Stanford has submitted a formal “expression of interest” to New York City to build a satellite campus. The proposed campus, which is slated to be located on Roosevelt Island in the East River, would incorporate both applied sciences research and graduate education.
“The campus will build on Stanford’s strengths,” said Jim Plummer, dean of the School of Engineering. “Our goal is to try and create something analogous to Silicon Valley in New York City.”
Stanford is just one among a number of institutions competing to fulfill Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s vision of a new science and technology center in New York City. In sum, 18 proposals were submitted to the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). These proposals represent 27 institutions, some of which are engaged in collaborative efforts.
The list includes Abo Akademi University in Finland, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Columbia University, Cornell University and Purdue University.
“It looks like [Stanford’s] is one of the more substantive proposals,” said University spokeswoman Lisa Lapin.
If selected, Stanford’s New York campus would not only provide an opportunity for education and research, but would also enable students to start companies and take technologies into existing companies on the East Coast — in short, to bring the innovative spirit of the West Coast to the East Coast.
With an initial focus on information technology, such as computer science and electrical engineering, the New York campus would draw especially from the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, the Graduate School of Business and the Technology Ventures Program. Stanford hopes to later expand the campus to include fields like green technology and biomedical engineering.
“Stanford envisions a strategic partnership that will blend strengths of a great research university with those of a great center of commerce and creativity — and generate significant and sustainable economic development,” reads the text of the Stanford proposal, ambitiously named “Stanford and New York City: Silicon Valley II.”
If Stanford wins the competition, it will begin construction in 2013 and convene the first classes in 2015 with 440 masters and doctoral students. This first phase of development is expected to cost $250 million, paid for by Stanford itself and supplemented by the city of New York and philanthropists. With a projected overall cost of as much as $1 billion over 25 years of construction, the current target once the project is completed is to enroll 2,200 graduate students and to hire 100 faculty members.
“The New York City campus would not really be a remote separate campus, but a piece of Stanford which is closely tied to the campus here,” Plummer said. “The programs and classes would be very much the same, but the students and faculty would just be living and studying in the New York area.”
The New York campus would be closely integrated with Stanford’s main campus in Palo Alto, relying on distance education and telepresence systems to connect the two locations. According to Plummer, the University’s end goal is for masters and doctoral students in New York to never have to set foot on the Palo Alto campus.
Stanford also hopes to explore ways to involve undergraduate students. Much like the current campuses in the Bing Overseas Studies Program and in Washington, D.C., the New York campus may become a site where undergraduates can spend an academic quarter.
Plummer said the site would serve as a way to answer three important intellectual questions.
“Can a 21st century university be geographically distributed?” he said. “Are the distance education and telepresence systems enough to make a geographically separated campus look and feel like one campus? Is it possible to create Silicon Valley in a different place?”
Of four possible locations, Stanford chose the Roosevelt Island site as best suited for its purposes. Located in the middle of the East River, it has the advantage of being close to Queens, Manhattan and Brooklyn. It will serve as the home for academic and research space and provide housing for students and faculty members.
On Apr. 14, President John Hennessy will present and discuss Stanford’s proposal at his annual address to the Academic Council. He will be joined by Plummer, Jennifer Widom, computer science department chair, and Robert Reidy, vice president for land, buildings and real estate. The address will begin at 3:30 p.m. in the NVIDIA Auditorium of the Huang Engineering Center.