"It is critical that we possess the intellectual resources – as well as the human resources – to help our students become leaders in an increasingly complex and diverse world. An institution like Stanford must reflect the multi-racial, multi-ethnic society and pluralistic democracy that serves as a foundation to the university."
–John Etchemendy, Provost
Diversity and inclusion at Stanford: Opportunities and initiatives
Diversity and inclusion are essential to Stanford's educational excellence. Research and teaching are enriched by a breadth of perspectives, and a Stanford education must help students prepare to succeed in a society that is increasingly diverse and a world that is increasingly interconnected.
As college and university communities across the country confront issues of race and justice on their campuses and in our broader society, this page offers background information on some of the activities Stanford has undertaken to advance diversity and inclusion in their many dimensions.
Some programs may not be widely known throughout the Stanford community. This page, while not comprehensive, seeks to bring information together in one place, in the hope it will help members of our community find resources and opportunities. We understand that our efforts in these arenas are ongoing and that continued progress is needed.
"We look forward to working together to create a climate that supports and affirms the wide range of life experiences and identities that we value at Stanford," President Hennessy and Provost Etchemendy recently wrote to members of the campus community.
Faculty
The Faculty Incentive Fund, in existence for more than two decades, helps make it possible for Stanford departments and schools to recruit qualified individuals who would bring diversity, broadly defined, to the faculty. This support can be directed toward scholars from underrepresented communities, women scholars in disciplines in which they are underrepresented, and others who would bring additional dimensions of diversity to the university's research and teaching programs. More than 85 percent of those hired have remained at Stanford.
The Faculty Development Initiative was established in 2007 by the provost in collaboration with the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Its objective is to recruit and hire outstanding junior as well as senior scholars whose research focuses on the study of race and ethnicity in the United States and internationally. Since 2008, 14 such faculty have been appointed in the School of Humanities and Sciences, Graduate School of Education and School of Medicine.
Currently, more than $325 million of Stanford's endowment is committed to supporting the above two programs. The endowment supports $16 million in annual salaries for faculty hired through the two programs. Over the last 25 years, $160 million in salary funding has been provided to these programs, which continue to grow.
Following a university-wide faculty survey, Provost Etchemendy commissioned two reports, issued in 2013 and 2014, focusing specifically on enhancing the experience of underrepresented faculty at Stanford. The provost's Panel on Faculty Equity and Quality of Life provided oversight of the study. Faculty members across the campus from underrepresented groups were interviewed. The report recommended strategies for improving mentoring, encouraging greater participation in decision-making, increasing recognition and enhancing collegial opportunities.
Organizationally, Stanford has an Office of Faculty Development and Diversity devoted to building a diverse faculty and providing support for the success of all faculty. The Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity, who oversees this office, reports directly to the provost. In addition, each of Stanford’s seven schools has a diversity officer who works to promote a more inclusive environment and support diversity efforts. A campus-wide Diversity Cabinet created by the provost also meets monthly and serves as a voice for raising awareness and impacting policy.
More broadly, the effort to recruit and develop a diverse professoriate is ingrained in many regular campus processes. For instance:
- Faculty searches are obligated to make extra efforts to seek and evaluate qualified women and underrepresented candidates, and the campus provides resources to support these efforts.
- The campus monitors and reports on the representation of women faculty and faculty of color, as well as their tenure and promotion rates, annually to the Faculty Senate.
- The annual President's Awards for Excellence through Diversity honor individuals and programs that have made exceptional contributions to enhancing and supporting diversity at Stanford.
Stanford faculty also create and lead research centers that engage scholars in research and teaching on issues of diversity and inclusion. For instance, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research pursues research advancing gender equality and brings together scholars to provide new insights into barriers to the advancement of women. The Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity operates a research institute and undergraduate degree programs focused on understanding the complex factors of race and ethnicity and how they have shaped history and the social fabric of the contemporary world.
Among other initiatives, the Project for Education Research That Scales (PERTS) partners with colleges, schools and other organizations to improve student motivation and achievement and to reduce achievement gaps. Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions (SPARQ) works to create and share social psychological insights with people working to address a range of challenges in communities. The Stanford Center on Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) fosters research, policy and practice to advance high quality, equitable education systems. The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality develops science-based policy on poverty and inequality. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute supports a broad range of activities illuminating Dr. King's life and legacy, including the King Papers Project.
Students
Recognizing that a diverse professoriate is dependent upon diversity in the ranks of graduate students entering academic professions, Stanford has undertaken a range of efforts at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.
Prominent among these is the DARE (Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence) Doctoral Fellowship Program, which awards two-year fellowships to advanced Stanford doctoral students from diverse backgrounds who want to investigate and prepare for academic careers. DARE, begun in 2008, so far has supported 144 fellows.
Another program, EDGE (Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education) Fellowships, aims to support the recruitment and retention of doctoral students in their first two years who have the potential to contribute to diversity in their academic fields and departments. EDGE currently supports 135 first- and second-year doctoral students and involves more than 70 advanced PhD student mentors.
For more than 20 years, Stanford has been part of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program, for sophomores interested in pursuing academic careers that address the educational consequences of racial and ethnic disparities in higher education. The program at Stanford has produced 28 PhDs. As that program focuses on the humanities and social sciences, Stanford has created a parallel program, the Stanford Undergraduate STEM Fellows Program, that provides similar support each year for undergraduates interested in academic careers in the natural sciences, math and engineering who will promote diversity, broadly defined, of the future professoriate.
Stanford's schools offer a range of other institutes and summer programs for current students, as well as for pre-college students. Examples include SURGE, Pre-College Math Institute/Valdes Math, Summer Research Early Identification Program, Stanford Summer Health Careers Opportunity Program and many others. Fee waivers for applications to graduate school remove barriers for low-income students to apply to a Stanford graduate program. Also, the Stanford Diversity Outreach for Doctoral Education—Centers of Influence Retreat hosts program directors, faculty and administrators who work with diverse undergraduates on campuses across the country to prepare for doctoral study.
The Diversity and First-Gen Office (DGen) provides diversity training and education programs on topics ranging from engaging difference to identifying and addressing inequity. In partnership with other campus programs, the office has provided activities and training for more than 500 students and 300 faculty and staff over the past year. Its director also partners with Psychology Prof. Hazel Markus on an Intergroup Communication course that invites students to engage across different identity groups. In addition, DGen pursues initiatives and campus partnerships to promote a supportive academic environment for first-generation and low-income students. Currently, about 15 percent of Stanford undergraduates are the first in their families to attend a four-year college. The office was established in 2011 and has recently added staff to advance its mission.
An "Engaging Diversity" course requirement is part of the "Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing" graduation requirements for all Stanford undergraduates. This new requirement was a product of the 2012 Study of Undergraduate Education at Stanford (SUES) report. The requirement asserts, "In a globally interconnected world, it is ethically and practically crucial to develop an awareness and understanding of differences. By gaining knowledge about diversity and public scholarship, your understanding of the social contexts that frame our communication and collaboration with one another will be extended, and your ability to respond to cultural challenges enhanced."
Undergraduate majors in race and ethnic studies are offered through the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. The center was the first interdisciplinary and comparative studies center of its type to be established at a private university in the United States. Since its founding in 1996, it has emerged as the premier center in higher education promoting comparative studies of the complex nature of ethnic and race relations. One program that is part of the CCSRE, the Program in African and African American Studies, established in 1969, was the first African and African American Studies program at a private university in the United States.
The Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies also offers an undergraduate major among its educational offerings.
Stanford's community centers provide support for student leadership and development, student mental health and well-being, and academic support and intellectual scholarship development. The centers also support a broad array of student organizations on campus. The centers, several of which have existed since the 1970s, offer an extensive range of programs discussed more fully on their respective websites – but below are just a few examples of activities each center has underway:
- Leading through Education, Activism and Diversity (LEAD) is a collaborative initiative of multiple community centers. LEAD is a two-quarter program and class that develops cross-cultural, collaborative leadership skills of emerging student leaders.
- The Asian American Activities Center (A3C) offers programs focusing on the mental health and well-being of students through a cultural lens, as well as a mentoring program pairing sophomores with faculty, staff and alumni who understand the cultural factors that may impact the student experience at Stanford.
- The Black Community Services Center hosts an Intellectual Roundtable discussion series on contemporary and historical issues relevant to the Black community and offers a two-quarter program for freshmen focused on building a community of scholars, including close interaction with faculty, alumni and sponsors of fellowship/internship opportunities.
- El Centro Chicano y Latino offers a two-quarter college transition program for freshmen, an honors thesis mentoring program, and a graduate scholars-in-residence program that promotes intellectual community among doctoral students from various disciplines and encourages mentorship between graduate and undergraduate students.
- The LGBT Community Resources Center runs programs including Flourish, which helps LGBT and questioning students thrive at Stanford; Sharing Our Stories at Stanford, harnessing the power of story to help students narrate and reflect on their life experiences; and QuEST, providing support to student projects addressing sexual orientation and gender identity.
- The Markaz: Resource Center for Engagement with the Cultures and Peoples of the Muslim World focuses on serving students interested in Africa, the Middle East, and central, south and southeast Asia, as well as the American Muslim experience. Its Chai Chats and Freshman Dinners facilitate critical conversations on issues relevant to the Muslim world.
- The Native American Cultural Center offers programs including a 5-day immersion program for incoming students, a two-quarter program pairing freshmen with graduate students as research mentors, and a program offered in partnership with the d.school that offers interactive workshops and training sessions on leadership and community building.
- The Women's Community Center convenes a Women in STEM Series; an annual Stanford Women's Leadership Conference; the Graduate Resilience, Advancement and Diversity (GRAD) Programs aimed at advancing intellectual pursuits and combatting isolation at the graduate level; and an internship program for students developing leadership skills.
The Weiland Health Initiative, a partnership between Vaden Health Center and the LGBT Community Resources Center, offers mental health, medical services and educational programming that are affirming across the spectrum of all gender and sexual identities at Stanford.
Residential Education hosts training and development for residential staff and in-house educational and discussion experiences. Four ethnic theme houses also are among Stanford's housing options.
Stanford has continued to expand need-based financial aid to provide accessibility for families of all financial backgrounds. In 2015, Stanford increased from $100,000 to $125,000 the threshold for annual family income below which parents with typical assets are not expected to make any financial contribution toward undergraduate tuition.
Stanford also has launched new programs to assist students with the transition to Stanford. In 2012 the university began the Leland Scholars Program, which facilitates the transition to college for incoming freshmen intending to study in STEM or pre-health fields. The three-week residential program in the summer before Stanford entrance is particularly aimed at students coming from schools with limited science curricula and Advanced Placement offerings, or who are among the first in their families to attend college. A partner program in the School of Engineering, the Stanford Summer Engineering Academy, established in 1998, seeks to attract students of diverse backgrounds to engineering and helps inspire and define academic choices for incoming students.
Many others parts of the university offers programs that promote diversity and inclusion at Stanford – among them the Office for Religious Life, the Bechtel International Center, the Office of Accessible Education, the Haas Center for Public Service, Student Activities and Leadership, and many others both university-wide and within Stanford's seven schools.
OpenXChange
Stanford in fall 2015 created OpenXChange, a new initiative to foster campus dialogue and constructive engagement on pressing societal issues, including issues of diversity and inclusion. The effort includes events, speakers, courses, student-led initiatives and opportunities for 1:1 and small-group discussion.
- In the fall, 33 senior campus administrators, faculty members and trustees hosted a Listening Dinner, where 200 undergraduate and graduate students shared their concerns on current issues in small-group discussions with university leaders.
- OpenXChange co-sponsored, with the Office for Religious Life and Stanford Live, a three-week campus residency by artist Anna Deveare Smith featuring conversations and performances on race and equality, including Ms. Smith's performances of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and "The Pipeline Project," an exploration of the school-to-prison pipeline in underserved communities.
- The winter quarter begins with a January 13 OpenXChange panel discussion exploring race and the criminal justice system, moderated by Katie Couric and featuring panelists including Stanford experts along with social justice activist and author Bryan Stevenson. An additional winter quarter event in the new "Open Office Hours" series will focus on the Black Lives Matter movement.
- OpenXChange grants are available for students and student groups to engage fellow students in thoughtful, critical discourse on issues of social importance. The grants offer up to $1,500 in financial support, as well as advising and logistical support, for activities such as speaker series, service trips or art exhibitions.
