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About the Guide

What is the Administrative Guide?

The Administrative Guide is a reference manual of Stanford University's non-research guidelines. Updates that affect policy content are made quarterly or more frequently as needed. Housekeeping updates are typically corrections to URLs, department names, typographical errors or other minor changes that do not affect policy content and are made immediately upon request of the policy owner/designee. Emergency updates may also be requested by policy owners/designees.

Who is responsible for maintaining the Guide?

University Human Resources is responsible for maintaining the Administrative Guide. The Administrative Guide Editor is located at:

3160 Porter Drive, Suite 250
Palo Alto, CA 94304

ID Mail Code: 8443

To request archival guide memos, or if you are a policy owner or designee and need to request changes, send an email to: guide-editor@lists.stanford.edu

Who approves Guide contents?

The University officer primarily responsible for a specific policy area formally approves Administrative Guide Memos relating to that area and brings any policy changes to the editor’s attention. The officer who approves a policy is listed on the applicable Guide Memo. When the concerns of more than one administrative office overlap in an Administrative Guide Memo, the officer approving the Memo is responsible for identifying the overlap to the Editor and for obtaining agreement on proposed changes from the other office(s). A university-wide liaison group reviews new policies prior to their publication. See Change Request Guidelines for details about the update process.

How is the Guide updated?

After changes are submitted by the policy owner or his/her designee, the Editor finalizes the revision during the quarterly update process for Guide Memos with content changes. The publication schedule displays current dates associated with that process. Once updates are made, an email notification is sent to the guide-update@lists.stanford.edu email distribution list.

For housekeeping or emergency updates, the Editor reviews the changes and has the discretion to make immediate updates depending on the type of change needed.

What's New summarizes new information and calls attention to all changes.

How can I receive update notices?

To receive quarterly notices of Administrative Guide updates, subscribe to the email distribution list. Visit the Administrative Guide email subscription page in Mailman to subscribe yourself to the list:  https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/guide-update.