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LIFE OF THE MIND 'What Are the Values We Are Contributing?' LIKE THE 14TH-CENTURY DOMINICAN friars she studies, Hester Gelber loves a knotty argument laced with provocative questions--about, say, the vitality of the University. "Why should someone spend the amount of money you have to spend to get this kind of education?" the associate professor of religious studies asks. "What is the justification for society at large in the continuation of this kind of institution? What are the values we are contributing? Those questions put the challenge right in our laps--to prove that we are important to the quality and health of society." As a specialist in the intellectual history of the late Middle Ages, Gelber has studied universities as they emerged at the beginning of the 13th century and scrutinized those that survived. The most distinguished institutions, she says, were tolerant of new ideas and made space for creative work. As chair of this year's Faculty Senate committee on undergraduate studies (cus), Gelber wants to see how Stanford is measuring up as a caretaker of curiosity in the new century. "The University has been the source of much of the economic engine we've got going," Gelber says. "But the humanistic values of the institution are absolutely critical for being able to make sense of the larger aims and hopes and obligations we have as human beings--to create wonderful things of beauty." Gelber, who pioneered a course titled Origin of the Universities when she taught at Stanford's Oxford campus in 1996, calls institutions of higher education "an extraordinary luxury" that society can afford only after its basic needs are met. "Universities bring students and teachers to them, draw them in, and then send them back out to recirculate ideas and information," she says. "We engage in exploits of curiosity that are the marvel of being human." Gelber, who designed her own history major as an undergraduate at Cornell University and did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, says she's troubled by the perception that students in California, unlike their East Coast counterparts, do not claim an intellectual identity as such. "We've had this tradition at Stanford where students tend to bury their intellectual interests under a bushel," she says. "They have them, but it's almost like a secret vice that they don't talk about--and it's not a mechanism for bonding in the student community." At the same time, Stanford undergraduates have seen one change in curriculum after another in recent years--from the revamped freshman humanities program to the increased number of small classes and seminars. They are doing more research and writing more critically than ever before. At least, that's been the goal. "We've implemented all these things and now we need to ask how it's working," Gelber says. "We need to know if we are fulfilling our obligations to students by fostering the kinds of intellectual experiences that will send them out into the world prepared to be flexible, creative, intellectually aware and lively folk who will know how to put their hands on information and evaluate it. And we need to see how students are experiencing the successes and the failures of what we've been doing." Gelber suggests that the University is at a crossroads of sorts, "going through a period of time when what it means to be a Stanford undergraduate is changing." She thinks it's high time to "give serious thought to where we are going and why . . . and we need to be thinking about how we're going to get feedback about the consequences of what we're doing, or else there will be unintended consequences." How to best take the temperature of the times? Gelber and committee members plan to distribute a questionnaire through the registrar's office, individual classes or the assu. The goal? "A snapshot of undergraduate intellectual experience." Gelber has had her finger on the pulse of student life for a number of years. She was a faculty resident, with her two sons, in Twain House, and she has taught seminars to freshmen she describes as simultaneously "eager, happy to be here and scared to death." In fall quarter she co-taught, with assistant philosophy professors Christopher Bobonich and Lanier Anderson, a course in the Intro-duction to the Humanities program titled Self Reflections. With 225 freshmen she examined Plato, Boethius, Chaucer, Montaigne and Nietzsche. "We asked ourselves, 'Okay, if you want to get a reader or an audience to think, how do you go about that?' And we discovered how those thinkers had created reflective spaces in their texts, where readers were forced to think for themselves." Gelber argues that similar reflective thinking now is in order about undergraduate life. Since she proposed a stock-taking snapshot to the Faculty Senate in September, Gelber and her committee have been mulling over the kinds of questions they will ask students, faculty and perhaps alumni. They hope to collect responses during winter quarter and analyze the data in the spring. "We might want to ask about students' expectations when they came to Stanford," says Julie Kennedy, PhD '92, a senior lecturer in earth sciences who serves on CUS. "Some questions could be: What were you thinking your relationship with faculty would be like? Have things like Stanford Introductory Studies helped in that regard? How important has that exposure been to your overall Stanford experience?" Political science professor and committee member Judith Goldstein says the life of the mind is thriving on campus--for students and faculty. Noting that "a lot of time and effort has been devoted in recent years to the first two years of students' experiences at Stanford," Goldstein says colleagues she talks with think "it may be time now to look at what is happening in the following two years." CUS committee member Gavin Wright agrees that now is a prime time to sample student opinion. "We've tried to change the culture for students in the first two years, and part of the questionnaire ought to look at whether there really have been changes across the board." Wright, an economic historian who worked on a black-voter registration project in the American South in the '60s, has taught two seminars for sophomore college, one of which focused on an economic interpretation of American history. "It was something I'd always wanted to teach, and I've never encountered such enthusiasm in the classroom," he says. "We became quite close there and I made lasting acquaintances. And I think that's a question we should be asking students: Is there some faculty member you feel connected to, as a result of these small-group experiences?" Gelber says the committee will be taking on the telling of a "huge story." "And yes, we would have more information seven years from now," she adds. "But what I want to do now is find a way to sink a posthole down into the qualitative questions."

REUNION HOMECOMING Snapshots to Remember IT WAS A WEEKEND for breaking records. More alums than ever--6,200 and still recounting--turned out for Reunion Homecoming October 19-22, raising more than $64 million through class campaigns. Newly inaugurated University president John Hennessy launched a five-year, $1 billion Campaign for Undergraduate Education. And on fourth-and-goal on Saturday, freshman quarterback Chris Lewis threw a successful end-zone pass for the Cardinal's 32-30 victory over the University of Southern California. "It worked perfectly," San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Fainaru-Wada wrote about the stunning touchdown play. But he could have been describing the entire weekend. On center court at the tennis stadium, Sen. John Glenn and former University provost and Bush adviser Condoleezza Rice headlined a panel on "Politicians, Public Service and Leadership Today." In classroom venues, Classes Without Quizzes drew alums for discussions about robotics, laughter, archaeology, butterflies and Shakespeare. Smaller, more intimate gatherings saw members of the Class of '70 chanting mantras on the lawn of the old Encina gym and talking about Jungian fantasies at Tresidder. Not to mention the libations at Zott's. Academic departments and cultural centers hosted open houses, and the welcome mat also was out in the newly renovated Bing Wing of Green Library, where curators were eager to lead classmates up the elegant staircase. Some took advantage of guided tours at the Rodin Sculpture Garden and Mem Chu, and others took a detour to the Mausoleum. Many who claimed to have flown paper models off the Mem Aud balcony on Sunday evenings turned out for a thought-provoking "Flicks Night" that showcased documentary films made by Stanford alumni. The grand finale? Had to be former yell leaders Al Harris, '32, Jim Ransahoff, '38, and Jim Triolo, '35, leading the cheer for the Axe on the Mem Aud stage Sunday morning. Their letter sweaters--see photo--still fit. Superbly.

Quote "We're all various varieties of dorks" -- First year student Alex Robbins of Los Angleles, on the egalitarian, collegial ethos at Stanford.

Cardinal Numbers Acres per student at Stanford: 0.6 Acres of Stanford land that are open space: 5,453 (roughly two-thirds of total) Acres of open space, excluding Stanford land, in Palo Alto: 3,800 Total square footage of Stanford's buildings: 12.3 million Miles of roads on Stanford land: 46 Governmental jurisdictions within which Stanford land falls: 6 Trees on campus: 25,000 Sources: http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/facts/; Office of Government & Community Relations; City of Palo Alto; Planning Office; http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/facts/lands.html

HISTORY 'Every Historian Has an Ax to Grind' GAZA. TERRORISM. PALESTINE. Bombings. Ariel Sharon. The words could come from front-page headlines about escalating violence in the Middle East. In fact, they were drawn from a colloquium of students who met around an oval seminar table on November 9, the same day that two Israeli helicopters launched a fatal rocket attack on a Pales-tinian militia commander. But the 17 undergraduate and graduate students in Joel Beinin's course "Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict" hadn't gathered to talk about current events. As they turned the pages of their course books, looking at maps of the United Nations partition that established the state of Israel in 1948, they were examining events and policies that set in motion the battle for sovereignty that persists today. "Students sign up for the class because they want to understand today's newspaper articles," says Beinin, an associate professor of history and newly elected president of the Middle East Studies Association. "But I tell them, 'You're gonna have to be patient and go back 100 years first.' " Beinin has been teaching the course since he arrived at Stanford in 1983. In alternate years he lectures to accommodate large enrollments, but he prefers the more intimate seminar format. There, he can guide students toward the issues that drive competing claims to water rights and to the political motivations that may lurk behind public posturings. As his students offer differing interpretations of events, Beinin makes a point of being up front about his own reading of the area's history. "This is my gloss," he will say, or, "Now the way I see this passage. . ." Beinin became the target of several student letters in the Stanford Daily in October after he participated in a history department teach-in called "Crisis in Israel/Palestine: Thinking Historically About Current Events." In his presentation he noted that Jews had been victims of unspeakable crimes in the 20th century and that it was not unusual for people who had been victimized to turn their trauma against others. But the letter writers objected to what they described as Beinin's "severely biased" and "one-sided" presentation, and one student argued that the history professor had "willfully neglected to mention the long and bloody history of Palestinian barbarism against the Jews of Israel." The blame is misdirected, says Beinin, because he can't be held accountable for the teach-in organizers' failure to find a faculty member who would support the Israeli viewpoint. "I don't claim to be neutral, objective or unbiased," he says. "What I claim is that I have very good historical evidence to support my opinion." Beinin argues that "Historians can't stand suspended over the world and investigate from a position that is detached from who they are and how they were brought up." Beinin traces his academic interests to his teenage years, when he was a youth leader of the Mapan party, a leftist Zionist organization his mother and father belonged to. His parents had returned to New York, where Beinin was born in 1948, after living for a number of years in Palestine. "They thought, like a lot of ethical intellectuals, that a Jewish state would disenfranchise Arabs and that a binational state should therefore be established," Beinin says. He studied Hebrew as a youngster, to be able to converse with an Israeli cousin, and later learned Arabic, with an Iraqi Jew for a tutor, when he lived on his uncle's kibbutz in northern Israel. Beinin says his teaching about Palestine also has been informed by the new school of Israeli historians that has emerged since the late 1980s, and he encourages students in his colloquium to study widely differing voices among those revisionists. "Every historian has an ax to grind," he told the class in the final minutes of a recent session. "The bad historians are the ones who tell you they're the only ones who are objective."

SPEAKERS CORNER STAYING COOL: "Empathize warmly with their stress levels when Stanford receives unfair criticism in the newspapers--for its curriculum, for its reluctance to be the recreational and open space resource for the entire Peninsula, for the Band, whatever," University president emeritus Donald Kennedy told Board of Trustees chair Isaac Stein at John Hennessy's inauguration on October 20. "One of your blessings is a judicious and even temperament; it helps to be, as our students might put it, way cool." SUPERMAN CLONE: "In seeking a new president," board chair Isaac Stein said at the inauguration ceremony, "the Board of Trustees wanted a visionary leader, somebody with complete integrity, a strong understanding of and commitment to the academic mission, the management skills to manage the complexities of a multibillion-dollar budget and, of course, the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound." Although the search committee was not able to "verify sightings of John soaring over Hoover Tower," it was "very confident that he exemplified all of the other enumerated requirements," Stein added. POISED FOR ACHIEVEMENT: In a half-hour speech after his investiture, University president John Hennessy noted: "Despite the formidable challenges arising from the remarkable prosperity of Silicon Valley, we are perhaps better poised now to build on the accomplishments of the past than at any other time in our history." In laying out his vision of the Univer-sity's top priorities, Hennessy began with "the area that is at the heart of our University: our commitment to undergraduate education." He also said he thought "a further increase in support for the arts and humanities will be needed" at Stanford.

MUSIC Why Should We Listen to New Music? WHEN SHE'S AT THE PODIUM, J. Karla Lemon has a single focus: "If you're not thinking, 'this is Mozart's four-bar phrase,' your mind is in the wrong place." As the first director of orchestras at the University, Lemon conducts the Alea II New Music Ensemble and the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, which was named Orchestra of the Year in the Bay Area by the San Jose Mercury News in 1993, at the end of its first season under her baton. A contrabass player by training, Lemon was principal bass with the student symphony at UC-Berkeley in the mid-'70s. She earned a master's degree in Germany at Freiburg's Staatliche Hochschule für Musik and before coming to Stanford directed the Sonoma State University Symphony for six years and the San Francisco State University Symphony Orchestra for five years. Stanford: You're conducting works by Mozart, Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky this year, and you're premiering a piece by the contemporary American composer Janice Giteck. Given that range, what are you trying to teach students over the course of the two or three years they will play in the symphony? Lemon: I want the repertoire to include the standard chestnuts, like Tchaikovsky and Brahms symphonies, and I want students to work with the best vocal artists, which has meant programming Bach's St. Matthew's Passion and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony two years out because of the demands on performers' schedules. But I also feel a responsibility to expose students to all sorts of music from the 20th century and to music being written today. How do you define the so-called "new music"? And why would we want to listen to it? When Bach was writing the cantatas, that was new music for his time. So basically it's music written by living composers--music that hasn't been heard or sensed or experienced before. With the arrival of electronic music and computer-generated sounds, the whole aural spectrum is being expanded today, not only for players but also for listeners. I'm probably more tolerant than your average concertgoer, because it's something I've committed myself to hearing. But not all new music is great, and sometimes I have a visceral reaction to it. Still, my question has to be: who's the next Stravinsky or Bartók? I probably will be dead before that is determined, but we won't know who the master composers of this century are if we don't take chances in programming pieces by today's composers. What are your graduate students in composition working on? We have a tremendous group of people who are writing really interesting music and writing it very well--working with things like increased rhythmic and pitch complexity. They are finding their own voices, and I want to encourage them to do that--to know that the world is a big enough place that all their voices can be heard. The thing that interests me most is the timbral experimentation that is going on--the incredible possibilities students are exploring of acoustical instruments coexisting with computer-generated sounds. There's all this electronic music that's been composed, with its bleeps and blops--some of which sounds organic to this world and some of which doesn't. And there are other students who are not using electronics at all, but are managing to come up with innovative rhythmic patterns and harmonic structures that sound new. It's always very inspiring to watch that evolution in a young composer. You are the first woman to direct the orchestras at the University. Do you think audiences are still surprised when you walk onto the stage in Dinkelspiel Auditorium? Yes. And, unfortunately, I think it's becoming increasingly less cool these days to even think about hiring a woman as conductor. So many orchestras are having financial difficulties, and the ones that do survive can't take risks. The main things a music director has to do is improve the quality of the orchestra and be a draw -- sell tickets. There are some very brave and far-thinking boards of directors that have appointed women, but they're rare. What's more, there is not a single woman concertmaster among the top five major orchestras--New York, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago and Philadel-phia. And the most traditional, most conservative orchestras don't program music by women. But at least American orchestras have progressed beyond the Vienna Philharmonic. There the argument for not allowing women to even play in the orchestra is that there would be less cohesion and less spiritual camaderie with women musicians.

BOOKMARKS TERRY WINOGRAD, Professor of Computer Science Google --"By far my favorite website," says Winograd. Perhaps because Larry Page, a doctoral student of his, started it. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility --Founded in 1981 by researchers at Xerox, the group is concerned about the impact of computer technology on society. ANDREA LUNSFORD, professor of English History of Rhetoric --The site, says Lunsford, has a wealth of information on rhetorical history, theory and practice. Digital Future Coalition --Need info on issues regarding legislation about intellectual property, accessible to non-lawyers? JAMES MONTOYA, vice provost for student affairs Critical Dance --A big supporter of dance,particularly modern dance, Montoya says he looks forward to reviews, interviews and performance schedules here. Political Adcritic --A must site for political enthusiasts, with a top-ten list that's "definitely worth exploring." THOMAS SHEEHAN, professor of religious studies ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/augustine.html --Whenever you need the Latin text of St. Augustine's Confessions, plus superb commentary by James J. O'Donnell. classics.mit.edu/Plotinus/enneads.html --And here you can find the classical English translation of Plotinus's Enneads.

ART The Beauty of Passing Time EVER SINCE HE WATCHED a student strip off his shirt and take an upper-body rinse in it, Tom Seligman, '65, has been routing his cross-campus bike errands past the newest outdoor sculpture on campus--to see how others are interacting with it. "I've had some great conversations there with astrophysics majors," says the Cantor Arts Center director. "One tried to explain the clockworks in terms of the movements of the planets, but he lost me in about two seconds." Timetable is the first West Coast work by sculptor Maya Lin, who received considerable attention for her Vietnam Vet-erans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Dedicated in October, Lin's Stanford piece is sited in front of the new Packard Build-ing on Serra Mall. Carved from a 40,000-pound chunk of black granite, the circular sculpture is both clock and water fountain. Motorized discs rotate on the submerged surface to record seconds, minutes and hours. Months are tracked on the ground as the granite cylinder takes a year to turn slowly on its axis, passing markers embedded in the pavement. As the years pass, a barely visible mat of algae will form on the stone, filtering the water and causing it to cascade even more gracefully off the sloping sides of the fountain. After she designed the piece, Lin recommended the firms that built the fountain, clockworks and turntable and carved the granite. But it was up to Julie Hardin-Stauter, Stanford's associate manager of construction services, to assemble the general contractor and structural teams that excavated the site, sunk the concrete piers and steel anchors, and leveled the foundation. The granite was delivered by flatbed truck from Minnesota and finally set on its base at 9 p.m. on an early-September evening. "It's been like Toad's wild ride for a year," says Hardin-Stauter, who will continue to monitor the control panels inside the underground pump station that keep the sculpture's many parts running smoothly. "It'll probably be hard to go back to mundane tasks like remodeling work stations and patching the roof on Hoover House--but what an incredible experience this was."

MEDICINE Pacemaker for the Brain IN AN ATTEMPT to reduce or stop seizures in epilepsy patients, doctors may have stumbled upon a new treatment for severe depression. Studies of the Vagal Nerve Stimulator (VNS), first approved by the fda in 1997 as a treatment for epilepsy, indicated that it positively affected patients' moods, regardless of whether their epilepsy improved. In a subsequent pilot study, four out of ten depressed patients with the device reported at least a 50 percent improvement in depression. That's potentially good news for depression sufferers. At any given time, about one in 20 Americans (18 million)--and 340 million people worldwide--suffer from this illness. And Dr. Charles DeBattista, director of Stanford's Depression Clinic, says it is poised to become one of the leading causes of disability in the world, since it affects people in their most productive years. Fortunately, about 70 or 80 percent of persons with depression respond well to medication and/or psychotherapy. But that still leaves many sufferers desperate for treatment. And for some, electroconvulsive therapy (ect) or electroshock is the only option available. While ECT is a far cry from the tortuous treatment depicted in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--Dr. DeBattista calls it "one of the most effective" non-pharmaceutical treatments--there are significant side effects, most notably cognitive problems and memory loss. Once treatment stops, depression often recurs. But researchers are hopeful that the VNS "pacemaker for the brain," which functions much like a heart pacemaker, might represent an alternative treatment to ect in the future. It may also be particularly helpful for the elderly and other patients who are intolerant of medications such as antidepressants. Once implanted, a small generator, controlled externally by a magnetic wand, sends an electrical pulse to the vagus nerve at regular intervals, stimulating areas of the brain believed to affect mood. The surgery to install the device takes about one to two hours, according to Dr. DeBattista, costs about $15,000, and the batteries last up to 12 years. Although the trials to study VNS's potential antidepressant effects are just beginning at Stanford and 19 other institutions, Stanford's Dr. John Barry, assistant professor of psychiatry and neurology, suggests that one outcome is likely: "We may understand a lot more about depression as a result of these studies.'' --Leslie Talmadge, '86

Campus Notebook New Loans for Faculty Housing Provost John Etchemendy announced in November a new loan program to help faculty purchase housing. Projected to cost the University $85 million over the next five years, loan packages would enable an assistant professor making $62,000 a year to buy a house that costs as much as $724,000. Stanford also will launch a rent-reduction program for faculty who want to rent housing in the new Stanford West complex. The measures, Etchemendy told the Faculty Senate, are "intended to get faculty into this horrible housing market," which is rivaled only by Manhattan.   $31.8 Million for New Pulmonary Center Stanford physicians and researchers specializing in treating patients with severe diseases of blood vessels in the lungs have received an anonymous donation of $31.8 million to establish the Vera Moulton Wall Center for Pulmonary Vascular Disease. By providing diagnostic and therapeutic services for adults and children, the center "creates a new model . . . it crosses the age barrier," says co-director Ramona Doyle, MD, assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine. Assistant professor of pediatrics Jeffrey Feinstein, MD, MPH, will co-direct the center with Doyle.   Hoover Fellowship to Study Radio Free Europe The Hoover Institution has established the Bernard Osher Fellowship Program to support research by senior journalists. They and other experts will delve into the archives of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which recorded the history of major events in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the Cold War and the first years of transition from communism to democracy. The two radio services, which were headquartered in Munich from 1950 to 1995, once had more than 1,000 employees, mostly émigrés from Eastern Europe and the republics of the Soviet Union.   SLAC Wins Praise for On-Time, On-Budget B Factory The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) on October 17 won a year 2000 award from the Department of Energy for program and project management. The award acknowledged the on-time, on-budget completion of the $293 million B Factory Project, which scientists will use to collide a beam of electrons with a counter-rotating beam of anti-electrons to produce subatomic particles called B mesons. "With the B Factory, SLAC has another major scientific project that will take us well into the next decade," SLAC director Jonathan Dorfan said in accepting the award. "SLAC is poised to make major new contributions to basic science."

FACULTY Good Advice for Freshmen "WHO IS THAT WOMAN who comes to all the games and talks to you?" field hockey teammates kept asking Christina Williams last year. "When I told them she was my freshman adviser, they were like, 'Wow, we don't even know who our advisers are.' " Williams is one of the lucky ones. Her adviser, Shannon Moffat, staff associate for chemistry professor Carl Djerassi, makes a point of being visible to her seven assigned students. Moffat takes her advising group to dinners, sends them birthday cards and makes quarterly appointments to meet with them and student advising associate Shad Ahmed to discuss course loads. When advisees can't make a meeting because of conflicting schedules, Moffat goes to them--rooting for Williams at a home game or sitting through a drizzling rain to applaud advisee Ava Roy in an outdoor play. Moffat's support has made Williams's experience with the freshman advising system overwhelmingly positive. But many students--like Williams's friends on the field hockey team--apparently have little contact with their advisers. As the Stanford Daily noted in a recent editorial that called for changes in the advising system, "When asked, most Stanford students remember one thing about the freshman advising system: the quarterly quest for the approval code." Although freshmen and sophomores are having more contact with faculty in Stanford Introductory Studies seminars, fewer and fewer freshmen have faculty for advisers. Lori White, director of undergraduate advising, told the Faculty Senate in October that only 42 of the University's 200-plus frosh advisers are faculty; the rest are staff, alumni and other volunteers. That's a significant decline since 1995, when faculty made up 30 percent of advisers. The problem, says White, has to do with expectations: University publications indicate that freshmen will be advised by faculty. As long-time frosh adviser Russell Berman, associate dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, puts it, "We certainly should have our practice in alignment with our promises." Under the current system, freshmen are assigned an adviser who provides guidance until they declare a major--typically at the end of their sophomore year. But White is floating the idea that freshman and sophomore advising be "decoupled," with staff continuing to provide the bulk of frosh advising and sophomores turning to faculty members in their areas of academic interest for advice. "Freshmen are walked through the nuts and bolts of requirements and get the lay of the land as far as classes go," Berman says about the conceptual structure of the current system. And staff can ably guide students around those signposts, he adds. But sophomores, Berman says, "are moving toward more reflective conversations about educational goals, professional aspirations and opportunities at the Uni-versity--conversations which are best undertaken in discussion with faculty." White has convened a committee on residential education and advising and asked members to report back with recommendations. They could take a leaf from Shannon Moffat's play book and try getting out to a few home games and drama productions.

Head of the Class TOP PROFS: Sidney Drell, professor emeritus at the Stanford Linear Acce-lerator Center, was named winner of the Enrico Fermi Award by President Clinton on November 9. Drell, 74, will receive the lifetime-achievement award in nuclear energy for his contributions to arms control and national security and to particle physics. Robert W. Dutton, the Robert and Barbara Kleist Professor in the School of Engineering and research director of the Center for Integrated Systems, was awarded the 2000 C&C Prize in Tokyo for his contributions to the manufacturing process for semiconductor devices. CAMPUS REWARDS: Shamit Kachru, associate professor of physics, has received a 2000 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering. He will use the monetary allowance of $125,000 per year for five years to continue his research in string theory. Keith Loague, associate professor of geological and environmental sciences, is this year's winner of the Laurance and Naomi Carpenter Hoagland Prize for undergraduate teaching. Students nominated Loague for his enthusiasm, attentiveness to their individual problems and knowledge of environmental issues. PSYCHOLOGICAL ADVANTAGE: Roger Shepard, '51, the Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor Emeritus of Social Science, received the American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in the Science of Psycho-logy on August 5 for his pioneering work in extracting quantitative information from qualitative data and for obtaining objective data about mental processes by probing with external stimuli. Herbert H. Clark, '62, professor of psychology, has been elected one of 16 foreign members of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences. Clark's specialty is the study of language use, semantics and pragmatics, especially in conversational settings.

ATHLETICS Teaching Student-Athletes to be Time Managers MOST ACADEMIC ADVISERS work with a handful of students each year. Verity Powell is reponsible for more than 800. As senior advising consultant for the athletics department, Powell talks with players on Stanford's 33 varsity teams about course loads and majors, and reviews their transcripts every quarter. She may send a note to a coach that says, "These two kids are really struggling, and they haven't come to see me yet." Or, "You have an amazing group this year." Sounds like a mom? Her daughter, Katy, '00 and son, Greg, were varsity water polo players at Stanford and Princeton, respectively, so Powell empathizes with parents' concerns. She has worked on campus for more than two decades as a professional academic adviser -- and for the past three years, she has been based at the Arrillaga Family Sports Center. The new study hall there, which opened last January and has a bank of Macintosh computers along one wall, is a big, airy improvement over the cramped quarters where athletes once worked on problem sets. "We used to have four computers in one small room, and if four linebackers came in to use them, it was pretty intimidating for little gymnasts, who would peer inside the door and then back out," Powell says. "But today we have [enough room for] a much better mix of athletes." Because players spend so much time at Arrillaga, Powell encourages them to come to the study hall whenever they are between activities. "If an athlete's in the building getting treated for an injury, and he has an hour before practice, I tell him to try studying here rather than going back to the dorm and wasting that time [en route]," she says. "Our kids try to be the best they can be in their academics, but the reality is that they also have a 20-hour-a-week job. So they have to learn to be superb time managers." Powell's schedule is equally demanding. She spent one recent morning answering questions from the parents of visiting track-team recruits: Will my son get priority housing? (No.) Will there be enough food? (Absolutely.) And weekends often find Powell and her husband, Geoffrey, '64, cooking turkey dinners for the defensive line of the football team or helping baseball players with community service projects. Powell says many of Stanford's varsity student-athletes--who make up 10 percent of the Class of '04--are used to getting straight As in high school. "But if they come from weak high schools, it can be tough the first year here," she adds. To help those who decide they need tutoring with perennially tough courses -- chemistry, math, physics and economics -- Powell can call upon a Rolodex full of graduate students. Of the 55 players who knocked on her office door in fall quarter, she says, most needed only a half-hour of tutoring per week, and many met with their tutors just once or twice. When varsity teams hit the road for tournaments, each victory adds new dimensions to Powell's job description. As the men's soccer team advanced through the NCAA championships two years ago, final exams were approaching. "Players were calling me every day, saying, 'We won another game and we have to stay on another day, so could you please get hold of Professor X for me?'" Powell recalls. "In the end, I picked up 23 different exams from various departments to fax to the team's hotel back East." In return, teams have come up with sport-specific thank-yous for the many term papers and tests Powell has downloaded from her e-mail, printed and delivered. "Last year, the baseball team flew me to Omaha for the College World Series," she says. "It was an incredible experience, and I got to watch a lot of baseball. Of course, there isn't much else to do in Omaha but watch baseball."

BASKETBALL Dancing on the Court AT 6-FOOT-2, Bethany Donaphin towers over her famous coach. But that doesn't stop Tara VanDerveer from stepping up with an occasional tease. "Plié," VanDerveer whispers, bending at the knees and arcing her hands above her head, as she saunters past a courtside interview with Donaphin in Maples Pavilion. A star rebounder who scored 17 points in this year's opener against St. Mary's, Donaphin, '02, was named Honorable Mention All-Pac-10 Academic last season and started as power forward in 21 games. Raised in midtown Manhattan, Donaphin spent 15 of her growing-up years on stage, tap-dancing on Broadway and training at the ballet barre with the Harlem School of the Arts and Dance Theater of Harlem. But she never quite fit the petite molds of those companies, and it wasn't until she began to study with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at age 16 that she found her niche in the broader gestures of modern dance. "My mom wanted me to be able to deal with my size and carry myself with pride--and dance taught me all of that," Donaphin says. In high school, she concentra-ted on basketball in the winter season, and danced mostly in fall and spring. But she found time in 1996 to perform with an Afro-Caribbean dance troupe at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, where she saw VanDerveer lead the U. S. Olympic women's basketball team to a gold medal--and was totally wowed. Ditto VanDerveer. "The first time I saw her play, I could see how quick her feet were and I was really impressed with how well she ran the floor," VanDerveer says. "She has good hands, she jumps well and she anticipates well. And I was really excited when I found out what a great student she was." VanDerveer actively recruited Donaphin; and after considering Duke, Harvard and Notre Dame, the East Coast native opted for Stanford and a major in public policy. Two years later, she says playing for VanDerveer, who in November notched her 500th career victory, is still a heady experience. "My frosh year, I would come to practice, and Tara would walk in, and I was like, 'Oh, my God, she's my coach.' I couldn't believe it."

Sports Notebook Jamie Carey Played with Heart Sophomore Jamie Carey, who had one of the finest frosh seasons in Stanford history last year, has hung up her basketball jersey because of recurring concussions. She tearfully announced her retirement at a November 7 news conference at Maples Pavilion. "It's hard, because you're playing with your heart, and you're playing with your life, but it was a decision that had to be made," she said. Coach Tara VanDerveer said she had experienced tremendous highs in her career, but had "never felt any lower." Carey, last season's Pac-10 freshman of the year, suffered her first concussion in the seventh grade. A minor collision on October 19 caused a concussion that required extensive medical tests and ultimately sidelined her.   Six Big Game Wins in a Row Fullback Casey Moore, '02, caught a 25-yard touchdown pass on Stanford's second play in overtime as the Cardinal beat UC-Berkeley 36-30 on November 18 in the 103rd Big Game. Quarterback Randy Fasani, '01, threw three TD passes as Stanford beat Cal for the sixth straight year, matching the longest winning streak in the rivalry's history. Before the final snap of the final game of the year, Fasani called a play that hadn't been used since last season. He found his receiver wide open, and Moore scored without a defender in sight.   Field Hockey Coach Wins 10th Conference Title With a 2-0 victory over UC-Berkeley, the women's field hockey team won the Northern Pacific Conference championship in November, bringing home the 10th conference title for head coach Sheryl Johnson, MA '81. Captain Michelle Scott, the only senior on the team, was named NorPac Player of the Year despite missing part of the season with an injury. Representing the West at the NCAA tournament that same month, the Cardinal women made it to the "sweet sixteen" round of the finals -- a "great" finale, said Johnson.   'Good, Hard Run' for Cross-Country Teams Stanford's nationally ranked cross-country teams had a strong showing at the NCAA championships in November, where the women placed third and the men finished fourth. "If you look at both programs, there's no team that's stayed more consistent than we have over the year," coach Vin Lananna said. "This is our fifth straight year since 1996 of winning a trophy [for placing in the top five spots]. Regardless of the conditions and circumstances, the kids tend to come through." In October, the men won the Pac-10 championships in Seattle, and the women claimed their fifth consecutive Pac-10 title. "Our goal . . . wasn't to be fancy or cutesy," Lananna said in Seattle. "We just wanted a good, hard run."

Cycling Peak Pedalers JOHN BILDERBECK, '00, has been known to chase down mountain bikers on campus and staple flyers to their locked bikes. He isn't impounding the bikes or ticketing speeders but recruiting riders for Stanford's mountain biking team, which he captained for two years. His sales pitch? Pump your legs so fast that the muscles burn as you push up a steep hill. Then race, heart pounding, down a steep, winding trail, jerking the handlebars left, right, left, to avoid crashing on tree roots or rocks. Repeat that drill until you can cover 25 miles in an hour and a half, coated with dust and mud, possibly scraped or bruised. Or worse. Team member David Pierce broke his collarbone last year when he flew over the handlebars during a race. "You are really going at the limit of what you can do and how fast you can react," says Darius Contractor, '02, the team's current captain, about the tempting thrills of mountain biking. Cycling has a long history at Stanford, and individual mountain bikers have been entering national competitions since the mid-1990s. But mountain biking took off as a club sport in 1997 when Patty Ciesla, '99, organized a small group of road racers who wanted to ride in mountain competitions. The events are roughly modeled on skiing, with slalom, cross-country and down-hill races. Men and women compete separately, but the points each group earns make up a combined team score. Races typically begin with a steep climb where riders go all-out to get into good positions before a couple dozen get to the narrower, downhill trails. This year, a core group of about 25 men and women are racing. They train from one to four hours daily, riding road bikes to build endurance and practicing maneuvers that enable them to race along tight, steep trails. "There is this great misconception that people just go out on mountains--that it's not a serious sport," says Erin Kassoy, '98, MS '00. "In fact, a lot of people . . . train really hard on the road to get in shape and then go out on mountain bikes to get technical skills." In 1998 and 1999, Cardinal mountain bikers finished second to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in the Western Collegiate Cycling Conference and sixth nationally. This fall, the team suffered from the timing of the nationals, which were held just after classes started in October--and the fact that Stanford had only two women competing. They finished tenth overall, out of 40 teams. The University of Colorado at Boulder, the sport's dominant team, won the national competition for the fourth year in a row. "My goal is to develop and promote the mountain biking team so that we will eventually win the collegiate championship," says coach Charles Lai, an avid cyclist. "I'm encouraged by the fact that although Stanford cross-country and women's basketball weren't competitive in the past, both teams are now national powerhouses. And there's no reason why the mountain bike team can't achieve the same success." A graduate of the University of Utah, Lai says Stanford cyclists may not have the snow-covered peaks looming behind the campus he enjoyed as a student, but there are plenty of steep climbs, single-track trails and fire roads in the area for training. Lai takes time off every Thursday afternoon from his job as president of Creation Engine, an academic software firm, to meet prospective team members at Roble gym and lead a ride. "Cyclists can put in a lot of road mileage year-round," he adds. As it happens, mountain bikes were invented in the Bay Area--by Specialized, which introduced the inexpensive, mass-produced "Stump Jumper" in 1981. But that local history is only part of what draws students to the sport today, according to veteran team members. "There is a cool camaraderie," Bilderbeck tells would-be competitors. "Normally, it would seem like an individual sport, but you . . . conquer the race course and then you can talk about it with your team. That's what gets people to race--the camaraderie."

FENCING They Rattle Their Sabres with Sneaky Style RED PONYTAIL FLYING, senior Katherine Stephan lunges at her opponent with a glistening sabre. Slashing her way down a 6-foot-wide electrical strip on the gym floor, she thrusts, parries and flicks with her weapon. Stephan is upholstered in a vest of bulletproof Kevlar and wears a steel mask. Her lightning-fast strokes are measured electronically, with a body cord wired to her uniform and another wire embedded in her blade. When she touches her opponent with the spring-loaded tip of her sabre, a buzzer sounds and a green light flashes on an overhead scoreboard. For decades, women could only fence competitively with light-weight foils, and it wasn't until 1989 that they were allowed to compete in collegiate tournaments with the épée, a heavier blade that resembles 19th-century dueling weapons. Last year the ncaa finally added the slashing cavalry sabre to the women's arsenal, and the four fencers on Stanford's new sabre squad--Stephan, Diane Boudalis, '01, Colleen O'Kelly, '02, and Meghan Everett, '04--are looking to make their mark when official bouts begin this month. "Fencing with foil is a lot like ballet, and épée footwork is long and loping," Stephan says about the other weapons she has tried. "But I love the short, powerful sabre." The sabre squad gathers at 6 a.m. three days a week for practice sessions in Roble's fencing center, where they alternately bash and psych each other out. "It's amazing fun and a total departure from anything I've done before," says Boudalis, who is captain of the squad. "You can't be a timid sabre fencer, and whatever one might lack in pure athleticism, one can make up for by playing the mental game." Devotees of fencing describe it as an elegant martial art that dates from the Renaissance and teaches strategy, style and good manners. But sabre rattlers will tell you there's another quality all fencers pride themselves on. "Sneakiness," says coach Lisa Milgram. "The player I want is the one who can play a really good joke on someone. So when we're recruiting from our phys ed classes, we look for the tricky little ones who are built low to the ground. We put sabres in their hands and say, Go hit 'em!" In her second year as head coach of the Stanford coed varsity team, Milgram is one of a handful of women who coach male fencers in the United States. She predicts that Stanford will be the powerhouse to beat in the western region this year, given its consistent showing in the ncaa Final Four for the past five years. Milgram has hired two Ukranian fencers as assistant coaches--George Pogosov and Alex Kuznetsov--and together they have recruited many of the 26 members of this year's team from secondary schools on the East Coast, where fencing has a long tradition. Sisters Iris, '03, and Felicia Zimmerman, '01, showcased Stanford's emerging program when they competed in the Sydney Olympics, and the Reichling brothers -- team captain Felix, '02, and younger sibling Florian, '04 -- bring the discipline of European training from their native Germany. Discipline is fine by Colleen O'Kelly, who credits her agility and speed to 15 years of training in ballet. "But sabre is pretty aggressive," she adds. "So we basically try to intimidate each other by stomping down the strip and yelling guttural stuff."

SCIENCE From Physics to Rainbows KENNETH GARRETT, '02, is the kind of humanities-oriented student science professors hoped to attract when they launched the Science, Math, Engineering Core (SME) four years ago. Although Garrett ultimately decided to major in international studies, he was intrigued enough by the new interdisciplinary course to sign up for SME in his freshman year--and he liked it, he really liked it. "I knew I was never going to use quantum physics, but someday I'm going to want to tell my kid how a camera works, or why a rainbow does that," Garrett says about the mysteries he solved. But, he adds, student sentiment appears to be split between people like himself, who love SME, and those who are more critical. "You could choose to look at it as a failure, or you could see it as an incredible effort on the part of Stanford to get it right," he says. Data still is being collected about the pedagogical experiment that some of the University's most talented scientists and teachers launched in 1996 ("A New Spin on Science," March/April 1999). Their hypothesis at the time: if you create exciting, relevant courses, you can engage even science-shy students in technical subjects. Teach probability by playing blackjack, investigate biochemistry by testing your own blood, measure the speed of light with the help of a TV -- the scenarios for learning fundamental science concepts sounded so enticing on paper. "We thought: if you build great courses, they will come," says Brad Osgood, a professor of electrical engineering who directs the program. "But we learned: if you build it they will come, but they won't stay." Indeed, last year alone, one SME course started with 60 students the first quarter, dropped to 48 in the winter and saw only eight students return for the final spring quarter. Looking back, Osgood thinks enrollments likely dipped over the years because SME demands a big commitment of time--either two or three completed quarters, plus a lab, depending on the current administrative policy--in exchange for a general education requirement. But Osgood hasn't given up. This year SME professors are back in the ring, flashing new course titles--"Information: Bits to Chips, Genes to Organisms"--and team-teaching about issues related to "earth" and "light." They're hoping to win a humanities crowd by linking the study of biotechnology to evolution, for example, and then using statistical concepts to make it all relevant and compelling. So far, 24 undergraduates have signed on to the idea. Future students, Osgood suggests, may include alumni taking adult education courses."I take very seriously the fact that we teach future senators or maybe even presidents, and other opinion leaders," says biology professor and SME supporter Virginia Walbot. "I want them to know what the facts are and how to read about science."

Inquiring Minds TRIAL BALLOONS: Frank Ludwig, a consulting professor in civil and environmental engineering, and Bob Street, the William Alden and Martha Campbell Professor in the School of Engineering, are analyzing data collected from hundreds of balloons that were launched over Salt Lake Valley in October. The two researchers are building computer models to better predict air quality and weather as part of a four-year study funded by the Department of Energy. DISTANT ERUPTIONS: Using data from specially designed satellites that bounce radar waves off the surface of islands from 500 miles in space, a team of Stanford geophysicists has discovered that seven volcanoes clustered in the Galápagos Islands are rising simultaneously--an indication that they could erupt sometime in the future. "Our dream is to monitor all 500 to 1,000 active volcanoes on Earth using satellite radar," says Paul Segall, professor of geophysics. CRITICAL PLUMBING: Cardiovascular surgeon D. Craig Miller is mapping the plumbing problems that cause murmurs and valve leakage in the human heart. Miller and his colleagues believe the map will allow heart surgeons to perform more precise operations to correct ischemic mitral regurgitation (IMR), a condition that affects between 1 and 2 million people in the United States and is particularly difficult to treat. CREATIVE WIRING: A new procedure being studied in a trial with 100 patients at Stanford Medical Center may provide the next generation of treatment for coronary artery disease. The Galileo Inhibit Study uses a small wire coated with a source of radiation and placed in the bloodstream for two to five minutes to treat patients with blocked arteries.

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