Stanford University

Stanford was founded by railroad magnate and California Governor Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane. It is named in honor of their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died of typhoid just before his 16 th birthday.

The Stanfords decided to create a great university, one that from the outset was untraditional: coeducational in a time when most private universities were all-male; nondenominational when most were associated with a religious organization; and avowedly practical, producing "cultured and useful citizens" when most were concerned only with the former.

The University opened in 1891 with 15 faculty members and 559 students. Today it enrolls 6,700 undergraduates and 8,000 grad students and is served by 1,700 faculty members.

The synthesis of teaching and research is fundamental to Stanford University. All faculty engage in scholarly research, most often in association with graduate students or advanced undergraduates. Stanford is noted for its openness to multidisciplinary research, not only within the schools and departments, but also in its independent laboratories, centers and institutes. Several national research centers are located on the campus, including the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC).

Stanford built its international reputation as the pioneering Silicon Valley institution through top programs in business, engineering and the sciences, spawning such companies as Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, Yahoo!, Google, and Sun Microsystems. The University also offers programs in the humanities and social sciences, particularly creative writing, history, government, economics, communication and psychology.

The Stanford University School of Education (SUSE) is a leader in groundbreaking, cross-disciplinary inquiry that shapes educational practices, their conceptual underpinnings and the professions that serve the enterprise. Faculty members integrate research and practice by maintaining close collaborations with administrators, teachers and policy makers around the world. The school trains its students to enable them to take leadership positions as teachers, researchers, administrators and policy makers.