I truly feel that this picture sums up Becca‘s entire life:
Lost in some exotic locale. That’s Becca.
(11:07 p.m.)
Tonight I had dinner with the provost. Now before you go thinking I’ve already worked my way into the political picture here at Stanford, let me assure you that it was a fairly random occurence. Last week I got an email saying “hey, if you want to have dinner with the provost, email us back. There’s room for 20 students; if more want to go, we’ll draw names out of a hat.” So I emailed, and either I got lucky or they got exactly 20 responses. In any case, this evening I ate with the provost, Dr. John Etchemendy.
He was a really interesting guy to talk to. He was once a Stanford graduate student himself, in the philosophy department of all places. He then taught at Princeton for a few years before coming back here as a professor, then philosophy department chair, and now provost. He was younger than I expected — probably no older than 55, at the very most.
I was very impressed at the thoughtful questions asked. It was obvious that the other students eating with me weren’t there merely for the free food. The points I found most interesting were:
- The provost is like the CEO of a company. He approves every faculty appointment, and every promotion. He makes decisions that affect housing, transportation, athletics, and every other auxiliary service. He watches the budget and decides what money goes where. He keeps the university running. (Until tonight, I really had no idea what a provost did…I just knew it was an important position. Now I see why.)
- Stanford’s yearly budget is $2 billion, including endowments and everything. The “general fund” is about $500 million.
- Dr. Etchemendy honestly feels that Stanford is as good right now as it’s ever been, in terms of quality of faculty and quality of students. He called us “the best university in the world at the moment.”
- Stanford accrues an incredible amount of debt. Each year, the university borrows as much as it can without losing its AAA loan rating. (I’m not totally sure what that is, but maintaining it is important.) The Board of Trustees will not allow the university to borrow more than that because they want to reserve the right to borrow a huge amount and drop to the AA rating in case there’s an earthquake and Stanford has to rebuild.
- The athletic department has at least one very strong supporter — a local man who owns a construction company and takes it upon himself to make sure the athletic corner of campus stays ship-shape. He brings his own company in to do all the landscaping.
- There are more graduate students here than undergraduates. If some professors and administrators had their way, they’d take it even farther, cutting undergrad enrollment in half and doubling the number of grad students. But Stanford needs undergraduates because most of them pay tuition, while most grad students don’t (because of fellowships, etc).
So dinner was very enjoyable. It’s so nice to see high-ranking administration taking the time to talk to ordinary students. They never really seemed to do that at Georgia Tech.
