Stanford University
PA-3: Inclusive and Participatory Governance

STUDENTS
Students serve on over 50 University Committees, including five committees of Stanford's Board of Trustees. These include the Board of Trustees Committee on Alumni and External Affairs, the Board of Trustees Committee on Development, the Board of Trustees Committee on Finance, the Board of Trustees Committee on Land and Buildings, and the Board of Trustees Committee on Globalization. Additionally, all Board of Trustee members are Stanford alumni.

The Nominations Commission (NomCom), which is a branch of the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) and is composed of 7 students from the undergraduate and graduate populations, is responsible for nominating students as voting members to university committees, Stanford Board of Trustee committees, and the Stanford Student Enterprises board of directors. NomCom has a direct impact on issues across the university through the students they nominate to committees. The term for the 7 NomCom members begins at the start of winter quarter and runs through the end of the next fall quarter. https://associatedstudents.stanford.edu/leadership/nominations-commission

The Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) is over 110 years old and is the only organization at Stanford of which every student is automatically a member. The ASSU provides funding to over 500 volunteer student organizations (VSO). These organizations in turn provide the majority of cultural, political, recreational and religious programming for the entire campus. The financial independence that the ASSU affords student organizations is one of the founding principles of the organization.

The ASSU also works to represent the interests, needs and perspectives of Stanford students at every level of decision making within the university. They advocate on behalf of Stanford students on issues such as the cost of living, diversity, student life and student activities. Each year the ASSU strives to innovate new projects and create new services that will improve the quality of student life at Stanford.

The ASSU is represented by legislative bodies (the Undergraduate Senate and the Graduate Student Council), an Executive branch, an Enterprise Component, and many other bodies. Each body handles a respective function but with significant overlaps. Loosely:
• The legislative branch facilitates the operation of student groups, managing the funding process for almost any event on campus
• The executive branch holds the improvement of student life and welfare as paramount, through self-initiated programming and support of individual student endeavors
• Stanford Student Enterprises ensures the long-term financial viability and independence of the Association and facilitates numerous student jobs and organizational reimbursements

Visit these sites for more details about ASSU's legislative bodies:
https://associatedstudents.stanford.edu/undergraduate-senate
https://associatedstudents.stanford.edu/gsc
https://associatedstudents.stanford.edu/executive
http://sse.stanford.edu/

STAFF
The University Management Group (UMG) is comprised of all administrative deans at the university and is charged with making decisions regarding the university's business processes. All staff members at Stanford are encouraged to participate in the Team for Improving Productivity at Stanford (TIPS), which reports to the University Management Group. At the least, administrative deans from 27 departments on campus are required to appoint staff members to this team, which is an open forum that:
1) Serves as a catalyst for communicating information to all staff.
2) Collaborates, raises awareness, influences and provides advice to enhance productivity across campus.
3) Supports successful and effective development and implementation of business processes.
4) Provides opportunities for leadership development to all Stanford staff.

The objectives of the TIPS group are to:
1) Provide a forum for staff who seek information and advice about Stanford programs and services.
2) Provide an opportunity for open discussion and the exchange of ideas about topics of interest.
3) Stay current and be informed about business operations and communicate information to and from business process owners and end users.
4) Provide a voice for user-level input and constructive feedback through identification, development, and implementation of University business processes.
5) Partner with other University groups in the identification, development, and implementation of policies, processes, and systems supporting Stanford business practices.
6) Engage staff to participate in Working Groups* focused on specific business processes, policies, and tools.
7) Bridge communication between staff and University Management Group (UMG).

The UMG/TIPS Liaison from each group is responsible for incorporating the feedback from the TIPS group by attending meetings, reviewing agendas, and soliciting additional input where necessary during the process of business and system development.

Additionally, Stanford embarked on a long-range planning effort in 2017 organized around key conceptual categories: education, research, our community, and beyond Stanford. The long-range planning effort began with the solicitation of proposals from all campus community members--including students, staff and faculty--between April and June 2017. A Sustainability Design team including faculty and staff will provide recommended actions to follow through on the proposals received. More information on the planning effort can be found here: https://planning.stanford.edu/
A total of 2,800 ideas were submitted, which were analyzed by area steering groups and synthesized into white papers in particular topic areas. The white paper on sustainability can be found here: https://planning.stanford.edu/papers/joint-paper-sustainability
After evaluation of the common themes by campus executive leadership, a vision for the university was announced in spring 2018. As part of this vision, Stanford announced two sustainability-related goals: 80% reduction in emissions from the 2011 baseline by 2025 and zero waste by 2030. More information on Stanford's full vision can be found here: https://ourvision.stanford.edu/ Design teams comprising Stanford community members--including staff and faculty--were formed by topic area in Fall 2018 to execute Stanford's vision, including a Sustainability Design Team.

FACULTY
The Faculty Senate is composed of 57 voting members serving staggered 2 year terms and 16 ex officio members. Standing guest seats are reserved for the student representatives, the Registrar, the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, the Vice Provost for Student Affairs, the Vice Provost of Faculty Development and Diversity and the Emeriti Council representative. The Chair, Vice Chair and Steering Committee members are elected from within the Senate body.

Members of the Academic Council are eligible to serve on the Senate and are placed in units based on school and discipline. Senators are elected annually by the Hare System of Proportional Representation; all Academic Council faculty may vote for faculty within their units. Elected Senators serve as free agents, not as representatives of a particular program, unit or school. The number of seats per unit is allocated relative to the size of the school and disciplines within that unit.

The Steering Committee is elected by the incoming Senate from a slate of Senators nominated by the Committee on Committees. One of the Steering Committee's first tasks is to appoint members of the incoming Senate to serve on the Committee on Committees. Each Board of Trustees subcommittee has at least one faculty member appointed via the Committee on Committees and the Nominations Committee.

Full Professors in the Academic Council are also elected to the Advisory Board, which handles the promotion and tenure of Academic Council faculty.

As mentioned above, Stanford faculty also participate in the newly formed Design Teams that will develop plans for execution of Stanford's new vision as part of the long-range planning process initiated in 2017.

COMMUNITY-CAMPUS ADVISORS, OFFICE OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

In March 2020, President Tessier-Lavigne launched Stanford’s Office of Community Engagement (OCE) to drive more purposeful engagement between the campus and the communities Stanford touches. Fueled by optimism, ingenuity and a collaborative spirit to operate across unit boundaries, OCE leverages Stanford’s people and programs to advance collaboration with leaders in local communities. See a details from a "Q&A" Stanford’s engagement with the community" here: https://news.stanford.edu/report/2021/01/06/qa-stanfords-engagement-community/

In its initial year, OCE conducted stakeholder interviews with constituents on and off campus, sponsored an independent landscape analysis of local nonprofit leaders’ perceptions, and learned about strategies at peer institutions. These efforts resulted in a year of iteration which shaped three primary roles for the office:

To identify and champion opportunities to embed engagement deeper into Stanford’s culture and practice.
To serve as a bi-directional doorway for the university, showcasing campus resources for exposure, curating requests from members of the public seeking to connect with Stanford, and facilitating connections for faculty and staff, all while listening and learning from neighbors about how the university can best contribute.
To facilitate and deepen campus-community collaboration by supporting a network of campus community engagement hubs. These hubs are the offices, centers, institutes, and social impact labs that regularly engage with outside communities as part of education, research, culture and recreation activities.

OCE’s work is not to create new programs, but to catalyze coordination with current ones in ways that are more meaningful to neighbors and more purposeful in tackling mutual social and environmental problems.

OCE’s inaugural Community-Campus Advisors was established in November 2021 to provide honest counsel and ensure that OCE makes strides toward our desired impacts. The group meets three times a year to provide input to leadership.

Advisors

Ralph Richard Banks, Faculty Director, Stanford Center for Racial Justice; Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law; Professor (by courtesy), Stanford School of Education

Juliet Brodie, Peter E. Haas Faculty Director, Haas Center for Public Service; director, Stanford Community Law Clinic; Professor of Law

Gina Dalma, Executive Vice President, Community Action, Policy and Strategy, Silicon Valley Community Foundation

Mark Duggan, The Trione Director and Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR); The Wayne and Jodi Cooperman Professor of Economics

Bernadine Chuck Fong, Acting President, Foothill College; Director of Leadership Initiatives and Special Projects, Office of Vice Provost for Graduate Education, Stanford University

Chantal Gaines, Deputy City Manager, City of Palo Alto; formerly Assistant to the City Administrator, City of Oakland

Lisa Goldman Rosas, Faculty Director, School of Medicine Office of Community Engagement and Stanford Cancer Institute Community Outreach and Engagement Program; Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health and the Department of Medicine, Division of Primary Care and Population Health, School of Medicine

Jorge Tapias, Vice President of Business Development/Partnership, Rev.com; Board Member, UrsaLeo

Katherine Toy, Deputy Secretary for Access, California Natural Resources Agency. Formerly Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy

Christine Tsang, Executive Director of the Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab (RegLab), Stanford Law School; formerly the Director of Customer Success & User Research at Everlaw, a legal tech startup applying machine learning to litigation

Jeremy Weinstein, Faculty Director, Stanford Impact Labs; Professor of Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research; Faculty co-director of the Immigration Policy Lab and the Data for Development Initiative

Ex Officio: Martin Shell, Vice President and Chief External Relations Officer, Stanford University

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COMMUNITY BOARD ON PUBLIC SAFETY

The Community Board on Public Safety was established to identify, make recommendations, and address issues involving the safety, security, and quality of life of students, staff, and faculty — reimagining public safety on the Stanford campus. The Board is charged with fostering trust, relationships, communication, and transparency between the Department of Public Safety and the wider campus community, as well as to provide an avenue for regular community feedback and counsel. The Board will prepare an annual report to the President, Vice President and General Counsel, and Chief of Police.

As noted in the Charge to the Community Board on Public Safety:
- One responsibility the Board is charged with is to promote "accessibility and transparency to the campus community and the general public by providing open meetings, forums, and listening sessions to discuss experiences of community members as they pertain to community safety and community-centered approaches to improving and/or maintaining community safety."
- Additionally, "Each year, at least one meeting of the Board shall be publicized and open to all members of the University community and its neighbors. This meeting will provide an opportunity to report to the community on public safety at Stanford. It will also provide an opportunity for University community members or neighbors to offer input, ask questions, or voice concerns about Stanford’s public safety."

See details on the charge to the Board here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1St9_gAsVYp0cR3m5iHxm92DeeYAPW1Jf/view

See general information about past and future meetings and activities related to the Community Board on Public Safety here: https://president.stanford.edu/university-governance/community-board-on-public-safety/