Graduate fellowships
program reaches $200 million endowment goal
BY JAMES ROBINSON
Stanford Graduate
Fellowships, a first-of-its-kind program that allows
students to engage in research based on intellectual
curiosity alone, has met its target endowment by raising
$200 million, President Gerhard Casper has announced.
Thanks to the
contributions of alumni, non-alumni, foundations and
corporations, the endowment has reached $200,427,275,
which will provide ongoing support to at least 300 of the
university's most promising doctoral students per year.
The program currently provides about $13,000 in tuition
support and an $18,500 stipend annually to each student
for three years.
Stanford Graduate Fellows
-- who are nominated by their departments and selected by
a senior faculty committee -- are able to work in the lab
or research group of their choice, rather than being
constrained to conducting research in a particular
project or with a particular adviser based on available
funding. Since the program was established in 1997,
several other universities have emulated it.
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"What makes this
university continue to grow, what makes the Silicon
Valley thrive, is not the agenda of any institution, but
the freedom of individuals to pursue those questions that
interest them. Stanford Graduate Fellowships represent
this freedom," Casper said.
"The fellows come to
Stanford from all over the world, often bringing bold and
unproven ideas, some of which, no doubt, are destined to
drive research in fields that do not yet exist."
Matthew
Reidenbach, the Wells Family Stanford Graduate Fellow,
right, is conducting interdisciplinary studies of the
effects of turbulence on coral ecosystems in the
laboratory of faculty mentor Jeffrey Koseff, left, senior
associate dean in the School of Engineering. (Photo: Rod Searcey)
Casper delivered the good
news of the funding milestone to a group of donors and
students assembled for a reception at the Faculty Club
last Friday. The fellows honored Casper by giving him a
blown-up "class photo" bearing their
signatures.
The idea to create the
program has its kernel in a 1994 conversation between
Casper and former Secretary of State George Shultz.
Casper worried about the uncertainties of federal
research support; Shultz suggested Casper raise a $1
billion research endowment. Casper took up the idea, but
decided a $200 million goal was sufficiently bold.
Provost John Hennessy said
the fellowships "have brought some of the best and
brightest young scholars to Stanford in the last three
years. Their research not only has enriched their
particular areas of study, it has enriched the work of
the faculty and other students with whom they work, not
to mention the vitality of the intellectual enterprise at
the university. We are very fortunate to benefit from the
generosity and vision of so many donors who have given
the fellows the opportunity to freely pursue their
scholarly interests."
The fellowships are
available in the natural sciences, mathematics,
statistics, engineering, the basic sciences in the School
of Medicine, and those social sciences, including
education, that are now dependent on federal
assistantship support for their doctoral students.
To launch the program in
1997, Casper committed $10 million in discretionary funds
to cover the first two years of operations. Over the
following 11 months, a small number of founding donors
committed the first $100 million, stipulating that their
gifts be used as matching funds to help attract other
donors.
The founding donors
included John and Tashia Morgridge. Taking a lead in
fundraising, John Morgridge, the chair of Cisco Systems,
chaired the National Volunteer Leadership Council. Other
members included Burt McMurtry, vice chair, and Bill
Bowes, Winston Chen, Franklin P. "Pitch"
Johnson, Thomas V. Jones, Pierre Lamond and William
Landreth. The Morgridges made the first gift to the
program and also the final gift that put the total above
its $200 million goal.
John Morgridge was
surprised at the degree of corporate support the
endowment has attracted. "Money has come in from
Europe and from Asia, in addition to the United States.
That's very positive, and I think it's a combination of
Stanford's reputation and the success of Silicon Valley
and the desire to be part of it," he said.
An SGF grant
enables Gypsy Achong to study the molecular biology of an
anaerobic microorganism that can degrade contaminants in
groundwater. She carries out this work in the laboratory
of faculty mentor Alfred Spormann, a microbiologist and
engineering professor. (Photo:
Rod Searcey)
In addition, he noted that
a number of venture capitalists, including many who are
not Stanford alumni, made generous contributions.
Morgridge, an alumnus of
the University of Wisconsin, said he successfully
encouraged his alma mater to create a similar program
there.
The other founding donors
were Anne T. and Robert M. Bass, the David and Lucile
Packard Foundation and two anonymous donors. The
individual fellowships are named after the donors who
followed their lead.
The new resources are
helping drive the research of students like Ned Hammond,
the d'Arbeloff Stanford Graduate Fellow, who performs
numerical simulations of plasmas (ionized gases) used for
materials processing. The most common application of his
research is chip manufacturing, where charged gases are
used to deposit fine materials and etch features into
chips.
Hammond spends his
unrestricted money on tuition and living expenses. His
adviser is Parviz Moin, the Franklin P. and Caroline M.
Johnson Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director
of the Center for Turbulence Research. Even though Moin
has a number of research contracts, Hammond, a third-year
graduate student, says that "having the money gave
me a huge amount of flexibility to find a topic I really
wanted to pursue."
Without the money he would
have had to support himself as a research assistant on a
pre-established project. "The SGF makes it easier
for my adviser to diversify," he added.
The new program "has
enabled us to bring in the very best graduate students
from all over the country and all over the world,"
said Charles Kruger, vice provost and dean of research.
While he said it is difficult to quantify, in a
scientific sense, the precise effect the program has had
on the university's ability to recruit the best graduate
students, "compared to more conventional offers made
to similar students in the past, the yield rate is
significantly better for Stanford Graduate Fellows."
Kruger noted that federal
funding for research assistantships "tends to be
limited in time, and federal programs tend to have a
shorter timespan than the Ph.D. career of a particular
student. So this gives the faculty, the students and the
university a greater sense of stability. Shifts in
funding emphasis occur from time to time, and you never
can tell what's going to happen, for example, in an
election year."
Deedee and Burt McMurtry
are among those who donated to the program. Burt
McMurtry, a member of Stanford's Board of Trustees and a
retiring venture capitalist, said it was "really
exciting for people who bought into the vision of the
program to meet the fellows. As is always the case,
there's nothing quite as exciting as talking to students
in the midst of their work, so it's been very
rewarding."
Casper added, "By
supporting these young scholars for three years, we allow
them to pursue curiosity-driven research unlimited by
traditional fields. Such a vote of confidence in the
fellows, regardless of what they decide to study, is a
great honor for them and a wise investment in the future
-- in the most parochial sense for Stanford, and in the
broadest sense for the principle of scientific inquiry
unfettered by anything but the passionate desire to
know."
Dawn Levy contributed
to this story. SR
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