"I never knew I could study that."

A CS major who identifies as gay sifts through the private diaries of Ric Weiland, early Microsoft engineer and longtime LGBTQ activist. A first-gen student draws upon their mother tongue to work through Chinese coolie labor contracts in 19th-century Cuba, all written in Spanish.

These are some of the hundreds of stories of Stanford undergrads who gained first-hand experience in the rigor, thrill, and rewarding tedium of research—and, just as importantly, a feeling of purpose, connection, and belonging in their Stanford undergrad career that so many of our students report lacking. These were not students in small classes, moreover, but large lecture courses with dozens and sometimes hundreds of classmates: not the place one tends to find “belonging.”

Stanford historian Tom Mullaney will discuss Massively Multiplayer Humanities, a program now in its seventh year, designed to upstream, scale-up, and diversify the hands-on research experience within the Humanities and Social Sciences.