Stanford University
AC-4: Graduate Program

Stanford's Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER) trains the next generation of interdisciplinary scholars and leaders to address the world's most challenging environmental and sustainability problems. E-IPER students combine academic disciplines, including natural and earth sciences, engineering, economics, humanities, social sciences, law, health, policy, and business to yield new insights and novel solutions to urgent global problems, such as energy use, climate change, food security, freshwater availability, depletion of ocean resources, land degradation, and biodiversity loss.

The goal of the program is to understand, predict, and respond to human-caused environmental change at local and global scales. To take on this challenge, students investigate the complexity of the global system, including the interactions, synergies, and feedbacks that link the oceans, atmosphere, land surfaces, and freshwater systems. A global perspective has emerged that challenges the research community to view and study the planet as a singular, highly-interactive system, moving past disciplinary approaches to evaluate the interactions among chemical, biological, and physical processes across the Earth's surface. Through the graduate and undergraduate programs, the program will train a new generation of scientists who comprehend the multiple facets of environmental processes, and who are able to think synthetically, evaluating change in our oceans, water, air and land processes as part of an integrated and connected system.

Geological Sciences is closely tied to the other three departments and the interdisciplinary programs within the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. In GS, fields of research and education encompass the entire planet from its deep interior to the surface, throughout the long span of geological time up to the human timescale. The scale of view ranges from global to atomic. Physical, chemical, and biological processes as well as the unique history of the Earth are within the broad scope of the program.

There are numerous such programs offered for graduate-level degrees. Please see the complete list, including website URLs, in the back-up document uploaded for AC-2.

The Civil and Environmental Engineering department is committed to finding solutions to our major sustainability challenges this century, and to educating and training the leaders who will have a large impact on our profession and on society.

A PhD minor is a program in another department that complements the student’s PhD program. A minor is not a requirement for any degree, but is available when agreed upon by the student and both major and minor departments. It is not available to students pursuing other graduate degrees.

Each department offering a PhD minor establishes the core, elective and examination requirements for the minor program. The major department determines acceptance of the minor as part of the student’s total PhD program. Approval from both the major and the minor departments must appear on the student’s Application for Candidacy for Doctoral Degree. The minor department must be represented on the university oral examination committee.

A student desiring a PhD minor in civil and environmental engineering must have a minor program advisor who is a regular CEE faculty member (member of Academic Council) in the program of the designated sub field. This advisor must be a member of the student’s University oral examination committee and on the reading committee for the dissertation.

The program must include at least 20 units of graduate-level course work (that is, courses numbered 200 or above, excluding special studies and thesis) in CEE completed at Stanford University. Units taken for the minor cannot be counted as part of the 45 unduplicated units for the PhD major. The list of courses must form a coherent program and must be approved by the minor program advisor and the CEE chair. An average GPA of at least 3.0 must be achieved in these courses.

The department’s mission is, through education and research, to advance the design, management, operation and interaction of technological, economic and social systems. The department’s engineering research strength is integrated with its educational program at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels: graduates of the program are trained as engineers and future leaders in technology, policy and industry. Research and teaching are complemented by an outreach program that encourages the transfer of ideas to the environment of Silicon Valley and beyond. MS&E’s programs provide a basis for contributing to areas such as biotechnology, defense policy, environmental policy, information systems and telecommunications.

Management Science and Engineering (MS&E) provides programs of education and research by integrating three basic strengths:

depth in conceptual and analytical foundations
comprehensive coverage of functional areas of application
interaction with other Stanford departments, Silicon Valley industry and organizations throughout the world.

The PhD and its associated minor are conferred upon candidates who have demonstrated substantial scholarship and the ability to conduct independent research. Through course work and guided research, the program prepares students to make original contributions in Management Science and Engineering and related fields.

As described in the section above, E-IPER is an interdisciplinary graduate program, rooted in the School of Earth Sciences. The E-IPER Joint MS allows professional degree students to take advantage of environment and resources courses, faculty, and programs on campus, earning an MS while jointly completing their professional degree in Stanford Law School, Graduate School of Business, or School of Medicine.

At Stanford, a Joint MS is a Masters of Science degree that is completed concurrently with another graduate or professional degree, allowing some coursework to count towards both degrees. E-IPER offers a Joint MS for selected students currently enrolled in Stanford's Graduate School of Business or Stanford Law School, and a dual MS for students at Stanford's School of Medicine, in which course units are not double-counted.

There are numerous such programs offered for graduate-level minors, concentrations, and certificates. Please see the complete list, including website URLs, in the back-up document uploaded for AC-2.