Training Environmental Leaders
E-IPER students cross academic disciplines to solve environmental problems.
Fellowships in Earth SciencesTalented young scholars pursue innovative research thanks to the support of generous donors.
A World of ComputationComputational modeling offers promise for the geosciences.
MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN
The Stanford Challenge enabled us to mobilize the strengths of the whole university to help solve the greatest challenges of our century. After only five years, our progress is amazing, thanks to the enthusiasm and support of our friends and alumni, and to fundamental changes in the way the university works. Through cross-school initiatives, as well as remarkable changes within the schools, we have seen tremendous growth and productivity.
The last five years have brought great opportunities to the School of Earth Sciences to embrace new challenges in earth, energy, and environmental science. We expanded our faculty and invested in research endeavors totally new to the school. We created new interdisciplinary departments and grew several interdisciplinary degree programs. And we encouraged innovative research and outreach activities that integrate faculty and student expertise from across our departments and beyond. Thanks to The Stanford Challenge and collaborations with our partner institutes, the Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy, we are leading efforts to solve some of the great societal challenges related to resources and the environment.
We created a new academic department, the Department of Environmental Earth System Science, focused on the life-support systems of the planet—oceans, atmosphere, climate, and land use. The undergraduate Earth Systems Program and the graduate Emmet Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER)—Stanford’s premier interdisciplinary programs on environment, resources, and sustainability, both housed in the School of Earth Sciences—continue to thrive, training the next generation of leaders to take on some of the most challenging problems of our age.
While strengthening our traditional disciplinary departments in geology and geophysics with great new hires, we re-envisioned the Department of Petroleum Engineering to become the Department of Energy Resources Engineering, reflecting the interest of our faculty and students in the broad range of energy issues. The Stanford Center for Computational Earth and Environmental Sciences, established in 2005 to build our capacity in computational modeling, began planning for a new interdisciplinary graduate program to help solve complex research and engineering problems in earth and environmental sciences. We welcomed a number of new faculty members, dramatically changing our demographics (90 percent of recent hires are at the assistant professor level, bringing new energy and dynamism to our programs, and 50 percent of them are women) and embarked on a focused effort to increase faculty from underrepresented groups.
Looking ahead, the School of Earth Sciences will continue to build on its deep tradition at Stanford—a tradition that goes back to the university’s beginnings in 1891—evolving and changing as science and the world evolve and change. We will continue to pursue fundamental science, working to understand how the world works and to inform decision making, linking knowledge to action in order to solve problems in earth, energy, and environmental science.
Thank you for supporting us in these efforts, for encouraging us in our ambitious goals, and for your generous and enthusiastic participation in The Stanford Challenge.
Pamela A. Matson
Chester Naramore Dean
Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor of Environmental Studies
