The paperless trend has taken another leap forward at Stanford: doctoral dissertations, the lengthy piles of paper that culminate the work of Stanford PhD students, will now be published online.

Unsurprisingly, Stanford mega-start-up Google is behind the new idea, which makes Stanford "the first university to take the whole dissertation approval and publishing process electronic." The new paperless plan also saves money (printing and distribution costs), space (our library is only so big), and makes it much simpler to view and read published dissertations.

The only problem: nobody really wants to read dissertations.

This still baffles me, and I know we've all been there. You show up to class a minute or two late (on time in my book), and it's like your classmates have built a human wall blocking you from all the seats. One person in the aisle seat of a row effectively nullifies all the seats in that row.

We usually have two options when we face this dilemma:

And we thought we were unique: Harvard, too, in the wake of losing a similar percentage of its endowment, has slashed its budget in all kinds of places. The latest victims? Hot breakfasts on weekends and cookies at faculty meetings.

The New York Times reports that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences--Harvard's name for its school of Humanities and Sciences--is facing a deficit of $130 million, has cut $75 million already, and will soon cut more.

The blog is a powerful tool, but can it influence your decision on where to go to college? Apparently, our friendly and socially-awkward semi-rivals at M.I.T. think so, according to an article from the New York Times this week. The admissions office at the school has been hiring students to blog about their life and experiences as a student and posting them--uncensored--on the school's web site for prospective applicants to read.

The article calls it a "powerful marketing tool," and students interviewed by the reporter claim that reading some of these blogs really helped them get a feel for the school and decide they, too, wanted to attend M.I.T. And while other schools, including other semi-rivals of ours, have adopted similar strategies, the blogs at M.I.T. stand out because the admissions office doesn't censor what the students say.

While perusing PZ Meyers’ blog I read an interesting entry about a brouhaha brewing up in the paleontological world over alleged theft of naming rights to specimens.

In Summary
A graduate student, Bill Parker, completed his master’s thesis using a New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science specimen

He argued that the specimen was unique enough to warrant its own name and submitted a paper to the Journal of Systematic Paleontology in which he bestowed a new name on the specimen.

The rules of paleontology apparently state that whoever publishes first gets naming rights. I’m not a paleontologist, but apparently naming a new specimen is very important and can make a Paleontologist’s career.

Parker’s article to the Journal of Systematic Paleontology was reviewed by Spencer Lucas.

Here comes the murky and alleged parts:

Lucas then published a paper in an New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science’s in-house publication (which is not peer reviewed) two-weeks prior to the January 2007 publication date of Parker’s article.

Parker is alleging that Lucas used his position in the Museum and as journal reviewer to steal the naming rights away from Parker.

Given the timeline presented, Parker’s allegations have a lot of merit

after the break - the allegations mount

John L. Hennessy is the 10th President of Stanford University and a pioneer of computer architecture.


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John Hennessy started at Stanford as an associate professor in Electrical Engineering in 1977 and assumed Presidency in 2000. A technologist at the core, President Hennessy pioneered a computer assembly language called MIPS in 1981 and started a company, MIPS Computer Systems, in 1984. As Stanford’s 10th president, he oversees the University from various perspectives and sits at the intersection of academics, technology, and the corporate world.

In this interview, he talks about his role as the President, the early years of running a startup, current issues Stanford University faces, and the future of information technology. He also gives advice to prospective students and budding entrepreneurs.

He is currently on the board at Google, Cisco Systems, and Atheros Communications, and has written two foundational books on computer architecture and assembly language.

- Min Liu of iinnovate

I hope most of you have finished your final exams and papers. I personally like papers better because you can stay up all night and finish it. You need to actually sleep before exams (something I haven't been doing a good job doing...). Anyway, I ran into a great picture I wanted to share. (click to enlarge)

And if you are still taking finals, there are some great resources out there. The best is probably that when taking a True or False test - "The Answer is NOT always C

I came across this interesting article in the NYTimes about technology in the classroom: New Class(room) War: Teacher vs. Technology - New York Times

Apparently lots of teachers are annoyed with the fact that students use their laptops and smart/cell phones in class instead of listening to the Prof. According to one:

"The more you give, the more they take. These devices become an indisposable sort of thing for the students. And nothing should be indisposable. Multitasking is good, but I want them to do more tasking in my class.”

The author replies:

"To which one can only say: Amen. And add: Too bad the good guy is going to lose."

Seriously? How is text messaging worse than doodling on the corner of the page, daydreaming or passing notes? They are all ways of ignoring the teacher and have been around for as long as boring teachers have.

If profs want to get more student engagement, they need to make their classes more engaging. Lots of education research shows that lecturing is just not very effective at fostering serious intellectual thinking. I wrote my PWR2 paper on cooperative learning which does a much better job.

All I have to say is that at least these students are coming to class. I think many more people would just skip lecture if they weren't allowed to text, surf facebook or according to the article, watch porn, during lecture.

What do you guys think? Technology in classrooms yay or nay?

While procrastinating on a Biochem problemset, I ran across this interesting article published in Education Week that I think sums up what many of us think about homework: It's just not that useful. The article explains how most studies barely have any correlation between homework and test scores in high school, and in fact a negative correlation for students in elementary school. In the 1994 and 1999 Trends in Mathematics and Science Study featuring data from 50 countries, researches stated:

“Not only did we fail to find any positive relationships,” but “the overall correlations between national average student achievement and national averages in [amount of homework assigned] are all negative.”

Yet we keep assigning it in our schools and the amount has been steadily increasing in the past number of years. The article tries to explain this phenomenon with the idea that "homework = practice = learning". But we've all experienced those moments when doing stupid worksheets and extra problems where we think "this is not teaching me ANYTHING".

"Supporters of homework rarely look at things from the student’s point of view, though; instead, kids are regarded as inert objects to be acted on: Make them practice and they’ll get better. My argument isn’t just that this viewpoint is disrespectful, or that it’s a residue of an outdated stimulus-response psychology. I’m also suggesting it’s counterproductive. Children cannot be made to acquire skills. They aren’t vending machines such that we put in more homework and get out more learning."

What do you think - is homework valuable?

The Truth about Homework

According to a press release leaked at IvyGate and various other college-admission-related sites, the following is the USNews rankings for universities for next year.

1. Princeton University (NJ)
2. Harvard University (MA)
3. Yale University (CT)
4. Stanford University (CA)
5. California Institute of Technology
University of Pennsylvania
7. Massachusetts Inst. Of Technology
8. Duke University (NC)
9. Columbia University (NY)
University of Chicago
11. Dartmouth College (NH)
12. Cornell University (NY)
Washington University in St. Louis
14. Brown University (RI)
Johns Hopkins University (MD)
Northwestern University (IL)
...and so on.

Stanford was tied for fourth with Caltech and MIT last year, and now it's in fourth by itself. Cal is 21 for those of you who care (I don't).

A few key points:
(1) Stanford students tend to be highly anti-institutional with regard to rankings, acting as if they do not matter. But it's hard to underestimate just how important USNews rankings are for when students choose colleges. It's interesting that students will tend to choose Stanford over all schools except Harvard, Yale and MIT. It roughly splits with Princeton, according to "A Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities." (It's a statistical paper, link here). It's important that Stanford continues to compete for the very best students--the ones that also get into Harvard, or Princeton, or whatever. Harvard at the moment dominates what one calls the "cross-admits," and of students getting into both Harvard and Yale, 86% go to Harvard. Wow.

(2) There's an interesting chicken-and-egg problem with rankings. The rankings shape public perceptions, and those perceptions then come back and shape the rankings, and so on. The public would find it hard to believe that, say, Penn is #1, but having Harvard or Princeton at #1 reinforces the public's idea. A Gallup poll conducted a couple of years ago had Stanford tied for third, behind Harvard and Yale, but second amongst the "highly educated," interestingly.

(3) The rankings are mostly irrelevant for those already in college, but for high school students picking a school, they certainly do matter--witness the hundreds of thousands of copies of the magazine sold every year. Students want to go to the best, most prestigious school possible. The rankings help shape those perceptions. That's why most people pick Harvard, the undisputed king of the castle when it comes to attracting top high school students. Is Harvard objectively better than other schools? Not really, but there has to be a reason why students want to go there so badly.

(4) According to an article in the Stanford Review printed last year, Stanford was ranked higher than it is now. It's unclear why, but Stanford's SAT profile is slightly lower than H and P, has more athletes (with indeterminate effect), and has slightly less in the top 10% of the class. But the most problematic measure is "alumni giving rate." Stanford has always had a weaker alumni community than Princeton--compare 34% to 61%. But Stanford fund raised $911 million, THREE HUNDRED MILLION more than any other school (Harvard was second). Do you think President Hennessy cares if alumni donate if they're breaking fundraising records anyway? Methinks not!

(5) While Stanford dominates the West Coast, they need to do a much better job competing on the East Coast.

In my role on staff at the university, I'm constantly on the lookout for how Stanford students and faculty are making waves in the blogosphere. As it so happens, a Stanford senior honors thesis by Jonathan Gibbs ('07) recently popped up on TrueHoop -- which is not only my favorite basketball blog, but may well be my favorite blog altogether.

In the wake of the Tim Donaghy NBA referee scandal, Gibbs' honors thesis (Point Shaving in the NBA: An Economic Analysis of the National Basketball Association's Point Spread Betting Market) has become the buzz of the basketball and Freakonomics blogging communities. TrueHoop has had multiple posts on Gibbs' work, which include an interview with Gibbs and Prof. Roger Noll chiming in as well. The thesis also makes a cameo on the widely-read Freakonomics blog. The TrueHoop postings are a great read, and I highly recommend them beginning with this one.

One thing I find quite interesting is a general lack of faith displayed toward undergraduate scholarship. In his initial posting on TrueHoop, Henry Abbott captures the essence of this attitude: "Hold the phone: An undergraduate? Do we really have to listen to this?"

Normally I wouldn’t write about my own startup on the Stanford blog. But I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw how fast and powerful just one blog was in spreading the word about Homeslyce, now servicing students starting college.

As you can see from the graph on the right, the number of unique users and page views shot up exponentially in just three days.

So I thought I’d write and share some things I saw and learned with my entrepreneurial home.

(Because I couldn't resist a Perlstein response! Even a rough one.)

Nonscientifically gathered top three answers to the question “How’s it going?” or “What’d you do today?” at Stanford:

1) “Procrastinated.”
2) “Nothing.”
3) “Chilled.”

These types of answers aren’t just a Stanford phenomenon either; nearly every student at college that I’ve talked to answers similarly. And, nearly always, these answers are accompanied with an apology and guilt. There’s a certainty, on the part of the answerer, that others are working much harder and more productively, and yet, the answerer does not want to distinguish him- or herself too much from the crowd. And so a retreat into a sort of comfortable average: one that perceives itself as having the ability to work harder and wastes a ton of time.

One of the last things I can remember my mom saying to me, before she left me at Stanford was this: “You’re going to have so much fun at college. The time will just fly by.” And she paused after she said this; I could tell she wanted to go back.

She was right, of course. I bet most current college students would agree. College is fun, and we’ve expected college to be really really fun since at least high school. All of us have seen Old School, okay?; we’ve seen Animal House, we’ve seen Billy Madison; and we expected it to be more than parties: we’ve seen the inspirational stuff too, we’ve seen Good Will Hunting and that all that sappy stuff.

So college has been pumped up for all of us. It’s that gateway between being a kid and being an adult; we start getting to have adult fun with kid responsibility. We were all expecting college.

Those expectations come with a weight, and that weight is why “Procrastination” is the most popular answer to the question “What’d you do today?”

This attitude ultimately shows exactly why college is just as important as in the Sixties, just in a different way and with different attitudes for different times.

Random shot of me and my buddy/bandmate MG


In all the tumult of the past few weeks, a fog of preparation and closure, I nearly lost sight of a small, personal milestone. It was nine years ago, nearly to the day, when I first set foot in the People’s Republic. I was a Junior at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and my entire life was on the verge of a thorough transformation, one both personal and professional.
Outwardly, I was a confident, highly focused International Studies major quickly absorbing the credits necessary to add a second major (East Asian Studies) and eventually a co-term MA. Inwardly, however, I hadn’t the slightest idea where I was headed. The Ph.D. was an attractive option, but so too was journalism, foreign service, and the private sector (much to my Father’s encouragement). All I knew for certain was: I wanted to travel + I had studied Chinese intensively for two years = Beijing made sense.

Richard Rorty, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and a significant figure in 20th century philosophy, died yesterday. Disenchanted with the trends of modern philosophy, Rorty shifted in his career from the sort of traditional analytical philosophy taught in philosophy departments to continental philosophy. Rorty received numerous awards, and, according to The Harvard Crimson, was supposed to receive an honorary degree from Harvard last week. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an entry outlining his thought.

I was lucky enough hear him give a very interesting talk at the Symbolic Systems Forum two years ago, where he attacked much of the current analytical research program in philosophy of mind. A video of the talk is available on the Symbolic Systems website, as is an article from the Stanford News Service about the talk.

UPDATE, 6.10.07: Stanford News Service now has an article on his death.

A friend forwarded this message to me from the French House chat list and I thought it was funny. As part of their final project in a Science, Technology and Gender class, one group surveyed student perception of certain majors at Stanford.

Some of the descriptions aren't too interesting, but a couple of them are downright hilarious, especially because these are quotations from students themselves.

Click to find your major and what people think of it!

Wes Clark (whom I support for President even though he's not an official candidate) will be giving a lecture on campus today at 7:30 in Room 200 of the Hewlett Teaching Center. I don't know exactly what he'll be talking about today specifically, but he has been discussing for many years now about ways the US should be working internationally to build its legitimacy.

I was able to meet Wes Clark earlier this year and can say he's very knowledgeable in a variety of areas: he's edited books on military history and taught economics at West Point. He's also quite engaging. It will be worth attending if you want a more thorough discussion than we're getting from the current crop of presidential candidates.

I should also point out that, back in December of 2003, Stanford hosted John Kerry while he was trailing most of the Democratic candidates and then Kerry went on to win the nomination. I always tell people that it was his appearance at Stanford which launched Kerry to the Democratic nomination. We might see the same with Wes Clark.

After blogging about Harvard's co-option of our GER system and the criticisms of the U.S. News and World Report's annual college rankings, I heard back from both President Hennessy and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

What follows is a recap of what each of them said.

Hennessy said in an email to me that he likes our blog, which is totally awesome. Regarding my stance that Harvard basically stole our pre-existing GERs, The Prez said, "We all learn from one another and imitation is a complement!"

Hennessy also concurred (that's right, the President of Stanford University and I see eye-to-eye) that the college rankings are detrimental, calling them, "a disservice."

As for the Chronicle of Higher Education, they informed me of a packet of articles they released just this morning-- I know, fresh off the press-- analyzing the entire college ranking phenomenon. They too found methodological flaws. Lots of 'em.

Read on if you'd like to hear more about President Hennessy's reaction to and the damning report from the Chronicle of Higher Education on college rankings.

If you've ventured to "the other side" of Campus Drive to the Med School (SoM), you've probably noticed some construction going on. The SoM is working on a little something called The Learning and Knowledge Center, or LKC. The vision of the LKC, according to the website, is to be "A New Model of Medical Education for a New Era in Medicine".

Several years ago I was involved in focus groups and committees to discuss how the LKC (which at the time was called "SMILE") could and should impact graduate students in the medical sciences. It's actually been rather exciting to see this endeavor progress from a vague concept to an actual design plan. If you want to see what medical education and research in the future is going to look like, make sure to check out the LKC. It's really cool! (The image above is a picture of what the area currently occupied by the Fairchild Buildings on Campus Drive--the two buildings between Beckman Center and the Clark Center--will look like in several years.)

Every time someone asks me about Stanford graduate school, particularly in the biosciences where I have some knowledge, I always comment on the high concentration of talent. Compared to many other top research intensive schools, Stanford is small. This influences the top ranking Stanford Medical school can obtain in the UNSAWR list. This is something that School of Medicine Dean Philip Pizzo has been discussing for quite a while. For those interested, here's a little blurb from one of his recent newsletters:

In looking at the data for this year, where we are once again ranked #7, it is clear that the only thing holding us from a higher rank in this survey is the total amount of NIH funding. We are lower than any other school in the top 10 in total NIH funding - which is really a function of our smaller faculty size compared to peers. Since total NIH funding weighs heavily in the scoring, we are truly impacted by that category.

In contrast, we are highest in NIH funding per faculty member (a better surrogate for quality). However, since this has a lower weight, it is offset by total NIH funding. Accordingly there is a ceiling that we are not able to break through.

Word on the street is that the Black Student Union has been selected by the ASSU as 2007 Voluntary Student Organization of the Year, while sociology and political science professor Larry Diamond has been selected the 2007 Teacher of the Year. An honorable mention for Teacher of the Year goes to Jeff Koseff, professor of civil and environmental engineering.

It's not clear yet what the ASSU will choose to highlight about this year's recipients, but in the case of Diamond and Koseff, at least, their public and high-profile roles in perhaps the two most important issues on students' minds -- Iraq and the environment -- surely played a role. Professor Diamond is widely regarded as one of the foremost experts on democracy and Iraq, while Professor Koseff directs Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment. I'm not familiar with Professor Koseff, but know from personal experience that Professor Diamond is quite deserving of the award, being an excellent teacher, an inspiring scholar, a willing participant in student events and campus dialogue, and an advocate for students he respects.

Congrats!

Even college presidents are getting fed up with U.S. News and World Report's annual college rankings.

According to the Washington Post, a letter from 12 college presidents including Dickinson College President William G. Durden called the rankings "misleading" and "not in the interest of prospective students in finding a college or university that is well suited to their education beyond high school."

In particular, a lot of the criticism has centered around the U.S. News' "peer reputation" survey, which asks school administrators to rank other schools in their region, often as many as 150, according to the Washington Post. Schools can rank from 1 to 5, or answer "don't know."

Ultimately, lots of buzz is going around the college administrator circuit hoping to offer as little information as necessary to U.S. News for its annual rankings. Just give them data they could get anyways such as enrollment and transfer rates, degrees conferred and financial aid, some advocate.

In the end, I agree with Robert J. Massa, vice president for enrollment and college relations at Dickinson College, who asks, "Why should we help U.S. News sell magazines?" That is, after all, all they want to do.

The Harvard Crimson is reporting that after 4 years of deliberation, Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences today voted 168 to 14 in favor of a new general education curriculum emphasizing "the real-world applications of a liberal arts education."

The article goes on to say:

Under the new general education requirements, students will be required to take courses in eight categories, including "Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding," "Culture and Belief," "Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning," "Ethical Reasoning," "Science of Living Systems," "Science of the Physical Universe," "Societies of the World" and "the United States and the World."

Hmm. Let's see here.

"Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning" DB: Math Rip-off.

"Ethical Reasoning" Yeah we got that. The exact same thing.

"Science of Living Systems" NatSci, anyone?

"Science of the Physical Universe" Sounds a lot like our EngrAppSci (courses fulfilling that requirement here).

"The United States and the World" They just mushed together American Cultures (AmerCul) and The Global Community (GlobalCom). Nice try, Harvard.

What's most pathetic about this sad excuse for thievery is in what they left out, not what they included. Of our Education for Citizenship GERs, Harvard notably forgot to "borrow" our Gender Studies requirement. This is one of the most important ones, I think. Fulfilling an American Cultures GER, for example, doesn't require the average (American) student to broaden her metaphorical horizons as much as taking a course on, say, feminist history, or another such course which "address[es] gender conceptions, roles, and relations" (Registrar's Office).

God, Harvard's lame.