At the Faculty Senate meeting on Thursday, co-chairs of the area steering groups gave an update on the long-range planning process and provided insights into how they reviewed and analyzed the more than 2,800 proposals that came in from across the campus community and from alumni.

The senate also heard a report on Stanford’s support for its growing population of postdoctoral scholars. Presenters outlined some of the challenges the scholars face and offered recommendations for strengthening the postdoctoral experience.

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The Research group reviewed a wide variety of proposals on “what” topics of research Stanford should be pursuing, said Rob MacCoun, co-chair and professor of law. But there were also many “who” and “how” proposals – who does research and how their careers can be fostered, and how research activities might be organized in new ways, through new models of pop-up centers or virtual centers, or through taking advantage of shared facilities, data and resources. One common theme across many proposals, MacCoun said, was “a sense that we could be doing more to influence public policy with the research and scholarship we do, and that more people should play more of an active role in that.”

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The Engagement Beyond Our University group received “vastly divergent inputs,” said co-chair Juliet Brodie, associate dean for clinical education at Stanford Law School. There were ideas such as opening a Stanford campus in Bangalore, doubling the size of the undergraduate class, solving the affordability crisis in the Bay Area and ending world disease, she said. Many proposals were truly externally facing, suggesting expanded service opportunities or online education offerings, Brodie said. But hundreds of proposals were about issues that seemed to be internal yet were directed to the “beyond Stanford” group – such as affordability, sustainability and inclusion. The group concluded, she said, that “Stanford, as the global leader that it is, is sort of intrinsically engaged beyond Stanford. When Stanford acts, people watch.”