their own companies. During the 1950s, he established
Stanford Industrial Park Stanford Research Park (SRP) is a technology park established in 1951 as a joint initiative between Stanford University and the Palo Alto, California, City of Palo Alto. It has more than 150 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Tesla Motors, TIB ...
, a high-tech commercial campus on university land. Also in the 1950s
William Shockley William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American physicist and inventor. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointly ...
, co-inventor of the silicon transistor, recipient of the 1956
Nobel Prize for Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
, and later professor of physics at Stanford, moved to the Palo Alto area and founded a company,
Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory was a pioneering semiconductor developer founded by William Shockley, and funded by Beckman Instruments, Inc., in 1955. It was the first high technology company in what came to be known as Silicon Valley to wo ...
. The next year eight of his employees resigned and formed a competing company,
Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. Founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument, it became a pioneer in the manufacturing of transistors and of int ...
. The presence of so many high-tech and semiconductor firms helped to establish Stanford and the mid-
Peninsula A peninsula (; ) is a landform that extends from a mainland and is surrounded by water on most, but not all of its borders. A peninsula is also sometimes defined as a piece of land bordered by water on three of its sides. Peninsulas exist on all ...
as a hotbed of innovation, eventually named
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
after the key ingredient in transistors. Shockley and Terman are often described, separately or jointly, as the "fathers of Silicon Valley". Stanford limited Jewish student admissions during the 1950s. Stanford in the 1960s rose from a regional university to one of the most prestigious in the United States, "when it appeared on lists of the "top ten" universities in America... This swift rise to performance asunderstood at the time as related directly to the university's defense contracts..." In the following decades, however, controversies would damage the reputation of the school. The 1971
Stanford prison experiment The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was a psychological experiment conducted in the summer of 1971. It was a two-week simulation A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulati ...
was criticized as unethical, and the misuse of government funds from 1981 resulted in severe penalties to the school's research funding and the resignation of Stanford President
Donald Kennedy Donald Kennedy (August 18, 1931 – April 21, 2020) was an American scientist, public administrator, and academic. He served as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (1977–1979), President of Stanford University (1980– ...
in 1992.


Land

Most of Stanford is on an campus, one of the largest in the United States. It is on the
San Francisco Peninsula The San Francisco Peninsula is a peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area that separates San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. On its northern tip is the City and County of San Francisco. Its southern base is Mountain View, south of Palo A ...
, in the northwest part of the
Santa Clara Valley The Santa Clara Valley is a geologic trough in Northern California that extends 90 miles (145 km) south–southeast from San Francisco to Hollister. The longitudinal valley is bordered on the west by the Santa Cruz Mountains and on the east ...
(
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
) approximately southeast of
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
and approximately northwest of San Jose. $4.5 billion was received by Stanford in 2006 and spent more than $2.1 billion in 2 counties named Santa Clara, and San Mateo. In 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped. Stanford's main campus includes a
census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counterparts of incorporated places, such ...
within
unincorporated Unincorporated may refer to: * Unincorporated area, land not governed by a local municipality * Unincorporated entity, a type of organization * Unincorporated territories of the United States, territories under U.S. jurisdiction, to which Congress ...
Santa Clara County Santa Clara County, officially the County of Santa Clara, is the sixth-most populous county in the U.S. state of California, with a population of 1,936,259, as of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. Santa Clara County and neighboring Sa ...
, although some of the university land (such as the
Stanford Shopping Center Stanford Shopping Center is an upscale open air shopping mall located on California State Route 82, Route 82 (El Camino Real (California), El Camino Real) at Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto, California. It is on the campus of Stanford University alt ...
and the
Stanford Research Park Stanford Research Park (SRP) is a technology park established in 1951 as a joint initiative between Stanford University and the City of Palo Alto. It has more than 150 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Tesla Motors, TIBCO and VMware; previous ...
) is within the city limits of
Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...
. The campus also includes much land in unincorporated
San Mateo County San Mateo County ( ), officially the County of San Mateo, is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 764,442. Redwood City is the county seat, and the third most populated city following Daly ...
(including the
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford Univers ...
and the
Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve The Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a nature preserve and biological field station formally established as a reserve in 1973. The biological preserve is owned by Stanford University, and is located at south of Sand Hill Road and west of Int ...
), as well as in the city limits of Menlo Park (Stanford Hills neighborhood), Woodside, and
Portola Valley Portola Valley is a town in San Mateo County, California. Located on the San Francisco Peninsula in the Bay Area, Portola Valley is a small, wealthy community nestled on the eastern slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains. History Portola Val ...
. The central campus includes a seasonal lake (
Lake Lagunita Lake Lagunita, informally referred to as Lake Lag, is an artificial dry lake in Stanford University, California, located on the western side of the Stanford campus near the Lagunita residences. It was created in to provide irrigation for Palo A ...
, actually an irrigation reservoir), home to the vulnerable
California tiger salamander The California tiger salamander (''Ambystoma californiense'') is a vulnerable amphibian native to California. It is a mole salamander. Previously considered to be a subspecies of the tiger salamander (''A. tigrinum)'', the California tiger salam ...
. As of 2012
Lake Lagunita Lake Lagunita, informally referred to as Lake Lag, is an artificial dry lake in Stanford University, California, located on the western side of the Stanford campus near the Lagunita residences. It was created in to provide irrigation for Palo A ...
was often dry and the university had no plans to artificially fill it. Two other reservoirs,
Searsville Lake Searsville Dam is a masonry dam in San Mateo County, California that was completed in 1892, one year after the founding of Stanford University, and impounds Corte Madera Creek (San Mateo County, California), Corte Madera Creek (in the San Francisq ...
on
San Francisquito Creek San Francisquito Creek (Spanish for "Little San Francisco" - the "little" referring to size of the settlement compared to Mission San Francisco de Asís) is a creek that flows into southwest San Francisco Bay in California, United States. Histo ...
and Felt Lake, are on more remote sections of the founding grant.


Central campus

The central academic campus is adjacent to Palo Alto, bounded by El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue, Jane Stanford Way, and
Sand Hill Road Sand Hill Road, often shortened to just "Sand Hill" or "SHR", is an arterial road in western Silicon Valley, California, running through Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Woodside, notable for its concentration of venture capital companies. The road h ...
. The
United States Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...
has assigned it two ZIP Codes: 94305 for campus mail and 94309 for
P.O. box A post office box (commonly abbreviated as P.O. box, or also known as a postal box) is a uniquely addressable lockable box located on the premises of a post office. In some regions, particularly in Africa, there is no door to door delivery ...
mail. It lies within
area code 650 Area code 650 is a telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It was split from area code 415 on August 2, 1997, and includes most of San Mateo County (except t ...
.


Non-central campus

Stanford currently operates in various locations outside of its central campus. On the founding grant: *
Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve The Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a nature preserve and biological field station formally established as a reserve in 1973. The biological preserve is owned by Stanford University, and is located at south of Sand Hill Road and west of Int ...
is a natural reserve south of the central campus owned by the university and used by wildlife biologists for research. Researchers and students are involved in biological research. Professors can teach the importance of biological research to the biological community. The primary goal is to understand the system of the natural Earth. *
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford Univers ...
is a facility west of the central campus operated by the university for the Department of Energy. It contains the longest
linear particle accelerator A linear particle accelerator (often shortened to linac) is a type of particle accelerator that accelerates charged subatomic particles or ions to a high speed by subjecting them to a series of oscillating electric potentials along a linear b ...
in the world, on of land. Off the founding grant: *
Hopkins Marine Station Hopkins Marine Station is the marine laboratory of Stanford University. It is located ninety miles south of the university's main campus, in Pacific Grove, California (United States) on the Monterey Peninsula, adjacent to the Monterey Bay Aquarium ...
, in Pacific Grove, California, is a
marine biology Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms in the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies s ...
research center owned by the university since 1892. Based on US Pacific Coast, it is one of the oldest marine laboratories. It includes 10 research laboratories and is also used for archaeological exploration purposes. A graduate student of the anthropology department discover some broken elements, which leads to proof that 100 years before it was home to a Chinese American fishing village. * Study abroad locations: unlike typical
study abroad International students, or foreign students, are students who undertake all or part of their tertiary education in a country other than their own and move to that country for the purpose of studying. In 2019, there were over 6 million internati ...
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 in
Redwood City, California Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a ...
, a few miles north of the main campus. In 2005, the university purchased a small, campus in Midpoint Technology Park intended for staff offices; development was delayed by
The Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At t ...
. In 2015 the university announced a development plan and the Redwood City campus opened in March 2019. * The Bass Center in
Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
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
Peking University Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charter ...
.


Faculty residences

Many Stanford faculty members live in the "Faculty Ghetto," within walking or biking distance of campus. The Faculty Ghetto is composed of land owned by Stanford. Similar to a
condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership structure whereby a building is divided into several units that are each separately owned, surrounded by common areas that are jointly owned. The term can be applied to the building or complex ...
, the houses can be bought and sold but the land under the houses is rented on a 99-year lease. Houses in the "Ghetto" appreciate and depreciate, but not as rapidly as overall
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
values. For faculty housing there are some changes that come from the date February 1, 2022.


Other uses

Some of the land is managed to provide revenue for the university such as the
Stanford Shopping Center Stanford Shopping Center is an upscale open air shopping mall located on California State Route 82, Route 82 (El Camino Real (California), El Camino Real) at Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto, California. It is on the campus of Stanford University alt ...
and the
Stanford Research Park Stanford Research Park (SRP) is a technology park established in 1951 as a joint initiative between Stanford University and the City of Palo Alto. It has more than 150 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Tesla Motors, TIBCO and VMware; previous ...
. Stanford land is also leased for a token rent by the
Palo Alto Unified School District The Palo Alto Unified School District is a public school district located near Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. It consists of twelve primary schools, three middle schools, two high schools, and an adult school. History The distric ...
for several schools including
Palo Alto High School Palo Alto Senior High School, commonly referred to locally as "Paly", is a comprehensive public high school in Palo Alto, California. Operated by the Palo Alto Unified School District, the school is one of two schools in the district, the other b ...
and
Gunn High School Henry M. Gunn Senior High School is one of two public high schools in Palo Alto, California, the other being Palo Alto High School. Established in , Gunn High School was named after Henry Martin Gunn, who served as the Palo Alto superintendent fr ...
. El Camino Park, the oldest Palo Alto city park (established 1914), is also on Stanford land. Stanford also has the Stanford Golf Course and Stanford Red Barn Equestrian Center used by Stanford athletics though the golf course can also be used by the general public.


Landmarks

Contemporary campus landmarks include the Main Quad and Memorial Church, the
Cantor Center for Visual Arts The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, formerly the Stanford University Museum of Art, and commonly known as the Cantor Arts Center, is an art museum on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California. ...
and the
Bing Concert Hall Bing Concert Hall is a performing arts facility at Stanford University that opened in January 2013. The heart of the building is the oval-shaped concert hall, which has 842 seats arranged in a vineyard style surrounding the stage in terraces. ...
, the
Stanford Mausoleum The Stanford Mausoleum, located in the Northwest of the Stanford University campus in the Stanford University Arboretum, holds the remains of the university's namesake Leland Stanford, Jr. and his parents Leland and Jane Stanford. Once per yea ...
with the nearby
Angel of Grief ''Angel of Grief'' or the ''Weeping Angel'' is an 1894 sculpture by William Wetmore Story for the grave of his wife Emelyn Story at the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. Its full title bestowed by the creator was ''The Angel of Grief Weeping Over th ...
,
Hoover Tower Hoover Tower is a structure on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California. The tower houses the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, an archive collection founded by Herbert Hoover before he became President of the United Stat ...
, the
Rodin François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a uniqu ...
Sculpture Garden, the Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden, the
Arizona Cactus Garden The Arizona Cactus Garden, or, officially, Arizona Garden, also known as the Cactus Garden, is a small botanical garden specializing in cactus and succulents. It is located on the campus of Stanford University (within the Stanford University A ...
, the Stanford University Arboretum,
Green Library The Cecil H. Green Library (commonly known as Green Library) is the main library on the Stanford University campus and is part of the SUL system. It is named for Cecil H. Green. Green Library houses 4 million volumes, most of which are relate ...
and
the Dish ''The Dish'' is a 2000 Australian historical comedy-drama film that tells the story of the Parkes Observatory's role in relaying live television of humanity's first steps on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. It was the top-grossing ...
.
Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...
's 1937
Hanna–Honeycomb House The Hanna–Honeycomb House, also known as simply the Hanna House, located on the Stanford University campus in Stanford, California, United States, was Frank Lloyd Wright's first work in the Bay Area and his first work with non-rectangular struc ...
and the 1919
Lou Henry Hoover House The Hoover House, formally known as the Lou Henry Hoover House or the Lou Henry and Herbert Hoover House, is a historic house located on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California, United States. Completed in 1920, it is the form ...
are both listed on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
.
White Memorial Fountain White Memorial Fountain, also known as ''The Claw'', is a fountain by Aristides Demetrios on the Stanford University campus in Stanford, California, United States. It was installed in 1964, and Demetrios returned to restore the fountain in 2011. I ...
(also known as "The Claw") between the Stanford Bookstore and the Old Union is a popular place to meet and to engage in the Stanford custom of "fountain hopping"; it was installed in 1964 and designed by
Aristides Demetrios Aristides Burton Demetrios (born 1932) is an American sculptor. Life Aristides Burton Demetrios, also known as "Aris," was born in 1932 and raised in Massachusetts, where he lived during childhood in Gloucester. His father George Demetrios was a ...
after a national competition as a memorial for two brothers in the class of 1949, William N. White and John B. White II, one of whom died before graduating and one shortly after in 1952. Has information on the White brothers that slightly corrects some of the facts in other articles. File:Stanford Memorial Church Interior 2.jpg, Interior of the
Stanford Memorial Church Stanford Memorial Church (also referred to informally as MemChu) is located on the Main Quad at the center of the Stanford University campus in Stanford, California, United States. It was built during the American RenaissanceGregg, p. 34 by ...
at the center of the Main Quad File:Stanford University Hoover Tower.JPG,
Hoover Tower Hoover Tower is a structure on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California. The tower houses the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, an archive collection founded by Herbert Hoover before he became President of the United Stat ...
, at , the tallest building on campus File:Stanstadium view.jpg, The new (2006)
Stanford Stadium Stanford Stadium is an outdoor college football stadium on the west coast of the United States, located on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California. It is the home of the Stanford Cardinal and hosts the university's commencemen ...
, site of home football games File:Stanford University Arches with Memorial Church in the background.jpg, Stanford Quad with Memorial Church in the background File:The Dish, Stanford University.jpg,
The Dish ''The Dish'' is a 2000 Australian historical comedy-drama film that tells the story of the Parkes Observatory's role in relaying live television of humanity's first steps on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. It was the top-grossing ...
, a diameter radio telescope on the Stanford foothills overlooking the main campus File:Claw Fountain at Stanford Univerisity.JPG,
White Memorial Fountain White Memorial Fountain, also known as ''The Claw'', is a fountain by Aristides Demetrios on the Stanford University campus in Stanford, California, United States. It was installed in 1964, and Demetrios returned to restore the fountain in 2011. I ...
(The Claw)


Administration and organization

Stanford is a private, non-profit university administered as a
corporate trust In the most basic sense of the term, A corporate trust is a trust created by a corporation. The term in the United States is most often used to describe the business activities of many financial services companies and banks that act in a fiduciar ...
governed by a privately appointed
board of trustees A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...
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 Stanford Research Park (SRP) is a technology park established in 1951 as a joint initiative between Stanford University and the City of Palo Alto. It has more than 150 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Tesla Motors, TIBCO and VMware; previous ...
, the
Stanford Shopping Center Stanford Shopping Center is an upscale open air shopping mall located on California State Route 82, Route 82 (El Camino Real (California), El Camino Real) at Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto, California. It is on the campus of Stanford University alt ...
, the
Cantor Center for Visual Arts The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, formerly the Stanford University Museum of Art, and commonly known as the Cantor Arts Center, is an art museum on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California. ...
,
Stanford University Medical Center Stanford University Medical Center is a medical complex which includes Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children's Health. It is consistently ranked as one of the best hospitals in the United States and serves as a teaching hospital for the ...
, and many associated medical facilities (including the
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford (LPCH) is a nationally ranked women's and children's hospital which is part of the Stanford University Health system. The hospital is located adjacent to the campus at 725 Welch Road, Palo Alto, Cal ...
). 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 11th and current president of Stanford University is Marc Trevor Tessier-Lavigne, a Canadian-born
neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist who has specialised knowledge in neuroscience, a branch of biology that deals with the physiology, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and molecular biology of neurons, Biological neural network, n ...
. The provost is the chief academic and budget officer, to whom the deans of each of the seven schools report.
Persis Drell Persis S. Drell is an American physicist best known for her expertise in the field of particle physics. She was the director of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory from 2007 to 2012. She was dean of the Stanford University School of Engine ...
became the 13th provost in February 2017. As of 2018, the university was organized into seven academic schools. The schools of
Humanities and Sciences "The Two Cultures" is the first part of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow which were published in book form as ''The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution'' the same year. Its thesis was that sci ...
(27 departments),
Engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...
(nine departments), and Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (four departments) have both graduate and undergraduate programs while the Schools of
Law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
,
Medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pract ...
,
Education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
, and
Business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...
, have graduate programs only. A new School of Sustainability will supersede the School of Earth, Energy, & Environmental Sciences in September 2022. 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 54 elected representatives of the faculty for the year 2021–22. 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 Ticket or tickets may refer to: Slips of paper * Lottery ticket * Parking ticket, a ticket confirming that the parking fee was paid (and the time of the parking start) * Toll ticket, a slip of paper used to indicate where vehicles entered a tol ...
by the entire student body. Stanford is the beneficiary of a special clause in the
California Constitution The Constitution of California ( es, Constitución de California) is the primary organizing law for the U.S. state of California, describing the duties, powers, structures and functions of the government of California. California's original co ...
, which explicitly exempts Stanford property from taxation so long as the property is used for educational purposes.


Endowment and donations

The university's
endowment Endowment most often refers to: *A term for human penis size It may also refer to: Finance *Financial endowment, pertaining to funds or property donated to institutions or individuals (e.g., college endowment) *Endowment mortgage, a mortgage to b ...
, managed by the Stanford Management Company, was valued at $36.3 billion as of August 31, 2022. Payouts from the Stanford endowment covered approximately 21% of university expenses in the 2022 fiscal year. In the 2018 NACUBO-
TIAA The Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA, formerly TIAA-CREF), is a Fortune 100 financial services organization that is the leading provider of financial services in the academic, research, ...
survey of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, only
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, the
University of Texas System The University of Texas System (UT System) is an American government entity of the state of Texas that includes 13 higher educational institutions throughout the state including eight universities and five independent health institutions. The UT& ...
, and
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
had larger endowments than Stanford. In 2006, President
John L. Hennessy John Leroy Hennessy (born September 22, 1952) is an American computer scientist, academician and businessman who serves as Chairman of Alphabet Inc. Hennessy is one of the founders of MIPS Computer Systems Inc. as well as Atheros and served as t ...
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 $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 366 new fellowships for graduate students, 139 new endowed chairs for faculty, and 38 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; the new Cantor Arts Center; 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. In April 2022, Stanford University announced a $75 million donation, in support of a multidisciplinary neurodegenerative brain disease research initiative at the university's Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. The donation came from Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny; hence The Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience will explore cognitive declines from diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.


Academics


Admissions

Stanford is considered by ''
US News ''U.S. News & World Report'' (USNWR) is an American media company that publishes news, consumer advice, rankings, and analysis. It was launched in 1948 as the merger of domestic-focused weekly newspaper ''U.S. News'' and international-focused ...
'' to be 'most selective', with an acceptance rate of 4%. Half of the applicants accepted to Stanford have an
SAT The SAT ( ) is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Since its debut in 1926, its name and scoring have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Schol ...
score between 1440 and 1570 or an ACT score of 32 and 35. Admissions officials consider a student's GPA to be an important academic factor, with emphasis on an applicant's high school class rank and letters of recommendation. In terms of non-academic materials as of 2019, Stanford ranks extracurricular activities, talent/ability and character/personal qualities as 'very important' in making first-time, first-year admission decisions, while ranking the interview, whether the applicant is a first-generation university applicant,
legacy preferences Legacy preference or legacy admission is a preference given by an institution or organization to certain applicants on the basis of their familial relationship to alumni of that institution. It is most controversial in college admissions, where st ...
, volunteer work and work experience as 'considered'.


Teaching and learning

Stanford follows a quarter system with the autumn quarter usually beginning in late September and the spring quarter ending in mid-June. The full-time, four-year undergraduate program has arts and sciences focus with high graduate student coexistence. Stanford is accredited by the
Western Association of Schools and Colleges The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) was an organization providing School accreditation, accreditation of public and private universities, colleges, secondary school, secondary and elementary schools in California and Hawaii, ...
. Stanford's admission process is need-blind for U.S. citizens and permanent residents; while it is not need-blind for international students, 64% are on need-based aid, with an average aid package of $31,411. In 2012–13, the university awarded $126 million in need-based financial aid to 3,485 students, with an average aid package of $40,460. Eighty percent of students receive some form of financial aid. Stanford has a no-loan policy. For undergraduates admitted starting in 2015, Stanford waives tuition, room, and board for most families with incomes below $65,000, and most families with incomes below $125,000 are not required to pay tuition; those with incomes up to $150,000 may have tuition significantly reduced. Seventeen percent of students receive
Pell Grant A Pell Grant is a subsidy the U.S. federal government provides for students who need it to pay for college. Federal Pell Grants are limited to students with financial need, who have not earned their first bachelor's degree, or who are enrolled ...
s, a common measure of low-income students at a college. In 2022, Stanford started its first dual-enrollment computer science program for high school students from low-income communities as a pilot project which then inspired the founding of the Qualia Global Scholars Program. Stanford plans to expand the program to include courses in Structured Liberal Education and writing. The Cantonese language had classes at Stanford until 2020, when the remaining Cantonese instructor was laid off.


Research centers and institutes

Stanford is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity." The university's research expenditure in fiscal year 2021 was $1.69 billion and total sponsored projects was 7,900+. As of 2016 the Office of the Vice Provost and Dean of Research oversaw eighteen independent laboratories, centers, and institutes. Dr. Kathryn Ann Moler is the key person for leading those research centers for choosing problems, faculty members, and students. Funding is also provided for undergraduate and graduate students by those labs, centers, and institutes for collaborative research. Other Stanford-affiliated institutions include the
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford Univers ...
(originally the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), the
Stanford Research Institute SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic d ...
(an independent institution which originated at the university), the
Hoover Institution The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace; abbreviated as Hoover) is an American public policy think tank and research institution that promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, and ...
(a conservative
think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...
) and the
Hasso Plattner Institute of Design The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, commonly known as the d.school, is a design thinking institute based at Stanford University. David M. Kelley and Bernard Roth founded the program. According to the ''New York Times'', the d.school ...
(a multidisciplinary design school in cooperation with the
Hasso Plattner Institute The Hasso Plattner Institute (Hasso-Plattner-Institut für Digital Engineering gGmbH), abbreviated HPI, is a German information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, an ...
of
University of Potsdam The University of Potsdam is a public university in Potsdam, capital of the state of Brandenburg, Germany. It is mainly situated across three campuses in the city. Some faculty buildings are part of the New Palace of Sanssouci which is known ...
that integrates product design, engineering, and business management education). Stanford is home to the
Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
Research and Education Institute which grew out of and still contains the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project, a collaboration with the King Center to publish the King papers held by the King Center. It also runs the John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists and the Center for Ocean Solutions, which brings together marine science and policy to address challenges facing the ocean. It focuses mainly 5 points, such as climate change, overfishing, coastal development, pollution and plastics. Together with
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...
and
UC San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It condu ...
, Stanford is part of the
Biohub Chan Zuckerberg Biohub (CZ Biohub), or simply Biohub, is a nonprofit research organization. In addition to supporting and conducting original research, CZ Biohub acts as a hub and fosters science collaboration between UC Berkeley, UC San Francis ...
, a new medical science research center founded in 2016 by a $600 million commitment from Facebook CEO and founder
Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), o ...
and pediatrician
Priscilla Chan Priscilla Chan (born February 24, 1985) is an American philanthropist and a former pediatrician. She and her husband, Mark Zuckerberg, a co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms, established the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in December 2015, with a p ...
. This medical research center is working for designing advanced-level health care units.


Libraries and digital resources

As of 2014,
Stanford University Libraries The Stanford University Libraries (SUL), formerly known as "Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources" ("SULAIR"), is the library system of Stanford University in California. It encompasses more than 24 libraries in all. Sev ...
(SUL) has 24 libraries in total. The
Hoover Institution Library and Archives The Hoover Institution Library and Archives is a research center and archival repository located at Stanford University, near Palo Alto, California in the United States. Built around a collection amassed by Stanford graduate Herbert Hoover prio ...
is a research center based on history of 20th century.
Stanford University Libraries The Stanford University Libraries (SUL), formerly known as "Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources" ("SULAIR"), is the library system of Stanford University in California. It encompasses more than 24 libraries in all. Sev ...
(SUL) held a collection of more than 9.3 million volumes, nearly 300,000 rare or special books, 1.5 million e-books, 2.5 million audiovisual materials, 77,000 serials, nearly 6 million microform holdings, thousands of other digital resources. and 516,620 journal, 526,414 images, 11,000 software collection, 1,00,000 videos etc. . The main library in the SU library system is the
Green Library The Cecil H. Green Library (commonly known as Green Library) is the main library on the Stanford University campus and is part of the SUL system. It is named for Cecil H. Green. Green Library houses 4 million volumes, most of which are relate ...
, which also contains various meeting and conference rooms, study spaces, and reading rooms.
Lathrop Library The Lathrop Library is one of several libraries at Stanford University in California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximat ...
(previously
Meyer Library The J. Henry Meyer Memorial Library was a library at Stanford University in California. It was dedicated on December 2, 1966. In 2007, a seismic assessment identified $45 million in required retrofits, more than the cost of a new library elsewhe ...
, demolished in 2015), holds various student-accessible media resources and houses one of the largest
East Asia East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea and ...
collections with 540,000 volumes. Stanford University Press was founded in 1892. It published about 130 books per year has printed more than 3,000 books. It also has fifteen subject areas.


Arts

Stanford is home to the
Cantor Center for Visual Arts The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, formerly the Stanford University Museum of Art, and commonly known as the Cantor Arts Center, is an art museum on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California. ...
, a museum with 24 galleries, sculpture gardens, terraces, and a courtyard first established in 1891 by Jane and Leland Stanford as a memorial to their only child. The center's collection of works by
Rodin François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a uniqu ...
is among the largest in the world. The
Thomas Welton Stanford Thomas Welton Stanford (1832–1918), also known as Welton Stanford, was an American-born Australian businessman, spiritualist and philanthropist, most notably toward Stanford University, which was founded by his older brother Leland Stanford. A ...
Gallery, which was built in 1917, serves as a teaching resource for the Department of Art & Art History as well as an exhibition venue. In 2014, Stanford opened the Anderson Collection, a new museum focused on postwar American art and founded by the donation of 121 works by food service moguls Mary and
Harry Anderson Harry Laverne Anderson (October 14, 1952 – April 16, 2018) was an American actor, comedian and magician. He is best known for his role of Judge Harry Stone on the 1984–1992 television series '' Night Court''. He later starred in the ...
. There are outdoor art installations throughout the campus, primarily sculptures, but some murals as well. The Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden near Roble Hall features includes wood carvings and "
totem pole Totem poles ( hai, gyáaʼaang) are monumental carvings found in western Canada and the northwestern United States. They are a type of Northwest Coast art, consisting of poles, posts or pillars, carved with symbols or figures. They are usually m ...
s." The Stanford music department sponsors many ensembles including five choirs, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Taiko, and the Stanford Wind Ensemble. Extracurricular activities include theater groups such as Ram's Head Theatrical Society, the Stanford Improvisors, the Stanford Shakespeare Company, and the Stanford Savoyards, a group dedicated to performing the works of
Gilbert and Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian era, Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ...
. Stanford is also host to ten ''a cappella'' groups, including the
Mendicants A mendicant (from la, mendicans, "begging") is one who practices mendicancy, relying chiefly or exclusively on alms to survive. In principle, mendicant religious orders own little property, either individually or collectively, and in many inst ...
(Stanford's first),
Counterpoint In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...
(the first all-female group on the
West Coast West Coast or west coast may refer to: Geography Australia * Western Australia *Regions of South Australia#Weather forecasting, West Coast of South Australia * West Coast, Tasmania **West Coast Range, mountain range in the region Canada * Britis ...
), the Harmonics, the
Stanford Fleet Street Singers The Stanford Fleet Street Singers (Fleet Street) is a comedy a cappella group from Stanford University. The group performs original songs and sketch comedy, and wears a uniform of black vests and red bow ties. Fleet Street is perhaps best known ...
,
Talisman A talisman is any object ascribed with religious or magical powers intended to protect, heal, or harm individuals for whom they are made. Talismans are often portable objects carried on someone in a variety of ways, but can also be installed perm ...
,
Everyday People "Everyday People" is a 1968 song composed by Sly Stone and first recorded by his band, Sly and the Family Stone. It was the first single by the band to go to number one on the Soul singles chart and the U.S. ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart. It held ...
, and Raagapella.


Reputation and rankings

''
Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'' in 2014 dubbed Stanford as "the Harvard of the 21st century". In the same year ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' dubbed Harvard as the "Stanford of the East". In that article titled ''To Young Minds of Today, Harvard Is the Stanford of the East'' ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' concluded that "Stanford University has become America's 'it' school, by measures that Harvard once dominated." In 2019, Stanford University took 1st place on Reuters' list of the ''World's Most Innovative Universities'' for the fifth consecutive year. In 2022, ''
Washington Monthly ''Washington Monthly'' is a bimonthly, nonprofit magazine of United States politics and government that is based in Washington, D.C. The magazine is known for its annual ranking of American colleges and universities, which serves as an alternat ...
'' ranked Stanford at 1st position in their annual list of top universities in USA. In a 2022 survey by ''
The Princeton Review The Princeton Review is an education services company providing tutoring, test preparation and admission resources for students. It was founded in 1981. and since that time has worked with over 400 million students. Services are delivered by 4,0 ...
'', Stanford was ranked 1st among the top ten "dream colleges" of America, and was considered to be the ultimate "dream college" of both students and parents.
Stanford Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business (also known as Stanford GSB) is the graduate business school of Stanford University, a private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective business schoo ...
was ranked 1st in the list of America's best business schools by ''Bloomberg'' for 2022-23. From polls of college applicants done by
The Princeton Review The Princeton Review is an education services company providing tutoring, test preparation and admission resources for students. It was founded in 1981. and since that time has worked with over 400 million students. Services are delivered by 4,0 ...
, every year from 2013 to 2020 the most commonly named "dream college" for students was Stanford; separately, parents, too, most frequently named Stanford their ultimate "dream college." Globally Stanford is also ranked among the top universities in the world (see infoboxes above). The ''
Academic Ranking of World Universities The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' (''ARWU''), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong University ...
(ARWU)'' ranked Stanford second in the world (after Harvard) most years from 2003 to 2020. ''
Times Higher Education ''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The Thes''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. Ownership TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...
'' recognizes Stanford as one of the world's "six super brands" on its ''World Reputation Rankings'', along with
Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...
,
Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
,
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
,
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...
, and
Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
.


Discoveries and innovation


Natural sciences

*
Biological synthesis Biosynthesis is a multi-step, enzyme-catalyzed process where substrates are converted into more complex products in living organisms. In biosynthesis, simple compounds are modified, converted into other compounds, or joined to form macromolecules. ...
of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) –
Arthur Kornberg Arthur Kornberg (March 3, 1918 – October 26, 2007) was an American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1959 for the discovery of "the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic aci ...
discovered the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and won the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, accord ...
1959 for his work at Stanford. By studying bacteria, Kornberg succeeded in isolating DNA polymerase in 1956–an enzyme that is active in the formation of DNA. * First
Transgenic organism A transgene is a gene that has been transferred naturally, or by any of a number of genetic engineering techniques, from one organism to another. The introduction of a transgene, in a process known as transgenesis, has the potential to change the ...
Stanley Cohen and
Herbert Boyer Herbert Wayne "Herb" Boyer (born July 10, 1936) is an American biotechnologist, researcher and entrepreneur in biotechnology. Along with Stanley N. Cohen and Paul Berg he discovered a method to coax bacteria into producing foreign proteins, ther ...
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 Growth hormone (GH) or somatotropin, also known as human growth hormone (hGH or HGH) in its human form, is a peptide hormone that stimulates growth, cell reproduction, and cell regeneration in humans and other animals. It is thus important in h ...
and
hepatitis B vaccine Hepatitis B vaccine is a vaccine that prevents hepatitis B. The first dose is recommended within 24 hours of birth with either two or three more doses given after that. This includes those with poor immune function such as from HIV/AIDS and th ...
. *
Laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fir ...
Arthur Leonard Schawlow Arthur Leonard Schawlow (May 5, 1921 – April 28, 1999) was an American physicist and co-inventor of the laser with Charles Townes. His central insight, which Townes overlooked, was the use of two mirrors as the resonant cavity to take maser act ...
shared the 1981
Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
with
Nicolaas Bloembergen Nicolaas Bloembergen (March 11, 1920 – September 5, 2017) was a Dutch-American physicist and Nobel laureate, recognized for his work in developing driving principles behind nonlinear optics for laser spectroscopy. During his career, he was a p ...
and
Kai Siegbahn Kai Manne Börje Siegbahn (20 April 1918 – 20 July 2007) was a Swedish physicist who was awarded the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics. Biography Siegbahn was born in Lund, Sweden, son of Manne Siegbahn the 1924 physics Nobel Prize winner. Siegbah ...
for his work on lasers. *
Nuclear magnetic resonance Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are perturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near field) and respond by producing an electromagnetic signal with a ...
Felix Bloch Felix Bloch (23 October 1905 – 10 September 1983) was a Swiss-American physicist and Nobel physics laureate who worked mainly in the U.S. He and Edward Mills Purcell were awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics for "their development of ne ...
developed new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements, which are the underlying principles of the
MRI Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to form pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes of the body. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and radio waves ...
.


Computer and applied sciences

*
ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
Stanford Research Institute SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic d ...
, formerly part of Stanford but on a separate campus, was the site of one of the four original ARPANET nodes. In the early 1970s, Bob Kahn & Vint Cerf's research project about Internetworking, later DARPA formulated it to the TCP(Transmission Control Program). *
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
—Stanford was the site where the original design of the Internet was undertaken.
Vint Cerf Vinton Gray Cerf (; born June 23, 1943) is an American Internet pioneer and is recognized as one of " the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with TCP/IP co-developer Bob Kahn. He has received honorary degrees and awards that include t ...
led a research group to elaborate the design of the Transmission Control Protocol (
TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...
) that he originally co-created with Robert E. Kahn (
Bob Kahn Robert Elliot Kahn (born December 23, 1938) is an American electrical engineer who, along with Vint Cerf, first proposed the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), the fundamental communication protocols at the hea ...
) in 1973 and which formed the basis for the architecture of the Internet. *
Frequency modulation synthesis Frequency modulation synthesis (or FM synthesis) is a form of sound synthesis whereby the frequency of a waveform is changed by modulating its frequency with a modulator. The frequency of an oscillator is altered "in accordance with the amplitude ...
John Chowning John M. Chowning (; born August 22, 1934 in Salem, New Jersey) is an American composer, musician, discoverer, and professor best known for his work at Stanford University, the founding of CCRMA - Center for Computer Research in Music and Acou ...
of the Music department invented the FM music synthesis algorithm in 1967, and Stanford later licensed it to
Yamaha Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation and conglomerate with a very wide range of products and services. It is one of the constituents of Nikkei 225 and is the world's largest musical instrument manufacturing company. The former motorcycle div ...
. *
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
– Google began in January 1996 as a research project by
Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was the chief executive officer of Google from 1997 unt ...
and
Sergey Brin Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (russian: link=no, Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur, who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin was the ...
when they were both PhD students at Stanford. They were working on the
Stanford Digital Library Project The Stanford Digital Library Project (SDLP) (also called The Stanford Integrated Digital Library Project and The Stanford Digital Library Technologies Project) was a research program run by Hector Garcia-Molina, Terry Winograd, Dan Boneh, and Andr ...
(SDLP) which is started in 1999. 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 The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
, among other federal agencies. *
Klystron tube A klystron is a specialized linear-beam vacuum tube, invented in 1937 by American electrical engineers Russell and Sigurd Varian,Pond, Norman H. "The Tube Guys". Russ Cochran, 2008 p.31-40 which is used as an amplifier for high radio frequenci ...
– invented by the brothers
Russell and Sigurd Varian Russell Harrison Varian (April 24, 1898 – July 28, 1959) and Sigurd Fergus Varian (May 4, 1901 – October 18, 1961) were American brothers who founded one of the earliest high-tech companies ...
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 Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...
equipment. *
RISC In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set comput ...
ARPA funded
VLSI project The VLSI Project was a DARPA-program initiated by Robert Kahn in 1978 that provided research funding to a wide variety of university-based teams in an effort to improve the state of the art in microprocessor design, then known as Very Large Scale ...
of
microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...
design. Stanford and
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...
are most associated with the popularization of this concept. The
Stanford MIPS MIPS, an acronym for Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages, was a research project conducted by John L. Hennessy at Stanford University between 1981 and 1984. MIPS investigated a type of instruction set architecture (ISA) now called ...
would go on to be commercialized as the successful
MIPS architecture MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA)Price, Charles (September 1995). ''MIPS IV Instruction Set'' (Revision 3.2), MIPS Technologies, ...
, while
Berkeley RISC Berkeley RISC is one of two seminal research projects into reduced instruction set computer (RISC) based microprocessor design taking place under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ''Very Large Scale Integration'' (VLSI) VLSI Project. ...
gave its name to the entire concept, commercialized as the
SPARC SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system developed ...
. Another success from this era were IBM's efforts that eventually led to the
IBM POWER instruction set architecture IBM POWER is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by IBM. The name is an acronym for ''Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC''. The ISA is used as base for high end microprocessors from ...
,
PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...
, and
Power ISA Power ISA is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) currently developed by the OpenPOWER Foundation, led by IBM. It was originally developed by IBM and the now-defunct Power.org industry group. Power IS ...
. 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 A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workstat ...
market as well as
embedded processor An embedded system is a computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is ''embedded'' as ...
s in
laser printer Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively-charged cylinder called a "drum" to d ...
s, routers and similar products. *
SUN workstation The SUN workstation was a modular computer system designed at Stanford University in the early 1980s. It became the seed technology for many commercial products, including the original workstations from Sun Microsystems. History In 1979 Xerox do ...
Andy Bechtolsheim Andreas Maria Maximilian Freiherr von Mauchenheim genannt Bechtolsheim (born 30 September 1955) is a German electrical engineer, entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer. His net worth ...
designed the SUN workstation, for the
Stanford University Network The Stanford University Network, also known as SUN, SUNet or SU-Net is the campus computer network for Stanford University. History Stanford Research Institute, formerly part of Stanford but on a separate campus, was the site of one of the four or ...
communications project as a personal
CAD Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve co ...
workstation, which led to
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...
.


Businesses and entrepreneurship

Stanford is one of the most successful universities in creating companies and licensing its inventions to existing companies, and it is often considered a model for
technology transfer Technology transfer (TT), also called transfer of technology (TOT), is the process of transferring (disseminating) technology from the person or organization that owns or holds it to another person or organization, in an attempt to transform invent ...
.Nigel Page
The Making of a Licensing Legend: Stanford University’s Office of Technology Licensing
. Chapter 17.13 in Sharing the Art of IP Management. Globe White Page Ltd, London, U.K. 2007
Timothy Lenoir. Inventing the entrepreneurial university: Stanford and the co-evolution of Silicon Valley pp. 88–128 in Building Technology Transfer within Research Universities: An Entrepreneurial Approach Edited by Thomas J. Allen and Rory P. O'Shea. Cambridge University Press, 2014. 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 and have created some 5.4 million jobs since the 1930s. When combined, these companies would form the tenth-largest economy in the world. Some companies closely associated with Stanford and their connections include: *
Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
, 1939: co-founders William R. Hewlett (B.S, PhD) and
David Packard David Packard ( ; September 7, 1912 – March 26, 1996) was an American electrical engineer and co-founder, with Bill Hewlett, of Hewlett-Packard (1939), serving as president (1947–64), CEO (1964–68), and chairman of the board (1964–6 ...
(M.S) *
Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...
, 1981: co-founders
James H. Clark James Henry Clark (born March 23, 1944) is an American entrepreneur and computer scientist. He founded several notable Silicon Valley technology companies, including Silicon Graphics, Netscape, myCFO, and Healtheon. His research work in comput ...
(Associate Professor) and several of his graduate students *
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...
, 1982: co-founders
Vinod Khosla Vinod Khosla (born 28 January 1955) is an Indian-American businessman and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. Khosla made his wealth from early venture capital investments in areas such ...
(M.B.A),
Andy Bechtolsheim Andreas Maria Maximilian Freiherr von Mauchenheim genannt Bechtolsheim (born 30 September 1955) is a German electrical engineer, entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer. His net worth ...
(PhD) and
Scott McNealy Scott McNealy (born November 13, 1954) is an American businessman. He is most famous for co-founding the computer technology company Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim. In 2004, while still at Sun, ...
(M.B.A) *
Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...
, 1984: co-founders
Leonard Bosack Leonard X. Bosack (born 1952) is a co-founder of Cisco Systems, an American-based multinational corporation that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking and communications technology, and services. His net worth is approximately $200 mi ...
(M.S) and
Sandy Lerner Sandy Lerner, (born 1955) is an American businesswoman and philanthropist. She co-founded Cisco Systems, and used the money from its sale to pursue interests in animal welfare and women's writing. One of her main projects, Chawton House, is in ...
(M.S) were in charge of the Stanford Computer Science and the Graduate School of Business computer operations groups, respectively, when the hardware was developed *
Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...
, 1994: co-founders
Jerry Yang Jerry Chih-Yuan Yang (born November 6, 1968) is a Taiwanese-American billionaire computer programmer, internet entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc. As of February 2022, Yang has a net worth ...
(B.S, M.S) and
David Filo David Robert Filo (born April 20, 1966) is an American billionaire businessman and the co-founder of Yahoo! with Jerry Yang. His Filo Server Program, written in the C programming language, was the server-side software used to dynamically serve ...
(M.S) *
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
, 1998: co-founders
Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was the chief executive officer of Google from 1997 unt ...
(M.S) and
Sergey Brin Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (russian: link=no, Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur, who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin was the ...
(M.S) *
LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...
, 2002: co-founders
Reid Hoffman Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman was the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for prof ...
(B.S), Konstantin Guericke (B.S, M.S), Eric Lee (B.S), and Alan Liu (B.S) *
Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...
, 2010: co-founders
Kevin Systrom Kevin Systrom (born December 30, 1983) is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He co-founded Instagram, the world's largest photo sharing website, along with Mike Krieger. Systrom was included on the list of America's Richest Entrep ...
(B.S) and
Mike Krieger Michel Krieger (born March 4, 1986) is a Brazilian-American entrepreneur and software engineer who co-founded Instagram along with Kevin Systrom, and served as its CTO. Instagram expanded from a few million users to 1 billion monthly active users ...
(B.S) *
Snapchat Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before the ...
, 2011: co-founders
Evan Spiegel Evan Thomas Spiegel (born June 4, 1990) is an American businessman, co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc. Spiegel was the youngest billionaire in the world in 2015. Early life and education Spiegel was born in Los Angeles, California, to lawyers Jo ...
(B.S), Reggie Brown (B.S) and Bobby Murphy (B.S) *
Coursera Coursera Inc. () is a U.S.-based massive open online course provider founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses, ...
, 2012: co-founders
Andrew Ng Andrew Yan-Tak Ng (; born 1976) is a British-born American computer scientist and technology entrepreneur focusing on machine learning and AI. Ng was a co-founder and head of Google Brain and was the former Chief Scientist at Baidu, building ...
(Associate Professor) and
Daphne Koller Daphne Koller ( he, דפנה קולר; born August 27, 1968) is an Israeli-American computer scientist. She was a professor in the department of computer science at Stanford University and a MacArthur Foundation fellowship recipient. She is one o ...
(Professor, PhD)


Student life


Student body

Stanford enrolled 6,996 undergraduate and 10,253 graduate students as of the 2019–2020 school year. Women made up 50.4% of undergraduates and 41.5% of graduate students. In the same academic year, the freshman retention rate was 99%. Stanford awarded 1,819 undergraduate degrees, 2,393 master's degrees, 770 doctoral degrees, and 3270 professional degrees in the 2018–2019 school year. The four-year graduation rate for the class of 2017 cohort was 72.9%, and the six-year rate was 94.4%. 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.


Dormitories and student housing

As of 2013, 89% of undergraduate students lived in on-campus university housing. First-year undergraduates are required to live on campus, and all undergraduates are guaranteed housing for all four undergraduate years. Undergraduates live in 80 different houses, including dormitories, co-ops,
row houses In architecture and city planning, a terrace or terraced house ( UK) or townhouse ( US) is a form of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, whereby a row of attached dwellings share side walls. In the United State ...
, and
fraternities and sororities Fraternities and sororities are social organizations at colleges and universities in North America. Generally, membership in a fraternity or sorority is obtained as an undergraduate student, but continues thereafter for life. Some accept gradu ...
. At Manzanita Park, 118
mobile home A mobile home (also known as a house trailer, park home, trailer, or trailer home) is a prefabricated structure, built in a factory on a permanently attached chassis before being transported to site (either by being towed or on a trailer). Us ...
s were installed as "temporary" housing from 1969 to 1991, but as of 2015 was the site of newer dorms Castano, Kimball, Lantana, and the Humanities House, completed in 2015. Most student residences are just outside the campus core, within ten minutes (on foot or bike) of most classrooms and libraries. Some are reserved for freshmen, sophomores, or upper-class students and some are open to all four classes. Most residences are co-ed; seven are all-male
fraternities A fraternity (from Latin ''frater'': "brother"; whence, "brotherhood") or fraternal organization is an organization, society, club or fraternal order traditionally of men associated together for various religious or secular aims. Fraternity in ...
, three are all-female
sororities Fraternities and sororities are Club (organization), social organizations at colleges and universities in North America. Generally, membership in a fraternity or sorority is obtained as an Undergraduate education, undergraduate student, but conti ...
, and there is also one all-female non-sorority house, Roth House. In most residences, men and women live on the same floor, but a few dorms are configured for men and women to live on separate floors (single-gender floors). Several residences are considered theme houses. The Academic, Language, and Culture Houses include EAST (Education and Society Themed House), Hammarskjöld (International Themed House), Haus Mitteleuropa (Central European Themed House), La Casa Italiana (Italian Language and Culture), La Maison Française (French Language and Culture House), Slavianskii Dom (Slavic/East European Themed House), Storey (Human Biology Themed House), and Yost (Spanish Language and Culture). Cross-Cultural Themed Houses include Casa Zapata (Chicano/Latino Theme in Stern Hall), Muwekma-tah-ruk (American Indian/Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian Themed House), Okada (Asian-American Themed House in Wilbur Hall), and Ujamaa (Black/African-American Themed House in Lagunita Court). Focus Houses include
Freshman-Sophomore College Since the founding, Stanford University has provided on-campus housing for students. Today, all undergraduate students, most graduate students, and many graduate employees use campus housing. While not all graduate students are eligible for campus ...
(Academic Focus),
Branner Hall Since the founding, Stanford University has provided on-campus housing for students. Today, all undergraduate students, most graduate students, and many graduate employees use campus housing. While not all graduate students are eligible for campus ...
(Community Service), Kimball (Arts & Performing Arts), Crothers (Global Citizenship), and
Toyon ''Heteromeles arbutifolia'' (; more commonly by Californian botanists), commonly known as toyon, is a common perennial shrub native to extreme southwest Oregon, California, and the Baja California Peninsula. It is the sole species in the genus ...
(Sophomore Priority). Theme houses predating the current "theme" classification system are Columbae (Social Change Through Nonviolence, since 1970), and Synergy (Exploring Alternatives, since 1972).
Co-ops A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-control ...
or "Self-Ops" are another housing option. These houses feature cooperative living, where residents and eating associates each contribute work to keep the house running, such as cooking meals or cleaning shared spaces. These houses have unique themes around which their community is centered. Many co-ops are hubs of music, art and philosophy. The co-ops on campus are 576 Alvarado Row (formerly Chi Theta Chi), Columbae, Enchanted Broccoli Forest (EBF), Hammarskjöld, Kairos, Terra (the unofficial
LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...
house), and Synergy. Phi Sigma, at 1018 Campus Drive was formerly
Phi Sigma Kappa Phi Sigma Kappa (), colloquially known as Phi Sig or PSK, is a men's social and academic fraternity with approximately 74 active chapters and provisional chapters in North America. Most of its first two dozen chapters were granted to schools in ...
fraternity, but in 1973 became a Self-Op. As of 2015 around 55 percent of the graduate student population lived on campus. First-year graduate students are guaranteed on-campus housing. Stanford also subsidizes off-campus apartments in nearby
Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...
, Menlo Park, and Mountain View for graduate students who are guaranteed on-campus housing but are unable to live on campus due to a lack of space.


Athletics

As of 2016 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 The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its College football, football teams compete in the NCAA D ...
in most sports, the
Mountain Pacific Sports Federation The Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) is a college athletic conference with members located mostly in the western United States, although it now has members as far east as Pennsylvania. The conference participates at the NCAA Division I ...
in several other sports, and the
America East Conference The America East Conference is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with NCAA Division I founded in 1979, whose members are located in the Northeastern United States. The conference has nine core members including eight public research u ...
in
field hockey Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must drive a round hockey ball by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shooting ci ...
with the participation in the inter-collegiate NCAA's Division I FBS. Its traditional sports rival is the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, the neighbor to the north in the East Bay. The winner of the annual " Big Game" between the
Cal Cal or CAL may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Cal'' (novel), a 1983 novel by Bernard MacLaverty * "Cal" (short story), a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov * ''Cal'' (1984 film), an Irish drama starring John Lynch and Helen Mir ...
and
Cardinal Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to: Animals * Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **''Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae **''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, the ...
football teams gains custody of
the Stanford Axe The Stanford Axe is a trophy awarded to the winner of the annual Big Game, a college football match-up between the University of California Golden Bears and the Stanford University Cardinal. The trophy consists of an axe-head mounted on a lar ...
. As of May 9, 2022, Stanford has won 130 NCAA team championships, more than any other school. Stanford has won at least one NCAA team championship each academic year for 46 consecutive years, starting in 1976–77 and continuing through 2021–22. The second-longest NCAA championship streak was 19 years, achieved by USC from 1959 to 1960 through 1977–78. As of January 1, 2022, Stanford athletes have won 529 NCAA individual championships. No other Division I school is within 100 of Stanford's total. Stanford won 25 consecutive NACDA Directors' Cups, from 1994 to 1995 through 2018–19, awarded annually to the most successful overall college sports program in the nation. 177 Stanford-affiliated athletes have won a total of 296 Summer Olympic medals (150 gold, 79 silver, 67 bronze), including 26 medals at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and 27 medals at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. In the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, Stanford-affiliated athletes won 26 medals, more than any other university. Stanford athletes have won medals in every Summer Olympic Games since 1912.


Traditions

* "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 The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, formerly known as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, is an American choir, acting as part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). It has performed in the Salt Lake Tabernacle for ov ...
. * Big Game: The central football rivalry between Stanford and
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...
. First played in 1892, and for a time played by the universities' rugby teams, it is one of the oldest college rivalries in the United States. * The
Stanford Axe The Stanford Axe is a trophy awarded to the winner of the annual Big Game, a college football match-up between the University of California Golden Bears and the Stanford University Cardinal. The trophy consists of an axe-head mounted on a lar ...
: A trophy earned by the winner of Big Game, exchanged only as necessary. The axe originated in 1899 when Stanford yell leader Billy Erb wielded a lumberman's axe to inspire the team. Stanford lost, and the Axe was stolen by Berkeley students following the game. In 1930, Stanford students staged an elaborate heist to recover the Axe. In 1933, the schools agreed to exchange it as a prize for winning Big Game. As of 2021, a restaurant centrally located on Stanford's campus is named "The Axe and Palm" in reference to the Axe. * Big Game Gaieties: In the week ahead of Big Game, a 90-minute original musical (written, composed, produced, and performed by the students of Ram's Head Theatrical Society) is performed in Memorial Auditorium. *
Full Moon on the Quad Full Moon on the Quad, also referred to as FMOTQ, is an annual tradition at Stanford University. During the event, students gather at Main Quad and kiss one another starting at midnight. Typically organized by the Junior class cabinet, the festiv ...
: 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. * The Stanford Marriage Pact: An annual
matchmaking Matchmaking is the process of matching two or more people together, usually for the purpose of marriage, in which case the matchmaker is also known as a marriage broker. The word is also used in the context of sporting events such as boxing, in ...
event where thousands of students complete a questionnaire about their values and are subsequently matched with the best person for them to make a "marriage pact" with. * Fountain Hopping: At any time of year, students tour Stanford's main campus fountains to dip their feet or swim in some of the university's 25 fountains. * Mausoleum Party: An annual
Halloween Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve) is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints' Day. It begins the observanc ...
party at the
Stanford Mausoleum The Stanford Mausoleum, located in the Northwest of the Stanford University campus in the Stanford University Arboretum, holds the remains of the university's namesake Leland Stanford, Jr. and his parents Leland and Jane Stanford. Once per yea ...
, the final resting place of
Leland Stanford Jr. Leland Stanford Jr. (May 14, 1868 – March 13, 1884), known as Leland DeWitt Stanford until he was nine, was the only son of American industrialist and politician Leland Stanford and his wife Jane. Following his death from typhoid at age 15, h ...
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. * Wacky Walk: At commencement, graduates forgo a more traditional entrance and instead stride into Stanford Stadium in a large procession wearing wacky costumes. * Steam Tunneling: Stanford has a network of underground brick-lined tunnels that conduct central heating to more than 200 buildings via steam pipes. Students sometimes navigate the corridors, rooms, and locked gates, carrying flashlights and water bottles. ''Stanford Magazine'' named steam tunneling one of the "101 things you must do" before graduating from the Farm in 2000. * 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. *Viennese Ball: a formal
ball A ball is a round object (usually spherical, but can sometimes be ovoid) with several uses. It is used in ball games, where the play of the game follows the state of the ball as it is hit, kicked or thrown by players. Balls can also be used f ...
with
waltzes The waltz ( ), meaning "to roll or revolve") is a ballroom and folk dance, normally in triple ( time), performed primarily in closed position. History There are many references to a sliding or gliding dance that would evolve into the wal ...
that was initially started in the 1970s by students returning from the now-closed (since 1987) Stanford in
Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...
overseas program. It is now open to all students. * The long-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 Ulrich von Hutten (21 April 1488 – 29 August 1523) was a German knight, scholar, poet and satirist, who later became a follower of Martin Luther and a Protestant reformer. By 1519, he was an outspoken critic of the Roman Catholic Church. Hutte ...
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. It was made official by way of incorporation into an official seal by the board of trustees in December 2002. * Degree of Uncommon Man/Uncommon Woman: Stanford does not award honorary degrees, but in 1953 the "degree of Uncommon Man/Uncommon Woman" was created by Stanford Associates, part of the Stanford alumni organization, to recognize alumni who give rare and extraordinary service to the university. It is awarded not at prescribed intervals, but instead only when the president of the university deems it appropriate to recognize extraordinary service. Recipients include
Herbert Hoover Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...
,
Bill Hewlett William Redington Hewlett ( ; May 20, 1913 – January 12, 2001) was an American engineer and the co-founder, with David Packard, of the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP). Early life and education Hewlett was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his ...
,
Dave Packard David Packard ( ; September 7, 1912 – March 26, 1996) was an American electrical engineer and co-founder, with Bill Hewlett, of Hewlett-Packard (1939), serving as president (1947–64), CEO (1964–68), and chairman of the board (1964–68, ...
, Lucile Packard, and John Gardner. * Former campus traditions include the Big Game bonfire on
Lake Lagunita Lake Lagunita, informally referred to as Lake Lag, is an artificial dry lake in Stanford University, California, located on the western side of the Stanford campus near the Lagunita residences. It was created in to provide irrigation for Palo A ...
(a seasonal lake usually dry in the fall), which was formally ended in 1997 because of the presence of endangered
salamander Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All ten ...
s in the lake bed.


Religious life

Students and staff at Stanford are of many different religions. The Stanford Office for Religious Life's mission is "to guide, nurture and enhance spiritual, religious and ethical life within the Stanford University community" by promoting enriching dialogue, meaningful ritual, and enduring friendships among people of all religious backgrounds. It is headed by a dean with the assistance of a senior associate dean and an associate dean.
Stanford Memorial Church Stanford Memorial Church (also referred to informally as MemChu) is located on the Main Quad at the center of the Stanford University campus in Stanford, California, United States. It was built during the American RenaissanceGregg, p. 34 by ...
, in the center of campus, has a Sunday University Public Worship service (UPW) usually in the "Protestant Ecumenical Christian" tradition where the Memorial Church Choir sings and a sermon is preached usually by one of the Stanford deans for Religious Life. UPW sometimes has multifaith services. In addition, the church is used by the Catholic community and by some of the other Christian denominations at Stanford. Weddings happen most Saturdays and the university has for over 20 years allowed blessings of same-gender relationships and now legal weddings. In addition to the church, the Office for Religious Life has a Center for Inter-Religious Community, Learning, and Experiences (CIRCLE) on the third floor of Old Union. It offers a common room, an interfaith sanctuary, a seminar room, a student lounge area, and a reading room, as well as offices housing a number of Stanford Associated Religions (SAR) member groups and the Senior Associate Dean and Associate Dean for Religious Life. Most though not all religious student groups belong to SAR. The SAR directory includes organizations that serve atheist, Bahá’í, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islam, Jewish, and Sikh groups, though these groups vary year by year. The Windhover Contemplation Center was dedicated in October 2014, and was intended to provide spiritual sanctuary for students and staff in the midst of their course and work schedules; the center displays the "Windhover" paintings by
Nathan Oliveira Nathan Oliveira (December 19, 1928 – November 13, 2010) was an American Painting, painter, printmaker, and sculptor, born in Oakland, California to immigrant Portuguese people, Portuguese parents. Since the late 1950s, Oliveira has been the s ...
, the late Stanford professor and artist. Some religions have a larger and more formal presence on campus in addition to the student groups; these include the Catholic Community at Stanford and Hillel at Stanford.


Greek life

Fraternities and sororities have been active on the Stanford campus since 1891 when the university first opened. In 1944, University President
Donald Tresidder Donald Bertrand Tresidder (April 7, 1894 – January 28, 1948) was the fourth president of Stanford University, serving from 1943 until his sudden death in 1948. He also had a longtime association with Yosemite National Park. Early life Son of Jo ...
banned all Stanford sororities due to extreme competition. However, following
Title IX Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educat ...
, the Board of Trustees lifted the 33-year ban on sororities in 1977. Students are not permitted to join a fraternity or sorority until spring quarter of their freshman year. As of 2016 Stanford had 31 Greek organizations, including 14 sororities and 16 fraternities. Nine of the Greek organizations were housed (eight in University-owned houses and one,
Sigma Chi Sigma Chi () International Fraternity is one of the largest North American fraternal literary societies. The fraternity has 244 active (undergraduate) chapters and 152 alumni chapters across the United States and Canada and has initiated more tha ...
, in their own house, although the land is owned by the university). Six chapters were members of the African American Fraternal and Sororal Association, 11 chapters were members of the Interfraternity Council, seven chapters belonged to the Intersorority Council, and six chapters belonged to the Multicultural Greek Council. * Stanford is home to three unhoused historically
National Pan-Hellenic Council The National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) is a collaborative umbrella council composed of historically African American fraternities and sororities also referred to as Black Greek Letter Organizations (BGLOs). The NPHC was formed as a permanent ...
(NPHC or "Divine Nine") sororities (
Alpha Kappa Alpha Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. () is the first intercollegiate historically African American sorority. The sorority was founded on January 15, 1908, at the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C., by a group of sixteen stud ...
,
Delta Sigma Theta Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. () is a historically African American sorority. The organization was founded by college-educated women dedicated to public service with an emphasis on programs that assist the African American community. Delta ...
, and
Sigma Gamma Rho Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. () is a historically African American sorority, international collegiate, and non-profit community service organization that was founded on November 12, 1922, by seven educators on the Irvington campus (1875–1 ...
) and three unhoused NPHC fraternities (
Alpha Phi Alpha Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. () is the oldest intercollegiate historically African American fraternity. It was initially a literary and social studies club organized in the 1905–1906 school year at Cornell University but later evolved int ...
,
Kappa Alpha Psi Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. () is a historically African American fraternity. Since the fraternity's founding on January 5, 1911 at Indiana University Bloomington, the fraternity has never restricted membership on the basis of color, creed ...
, and
Phi Beta Sigma Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. () is a historically African American fraternity. It was founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C. on January 9, 1914, by three young African-American male students with nine other Howard students as char ...
). These fraternities and sororities operate under the African American Fraternal Sororal Association (AAFSA) at Stanford. * Seven historically
National Panhellenic Conference The National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) is an umbrella organization for 26 (inter)national women's Fraternities and sororities, sororities throughout the United States and Canada. Each member group is autonomous as a social, Greek alphabet#Use ...
(NPC) sororities, four of which are unhoused (
Alpha Phi Alpha Phi International Women's Fraternity (, also known as APhi) is an international sorority with 172 active chapters and over 250,000 initiated members. Founded at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York on September 18, 1872, it is the fou ...
,
Alpha Epsilon Phi Alpha Epsilon Phi ( or AEPhi) is a Fraternities and sororities in North America, sorority and one of the members of the National Panhellenic Conference, an umbrella organization overseeing 26 North American sororities. It was founded on Octobe ...
,
Chi Omega Chi Omega (, also known as ChiO) is a women's fraternity and a member of the National Panhellenic Conference, the umbrella organization of 26 women's fraternities. Chi Omega has 181 active collegiate chapters and approximately 240 alumnae chapte ...
, and
Kappa Kappa Gamma Kappa Kappa Gamma (), also known simply as Kappa or KKG, is a collegiate sorority founded at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, United States. It has a membership of more than 260,000 women, with 140 collegiate chapters in the United States a ...
) and three of which are housed (
Delta Delta Delta Delta Delta Delta (), also known as Tri Delta, is an international women's fraternity founded on November 27, 1888 at Boston University by Sarah Ida Shaw, Eleanor Dorcas Pond, Isabel Morgan Breed, and Florence Isabelle Stewart. Tri Delta part ...
,
Kappa Alpha Theta Kappa Alpha Theta (), also known simply as Theta, is an international women’s fraternity founded on January 27, 1870, at DePauw University, formerly Indiana Asbury. It was the first Greek-letter fraternity established for women. The main arch ...
, and
Pi Beta Phi Pi Beta Phi (), often known simply as Pi Phi, is an international women's fraternity founded at Monmouth College, in Monmouth, Illinois on April 28, 1867 as I. C. Sorosis, the first national secret college society of women to be modeled after ...
) call Stanford home. These sororities operate under the Stanford Inter-sorority Council (ISC). * Eleven historically
National Interfraternity Conference The North American Interfraternity Conference (or NIC; formerly known as the National Interfraternity Conference) is an association of intercollegiate men's social fraternities that was formally organized in 1910, although it began at a meeting a ...
(NIC) fraternities are also represented at Stanford, including five unhoused fraternities (
Alpha Epsilon Pi Alpha Epsilon Pi (), commonly known as AEPi, is a college fraternity founded at New York University in 1913 by Charles C. Moskowitz and ten other men. The fraternity has more than 150 active chapters across the United States, Canada, United Kingdo ...
,
Delta Kappa Epsilon Delta Kappa Epsilon (), commonly known as ''DKE'' or ''Deke'', is one of the oldest fraternities in the United States, with fifty-six active chapters and five active colonies across North America. It was founded at Yale College in 1844 by fifteen ...
,
Delta Tau Delta Delta Tau Delta () is a United States-based international Greek letter college fraternity. Delta Tau Delta was founded at Bethany College, Bethany, Virginia, (now West Virginia) in 1858. The fraternity currently has around 130 collegiate chapters ...
,
Sigma Alpha Epsilon Sigma Alpha Epsilon (), commonly known as SAE, is a North American Greek-letter social college fraternity. It was founded at the University of Alabama on March 9, 1856. Of all existing national social fraternities today, Sigma Alpha Epsilon is t ...
, and
Kappa Alpha Order Kappa Alpha Order (), commonly known as Kappa Alpha or simply KA, is a social Fraternities and sororities, fraternity and a fraternal order founded in 1865 at Washington and Lee University, Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) i ...
), and four housed fraternities (
Sigma Phi Epsilon Sigma Phi Epsilon (), commonly known as SigEp, is a social college fraternity for male college students in the United States. It was founded on November 1, 1901, at Richmond College (now the University of Richmond), and its national headquarte ...
,
Kappa Sigma Kappa Sigma (), commonly known as Kappa Sig, is an American collegiate social fraternity founded at the University of Virginia in 1869. Kappa Sigma is one of the five largest international fraternities with currently 318 active chapters and colo ...
,
Phi Kappa Psi Phi Kappa Psi (), commonly known as Phi Psi, is an American collegiate social fraternity that was founded by William Henry Letterman and Charles Page Thomas Moore in Widow Letterman's home on the campus of Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pen ...
, and
Sigma Nu Sigma Nu () is an undergraduate Fraternities and sororities in North America, college fraternity founded at the Virginia Military Institute on January 1, 1869. The fraternity was founded by James Frank Hopkins, Greenfield Quarles and James McIlva ...
). These fraternities operate under the Stanford Inter-fraternity Council (IFC). * There are also four unhoused Multicultural Greek Council (MGC) sororities on campus (
alpha Kappa Delta Phi alpha Kappa Delta Phi (), also known as aKDPhi, Kappa Delta Phi, KDPhi, is an international Asian-interest sorority founded at the University of California, Berkeley. alpha Kappa Delta Phi has 63 chapters located at numerous universities acros ...
,
Lambda Theta Nu Lambda Theta Nu () is a Latina-based Greek letter intercollegiate sorority founded in 1986 at California State University, Chico. History Formation Eighteen Latina students at California State University, Chico banded together during what th ...
,
Sigma Psi Zeta Sigma Psi Zeta () Sorority, Inc., also known as Sigmas or SYZ, is a progressive multicultural sorority. It was founded on March 23, 1994 at the University at Albany and incorporated in New York on March 15, 1996 by the 10 Founding Mothers. The s ...
, and
Sigma Theta Psi Sigma Theta Psi () is a multicultural, academic, and social sorority. The sorority was founded at San Jose State University (SJSU) in 1991. Sigma Theta Psi is known for their significant contribution to breast cancer awareness throughout sisters' l ...
), as well as two unhoused MGC fraternities (
Gamma Zeta Alpha Gamma Zeta Alpha Fraternity, Inc. () was founded on December 3, 1987 at California State University, Chico in Chico, California. It is a Latino Interest fraternity that emphasizes Latino culture and the success of Latino males in higher education ...
and
Lambda Phi Epsilon Lambda Phi Epsilon (, also known as LPhiE and LFE) is the largest Asian-American-Interest fraternity in North America. Lambda Phi Epsilon is affiliated with the National APIDA Panhellenic Association, and is a former member of the North American I ...
). Lambda Phi Epsilon is recognized by the National Interfraternity Conference (NIC).


Student groups

As of 2020, Stanford had more than 600 student organizations. Groups are often, though not always, partially funded by the university via allocations directed by the student government organization, the ASSU. These funds include "special fees," which are decided by a Spring Quarter vote by the student body. Groups span athletics and recreation, careers/pre-professional, community service, ethnic/cultural, fraternities and sororities, health and counseling, media and publications, the arts, political and social awareness, and religious and philosophical organizations. In contrast to many other selective universities, Stanford policy mandates that all recognized student clubs be "broadly open" for all interested students to join. Stanford is home to a set of student journalism publications. ''
The Stanford Daily ''The Stanford Daily'' is the student-run, independent daily newspaper serving Stanford University. ''The Daily'' is distributed throughout campus and the surrounding community of Palo Alto, California, United States. It has published since the U ...
'' is a student-run daily newspaper and has been published since the university was founded in 1892. The student-run radio station,
KZSU KZSU is a freeform FM radio station broadcasting from the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California, United States. KZSU broadcasts in stereo at 90.1 MHz FM with an effective radiated power of 500 watts. The station is owned b ...
Stanford 90.1 FM, features freeform music programming, sports commentary, and news segments; it started in 1947 as an AM radio station.
The Stanford Review ''The Stanford Review'' (also known as ''The Review'') is a student-run newspaper that serves Stanford University in Stanford, California. It was founded in 1987 by Peter Thiel and Norman Book. History In 1987, after around 500 students partici ...
is a conservative student newspaper founded in 1987. ''
The Fountain Hopper ''The Fountain Hopper'' or ''FoHo'' is an anonymous email-based student publication serving Stanford University. It consists of an irregular newsletter with original reporting and a digest of Stanford-related news. Unlike other publications ser ...
'' (''FoHo'') is a financially independent, anonymous student-run campus
rag Rag, rags, RAG or The Rag may refer to: Common uses * Rag, a piece of old cloth * Rags, tattered clothes * Rag (newspaper), a publication engaging in tabloid journalism * Rag paper, or cotton paper Arts and entertainment Film * ''Rags'' (1915 ...
publication, notable for having broken the Brock Turner story. Stanford hosts numerous environmental and sustainability-oriented student groups, including Students for a Sustainable Stanford, Students for Environmental and Racial Justice, and Stanford Energy Club. Stanford is also home to a large number of pre-professional student organizations, organized around missions from startup incubation to paid consulting. The
Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students The Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) is a student group at Stanford University focusing on business and entrepreneurial activities. One of the largest student-run entrepreneurship organizations in the world, BASES' ...
(BASES) is one of the largest professional organizations in Silicon Valley, with over 5,000 members. Its goal is to support the next generation of entrepreneurs.
StartX StartX is a non-profit startup accelerator and founder community associated with Stanford University. It was founded by Cameron Teitelman and Dan Ha in 2011. It began as a spin-off of Stanford Student Enterprises, the non-profit financial a ...
is a non-profit startup accelerator for student and faculty-led
startups A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses t ...
. It is staffed primarily by students. Stanford Women In Business (SWIB) is an on-campus business organization, aimed at helping Stanford women find paths to success in the generally male-dominated technology industry. Stanford Marketing is a student group that provides students hands-on training through research and strategy consulting projects with
Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...
clients, as well as workshops led by people from industry and professors in the
Stanford Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business (also known as Stanford GSB) is the graduate business school of Stanford University, a private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective business schoo ...
. Stanford Finance provides mentoring and internships for students who want to enter a career in finance. Stanford Pre Business Association is intended to build connections among industry, alumni, and student communities. Other groups include: * The Stanford Axe Committee is the official guardian of the
Stanford Axe The Stanford Axe is a trophy awarded to the winner of the annual Big Game, a college football match-up between the University of California Golden Bears and the Stanford University Cardinal. The trophy consists of an axe-head mounted on a lar ...
and the rest of the time assists the
Stanford Band The Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band (LSJUMB) is the student marching band representing Stanford University and its athletic teams. Billing itself as "The World's Largest Rock and Roll Band," the Stanford Band performs at sporting ...
as a supplementary spirit group. It has existed since 1982. * The Stanford solar car project, in which students build a solar-powered car every 2 years and race it in either the
North American Solar Challenge The American Solar Challenge (ASC), previously known as the North American Solar Challenge and Sunrayce, is a solar car race across the United States. In the race, teams from colleges and universities throughout North America design, build, test ...
or the
World Solar Challenge The World Solar Challenge (WSC), since 2013 named Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, is an international event for solar powered cars driving 3000 kilometres through the Australian outback. With the exception of a four-year gap between ...
. * Stanford American Indian Organization (SAIO) which hosts the annual Stanford Powwow started in 1971. This is the largest student-run event on campus and the largest student-run powwow in the country. * The Stanford Improvisors (SImps for short) teach and perform improvisational theatre on campus and in the surrounding community. In 2014 the group finished second in the Golden Gate Regional College Improv tournament and they have since been invited twice to perform at the annual San Francisco Improv Festival. * Asha for Education is a national student group founded in 1991. It focuses mainly on education in India and supporting nonprofit organizations that work mainly in the education sector. Asha's Stanford chapter organizes events like
Holi Holi (), also known as the Festival of Colours, the Festival of Spring, and the Festival of Love,The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) p. 874 "Holi /'həʊli:/ noun a Hindu spring festival ...". is an ancient Hindu religious festival ...
as well as lectures by prominent leaders from India on the university campus.


Safety

Stanford's Department of Public Safety is responsible for law enforcement and safety on the main campus. Its deputy sheriffs are
peace officers A law enforcement officer (LEO), or peace officer in North American English, is a public-sector employee whose duties primarily involve the enforcement of laws. The phrase can include campaign disclosure specialists, local police officers, pros ...
by arrangement with the
Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office is a local law enforcement agency that serves Santa Clara County, California. It provides general-service law enforcement to unincorporated areas of Santa Clara County, as well as incorporated cities withi ...
. The department is also responsible for publishing an annual crime report covering the previous three years as required by the
Clery Act The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act or Clery Act, signed in 1990, is a federal statute codified at , with implementing regulations in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations at . The Clery Act requir ...
. Fire protection has been provided by contract with the Palo Alto Fire Department since 1976. Murder is rare on the campus, although a few cases have been notorious, including the 1974 murder of Arlis Perry in Stanford Memorial Church, which was not solved until 2018. Also notorius was
Theodore Streleski Theodore Landon "Ted" Streleski (b. 1936) is an American former graduate student in mathematics at Stanford University who murdered his former faculty advisor, Professor Karel de Leeuw, with a ball-peen hammer on August 18, 1978. Shortly after the ...
's murder of his faculty advisor in 1978.


Campus sexual misconduct

In 2014, Stanford was the tenth highest in the nation in "total of reports of rape" on their main campus, with 26 reports of rape. In Stanford's 2015 Campus Climate Survey, 4.7 percent of female undergraduates reported experiencing sexual assault as defined by the university, and 32.9 percent reported experiencing sexual misconduct. According to the survey, 85% of perpetrators of misconduct were Stanford students and 80% were men. Perpetrators of sexual misconduct were frequently aided by alcohol or drugs, according to the survey: "Nearly three-fourths of the students whose responses were categorized as sexual assault indicated that the act was accomplished by a person or persons taking advantage of them when they were drunk or high, according to the survey. Close to 70 percent of students who reported an experience of sexual misconduct involving nonconsensual penetration and/or oral sex indicated the same." Associated Students of Stanford and student and alumni activists with the anti-rape group Stand with Leah criticized the survey methodology for downgrading incidents involving alcohol if students did not check two separate boxes indicating they were both intoxicated and incapacity while sexually assaulted. Reporting on the Brock Turner rape case, a reporter from ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' analyzed campus rape reports submitted by universities to the U.S. Department of Education, and found that Stanford was one of the top ten universities in campus rapes in 2014, with 26 reported that year, but when analyzed by rapes per 1000 students, Stanford was not among the top ten.


''People v. Turner''

On the night of January 17–18, 2015, 22-year-old
Chanel Miller Chanel Elisabeth Miller (born June 12, 1992) is an American writer and artist based in San Francisco, California and New York City. She was known anonymously after she was sexually assaulted on the campus of Stanford University in 2015 by Broc ...
, who was visiting the campus to attend a party at the Kappa Alpha fraternity, was sexually assaulted by Brock Turner, a nineteen-year-old freshman student-athlete from Ohio. Two Stanford graduate students witnessed the attack and intervened; when Turner attempted to flee the two held him down on the ground until police arrived.Liam Stack for ''The New York Times''. June 6, 201
Light Sentence for Brock Turner in Stanford Rape Case Draws Outrage
/ref> Stanford immediately referred the case to prosecutors and offered Miller counseling, and within two weeks had barred Turner from campus after conducting an investigation. Turner was convicted on three felony charges in March 2016 and in June 2016 he received a jail sentence of six months and was declared a sex offender, requiring him to register as such for the rest of his life; prosecutors had sought a six-year prison sentence out of the maximum 14 years that was possible. The case and the relatively lenient sentence drew nationwide attention. Two years later the judge in the case, Stanford graduate
Aaron Persky Michael Aaron Persky (born 1962) is an American attorney and former judge of the Santa Clara County Superior Court from 2003 to 2018. He gained attention after his ruling in the case ''People v. Turner'', in which he in June 2016 sentenced Stan ...
, was recalled by the voters.


Joe Lonsdale

In February 2015, Elise Clougherty filed a sexual assault and harassment lawsuit against venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale.Katie Benner for Bloomberg News. February 2, 201
Benner on Tech: Parsing a Sexual Assault Suit
/ref>Emily Bazelon for ''The New York Times''. February 11, 201

/ref> Lonsdale and Clougherty entered into a relationship in the spring of 2012 when she was a junior and he was her mentor in a Stanford entrepreneurship course. By the spring of 2013 Clougherty had broken off the relationship and filed charges at Stanford that Lonsdale had broken the Stanford policy against consensual relationships between students and faculty and that he had sexually assaulted and harassed her, which resulted in Lonsdale being banned from Stanford for 10 years. Lonsdale challenged Stanford's finding that he had sexually assaulted and harassed her and Stanford rescinded that finding and the campus ban in the fall of 2015. Clougherty withdrew her suit that fall as well.


Notable people

As of late 2021, Stanford had 2,288 tenure-line faculty, senior fellows, center fellows, and medical center faculty.


Award laureates and scholars

Stanford's current community of scholars includes: * 20
Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
laureates (as of October 2020, 85 affiliates in total); * 174 members of the
National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
; * 113 members of
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...
; * 90 members of
National Academy of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, En ...
; * 303 members of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
; * 10 recipients of the
National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...
; * 3 recipients of the
National Medal of Technology The National Medal of Technology and Innovation (formerly the National Medal of Technology) is an honor granted by the President of the United States to American inventors and innovators who have made significant contributions to the development ...
; * 6 recipients of the
National Humanities Medal The National Humanities Medal is an American award that annually recognizes several individuals, groups, or institutions for work that has "deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened our citizens' engagement with the human ...
; * 47 members of
American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
; * 56 fellows of the
American Physics Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...
(since 1995); * 4
Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
winners; * 33
MacArthur Fellow The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 ind ...
s; * 6
Wolf Foundation Prize The Wolf Prize is an international award granted in Israel, that has been presented most years since 1978 to living scientists and artists for ''"achievements in the interest of mankind and friendly relations among people ... irrespective of natio ...
winners; * 2 ACL Lifetime Achievement Award winners; * 14
AAAI The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artif ...
fellows; * 2
Presidential Medal of Freedom The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award of the United States, along with the Congressional Gold Medal. It is an award bestowed by the president of the United States to recognize people who have made "an especially merito ...
winners. Stanford's faculty and former faculty includes 48 Nobel laureates, 5 Fields Medalists, as well as 17 winners of the Turing Award, the so-called "Nobel Prize in computer science," comprising one-third of the awards given in its 44-year history. The university has 27 ACM fellows. It is also affiliated with 4
Gödel Prize The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, given jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Inter ...
winners, 4
Knuth Prize The Donald E. Knuth Prize is a prize for outstanding contributions to the foundations of computer science, named after the American computer scientist Donald E. Knuth. History The Knuth Prize has been awarded since 1996 and includes an award of US ...
recipients, 10
IJCAI Computers and Thought Award The IJCAI Computers and Thought Award is presented every two years by the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), recognizing outstanding young scientists in artificial intelligence. It was originally funded with royalt ...
winners, and about 15
Grace Murray Hopper Award The Grace Murray Hopper Award (named for computer pioneer RADM Grace Hopper) has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1971. The award goes to a computer professional who makes a single, significant technical or serv ...
winners for their work in the foundations of computer science. Stanford alumni have started many companies and, according to ''
Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
'', has produced the second highest number of billionaires of all universities. As of 2020, 15 Stanford alumni have won the
Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
. As of 2022, 128 Stanford students or alumni have been named
Rhodes Scholars The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...
.


See also

*
List of universities by number of billionaire alumni Counting all degrees, Harvard University comes in first place in terms of the total number of billionaire alumni. Harvard also comes in first if only bachelor's degrees are counted, according to a 2021 Forbes report. Harvard also ranks first in the ...
*
List of colleges and universities in California This is a list of colleges and universities in California. Federal institutions Graduate institutions * Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey) Other academic institutions * Defense Language Institute (Monterey) State institutions Two-year inst ...
* S*, a collaboration between seven universities and the
Karolinska Institute The Karolinska Institute (KI; sv, Karolinska Institutet; sometimes known as the (Royal) Caroline Institute in English) is a research-led medical university in Solna within the Stockholm urban area of Sweden. The Karolinska Institute is consist ...
for training in bioinformatics and genomics *
Stanford School The Stanford School (humorously also called the Stanford Disunity Mafia) is a group of philosophers of science, the members of which taught at various times at Stanford University, who share an intellectual tradition of arguing against the unity of ...


Explanatory notes


References


Further reading

* Lee Altenberg
''Beyond Capitalism: Leland Stanford's Forgotten Vision''
(Stanford Historical Society, 1990) *
Ronald N. Bracewell Ronald Newbold Bracewell Order of Australia, AO (22 July 1921 – 12 August 2007) was the Lewis M. Terman Professor of Electrical Engineering of the Space, Telecommunications, and Radioscience Laboratory at Stanford University. Education B ...
, ''Trees of Stanford and Environs'' (Stanford Historical Society, 2005) * Ken Fenyo, ''The Stanford Daily 100 Years of Headlines'' (2003), * Jean Fetter, ''Questions and Admissions: Reflections on 100,000 Admissions Decisions at Stanford'' (1997), * Ricard Joncas, David Neumann, and Paul V. Turner. ''The Campus Guide: Stanford University''.
Princeton Architectural Press Princeton Architectural Press is a small press publisher, specializing in books on architecture, design, photography, landscape, and visual culture, with over 1,000 titles on its backlist. In 2013, it added a line of stationery products, including ...
, 2006. . (print); (online). * Stuart W. Leslie, ''The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford'',
Columbia University Press Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by Jennifer Crewe (2014–present) and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fiel ...
, 1994 * Rebecca S. Lowen, R. S. Lowen, ''Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford'',
University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty ...
, 1997


External links

*
Stanford Athletics website
* {{Authority control 1891 establishments in California Educational institutions established in 1891 Private universities and colleges in California Romanesque Revival architecture in California Schools accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Universities and colleges in Santa Clara County, California