If you thought there was pressure on Stanford students, imagine being a junior faculty member -- juggling teaching and research in a publish-or-perish world as the tenure clock tick, tick, ticks. So when President Gerhard Casper announced that his office will fund a new five-year pilot program to give up to $20,000 in research grants to many of Stanford's young professors, the news was greeted with surprise and delight. "This is fantastic," says Paula Moya, an assistant professor of English. "It's a substantial statement that they don't just want to put pressure on junior faculty but want to help us succeed."
The president's new program, announced at his annual State of the University address in October, will start by giving $725,000 in grants to 145 junior faculty in the three schools that offer undergraduate degrees: Earth Sciences, Engineering, and Humanities and Sciences. Current and future assistant professors will receive $5,000 initially, $5,000 more at the time of their fourth-year review and another $10,000 if they win tenure. Over five years the program will cost about $2 million. "Undergraduates come to Stanford to pursue a degree in a research-intensive university," Casper explained in his address at Kresge Auditorium. "It is to their benefit, as well as to the benefit of the faculty, that the university strengthen research support to junior faculty."
The money will come from annual fund raising, which, Casper noted, hit a record this year. Faculty members will be permitted to spend their grants for any research purpose except personal salary or as a housing supplement. Anne Royalty, an assistant professor of economics, says she may use the funds to buy number-crunching computer equipment, hire research assistants or attend conferences. "All of these things are crucial to the beginnings of careers," she says.
Elsewhere in his address, Casper noted that Stanford made history on many fronts in 1997-98, setting records in freshman applications and fund raising, opening new buildings in the Science and Engineering Quad, and even making it to the Final Four in men's basketball. On the downside, he reported that 10 faculty grievance cases reached the provost's office last year, compared to two or three per year from 1990 to 1995. "Alas, it seems there is little we can do about an excessive and overreaching legal system," Casper said. "But we can do something about our own internal procedures."
In an effort to reduce the staff time and money spent on resolving such cases, Casper has appointed a seven-member task force to recommend ways to streamline the faculty discipline and grievance processes. Current procedures, he said, are too cumbersome. "These days, and for the first time in my life, I myself am mostly a client, and a victim, of lawyers," said Casper, himself a professor of law. "My daughter, who is a lawyer, when asked what her father does, answers: 'My father? Oh, he is a defendant.'"
