Redevelopment and an earthquake
1985 – 1994
by Andrew Myers
. . . The future of computer science lay in engineering—in problem-solving, not in theory, and problem-solving is an essentially engineering thing to do.
— Dean James Gibbons
1985 – 1994
The seventh decade of the School of Engineering began with a major development. After more than twenty years in the School of Humanities and Sciences—and much deliberation—in April 1985 approval came for the Department of Computer Science to move into the School of Engineering. The transition was completed by the end of the year. “Both schools are in favor of it,” said Norman Wessells, dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences. “The department should be where it will function best.”(1) It was “a very, very big deal,” Dean Gibbons later recalled. “[The Department of Computer Science] certainly was often number one in the country. . . . It was clear to me and to a few of my colleagues that the future of computer science lay in engineering—in problem-solving, not in theory, and problem-solving is an essentially engineering thing to do.”(2)
Students using computer terminals, 1985. | Special Collections & University Archives.
The department also added an undergraduate degree in the fall of 1985, and, by the following June, seven students had earned their BS degrees in computer science.(3) Signifying the growing influence of computers and computational approaches across engineering, in 1988 computer science faculty members Gene Golub and Joseph Oliger founded a degree-granting program in Scientific Computing and Computational Mathematics, a forerunner of today’s Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME), established in 2004.
While Stanford continued to dominate one of the newest fields in engineering, it likewise worked to transform one of the oldest: construction. In 1986, a committee of civil engineers in Stanford’s Construction Engineering and Management program began to study ways to innovate in their mature profession. When it was founded in 1955, the program had been among the first in the country, but it had grown stagnant. “There are many industries that have a long tradition of trying to advance technology,” faculty member Clyde B. “Bob” Tatum determined at the time. “Construction is not one of those.” The committee established an advisory committee to update the curriculum and expedite the integration of new technologies into the program. It also formed the Stanford Construction Institute, an affiliate program for industrial sponsors who not only funded the program but also provided practical and research opportunities to faculty and students.(4) From the first industrial affiliate program in 1968, called the Computer Forum, the school would develop more than fifty industrial affiliate programs, which provide essential funding for research and innovation.
The Stanford Solar Car tests limits under extreme conditions
Linda A. Cicero/Stanford News Service.
The student-run, university-wide Stanford Solar Car Project (SSCP) designs, builds, and races solar-powered vehicles in international competitions every other year, to test the limits of their designs under extreme conditions. The project promotes innovation in renewable energy technologies and sustainable transportation and provides students with hands-on opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration. Of the fifteen vehicles constructed since the project began in 1989, Luminos was the most successful, placing fourth in the 2013 race and going on to log 10,000 miles. Today it is on display in the Huang Engineering Center.
An excerpt from The Stanford Daily, vol. 195, no. 64, 1989.
The Department of Civil Engineering embraced its new proximity to Computer Science (CS) and in January 1988 founded the Center for Integrated Facility Engineering (CIFE). CIFE pioneered the application of information technology to the construction industry, focusing on efficient design and construction. Martin Fischer and John Kunz at CIFE, collaborating with Terry Winograd in CS, developed tools such as 4D computer-aided design (CAD) software, which integrated time into traditional 3D modeling to enhance planning and coordination. CIFE researchers would go on to achieve improved plant maintenance systems, develop efficient pipe routing using mobile robots, and leverage the Internet for construction efficiency.(5)
In 1991, the Department of Civil Engineering added an environmental undergraduate degree track. Jeffrey Koseff, then assistant professor, noted that the new degree track built on the strong existing program for graduate students by providing “classes specifically for undergraduates.” Courses included water decontamination, environmental planning, and air-quality management. Meanwhile, in the same department, Koseff and colleague Robert Street established the field of environmental fluid mechanics, pushing theoretical and experimental boundaries in the study of rivers, lakes, and oceans.(6)
Keeping up with the trend of cross-disciplinary work, and with an eye on the future, faculty member Robert Cannon in 1985 united two Stanford specialties, aerospace and robotics, to form the new Aerospace Robotics Laboratory (ARL). His goal was to develop a new class of robots that were “deft, light and flexible and don’t use much energy.” Cannon noted that “the robots you see today in factories or in space are not very bright, and they are also awfully clumsy.”(7) ARL faculty would make major contributions to the field and extend human reach into distant and dangerous environments.(8)
“Near West Campus” redevelopment begins
Stanford Engineering’s alumni set new heights in fundraising for the school and the university. In 1986, William R. “Bill” Hewlett (’34, ’39), cofounder of Hewlett-Packard, pledged $50 million to Stanford’s Centennial Campaign, the single largest pledge from one individual Stanford had ever received. Forty million dollars of the gift was earmarked to rebuild the science and engineering buildings on a 41-acre site known as the “Near West Campus” for its location relative to the main quad. Expected to take fifteen years to complete, the project was considered at the time to be the largest campus redevelopment effort by any university in the United States.(9)
“Stanford has been important to me and my family, to my company, to this community, and to the nation. I want to see it strengthened for the future so that it will continue to benefit society through educating promising young people and performing research essential to the progress of mankind,” Hewlett said at a ceremony announcing the gift.(10)
The plans were grand, but two major incidents stalled them. First, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was destructive and costly. Then, in the early 1990s, a university research spending scandal—sometimes called “the other earthquake”—led to the resignation of Stanford president Donald Kennedy and a decline in federal research funding. In late 1994, David Packard and Bill Hewlett together committed an additional $77.4 million, the biggest gift in Stanford history, to complete the Near West Campus project.(11)
Redevelopment of the science and engineering buildings. The Near West Campus project, as it was known for its location relative to the main quad, involved removing five structures, remodeling two, and building four new structures, and was Stanford’s largest construction project ever. The project kicked off in 1986 with a gift from William Hewlett. In 1994, another gift from Hewlett and business partner David Packard provided funds to complete the project, which opened its doors in 1999. | Stanford University Planning Office.
Aerial view of the Stanford campus showing construction of the Near West Campus project, 1994. | Stanford University Planning Office.
Stanford Engineering Venture Fund
Meanwhile, in 1985, Dean Gibbons developed a fundraising innovation that would expand Stanford Engineering’s foundational role in Silicon Valley. He engaged seven venture capitalists to contribute to the new Stanford Engineering Venture Fund (SEVF), which invested small amounts in area companies that often had Stanford-related founders or technologies. The fund thrived for nine years, achieving a 30 percent annual return, before closing in 1995; it provided eight endowed professorships, nine endowed fellowships, funding for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, contributions to capital construction for the science and engineering building Near West Campus project and elsewhere, and matching funds for twenty additional graduate fellowships. The final $6 million transfer established SEVF II, which continues the mission with new volunteers, even higher returns, and increased impact.(12)
Quality over quantity
Fundraising was not the only area in which numbers were peaking. In 1985, the school conferred 861 graduate engineering degrees, the most in the nation. Yet, continuing to increase in size was not the objective. The school’s main goal was to have a top-quality program, not the biggest, said Robert Eustis, professor of mechanical engineering and senior associate dean at the School of Engineering. “We are large, but we’re about where we want to be.”(13)
Many students might have been drawn to engineering for its promise of employment. In 1988, job prospects for engineers were so strong that even the “Black Monday” stock market crash the previous October would have little effect on them. A nationwide survey of employers predicted a modest rise in hiring and an increase in starting salaries, with Stanford graduates expected to be at the high end of the starting salary range in every discipline.(14)
The Stanford Instructional Television Network
In 1987, a new avenue opened for students. The Stanford Instructional Television Network (SITN) began broadcasting engineering lectures, once available only to companies like IBM and Hewlett-Packard, directly to dormitories experimentally through Stanford’s SUNet cable network. By 1990, SITN would be broadcasting classes by satellite nationwide.(15) Three years later, the United States Distance Learning Association recognized SITN as the “Most Outstanding Distance Education Network in the U.S.”
Celebrating its twentieth anniversary in 1988, SITN markedly increased access to Stanford courses and soon became so popular that interest far outpaced capacity.(16) Andy DiPaolo, SITN director, saw this evolution as a reflection of the quality of the faculty and the content. “The key to what we’re trying to do at SITN and the School of Engineering is to give companies access to premier curriculum. We think it will be a significant contribution to the economic prosperity and intellectual vitality of American industry,” DiPaolo said.(17) SITN would later be integrated into the Stanford Center for Professional Development when it was founded in 1995.
STS-47 Mission Specialist Mae C. Jemison floating in the Science Module aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, September 1992. | NASA.
Mae Jemison
In her 1996 commencement speech, Mae C. Jemison (BS ’77 chemical engineering), America’s first female African American astronaut, challenged outgoing graduates to embrace personal and professional change and engage different perspectives to create new solutions: “We each get a chance to choose our own path. . . . Sometimes, it seems to me that we are running away from problems and reacting to issues in our world and our societies as though we are afraid of change, that we’re afraid of things being a little bit different. And that’s keeping us from formulating the right question so we can solve a problem.”(18)
Born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago, Mae Jemison was an academic standout in high school who won a scholarship to attend Stanford University at the age of sixteen.(19) Jemison entered Stanford in 1973; the previous year had marked a turning point for women in America with the passage of Title IX, a portion of the United States Education Amendments of 1972 prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex. On campus, the social and political movements that had gripped the university in the 1960s continued to escalate, reaching new heights in the 1970s, when students were protesting the war in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos while celebrating gay liberation and the rights of women and minorities.(20)
During this time, Jemison balanced her undergraduate studies in chemical engineering and African and African American Studies with her personal interests in theater and dance, finding opportunities to showcase her creative endeavors through choreographing dance performances and participating in socially conscious, student-produced plays through the Roble Hall Drama Workshop,(21) while also being involved in student politics and intramural sports. After graduating from Stanford in 1977, Jemison obtained a doctorate in medicine from Cornell University and, in 1992, became the first woman of color in space as an astronaut aboard the aptly named Space Shuttle Endeavour.
In the years since, Jemison has continued on trajectories of her own design, following the very advice she gave to the graduating class of 1996: to embrace change and create new solutions. After logging additional time as a member of Spacelab and retiring from NASA, Jemison “received 9 honorary doctorates and authored in 2012 the winning bid on DARPA’s 100 Year Starship project that aims to make human interstellar travel a reality within the next century.”(22)
—Hanna Ahn
Assistant University Archivist for
Special Collections & University Archives
Focus on diversity
Despite the school’s growing global reputation and rising national rankings, Dean Gibbons in a 1987 report acknowledged concerns about the underrepresentation of women and minorities in the student body and faculty. At the time, the faculty included only eight fully tenured female professors, just less than 6 percent; only 23 percent of the student body were women. A 1989 Stanford Daily reporter laid it out plainly: “From the undergraduate to the faculty level, the numbers of women and minorities in engineering continue to lag far behind those of white males.”(23) “We share with you the goal of increasing the number of women and minority faculty across the University and within the school (of engineering) in particular,” Gibbons said to the faculty senate when he presented his report.(24)
Jeannie Marie Flynn Leavitt, who entered the U.S. Air Force in 1992 after earning her master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford, 1993. Leavitt became the first woman entered into the Air Force fighter pilot training program and the Air Force’s first female fighter pilot in 1993, graduating first in her class. She was also the first woman to command a USAF combat fighter wing. | U.S. Air Force.
To counter these low numbers, members of a Latino engineering student organization tutored local minority high school students in algebra. The Women in Science and Engineering network began matching undergraduate female engineering and science students with graduate mentors, and students founded a chapter of the nationwide Society of Women Engineers to sponsor speakers and activities of interest to women and to reach out to local students.(25)
To help in this effort to attract new minority and female faculty and students in science, engineering, and management, the General Electric Foundation in 1989 announced Faculty for the Future, a $300,000 four-year series of research grants and student fellowships.(26) Then, in 1993, Stanford joined a five-year National Science Foundation program to increase the number of minorities earning degrees in engineering and science. The grant funded recruiting, the expansion of summer classes to incoming freshmen, and financial assistance to minority graduate students. The school itself pitched in an additional $1 million to bolster the program.
By 1992, the ratios had improved a bit, but not enough. A study conducted by the American Association of Engineering Societies said women numbered one in five of undergraduate engineering majors nationwide, while at Stanford the figure was slightly better, at one in four. In certain departments, such as industrial and mechanical engineering, Stanford’s number was a rosier one in three.(27)
Ellen Ochoa, who earned a master’s and doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford, became the first Hispanic woman to go into space in 1993. She flew into space four times on Space Shuttle missions STS-56, STS-66, STS-96, and STS-110, logging nearly 1,000 hours in orbit. She went on to become the eleventh director of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. | NASA.
Despite these many challenges, in 1992 alumna Mae Jemison, MD (BS ’77 chemical engineering) became the first African American woman in space, joining six other astronauts on the shuttle Endeavour and orbiting the planet 127 times during its eight-day trip.(28) A year later, engineering alumna Ellen Ochoa (MS ’81, PhD ’85 electrical engineering) became the first Hispanic American woman to travel in space.(29) And in 1994, Jeannie Marie Flynn Leavitt (MS ’92 aeronautics and astronautics) became the first female fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, graduating first in her class.(30)
A second center for earthquake science
In 1988, Stanford and the U.S. Geological Survey united to open the Center for Research in Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (CREES). Citing the new center’s broader interdisciplinary scope compared to the Blume Earthquake Engineering Center, inaugural director Helmut Krawinkler hoped the center’s work would have “a large impact” in lessening the damage earthquakes cause. Likening the new center to the Center for Integrated Systems he had helped to found years earlier, Gibbons highlighted the center’s cooperation between industry and government.(31)
The founding of CREES proved providential when, in the following year, 1989, the 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake struck with an epicenter approximately 34 miles from campus. The effect of the quake across campus, particularly in engineering, was sobering. Computer science professor Vaughan Pratt, who was helping to plan the department’s new building, wrote, “The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake brought planning to an abrupt halt, quite literally. . . . At around 4:55 pm I asked why the proposed building couldn’t copy the pleasing fractal shapes of the main quad more closely. One of the planners said that those shapes were too susceptible to earthquake damage. At 5:04 pm the quake struck.”(32) Amid a campus-wide shutdown, Professor and Chair of Civil Engineering Haresh Shah, with others from the John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center, led inspections of campus buildings, red-flagging twenty-six as unfit for use and limiting access to another thirty-four.(33) More than two hundred campus structures were damaged, some beyond repair. It would take over a decade to restore them, at a cost of more than $160 million.(34)
Damage to Encina Hall from the Loma Prieta earthquake, 1989. Faculty from the John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center led teams that inspected all campus buildings after the quake hit on October 17. Altogether, more than 200 buildings sustained damage, some beyond repair. Building restoration took more than a decade to complete and cost nearly $160 million. | Special Collections & University Archives.
Damage to a library following the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. More than 750,000 books were salvaged at campus libraries following the quake. The west wing of Green Library was the hardest hit. | David C. Weber/Special Collections & University Archives.
Innovation abounds
Early proponents of artificial intelligence Edward Feigenbaum, professor of computer science, and Dabbala Rajagopal “Raj” Reddy (PhD ’66), an assistant professor at Stanford until 1969, jointly received the 1994 A.M. Turing Award for “pioneering the design and construction of large scale artificial intelligence systems.” At Stanford, Feigenbaum said, he was motivated to shift from studying how humans think to developing the technology for computers to think.(35)
In electrical engineering, graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo founded Yahoo! in 1994 to find and categorize sites on the early World Wide Web. “We were just trying to take all that stuff and organize it to make it useful,” Filo said. With the help of venture funding, Yahoo! would become a major Internet media company.
Electrical engineering graduate students and Yahoo! founders David Filo (left) and Jerry Yang, 1994. They created a website that served as a directory of the nascent World Wide Web. By autumn 1994, the site, run by servers in a campus trailer, handled a million hits a day. The following year, venture funding helped launch Yahoo! into a major internet company. | School of Engineering.
So much had been accomplished in the school’s seventh decade, yet still greater heights lay ahead: world-changing innovations, major leadership changes, new departments, new buildings, new records in fundraising, and a forty-year effort finally lifting off for outer space.
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