men and undergraduate advising,
will also enroll in
the MFA poetry
program at the
California College
of the Arts in
San Francisco.
Harry Elam,
vice provost for
undergraduate
education,
praised Lythcott-
Haims for her
work in expand-
ing undergraduate advising
and for her community build-
ing. She won a 2010 Dinkel-
spiel Award for contributions
to undergraduate education.
There will be a national search
for a successor.
After graduating from
Stanford in 1989, Lythcott-
Haims got a law degree at
Harvard and practiced corpo-
rate law before becoming a
Stanford Law School associ-
ate dean in 1998. A mother of
two, she’s planning a book
based on her experiences as
dean, especially the changing
role of parents in the lives of
college students.
Kramer “pioneered a new
vision of legal education and
then oversaw the creation of a
physical plant capable of supporting the new program.”
Etchemendy will conduct the
search for a successor.
HIT TING THE BOOKS: Writing
is her new passion.
DEAN JULIE DEPARTS
At Admit Weekends over the
years, her inner refrain has
been, “Folks, you’re not in
Cambridge, you’re not in New
Haven, you’re not in Princeton, you’re in Palo Alto, and we
do things differently here.”
Now Julie Lythcott-Haims, a
charismatic University administrator for 14 years, will be
doing something different:
pursuing a writing career.
“Dean Julie,” the associate vice
provost for undergraduate
education and dean of fresh-
FOUNDATION HIRES
KRAMER
Larry Kramer, since 2004 the
dean of Stanford Law School,
will become president of the
William (’ 34, Engr. ’ 39) and
Flora Hewlett Foundation
on September 1. The philanthropical organization, based
in Menlo Park, focuses on
social and environmental
action and has an endowment
of more than $7 billion.
At Stanford, Kramer
spearheaded greater commitment to public service and
public interest law and championed deeper integration
between Law and the other
six schools. In his tenure, law
education has emphasized
team-oriented and multidisciplinary approaches and
expanded clinical training.
Stanford Acting Pres-
ident and Provost John
Etchemendy, PhD ’82, said
ENERGY INNOVATION
ON TAP
Sootless diesel, hydrogen
production from plant sugars, and a “living” fuel cell in
which microbes make methane are among seven research
efforts granted $8.4 million
from the Global Climate and
Energy Project at Stanford.
“These awards support
fundamental research on
a broad range of potentially game-changing energy
technologies,” says project
director Sally Benson. An
industry partnership with
ExxonMobil, GE, Schlum-berger, Toyota and DuPont,
the project has supported 93
programs with funding totaling about $113 million since
its launch in 2002. n
As class assignments go, the final requirement for students in Introduction to
Mechatronics was its own special form of March Madness. While more than
200 raucous spectators cheered them on, 16 teams competed to see whose
robot would be crowned champion.
Dubbed $uperPAC Monday, a nod to this election year primary season,
the session featured tabletop robots such as Bit Romney and (the eventual
winner) Michelle Botman. The robots’ challenge: collect tokens from a
“SuperPAC” zone and deposit them into five boxes—designed to seesaw—
representing major primary states. As the tokens accumulated, the seesaws
tipped, indicating a primary “victory.” The robots that won the most primaries
advanced to succeeding rounds.
The competition has become an annual rite of spring for mechanical
engineering students who spend the quarter learning how to program a
microprocessor, connect sensors to motors and “piece by piece learn all of
the elements of a robot,” says mechanical engineering professor Tom Kenny.
Friends and family members were invited, producing a standing-room-
only crowd in the Peterson Engineering Lab. “This proves engineering can be
fun,” added Kenny, but the students didn’t seem to need persuading. n
My Robot Is Better Than Yours
