Plans for Denning House, the new home of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program, are moving forward thanks to concept and site approval by the Stanford Board of Trustees this week.

Denning House, which will be located near Lake Lagunita and next to Roble Hall, has been made possible by a gift from trustee Chair Steven Denning and his wife, Roberta. The site is currently a gravel parking lot located off Lomita Drive.

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The trustees also heard from Stanford faculty as part of what Denning called “an attempt to educate trustees in the rich research and capabilities around the university.” The presentations focused on:

• Interdisciplinary education, which was given by Dan McFarland, professor of education and of organizational behavior, who talked about the productivity that has resulted from the enhancement of interdisciplinary institutes at Stanford. Denning said McFarland’s presentation reinforced the efficacy of the vision Hennessy had in encouraging interdisciplinary teaching and research.
• Intellectual property law and policy, a presentation that featured faculty experts from Stanford Law School. Faculty members Mark Lemley, Paul Goldstein and Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, as well as Law School Dean Elizabeth Magill, gave the board an explanation of patent law and the evolution of technology transfer in colleges and universities.
• Social and education inequality, which featured education Professor Sean Reardon. Reardon is an expert in poverty and inequality in education who shared his research, which relied on large data bases, with trustees. In his most recent research, Reardon and his colleagues reviewed more than 200 million test scores to spotlight communities with the nation’s worst achievement gaps.