Changes to undergraduate admissions.
If you’re from the 1900s, take a deep breath: Admissions season is open for the Stanford Class of 2030. The university announced that it has reinstated a standardized testing requirement after the Faculty Senate’s Committee on Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid explored the role of standardized testing in admissions and voted to recommend its return as part of a holistic review of each applicant. Submission of SAT or ACT scores has been optional since 2020.
The university also announced that it will defer a definitive judgment on legacy admission considerations following the passage of a California law that restricts alumni or donor preference in admissions at universities that receive state-funded student financial assistance, including the Cal Grant programs. For now, Stanford will continue to consider alumni and donor status for academically qualified applicants. To comply with the new state law, Stanford will automatically adjust financial aid packages, substituting university scholarship funding for California aid programs.
Lastly, the Class of 2030 will be about 150 students larger than in past years. The class size increase is an initial step in university president Jonathan Levin’s, ’94, goal to expand access to a Stanford education. No word yet on whether students graduating in the ’30s will be allowed to have jetpacks on campus.
Have you found a keeper?
Maybe, ladies, but you’re also probably “mankeeping.” Coined by postdoctoral fellow Angelica Puzio Ferrara, the buzzy new term describes the labor heterosexual women perform to meet the social and emotional needs of the men in their lives. It’s an extension, she said, of “kinkeeping,” the work done (most often by women) to keep a family together. As straight male social circles dwindle, a woman is often the sole person supporting her male partner through daily challenges, encouraging them to keep up with friends, even serving as something of an unofficial therapist. “Women tended to have all of these nodes of support they were going to for problems, whereas men were more likely to be going to just them,” said Ferrera.
Just keep pedaling.
Photo: Nancy Bao, ’28
Seven students. 70 days. 2,500 miles. It’s the season of Stanford Spokes, the student group that cycles each summer from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., teaching at local schools and libraries as they go. This summer’s Spokesters have dodged semitrucks in Utah, taught CPR in Colorado, and developed a taste for Braum’s ice cream in Kansas. Only a few states to go. You can follow along on their Instagram.
The university announces layoffs.
On July 31, Stanford announced it would cut 363 jobs, including roles in administrative services, research, facilities, communications, libraries, marketing, and student services. The university filed a notice in accordance with the WARN Act, a state law that requires employers to provide a 60-day notice of mass layoffs. “This is the product of a challenging fiscal environment shaped in large part by federal policy changes affecting higher education,” wrote president Jonathan Levin and provost Jenny Martinez in a message to faculty and staff.
The layoffs are a part of the $140 million budget cut announced in June. “These are difficult actions that affect valued colleagues and friends who have made important contributions to Stanford,” Levin and Martinez wrote. “Thank you for your hard work, for your support of your colleagues, and for all of your efforts to support our vital ongoing mission of research and education.”
Addressing the Social Security funding gap.
Social Security’s Old Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund is projected to be exhausted in just eight years, and the program as a whole faces a $26.1 trillion funding gap over the next 75 years. Many have proposed addressing that gap by raising Social Security’s full retirement age past 67—after all, Americans on average are now living about 20.6 years beyond age 65. (When Social Security first paid monthly benefits, in 1940, workers earned full benefits at 65 and lived an average of 13.7 years after retirement.) In a policy brief, Andrew Biggs, a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), and John Shoven, a former SIEPR director and professor emeritus of economics, propose raising the retirement age to 69 while simultaneously changing the benefits formula. Since high-wage workers survive on average several years more than retirees with average incomes, and low-wage workers live several years fewer than average, raising the retirement age alone, the experts said, would make lower earners pay for a funding problem they didn’t cause. Their proposal would adjust the replacement percentages in Social Security’s benefit formula such that very low wage earners receive the same benefit they are entitled to under the current benefit formula. It’s not a magic bullet, said Biggs and Shoven, but over time, it could make up about half of the looming Social Security funding gap.
But wait, there’s more. . .
Stanford announced that John Donahoe, MBA ’86, will serve as the university’s new director and chair of athletics. The former CEO of Nike succeeds Bernard Muir. He starts on September 8.
Gray volcanic ash, a greener future: Tiziana Vanorio, an associate professor of Earth and planetary sciences, has harnessed volcanic chemistry to create a cement mix with a much lower carbon footprint. Traditional cement requires heating limestone in a process that is responsible for 8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
Even 15 minutes in nature can improve mental health. Even better: no exercise required.
At 12, Arica Gaitan lost her father and sister in a car accident. Now, as a licensed embalmer and the lead of the anatomical gift program, Gaitan helps train future doctors by embalming individuals who’ve donated their bodies to Stanford Medicine.
A recent study found that rapid treatment may increase survival rates for children suffering from influenza-associated acute necrotizing encephalopathy, a rare but dangerous flu complication characterized by brain swelling and a runaway immune response. The most important preventative strategy? Getting an annual flu shot.
Something’s fishy here: Researchers recently identified the event cascade behind protein dysfunction in the brains of aging killifish, which could shed light on the development, prevention, and treatment of age-related neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s in humans.
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