The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability is a school at Stanford University focusing on climate change and sustainability. The school also researches many domains of fossil fuel extraction and development. It opened on September 1, 2022, as Stanford's first new school since the School of Humanities and Sciences in 1948. It is considered one of the largest climate change–related schools in the United States.
Arun Majumdar is the school's inaugural dean. Initially, the school will have 90 faculty members. It has plans to add 60 more faculty members over 10 years and construct two new buildings adjacent to the existing Green Earth Sciences and Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy buildings. It incorporated the academic departments and interdisciplinary programs of the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences as well as the Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy. The school also includes the Hopkins Marine Station and a startup accelerator. Despite being Stanford's newest school, it incorporates the university's oldest academic department, geology.
History
The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability was created in part by incorporating the former Stanford University School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences on September 1, 2022. Prior to February 2015 it had been called the School of Earth Sciences.
Stanford University's very first faculty member, John Casper Branner, was a professor of geology, so that earth science is considered the oldest academic foundation of Stanford University. The search for and extraction of natural resources was the major focus of Branner's geology department during that period of Western development. Departments were originally not organized into schools, but this changed with the establishment of the School of Physical Sciences in 1926. In 1946 the School of Mineral Sciences was established, and geology was eventually split into several departments.
Academics and organization
The School of Sustainability has six academic departments and three interdisciplinary programs. The departments are Civil and Environmental Engineering (a joint department with the School of Engineering); Earth System Science; Energy Science and Engineering; Geological Sciences; Geophysics; and Oceans. The interdisciplinary programs are the Earth Systems Program; the Sustainability Science and Practice Program; and the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER). Research and teaching span a wide range of disciplines. The interdisciplinary programs, in conjunction with the six departments, reach out to all other schools on the Stanford campus as well as the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and state and federal policy makers.
The school's library, Branner Earth Sciences Library, contains over 125,000 volumes, a large map collection, and Stanford's GIS lab for ongoing GIS reference and research consultation.
Programs
The school offers both undergrad and graduate degrees. The majority of the students are graduate students, with a large contingent of coterminal master's degree recipients from the Earth Systems interdisciplinary program. The school attracts students from all six of the inhabited continents, and continues to be one of the most ethnically diverse Earth Sciences programs in the US. As of 2022 about 4.0% of Stanford's graduate students (approximately 360) are in the school and 1.4% of the undergraduates (approximately 100).
Research
Research programs in the SES continue to make groundbreaking discoveries about the planet, its environment, and human interactions. As a result, there are a number of industry funded-research groups (i.e.Stanford Exploration Project, Stanford Wave Physics Laboratory, Stanford Rock Physics and Borehole Geophysics Project) that implement student-led research for industry implementation.
Industrial Affiliate Programs
The Doerr School includes 14 industry-funded affiliate programs, including the Stanford Exploration Project, the Stanford Natural Gas Initiative, and the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage. The affiliate programs cover many areas of research, including oil and gas exploration, oil field monitoring and development, hydraulic fracturing, natural gas extraction, methane leak detection, carbon capture and sequestration, and enhanced oil recovery.