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Glenn Matsumura
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WHEN STANFORD'S FACULTY began
to think strategically in the early 1990s about the direction of undergraduate
education at a research university in the 21st century, the terrain was
largely unmapped. Some visionaries, however, had been thinking in general
terms about the subject of education. Alvin Toffler, the well-known futurist,
made one of the more prescient observations.
“The illiterate of the 21st century,” Toffler wrote, “will
not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn
and relearn.”
Stanford’s innovations in undergraduate education are now part of
the intellectual fabric on campus. How did the University move from the
general proposition to offer students the nation’s finest undergraduate
education to a course of study that was innovative, engaging and useful
in a world defined by a new vision for the meaning of literacy?
To start, Stanford’s goal for its undergraduate experience had always
been to instill a passion for intellectual pursuits and prepare students
for a life of learning. In many ways, the goal reflected Toffler’s
vision of preparing literate citizens for the next century. As we reviewed
our undergraduate experience, four specific objectives evolved to guide
us toward that ambitious goal.
First, we wanted to engage students in the search for knowledge and the
excitement of that search from the moment they arrived on campus.
Second, we wanted to provide many more opportunities for students to work
with faculty in small-group settings that would allow faculty members
to share their intellectual passions.
Third, we wanted undergraduate students to be able to take advantage of
Stanford’s preeminence as a research institution, by becoming involved
in the search for new knowledge.
And finally, we wanted to broaden the range of intellectual pursuits that
we offered students, to help them find their interests and let them experience
different ways to learn.
The initial focus of our efforts was the freshman and sophomore experience.
Clearly, if we could make the first two years of Stanford intellectually
stimulating, it would set the stage for further engagement in the junior
and senior years. The practical question became: how could we make those
first two years more engaging? President Gerhard Casper and members of
Stanford’s Commission on Undergraduate Education understood that,
as a first principle, we needed to increase the contact between our exceptional
faculty and our talented students during their first two years.
The second principle was to make these introductory experiences rewarding
and engaging for students. We wanted to let them select their interests
in a flexible and broad manner, without being limited by concepts such
as requirements and prerequisites, which become important in later years
as students pursue a major.
The commission considered many ways to accomplish its goals, but concluded
that the best way to do so was by asking the faculty to engage our freshmen
and sophomores in a variety of small seminar courses that reflected the
passions of teachers and students. The innovations that have resulted—Freshman
Seminars, Freshman/Sophomore College, Sophomore Dialogues, Sophomore College,
undergraduate research opportunities, and others—have been successful
precisely because they are built on the bedrock of intellectual pursuits
shared by faculty and students.
Our efforts also have been successful because they are deeply rooted in
Stanford’s culture of liberal education and crossdisciplinary pursuit
of knowledge. One of the key early innovations, in 1997, was a new core
curriculum for freshmen, called “Introduction to the Humanities.”
IHUM, as it is popularly known, is built on the foundation of a shared
experience in the humanities together with a multidisciplinary approach
to understanding human civilization, experience and culture. I recently
received a letter that emphasized the importance of such a framework from
an alumnus named Bruce Byers.
“I’m a self-employed consultant based in Washington, D.C.,”
Mr. Byers, ’73, wrote. “It was in 1997, when I was teaching
at the University of Zimbabwe and doing research on sacred forests, that
I began to realize the debt I owed to the Stanford human biology program.
Having shifted into ecology and evolution in graduate school, I was finally,
as a Fulbright scholar, working at the interdisciplinary interface between
ecology and social sciences that human biology had exposed me to 25 years
earlier.”
As Mr. Byers’s experience shows, Stanford has long embraced Toffler’s
observation about the need to learn and relearn. Given the attention and
resources we have devoted to our undergraduate curriculum since then,
the dedication of our faculty, and the support of our friends and alumni,
Stanford is now poised to take undergraduate education to an even higher
level.
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