Holiday message, 2022
Dear Friends of Stanford Digital Education,

Each Friday night, around the dinner table, my family plays a conversational game, “Rose, Thorn, Bud.” My two small kids, my wife, and I go around in a circle, sharing something good that happened that week (the rose), something unfortunate (the thorn), and something we’re looking forward to (the bud). It is equally an exercise in listening, in trying to make sense of what happens to us, and in putting those events in context. Amazingly, most of the time, it works.
So as we bring our first year of Stanford Digital Education to a close and prepare for what is to come in 2023, here are my rose, thorn, and bud for our team:
My “rose” is our collaboration with Structured Liberal Education (SLE), which began in January and has continued to blossom through the year. Our team now works with dozens of internal and external partners, who collectively make up a beautiful and diverse bouquet. But the “SLE x Digital Education” collaboration stands out because it’s so unexpected. “Great Books” programs like SLE are not known for their embrace of innovation. More often they’re associated with traditionalist teaching and nostalgia for conversations around an antique seminar table. Not so SLE, which was the first humanities program at Stanford to join our college pathways partnership with the National Education Equity Lab. Our shared experiment in making classical texts, close reading, and critical thinking more widely available to low-income students has already borne fruit at Uncommon Schools in Brooklyn, New York, where we produced a moving video featuring Greg Watkins of SLE, Mike Taubman of Uncommon Schools (a Stanford alum who is now a Stanford Digital Education Fellow), and their remarkable students sharing their experiences of learning with these gifted educators. Together with Greg, Mike, and others, we’re figuring out how to redesign and scale that seminar table, and make seats available to bright minds who have not in the past been invited.
My “thorn” is the immense ongoing psychological burden of COVID-19 on our community. The stress of the early pandemic was highlighted in our report, published this fall, “Lessons from Teaching and Learning at Stanford During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” But students, faculty, and staff are still suffering, and the toll on mental health may be rising, even as the risk to physical health has declined. I fear the desire to “move on,” and the collective amnesia that accompanies it, only makes things worse. Our report identifies “supporting the whole student” as one of the important lessons of pandemic teaching and learning. We have to find ways to preserve that idea and design for it in all our programs, online and on campus.
My “bud” is our university-wide strategic plan, which will come to fruition in mid-2023. We began this process this fall with four design workshops, which have engaged dozens of colleagues from across the university. Through the winter and spring 2023 quarters we will welcome more voices to share ideas and feedback. The goal is to galvanize our whole community around a shared vision for digital learning at Stanford. During the pandemic, the need was clear, and thousands of faculty, staff, and students rallied around the singular need for academic continuity. Coming out of the pandemic, there are more options and long-term choices to be made. To make the best use of the resources we have, the newfound skills of our faculty, and the educational needs of society, we must make those choices carefully and inclusively. Our strategic planning process is the means to that end.
Thank you for the wisdom and strength you have shared with us this year. We are grateful for our colleagues, our community, and our many friends around the world for learning and growing with us.
Sincerely,
Matthew Rascoff
Published December 16, 2022
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