Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

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.[1] It opened on September 1, 2022,[2] 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.[3]

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.[3][4] 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.[5] Prior to February 2015 it had been called the School of Earth Sciences.[6]

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.[7] 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.[8]

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).[9] 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[10] and 1.4% of the undergraduates (approximately 100).[11]

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.[12] The affiliate programs cover many areas of research, including oil and gas exploration,[13] oil field monitoring and development,[14] hydraulic fracturing, natural gas extraction, methane leak detection,[15] carbon capture and sequestration, and enhanced oil recovery.[16]

San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD)

The San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) is one of three components of the Earthscope Project, funded by the National Science Foundation in conjunction with the USGS and NASA. The SAFOD site is located just north of the town of Parkfield, California. The SAFOD main hole was drilled to a depth of ~3.4 km in 2004 and 2005, crossing the San Andreas near a region of the fault where repeating Magnitude 2 earthquakes are generated.

A goal of this project is to install instruments to record data near the source of these earthquakes. In addition to the installation of these instruments, rock and fluid samples were continuously collected during the drilling process, and will also be used to analyze changes in geochemistry and mechanical properties around the fault zone. The project will lead to a better understanding of the processes that control the behavior of the San Andreas fault, and it is hoped that the development of instrumentation and analytic methods will help evaluate the possibility of earthquake prediction which is of primary importance for earthquake engineering.

The project is co-PIed by Bill Ellsworth and Steve Hickman of the USGS, and Stanford geophysics faculty member and alum Mark Zoback. Zoback's research in the SES focuses on stress and crustal mechanics. His students are heavily engaged in on-going research in the Global Climate and Energy Project.

Funding

Stanford has raised $1.69 billion for the establishment of the school, including $1.1 billion from venture capitalist John Doerr and his wife Ann, after whom the school is named. The Doerrs' gift was the largest ever given to a university for the establishment of a new school and the second largest gift to an academic institution; it makes the Doerrs the top funders of climate change research and scholarship. Other donors include Yahoo! cofounders Jerry Yang and David Filo and their spouses, Akiko Yamazaki and Angela Filo.[3][4] The Doerr School has also received funding from ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, Shell, Saudi Aramco, Petrobras, and many other oil and gas companies via the Doerr School's industry affiliates program[17] and the Precourt Institute.[18][19] Dean Arun Majumdar has indicated that the Doerr School is open to continuing to accept funding from and to work with fossil fuel companies,[3][20] drawing criticism from Stanford students,[21][22] faculty,[23] staff,[24] and alumni.[25]

Funder Influence on Research

Some of the Doerr School's affiliate programs, including the Natural Gas Initiative, provide funders with seats on their advisory or governance boards, give them access to unpublished research, and allow representatives from funders to directly mentor students.[26] The school allowed representatives from three of its oil and gas funders, Shell, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies, to give input into the school's first Flagship Destination.[27]

Rankings

As of 2014 then then-School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences was ranked as the third best Earth Sciences program by the U.S. News & World Report as of 2014. (Caltech was ranked number 1, MIT number 2, and UC Berkeley was tied with Stanford for number 3.)[28]

References
  1. "Industrial Affiliates Programs | Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability". sustainability.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2023-09-13.
  2. Adams, Amy (May 4, 2022). "Arun Majumdar named inaugural dean of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability" (Press release). Stanford University. Retrieved May 4, 2022.
  3. Gelles, David (May 4, 2022). "John Doerr Gives Stanford $1.1 Billion for Climate School". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 4, 2022.
  4. Adams, Amy; Cole, Anneke (May 4, 2022). "Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, university's first new school in 70 years, will accelerate solutions to global climate crisis" (Press release). Stanford University. Retrieved May 4, 2022.
  5. "Inaugural dean of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability". 4 May 2022.
  6. "Stanford renames Earth Sciences school to convey the breadth of its research and teaching". Stanford Report. 11 February 2015. Retrieved 9 January 2016.
  7. "Branner Earth Sciences Library & Map Collections: History". Stanford Libraries. Stanford University. Retrieved 9 January 2016.
  8. "Guide to SU Schools". Stanford Historical Society. 20 January 2013. Archived from the original on 20 January 2013. Retrieved 2 January 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  9. "Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability". Stanford Bulletin. Retrieved 16 June 2023.
  10. "Graduate Profile: 2015-2016". Stanford Facts. Stanford University. Retrieved 9 January 2016.
  11. "Undergraduate Profile: 2015-2016". Stanford Facts. Stanford University. Retrieved 9 January 2016.
  12. "Industrial Affiliates Programs | Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability". sustainability.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2023-09-13.
  13. "Stanford Earth imaging Project". sepd8.sites.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2023-09-13.
  14. "Smart Fields Consortium". smartfields.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2023-09-13.
  15. Why a Natural Gas Initiative?, retrieved 2023-09-13
  16. "Stanford Center for Carbon Storage". sccs.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2023-09-13.
  17. "Industrial Affiliates Programs | Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability". sustainability.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2022-09-15.
  18. "Big Oil Entanglements at the Doerr School of Sustainability". Coalition for a True School of Sustainability. Retrieved 2022-09-15.
  19. "Stanford's Strategic Energy Alliance funds six new energy research projects for a total of $5.1 million | Energy". energy.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2022-07-15.
  20. "Message from Arun Majumdar: Looking forward | Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability". sustainability.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2022-07-15.
  21. Scott-Buechler, Celina; Statler, Ada (2022-06-21). "Stanford's New School of Sustainability Is a Gift to Fossil Fuel Companies". ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2022-07-15.
  22. Andreoni, Manuela (2022-05-24). "A feud over fossil fuel money". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-07-15.
  23. "Open Letter on the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability". Google Docs. Retrieved 2022-07-15.
  24. "From the community | Should any fossil-fuel company qualify for funding Stanford's School of Sustainability? A response to Dean Majumdar's letter". The Stanford Daily. 2022-06-03. Retrieved 2022-07-15.
  25. "From the community | Reject fossil fuel donations". The Stanford Daily. 2022-05-30. Retrieved 2022-07-15.
  26. "Natural Gas Initiative". ngi.stanford.edu. 2023-09-28. Retrieved 2023-09-13.
  27. Lee, Stephanie (May 4, 2023). "Big Oil Helped Shape Stanford's Latest Climate-Research Focus". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Archived from the original on May 30, 2023. Retrieved September 13, 2023.
  28. "Stanford University". Education. U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved 9 January 2016.
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