Please note that each session will repeat. Attendees will be able to choose from two of the ten available sessions. All sessions will be recorded and available on iTunes shortly after the event.
Some Questions You've Always Had about Education and Why Economists Have the Answers
Presenters: Eric Hanushek and Caroline Hoxby
If you've ever wondered how valuable a good teacher is, whether a student's classmates affect his performance, whether charter schools make sense, whether countries that invest more in education grow faster or whether more selective colleges are worth the price, this Leading Matters program is for you.
Presenters: Eric Hanushek and Caroline Hoxby
If you've ever wondered how valuable a good teacher is, whether a student's classmates affect his performance, whether charter schools make sense, whether countries that invest more in education grow faster or whether more selective colleges are worth the price, this Leading Matters program is for you. Learn the best evidence on these and other interesting questions. Understand how the tools of modern economics help us answer questions that have remained quandaries for years.
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Eric Hanushek, Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor, by courtesy, of economics
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Eric Hanushek specializes in the economics and finance of schools. His ongoing research spans a number of important areas of education policy including the impacts of high stakes accountability and of class size reduction, the importance of teacher quality, and current debates about school finance adequacy and equity. His soon-to-be-released book, Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses: Solving the Funding-Achievement Puzzle in American Public Schools, describes how school finance policy can be used to reach our educational goals. He was a member of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Committee for Educational Excellence and is chair of the National Board for Education Science. He is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and has a PhD in economics from MIT.
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Caroline Hoxby, Scott and Donya Bommer Professor in Economics and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution
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Caroline Hoxby is an innovator in how better scientific methods can provide more reliable answers to educational policy questions. Her work has spanned issues such as the impact of competition among schools, the value of charter schools, peer effects, school finance, and the quality of colleges and universities. She is the director of the Economics of Education program of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the National Board for Education Science. She is a Rhodes Scholar and has a PhD in economics from MIT.
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Long Life in the 21st Century
Presenter: Laura Carstensen
We are approaching a watershed moment in human history. In just a few years, the number of people over 65 will surpass the number of children under 15. By the time our children reach old age, living to 100 will be commonplace.
Presenter: Laura Carstensen
We are approaching a watershed moment in human history. In just a few years, the number of people over 65 will surpass the number of children under 15. By the time our children reach old age, living to 100 will be commonplace. Rather than perceiving this as good news, most people respond to extended longevity with discussions about coping with or halting the aging process. Yet, to the extent that people arrive at old age mentally sharp, physically fit and financially secure, long-lived societies will thrive. This session will explore the work happening at the Stanford Center on Longevity to bring about profound advances in the quality of life from early childhood to old age.
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Laura Carstensen, professor of psychology and founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity and the Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy
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Laura Carstensen's research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging for more than 20 years, and in 2005 she was honored with a MERIT award. Carstensen is best known for socio-emotional selectivity theory, a life-span theory of motivation. With her students and colleagues, she has published well over 100 articles on life-span development. Her most current empirical research focuses on ways in which motivational changes influence cognitive processing. Carstensen serves on the board of science advisors for the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. She has chaired two studies for the National Academy of Sciences, resulting in The Aging Mind and When I'm 64. The recipient of numerous professional awards and honors, she has been selected as a Guggenheim Fellow, received the Richard Kalish Award for Innovative Research and the Distinguished Career Award from the Gerontological Society of America, as well as Stanford University's Deans Award for Distinguished Teaching.
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The Jazz Improviser's Mind
Presenter: Mark Applebaum
Jazz pianist and composer Mark Applebaum presents a mini-concert and lecture demonstration in which the basic principles of jazz and improvisation are explained.
Presenter: Mark Applebaum
Jazz pianist and composer Mark Applebaum presents a mini-concert and lecture demonstration in which the basic principles of jazz and improvisation are explained. For non-musicians and musicians alike, this session will focus on key concepts through an examination of several jazz and blues standards and song forms in order to illustrate the kinds of decisions that the jazz improviser makes, both in advance and spontaneously in concert.
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Mark Applebaum, associate professor of composition and theory in the department of music
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Mark Applebaum received his PhD in composition from UC-San Diego. His solo, chamber, choral, orchestral, operatic and electroacoustic work has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, Africa and Asia with notable premieres at the Darmstadt summer sessions. He has received commissions from Betty Freeman, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Fromm Foundation, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the Vienna Modern Festival, Antwerp's Champ D'Action, Festival ADEvantgarde in Munich, Zeitgeist, MANUFACTURE (Tokyo), the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Jerome Foundation and the American Composers Forum, among others. In 1997, Applebaum received the American Music Center's Stephen Albert Award and an artist residency fellowship at the Villa Montalvo artist colony in Saratoga, California. Applebaum is also active as a jazz pianist and builds electroacoustic instruments (as both compositional and improvisational tools) out of junk, hardware and found objects. His music can be heard on recordings on the Innova, Tzadik, Capstone and SEAMUS labels.
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Frontiers of the Future: Training and Fixing Your Brain
Presenters: Carla Shatz and Krishna V. Shenoy
Never before has the prospect for understanding how the brain works been more possible and exciting. We are at the threshold of deciphering human emotions, feelings, consciousness and behavior.
Presenters: Carla Shatz and Krishna V. Shenoy
Never before has the prospect for understanding how the brain works been more possible and exciting. We are at the threshold of deciphering human emotions, feelings, consciousness and behavior. Our understanding of our brains and nervous systems, from molecules, cells, circuits and structures, to functions for life and human behavior, is one of our most important challenges and opportunities in the 21st century, and one that Stanford is uniquely poised to play a lead role in unraveling. From how science shines light on the nature vs. nurture debate, to the emerging opportunity to help paralyzed patients by "eavesdropping" on electrical neural brain signals, this session will explore some of the exciting Stanford discoveries at the frontiers of neuroscience.
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Carla Shatz, professor of biological sciences and neurobiology, and director of the Bio-X Program
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Carla Shatz conducts research on how our experiences change our brain circuits during early critical periods of learning and development. Her neuroscience research has advanced the understanding of how the eye and the brain become properly connected during early life. She was the first to observe how, during fetal development, the eye tests its connections to the brain's visual processing regions by sending and resending waves of electrical activity through nerve cells across the retina. She has served as the president of the 38,000 member Society for Neuroscience, and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. She has received many honors and awards, including the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievement in Health and Education, and most recently the Gill Prize in Neuroscience from Indiana University.
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Krishna V. Shenoy, associate professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering (affiliate), and head of the Neural Prosthetic Systems Laboratory
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Krishna Shenoy's group at the Neural Prosthetic Systems Lab conducts neuroscience and neuroengineering research to better understand how the brain controls movement, and to design medical systems to assist those with movement disabilities. His neuroscience research investigates the neural basis of movement preparation and generation using a combination of electrophysiological, behavioral, computational and theoretical techniques. His neuroengineering research investigates the design of high- performance neural prosthetic systems, which are also known as brain-computer interfaces and brain-machine interfaces. These systems translate neural activity from the brain into control signals for prosthetic devices, which assist disabled patients by restoring lost function. This work includes statistical signal processing, machine learning, low-power circuits, and real-time system modeling and implementation. Among his awards and honors are the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences (1999) and the McKnight Technological Innovations in Neurosciences Award (2007).
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Falling Further Behind? What Global Economic and Political Volatility Means for the World's Poor
Presenters: Larry Diamond, '73, MA '78, PhD '80 and Rosamond Naylor, PhD '89
Roughly 1 billion people—or 15 percent of the world's population—live in abject poverty and suffer daily from chronic hunger. How has this segment of the global population fared with the commodity boom and the subsequent collapse of commodity prices? How have political changes, both nationally and internationally, affected the world's poor?
Presenters: Larry Diamond, '73, MA '78, PhD '80 and Rosamond Naylor, PhD '89
Roughly 1 billion people—or 15 percent of the world's population—live in abject poverty and suffer daily from chronic hunger. How has this segment of the global population fared with the commodity boom and the subsequent collapse of commodity prices? How have political changes, both nationally and internationally, affected the world's poor? Will the Obama presidency improve the situation? This session will address what global economic and political change means for the world's poor, and will identify future strategies for more equitable growth in the face of volatility.
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Larry Diamond, '73, MA '78, PhD, '80, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
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Larry Diamond's research and policy work mainly concern the development and function of democracy around the world as well as U.S. and international policies to promote democracy and support human development. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and co-director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. He has also advised the U.S. Agency for International Development (whose 2002 report, "Foreign Aid in the National Interest," he co-authored), the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other governmental and nongovernmental organizations. His book The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books, 2008) explores the sources of global democratic progress and stress and the future prospects of democracy. In 2007, he was named Teacher of the Year by the Associated Students of Stanford University; he also received Stanford's Dinkelspiel Award for his inspired teaching and commitment to undergraduate education and for the example he sets as a scholar and public intellectual.
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Rosamond Naylor, PhD '89, William Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Woods Institute for the Environment, and professor of environmental earth systems science
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Rosamond Naylor directs the Program on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford-a program jointly held by the Freeman Spogli and Woods Institutes. She has been involved in a number of field-level research projects throughout the world concerning agricultural development, biotechnology, climate-induced yield variability, aquaculture production and food security. Her research focuses on the environmental and equity dimensions of intensive food production. Naylor has served on the Oversight Committee for the McKnight Foundation's Collaborative Crop Research Program since 1997 and the Pew Fellows Advisory Committee since 2007. She was named fellow in the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program in Environmental Sciences in 1999 and Pew Fellow in Conservation and the Environment in 1994.
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Social Innovation: Advancing Solutions to Some of the World's Toughest Problems
Presenter: James A. Phills, Jr.
"Seeking solutions. Educating Leaders. This is our mission. This is The Stanford Challenge." Through the Center for Social Innovation's wide-ranging programs and activities, Stanford students, faculty and alumni are bringing President Hennessy's vision of the role of a 21st-century university to life.
Presenter: James A. Phills, Jr.
"Seeking solutions. Educating Leaders. This is our mission. This is The Stanford Challenge." Through the Center for Social Innovation's wide-ranging programs and activities, Stanford students, faculty and alumni are bringing President Hennessy's vision of the role of a 21st-century university to life. The emergence of the most powerful and innovative solutions is being driven by the growing exchange of ideas, values and capital between the private, public and nonprofi t sectors. Hear inspiring stories about how Stanford is not only generating and disseminating knowledge that helps us to understand the world's most complex and intractable problems (the traditional role of a university), but is also actively engaged in applying this knowledge to improve the lives of real people and communities. By drawing on a wide range of examples and cases, this session will outline the fundamental characteristics and key drivers of contemporary social innovations, as well as their implications for those who aspire to create social change.
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James A. Phills, Jr., Claude N. Rosenberg Director of the Center for Social Innovation and academic editor of Stanford Social Innovation Review
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At the Center for Social Innovation, Phills oversees a number of executive programs and teaches MBA electives on nonprofit strategy and social entrepreneurship. His research focuses on the emerging area of social innovation. In particular, Phills explores the growing exchange of ideas, talent, capital and values across sector boundaries and the shifting roles and relationships between business, government and nonprofits developing innovative solutions to social problems. He has also studied learning at the group, organizational and societal levels of analysis.
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What Is Nanotechnology and Why Is It Important?
Presenter: Kam Moler, '88, PhD '95
Nanotechnology is in the news a lot these days. The hype claims that nanotechnology is a "sea change" that is going to dramatically influence our lives, improving everything from medicine to the clothes we wear. But what is it exactly? Why is it deemed to be the next big thing?
Presenter: Kam Moler, '88, PhD '95
Nanotechnology is in the news a lot these days. The hype claims that nanotechnology is a "sea change" that is going to dramatically influence our lives, improving everything from medicine to the clothes we wear. But what is it exactly? Why is it deemed to be the next big thing? And what is Stanford doing in this groundbreaking area? This session will present an overview of nanoscience, explaining why things are different at the nanoscale, followed by a look at some of the most promising areas of nanotechnology, including fuel cells, solar panels, radiology, and cancer treatment.
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Kam Moler, '88, PhD '95, associate professor of applied physics and of physics, and director of the Center for Probing the Nanoscale (a National Science Foundation nanoscale science and engineering center)
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After receiving both her BS and her PhD in physics from Stanford, Kam Moler conducted postdoctoral work at IBM and Princeton as an R.H. Dicke Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research interests include the development of magnetic nanoprobes for studies in experimental condensed matter physics. Her honors include a Packard Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and the William L. McMillan Award for outstanding contributions in condensed matter physics.
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Pictures and Words: Exploring the Creative Process
Presenters: Eavan Boland and Kristine Samuelson, '73
Creativity is an oft-used word that remains elusive to define. Our speakers will use examples from their own work as well as student work to discuss creativity and insights into the creative process.
Presenters: Eavan Boland and Kristine Samuelson, '73
Creativity is an oft-used word that remains elusive to define. Our speakers will use examples from their own work as well as student work to discuss creativity and insights into the creative process. Professor Samuelson will look at the process of approaching film projects and developing their full potential for story and visual treatment. She'll talk about film form and the creative voice, presenting the broad range of choices within the nonfiction film genre. Professor Boland will examine how poems develop and how poets find the sound and shape of their own distinctive voice.
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Eavan Boland, Lane Director of the Stanford Creative Writing Program, and Bella Mabury and Eloise Mabury Knapp Professor in Humanities
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A poet and essayist, Eavan Boland has published nine volumes of poetry, including Against Love Poetry, The Lost Land, In a Time of Violence and An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967-87. She has received the Lannan Award for Poetry and has published a volume of prose called Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Threepenny Review, The Kenyon Review and The American Poetry Review. Considered one of the foremost poets in the English-speaking world, Boland has taught at Stanford since 1995. Her research interests include women and poetry, Irish literature and computer technology. Her most recent publications are New Collected Poems and The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology which she co-edited with Edward Hirsch.
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Kristine Samuelson, '73, director of the Film and Media Studies Program, and professor and chair of the department of art and art history
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An independent producer for 28 years, Kristine Samuelson's credits include Time Has No Sympathy; Arthur and Lillie 2 a.m. Feeding; An Artist's Journey; Wrong Place, Wrong Time; Empire of the Moon; Riding the Tiger; The World As We Know It; El Niņo; The Days and The Hours; and I Can See Everything. Her work has been broadcast nationally on PBS and cable networks and has screened at film festivals and venues worldwide. She also created and produced Point 25, a multimedia installation and concert held simultaneously in the United States and Sweden. Her most recent production, An Abundance of Crows, is in postproduction. In addition to a Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching, she has received a Bing Teaching Award and the Undergraduate Teaching Award in the Department of Communication. She was named the McNamara Faculty Fellow for 1996-97.
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Solutions to the Long-Run Problems of the Economy
Presenters: John B. Shoven and George Shultz
The current economic crisis must be viewed as a gigantic wake-up call. We have been living beyond our means for some years now. We have ignored huge financial imbalances such as the gap between saving and investment in this country, which manifests itself as the huge international trade deficit. These imbalances need to be addressed.
Presenters: John B. Shoven and George Shultz
The current economic crisis must be viewed as a gigantic wake-up call. We have been living beyond our means for some years now. We have ignored huge financial imbalances such as the gap between saving and investment in this country, which manifests itself as the huge international trade deficit. These imbalances need to be addressed. We have more problems than just a deep recession. Looming on the horizon are the staggering unfunded costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. George Shultz and John Shoven will speak about addressing these long-run problems of the economy. They believe steps can be taken to make these problems manageable, and the time to start addressing the long-run imbalances in the economy is now.
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John B. Shoven, Charles R. Schwab Professor of Economics and Wallace R. Hawley Director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR)
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John Shoven researches public finance, corporate finance and investments. An expert on tax policy, Social Security and U.S. saving patterns, Shoven was a consultant for the U.S. Treasury Department from 1975 to 1988. The author of more than 100 professional articles and 20 books, he has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, the London School of Economics and Kyoto University, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His latest book, Putting Our House in Order: A Guide to Social Security and Health Care Reform was co-authored by George Shultz. Shoven joined the Stanford faculty in 1973 and has served as the chairman of the economics department (1986-89), director of the Center for Economic Policy Research (1988-93) and dean of Humanities and Sciences (1993-98). He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Shoven is chairman of the board of Cadence Design Systems and is a member of the boards of Exponent, Inc. and American Century Funds.
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George Shultz, Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution
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George Shultz graduated from Princeton University in 1942. After serving in the Marine Corps (1942-45), he earned a PhD in industrial economics at MIT. Shultz taught at MIT and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, where he became dean in 1962. He was appointed secretary of labor in 1969, director of the Office of Management and Budget in 1970, and secretary of the Treasury in 1972. From 1974 to 1982, he was president of Bechtel Group, Inc. Shultz served as chairman of the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board (1981-82) and Secretary of State (1982-89). In 1989, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. He is chairman of the J.P. Morgan Chase International Council, advisory council chairman of the Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency at Stanford University, chairman of the MIT Energy Initiative External Advisory Board, and chairman of the Energy Task Force at Hoover Institution. Since 1989, he has been a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
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The Future of Energy
Presenters: Sally Benson and Stacey Bent, PhD '92
Meeting the world's growing energy needs in a sustainable fashion is one of the most pressing issues of our time. This presentation will introduce the scope of the global energy challenge and will describe a transition from fossil-based fuels to sustainable energy systems.
Presenters: Sally Benson and Stacey Bent, PhD '92
Meeting the world's growing energy needs in a sustainable fashion is one of the most pressing issues of our time. This presentation will introduce the scope of the global energy challenge and will describe a transition from fossil-based fuels to sustainable energy systems. Several scientific and engineering challenges will be illustrated, including methods of capturing and storing CO 2 generated by the use of fossil fuels and the development of fuel cells as a portable energy source. Concepts of renewable energy will also be introduced, and the promise and challenges of photovoltaic devices, which directly convert the energy of the sun into electricity, will be discussed.
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Sally Benson, director of the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP), professor (research) of energy resources engineering and senior fellow, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment
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Sally Benson was appointed GCEP director in January after holding the executive director post since March 2007, when she joined the Stanford faculty. She teaches courses on carbon dioxide capture and storage and greenhouse gas mitigation technologies. Before coming to Stanford, Benson worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, serving in a number of capacities, including division director for earth sciences, associate laboratory director for energy sciences, and deputy director for operations. A groundwater hydrologist and reservoir engineer, Benson has conducted research to address a range of issues related to energy and the environment. For the past 10 years, she has studied how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by capturing carbon dioxide from power plants and pumping it into deep underground formations for permanent sequestration.
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Stacey Bent, PhD '92, professor of chemical engineering
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Stacey Bent came to Stanford in 1998 from New York University, following postdoctoral work at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Bent's research is focused on understanding surface and interfacial chemistry and materials synthesis, and applying this knowledge to a range of problems in semiconductor processing, nanotechnology and renewable energy. Her group studies new materials and processes for next generation solar cells, fuel cells and catalysts. Bent has presented 150 invited talks and has published more than 100 papers. She has been recognized with a number of major awards, and has won the Tau Beta Pi Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Stanford.
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The Innocence Revolution and the Death Penalty
Presenter: Lawrence C. Marshall
Over the past fifteen years, exposure of wrongful convictions has generated great interest in the accuracy of the criminal justice system.
Presenter: Lawrence C. Marshall
Over the past fifteen years, exposure of wrongful convictions has generated great interest in the accuracy of the criminal justice system. This session will explore the ramifications over the wrongful conviction phenomenon on the criminal justice system in general and on the death penalty in particular
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Lawrence C. Marshall, professor of law and associate dean for public service and clinical education and David & Stephanie Mills Director of Clinical Education
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A nationally renowned advocate for reform of the U.S. criminal justice system, Lawrence C. Marshall has been widely recognized for both his activism and teaching. As the director of Stanford's legal clinics, Professor Marshall has committed himself to creating an integrated clinical experience that serves the needs of each and every student at Stanford Law School. Much of his scholarly work has focused on issues surrounding the application of the death penalty. Professor Marshall co-founded the world-renowned Center on Wrongful Convictions, for which he served as legal director and represented many wrongly convicted inmates, including a number of inmates who had at one time been sentenced to death. Professor Marshall is also deeply involved in a national movement to implement innovative reforms in legal education in order to ensure that law students are best prepared to enter the legal profession.
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