With the launch and growth of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, the university is embracing the opportunity to make sure that every undergraduate Stanford student can get a world-class education in sustainability.
To that end, the school has formed a working group of faculty, staff, and students to identify successful sustainability offerings and areas for enhancement in undergraduate education and scholarship. The group is chaired by Kathryn Ann “Kam” Moler, professor of applied physics and of physics in the School of Humanities and Sciences and of energy science and engineering in the Doerr School of Sustainability. Moler served as transition dean for the Doerr School of Sustainability in 2022 and was the university’s vice provost and dean of research from 2018 to 2023.
“Our goal is to ensure that every Stanford undergraduate student has the opportunity to receive a world-class education in sustainability, regardless of their field of study,” said Arun Majumdar, dean of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “Addressing the challenges of sustainability requires insights and expertise from nearly every field of practice. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment, and we want each of our undergraduates to have the opportunity to learn and engage.”
Majumdar identified prospective group members in consultation with the university’s provost, president, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE), and PhD student Anela Arifi, a member of the school’s Advisory Council. The group includes two students and six faculty from across the school, in addition to Professor Dan Edelstein, a faculty director for Stanford’s Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) program required for first-year undergraduates, and Shari Palmer, senior associate vice provost in the office of the VPUE.
“It’s important to me that we honor all of the different journeys that everybody is on, whatever their individual aspirations and pathways are,” Moler said. “Can we make sure that they are having an excellent experience when they’re engaging with sustainability education? And can we give them the opportunity to go one step deeper?”
This is an all-hands-on-deck moment, and we want each of our undergraduates to have the opportunity to learn and engage.”Arun MajumdarDean of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
The group convened for the first time last week and will continue to meet weekly, with the goal of proposing concrete options for community feedback by the end of winter quarter. The charge was crafted with input from university leaders and department chairs, and the members will be soliciting feedback using a broad definition of sustainability as “a world where humans and nature thrive in concert and perpetuity.”
In addition to looking at existing courses and programs and identifying gaps, the group will explore the aspirations of faculty and students. The group will also consider what it would take to meet students where they are – from leveraging existing courses and expanding experiential opportunities to integrating student credentials and supporting faculty. After a period of community input, the findings will be presented for consideration in educational planning to the provost, VPUE, Majumdar, and Lynn Hildemann, senior associate dean for education in the Doerr School of Sustainability.
Varun Shirhatti, senior coterminal student in Earth systems and one of the two student representatives in the group, said it was fascinating to hear the faculty members’ perspectives “on the other side of undergraduate education” during the first meeting. They made a point of recognizing the importance of student perspectives in this process, he noted.
“In a lot of the communities I’m currently part of, there have been conversations in the last year or so about what it means to be in the sustainability space at Stanford, and how it’s not just the people in Earth systems who are in the sustainability space. I have friends who are studying CS or data science and really want to do work related to sustainability,” Shirhatti said. “I think it’s becoming more widely accepted that sustainability is not siloed away from other disciplines, and I’m really interested in trying to bring those worlds together.”
The working group intends to build on past efforts and develop recommendations for improving sustainability education aligned with the school’s mission and the evolving landscape of interdisciplinary education in sustainability. Regardless of major or career path, meaningful knowledge and experience in sustainability will be valuable for navigating a world with intersecting environmental issues like waste production, air pollution, biodiversity loss, natural disasters, water and food scarcity, and more.
“A lot of students and peers that I talk to have an almost a negative attitude toward sustainability as a corporate term, sometimes because they see it as greenwashing or just a way to somehow capitalize on climate change,” said Cayden Luby, coterminal master’s student in civil and environmental engineering. “Student perspectives are so critical for this – especially those who are more skeptical.”
“I believe very deeply in the wisdom of the community – we need to get input from people, and we also need to foster discourse between people,” Moler said. “There are many ways to think about sustainability, and the value of having everybody think about it together is tremendous.”
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Moler is also vice president for SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Marvin Chodorow Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S). Edelstein is also the William H. Bonsall Professor in French in H&S. Hildemann is also a professor of civil and environmental engineering.
This story was originally published by the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.