Talk:Stanford University
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Archives: Archive 1 (Sept 2003-May 2006)
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[edit] Folding@Home
At 20:21 on July 15, 2006, User:128.12.138.13 removed the following text in the "Trivia" section, arguing that "Plug for software in Stanford history would be warranted if it didn't require an introduction." I disagree, though not strongly enough to revert the change. Can someone else weigh in on this? --Starwiz 14:13, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
- Stanford is the university behind Folding@home, one of the most widely disseminated distributed computing projects in the life sciences field, allowing hobbyists and enthusiasts to participate in scientific research by donating unused computer processor cycles. It studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases.
[edit] Traditions and Full Moon on the Quad
Full Moon on the Quad is a two-paragraph article that was proposed for deletion. Rather than send it up to AfD for deletion consideration, I think it may be more constructive to just merge it in with the traditions section in the main article. Additionally, the other traditions could be expanded with a few sentences describing the nature of the tradition. Yes, after the merge, Full Moon on the Quad could live on as a redirect to the article. Any objections? —C.Fred (talk) 15:16, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
- Never mind. Based on the quick reaction, I've sent it to AfD. —C.Fred (talk) 20:30, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Jasper Ridge, "crystalline lake", size of campus, and Nobel prize winners
Isn't Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve a part of the 8,183 acre campus (not separate from it as implied by the article)? What does "crystalline" mean in the reference to Lagunita as a crystalline lake? Aren't there two other lakes that might be mentioned -- Sears and Felt? The claim about Stanford being the second-largest university complex in the world strikes me as false. Duke and -- I believe -- the University of the South have larger campuses in terms of acreage. Multi-campus state universities like SUNY and UC are considered single universities with various branch campuses that are probably larger in acreage and (certainly) student population than Stanford. So I think the claim about Stanford's size should be qualified and put in context. There is no question but that Stanford is huge in terms of both acreage (for a single campus) and the square footage of its buildings. If you think in terms of both of these factors, it probably is the second-largest "complex" in the world. But these things should be pointed out and backed up with sources. The same goes for Nobel prize winners. This article claims 17, while the Stanford website claims 16. But it turns out that most are retired, and most of the remainder do not teach at Stanford but are researchers at Hoover Institution or SLAC. If the University of California added up all of its retired and non-retired Nobel prizewinners -- including the ones working in nuclear weapons research at LBL, LLL and Los Alamos Scientific Lab or medical research at UCSF -- the resulting number of "Nobel prizewinners on the UC faculty" would be huge. But freshmen at UC still wouldn't be tripping over Nobel prize winners on UC campuses. I think some of these criticisms have been made before. So why haven't editors made the appropriate changes? I'll be coming back again at some point to see if these claims are still in the article. starkt 08:21, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- A few answers (as far as I know. I can't reference any of this - this is more from my personal knowledge from the past six years I've spent on campus. Yes, Jasper Ridge is part of the university lands. I have no idea what "crystalline" lake means. I don't believe there are any other lakes on campus - certainly there aren't any others of note to the student body. Now, the campus size issue. As I know it (and the tour guides on campus say), Stanford is the second largest university in the world, behind the University of Moscow. This means the lands the university owns are the second largest in the world. However, most of these lands don't have academic buildings on them - lands includes Jasper Ridge and the Stanford Shopping Center. The university is not allowed to sell these lands (according to its charter), but it leases them for basically nothing. So, technically, they are owned by the university but aren't per se part of the main "campus". I think this answers the question - it's a cool, if slightly dumb, trivia fact that is fun to brag about and is fairly widely known (among Stanford students anyway). State universities with multiple campus really don't count in this way - you can't count the UC SYSTEM of universities as one university. Each has it's own faculty, student body, admissions process, etc. Admission to UC Davis doesn't mean you can take classes at UC Berkeley, and a degree from UC Berkeley is different from one at UC Davis, so they are really totally different schools.
- I'm not sure what point you're making about Nobel Prize winners - I would guess most Nobel laureates at most schools don't teach, since it takes many, many years to get one. This is a commonly accepted way of counting them and is a widely used/bragged about indicator of the quality of the faculty, so I'm not sure your point in challenging it. And I will attest that students can interact with faculty from SLAC and Hoover - I've taken classes from them, so they are part of the university. Anyway, I think it's relevant to have the corrected value of 16 winners in the article. Hopefully that addresses your concerns. Auric04 03:25, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Yearly expenses
A more interesting figure than Endownment (money which you doesn't spend on research) is the actual figure what the university does spend on research and teaching. Please add it to the page.
- What exactly are you asking? The Endowment is important since the interest on that is a fairly constant source of income (to be exact the law requires a certain percentage of the endowment to be spent each year which might be greater or less than the interest in a given year, though an institution can choose to spend more). This money can and is spent on research and teaching. The university can use it to fund research that hasn't yet attracted outside sponsorship (seed money); it can also use it to fund undergraduate student research or to pay for graduate student fellowships and so on. According to Stanford Facts 2006, the budget was $2.9 billion dollars not including the capital budget (e.g., new buildings) --Erp 16:45, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Not to let the German hear the end of World War II
Chapter "History" ends with "German had recently replaced Latin as the dominant language of science and philosophy (a position it would hold until World War II)." In my mind it is not necessary to allude World War II in this cohesion. Germany is neither a land of Hitlers nor the land of poets and philosphers. But I think it's wrong to marginalise it with a brown cover. -- F. Gudmen
-- It seems to me to be relevant to the demise of German as a scholarly language; as similar explanation for the death of Latin might be associated with the reduction of the role of Christianity in scientific circles (due to their various mistakes in their attitude to science). Likewise, the conflict between Germany and its allies, and the rest of the world (I use this description vaguely since America took their sweet time) - was responsible for the shattering of German science for at least a decade in terms of product, and also made German a language non-grata.
The reasons for German's absence from academic circles now is probably entirely economic and demographic, however, the original fall from grace was rooted in the World War 2 conflict; and so I think it is not inappropriate to mention. Anyone else have thoughts on this? Also, I don't think the sentence as it is in the article infers what you have inferred.
