Teacher In 2009, Condoleezza Rice returned to Palo Alto to be a ‘happy Stanford faculty member’ and political science professor. ‘My future is with my students at Stanford,’ she said.

also are other subjects that will round out the total person. We need to support all of these things as part of educational reform.

How do you learn best? When you need to acquire new knowledge, how do you approach it? I am an academic, so my first instinct is to research a topic. It is a lot easier now with all the available electronic search tools. I try to keep a baseline of knowledge about issues that I am interested in. For example, I read broadly about energy and eco- nomic policy. When I try to understand something specific, I delve into it by reading several good articles for starters. I am an oral learner and have always been as

much an oral learner as a reader. That is unusual for academics. I like to go to a lecture and have people come and talk to me. When I was secretary,

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I would ask, for example, to have the officer from the Vietnam desk talk to me about what is going on in Vietnam.

Clearly, social media and the ability to connect with others electronically grow daily. Are you engaged in social media? I am on Facebook and Twitter. I tweet about important events and share information on Face- book so my followers know what I am doing with my life. I also try to have fun with social media.

One of the interesting things happening at universi- ties is the explosion of online learning. Do you think this method is as valuable as face-to-face? Surely, there is some information that can be imparted online — basic information can be pre- sented online, but face-to-face experiences are

JUNE 2013 PCMA CONVENE 73

LINDA A. CICERO, STANFORD NEWS SERVICE