From Rice to Stanford

Shortly after he was appointed president of Rice University in Houston seven years ago, Chemist Kenneth Pitzer was asked whether he planned to pattern his school after Caltech or M.I.T. Neither, replied Caltech Graduate Pitzer. "I intend to model it on Stanford."

He was as good as his word. And he was so successful at building a Texas copy of the school he considers one of the best in the world that Stanford took particular notice. Last week Stanford paid Pitzer the ultimate compliment: it brought him to Palo Alto to succeed President I.E. Wallace Sterling, 62, who is retiring after 18 years on the job.

Stanford's student leaders were not pleased. They complained that they had not had any voice in the selection, and Student Body President Denis Hayes, who argued that Pitzer had "no recent experience with race relations or student relations," led a move for an unofficial student referendum on the appointment. It is not likely to come to much--especially if Stanford's students take the trouble to look up Pitzer's record at Rice. There he fought successfully to remove an admissions ban on Negro students from the trust agreement under which the university was founded, and he ordered racial integration of the off-campus faculty club. He was easily accessible to student leaders and appointed students to academic committees. To antiwar activists, Pitzer's main drawback may be his 2 1/2 years (1949 to 1951) as a weapons-oriented director of research for the AEC and his current service on the board of the Rand Corp.

Under Sterling, Stanford successfully conducted a $113 million fund drive and solidified its position as one of the best-financed schools in the nation.

More significant, the American Council on Education now rates the overall quality of Stanford's graduate education third in the nation, behind Berkeley and Harvard, with particular strength in engineering, psychology, biochemistry, zoology and physics. Its law school is gaining stature under Dean Bayless Manning, and its medical school is at the forefront of heart surgery through work directed by Dr. Norman E. Shumway Jr.

If Stanford's quality gave him a high goal to work toward when he was at Rice, Pitzer is no less ambitious now. His aim, he says, is "to make Stanford as strong as Harvard and M.I.T. -- put together."

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