STANFORD UNIVERSITY (Leland Stanford Junior University)

Stanford University Official Site

Stanford University

Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as Stanford University or simply Stanford, is a private university located approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco and approximately 20 miles (32 km) northwest of San Jose in Stanford, California, United States. Stanford is situated adjacent to the city of Palo Alto, near Silicon Valley.

History

Stanford was founded by railroad magnate and California Governor Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane Stanford. It is named in honor of their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died of typhoid just before his 16th birthday.

The story that a lady in "faded gingham" and a man in a "homespun threadbare suit" went to visit the president of Harvard about making a donation, were rebuffed, and then founded Stanford is untrue.

Locals and members of the university community are known to refer to the school as The Farm, a nod to the fact that the university is located on the former site of Leland Stanford's horse farm.

The University's founding grant was written on November 11, 1885, and accepted by the first Board of Trustees on November 14. The cornerstone was laid on May 14, 1887, and the University officially opened on October 1, 1891, to 559 students, with free tuition and 15 faculty members, seven of whom hailed from Cornell University. Among the first class of students was a young future president Herbert Hoover, who would claim to be first student ever at Stanford, by virtue of having been the first person in the first class to sleep in the dormitory.

The school was established as a coeducational institution although it maintained a cap on female enrollment for many years. This was not due to any anti-female sentiment but rather based on a concern of Jane Stanford, who worried that without such a cap, the school could become an all-female institution, which she did not feel would be an appropriate memorial for her son.

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed parts of the Main Quad (including the original iteration of Memorial Church) as well as the gate that first marked the entrance of the school; rebuilding on a somewhat less grandiose scale began immediately.

The official motto of Stanford University, selected by the Stanfords, is "Die Luft der Freiheit weht." Translated from the German, this quotation of Ulrich von Hutten means "The wind of freedom blows." At the time of the school's establishment, German had recently replaced Latin as the supraregional language of science and philosophy (a position it would hold until
World War II).

Academics

Schools

Three of Stanford's seven schools offer undergraduate and graduate programs: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Humanities & Sciences. The other four offer graduate programs: Business, Education, Law and Medicine.

Business
Earth Sciences
Education
Engineering
Humanities & Sciences
Law
Medicine

Research Centers and institutes

Other Stanford-affiliated institutions include the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (originally the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) and the Stanford Research Institute, a now-independent institution which originated at the University, in addition to the Stanford Humanities Center. Stanford also houses the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, a major public policy think tank that attracts visiting scholars from around the world, and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which is dedicated to the more specific study of international relations. Apparently because it could not locate a copy in any of its libraries, the Soviet Union was obliged to ask the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, at Stanford University, for a microfilm copy of its original edition of the first issue of Pravda (dated March 5, 1917)

Libraries and digital resources

The Stanford University Libraries hold a collection of more than eight million volumes. The main library in the SU library system is Green Library. Meyer Library holds the vast East Asia collection and the student-accessible media resources. Other significant collections include the Lane Medical Library, Terman Engineering Library, Jackson Business Library, Falconer Biology Library, Cubberley Education Library, Branner Earth Sciences Library, Swain Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Library, Jonsson Government Documents collection, Crown Law Library, the Stanford Auxiliary Library (SAL), the SLAC Library, the Hoover library, the Miller Marine Biology Library at Hopkins Marine Station, the Music Library, and the University's special collections. There are 19 libraries in all.

Digital libraries and text services include HighWire Press, the Humanities Digital Information Services group and the Media Microtext Center. Several academic departments and some residences also have their own libraries.

Stanford is a founding and charter member of CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, the nonprofit organization which provides extremely high-performance Internet-based networking to California's K-20 research and education community.

Stanford University ranked 19th in the 2007 THES-QS World University ranking

Stanford University ranked 17th in the 2008 THES-QS World University ranking

Stanford University ranked 16th in the 2009 THES-QS World University ranking

Stanford University ranked 13th in the 2010 QS World University ranking

Stanford University ranked 11th in the 2011 QS World University ranking