Stanford University
EN-3: Student Life

Stanford has more than 20 sustainability-focused student groups that address a wide range of sustainability topics across campus. The most established sustainability organization, Students for a Sustainable Stanford, has been working on campus for more than a decade and contains multiple sub-groups focused on water, environmental justice, climate change, and other sustainability topics. Additional sustainability-focused student groups include the Green Living Council, which promotes sustainability in dorms; Engineers for a Sustainable World, which is developing solar powered lighting solutions for the Philippines; Fossil Free Stanford, which is encouraging university leadership to divest from fossil fuels; and many others. Please see the website for a full list of sustainability-related student groups on campus. Beginning in academic year 2015-2016, Stanford's Office of Sustainability launched a Student Sustainability Working group (SSWG). SSWG brings together students, academic staff, and sustainability staff to share updates, solicit project feedback, and brainstorm partnership opportunities. By increasing communication and project support among organizations, SSWG will help ensure a cohesive approach to sustainability at Stanford. Topics of 2015-16 SSWG meetings have included water reduction, environmental justice, and waste diversion and minimization. Visit https://sustainable.stanford.edu/cardinal-green/cardinal-green-students/student-sustainability-working-group More information, and a brief description of each group, can be found online: http://sustainable.stanford.edu/student_groups

Stanford Dining & Student Housing operate a network of organic gardens at dining halls and student houses across campus to enable students to experience growing and consuming fresh organic produce. Stanford Dining’s gardens host about four work days a week that are open to all students. Stanford Dining also works in collaboration with Stanford's BeWell program to manage the Stanford BeWell Community Gardens, which are strategically placed in open areas around Stanford's campus and tended by over 150 staff, students, and faculty. Stanford's School of Earth Sciences also runs an educational farm, which was renovated in 2014-15. This farm is used for classes and student activities, such as a hands-on organic farming class that is offered each quarter. The produce grown at the educational farm is mostly sold to Stanford Dining to be served in the dining halls.

Stanford Students Environmental Consulting (SSEC) is a group of dedicated, business- and environmentally-focused students at Stanford University that provide consulting services to help organizations address their most challenging environmental problems. In addition to finding answers to tough problems, they also aim to raise awareness for environmental issues and identify practical, sustainable opportunities for the business sector. Lastly, they aspire to foster learning and growth of their members, allowing them to develop and expand their professional skills related to, but certainly not limited to, business, finance, marketing, legal and environmental stewardship. SSEC members have a diverse range of backgrounds, including engineering, management science, economics and public policy. Leveraging this diversity helps SSEC provide practical, multifaceted sustainable solutions to tough problems. They also connect to a strong community of advisors, including notable professors from the Stanford University research community, venture capitalists, and business school members. Past members of SSEC have gone on to work at top tier management consulting firms, environmental consulting firms, environmental NGOs, energy companies and investment banks.

The Stanford Graduate School of Business Social Impact Fund also provides a hands-on experience in generating a beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return. The program emphasizes hands-on experience with philanthropic “impact investing." Faculty, alumni, and expert practitioners provide strategic guidance on co-investing, sourcing, structuring deals, measuring impact, portfolio allocation, and exits. The fund is geographically flexible and invests in early-stage for-profit ventures in the following areas: (1) environment and energy; (2) health care and wellness; (3) education; (4) urban development; and (5) food and agriculture. Student investment managers gain: (1) hands-on experience in impact investing; (2) preparation for a future career in impact investing or as social entrepreneurs, understanding how investors work; (3) application of classroom knowledge to real-world impact investing; (4) a deeper understanding about issues in particular fields; and (5) a stronger network of alumni, social entrepreneurs, and investors focused on impact in industries of interest. Visit http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/organizations/invest/other-ways/centers-initiatives Finally, from 2008-2015, the Stanford Student Green Fund provided grants for innovative student-driven projects designed to create a more sustainable campus. A total of $30,000 per academic year was available to fund projects. Projects were required to aim to reduce Stanford's ecological footprint, have a clearly defined, measurable outcome, incorporate publicity, education or outreach, and include direct student involvement. Projects funded in the 2013-2014 academic year included Graduate School of Business students designing a "Climate Act @ GSB" initiative, a Students for a Sustainable Stanford program piloting environmentally friendly cleaning practices in student residences, the purchase and installation of a water bottle filling station on campus, and several projects run by R&DE Student Housing interns.

Stanford hosts a vast array of conferences and events targeted at engaging students in Sustainability. The Office of Sustainability organizes an annual "Celebrating Sustainability" event around Earth Day. The "Celebrating Sustainability" event was hosted in 2015 for the fourth year in a row as an interactive festival designed to educate members of the campus community about Stanford's sustainability achievements and opportunities for individual action through engaging activities and displays. For the first time in 2016, Stanford’s Celebrating Sustainability event was connected with academic programming in the form of the Connecting the Dots symposium, which is a conference focused on sustainability across multiple topics, such as energy, water, and waste. This year, both events have been promoted jointly, and all attendees are encouraged to attend the symposium, the Celebrating Sustainability fair, and an ensuing tour of Stanford’s Central Energy Facility. Another example is the student-governed Berkeley-Stanford Cleantech Conference, which is an annual conference co-hosted by Stanford and Berkeley that addresses renewable energy advancements. Additionally, Stanford hosts an annual conference at SLAC called Energy@Stanford. This conference is open to all interested incoming graduate students to find out more about energy initiatives at Stanford. Stanford also hosts many lecture series each quarter dealing with the environment, including topics such as energy, climate change, conservation biology, and a wide variety of other subjects. The student-governed Stanford Energy Club maintains a comprehensive calendar of such events, both on- and off-campus and distributes this information to students, faculty, and staff (http://energy.stanford.edu). In 2015 and 2016, Students for a Sustainable Stanford’s Environmental Justice Week connected environmental issues with the communities being impacted by climate change through a series of lectures, panels, discussion forums, and movie screenings. Finally, in February 2015, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc. sorority hosted Green Week to raise sustainability awareness in the black community at Stanford. The sorority partnered with staff and student sustainability groups across campus to offer a wide variety of events aimed at attracting new students to the sustainability movement. More than 150 students attended the events, which included informational tabling, film screenings, fruit gleaning, and vegetarian dinners.

In January 2016, the second annual Stories of Sustainability, hosted by the Associated Students of Stanford University, attracted more than 300 attendees and raised awareness around climate change through diverse student performances. The event utilizes dance, song, spoken word, and short stories to encourage climate action through student research and activism. In October 2015, Students for a Sustainable Stanford organized the KNOW TOMORROW Rally for Climate Action, with performances by Stanford student groups and addresses by student sustainability leaders and keynote speaker Al Gore. Visit https://energy.stanford.edu/events/know-tomorrow-stanford-rally-climate-action In April 2015, Students for a Sustainable Stanford hosted Earthfest during Admit Weekend to showcase Stanford’s student sustainability initiatives for recently admitted students and their parents. An activities fair and live music attracted hundreds of attendees to the celebration. The eARThbeat event in May 2013 was the fourth annual installment of the spring arts and sustainability festival organized by the Student Organizing Committee for the Arts and Students for a Sustainable Stanford. The groups also partnered with the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, the Green Alliance for Innovative Action (GAIA), Green Grid Radio, and the Green Living Council. The event featured interactive art and sustainability workshops, sustainable food trucks, live music and other activities. Shalini Kantayya, an award-winning filmmaker, hosted a screening of and Q&A on her latest film, A Drop of Life, and Michael Christian, an artist who has presented works at Burning Man and Coachella, organized an exhibit of his latest interactive sculptures. The evening ended with the always-popular Stanford Soundtrack Release Party featuring student bands and performers. Approximately 300 students attended the event. The inaugural event in this series, Vision eARTh, was held in 2011. For more details, please visit: http://events.stanford.edu/events/275/27597/

Stanford is home to a number of different outing societies. Most relevant is the Outdoor Education Program, which teaches a one-unit class each quarter on outdoor leadership skills including Leave No Trace and basic backwoods safety and responsibility. Stanford Outdoor Gear is a student-run group which rents outing supplies to students for weekend trips. Stanford also organizes an annual student-led pre-orientation backpacking trip (SPOT) for any interested incoming freshmen.

Each year, Stanford runs Three Books, which is a summer reading program for incoming freshmen designed to foster intellectual excitement and provide a foundation for discussion upon arrival on campus. The 2014-15 Three Books program was scientifically themed and included a book called Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines by Richard A. Muller. This book focuses on the science and politics of sustainability issues, especially related to global warming and alternative energy. It served to highlight sustainability themes and their relation to scientific exploration in order to illuminate ways that incoming freshman can use their Stanford education to have a positive ecological impact. Additionally, the Stanford Outdoor Education program leads Stanford Pre-Orientation Trips (SPOT) for incoming freshmen before they arrive at Stanford. These trips are designed to be immersive experiences that ease the transition to life at Stanford and foster Stanford identity, community, and personal growth through activity, self-reflection and mentorship in outdoor and wilderness environments. More information on the wilderness trips is available at http://outdoored.stanford.edu/spot/wilderness/.

(1) The student-run organization Green Living Council runs a training course, "Promoting Sustainability Behavior Change at Stanford." This class covers effective strategies for enacting sustainable behavior change on campus, including community-based social marketing, psychology, behavioral economics, education, sociology, and design. Students design a behavior change intervention project targeting a specific sustainable behavior. The course consists of online lectures and weekly sections/workshops. (2) The student-run organization Students for a Sustainable Stanford leads a two credit course titled "Environmental Justice in the Bay Area." The hands-on, discussion-based class seeks to expose students to the intersectionality of social justice and environmental issues. Through student-led talks and fieldtrips around the region, the course encourages participants to think about the connections between issues of privilege, race, health, gender equality, and class in environmental issues. (3) The Teaching Kitchen @ Stanford, created in partnership with the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, teaches students cooking skills, including cooking plant-forward recipes, while also teaching them about sustainability. Visit https://rde.stanford.edu/dining/teaching-kitchen. (4) The R&DE Stanford Dining organic gardens offer multiple work days a week in addition to workshops to teach students how to grow their own produce. In addition, the Seed Library run by R&DE Stanford Dining gives students free seeds each month that they can plant at home or in the gardens by their dorms. Visit https://rde.stanford.edu/dining/organic-gardens (5) Stanford offers a number of seasonal campaigns directed at students that encourage students to pledge to take a simple sustainability action. The actions are related to each campaign's theme. For instance, the Cardinal Green Buildings campaign is offered in the fall and encourages students to unplug their appliances when they leave for Winter Break in conjunction with its energy conservation theme. In the winter, students area asked to pledge to sort their waste properly in conjunction with the Recyclemania campaign, and in 2016, students were asked to pledge to take shorter showers (5 minutes or less) in conjunction with the April water-saving campaign. Finally, students are most involved in Give & Go, where they are encouraged to correctly sort their waste and donate reusable items as they move out at the end of the year. These are all sustainable life skills that students are made aware of through the Sustainable Stanford campaign series.

The Sustainable Stanford Internship Program (managed by the Office of Sustainability in partnership with sustainability staff and organizations across campus) provides 35+ paid opportunities for students to gain hands-on experience implementing programs that influence on-campus sustainability. Sustainable Stanford Interns work on projects covering various campus sustainability topics (waste, water, housing, food), under supervision and direction from campus sustainability staff. Each intern commits to an academic year-long program working to manage a campus sustainability project and bring about tangible results. In addition to gaining experience in sustainability project design and implementation, interns learn about the variety of careers in sustainability across campus and develop a network of cohorts through program orientation and final presentations. Additionally, one of the tenants of the new Cardinal Service initiative offered by the Haas Center is Cardinal Careers, an effort to help students discover career paths in public service and sustainability. Specifically, Stanford's Haas Center for Public Service offers the Community Work-Study Program, which provides an opportunity for students to develop and participate in a significant service experience while earning a portion of their financial aid award. This program is available during the academic year and the summer. It provides the freedom for eligible students to design a service experience in collaboration with a partnering organization. Placements during the academic year are typically on campus and in the local community while summer placements can be at qualified organizations anywhere in the United States. The Haas Center also runs the Undergraduate Fellowship Program, which offers resources for Stanford undergraduates who wish to make contributions to public service organizations and communities. Depending on the fellowship, fellows can participate in either prearranged placements or self-designed fellowship opportunities in both domestic and international settings. The Haas Center offers grants to undergraduate students interested in this type of service experience, in addition to operating several other grant programs to help cultivate students' passion for service. The TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy also offers paid summer internships for Stanford undergraduate students to gain work experience and develop applied engineering knowledge at Stanford affiliated sustainable energy start up companies.

Students for a Sustainable Stanford has administered a graduation pledge in the past but has not done so in the last three years. The pledge read as follows: I pledge to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider, and I will try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which I work. Graduating students were able to take the pledge online and those who pledged wore a green ribbon on their graduation robes.

OPENXCHANGE In 2015-2016, funding to support sustainability events and dialog was offered through Stanford’s OpenXChange, a year-long, campus-wide effort to strengthen and unify Stanford through purposeful engagement around issues of national and global concern. Through this program, students, staff, and faculty received grants to support sustainability events, courses, and fieldtrips. Visit https://openxchange.stanford.edu/. KNIGHT-HENNESSY SCHOLARS PROGRAM In 2016, the launch of the Knight-Hennessy scholars program was announced, which is a graduate-level scholarship program to prepare a new generation of global leaders with the skills to address the increasingly complex challenges facing the world. Ambitious in scope and scale, Knight-Hennessy Scholars will annually admit 100 high-achieving students with demonstrated leadership and civic commitment, who are nominated by their undergraduate universities. The goal is to select students from a wide range of backgrounds and nationalities. Upon admittance to Stanford's graduate programs, scholars will receive funding for three years to pursue master's or doctorate level degrees, or professional programs along with education in leadership, innovation and other curricula designed to develop scholars' capacity to lead ambitious change in a complex world. The program is named for alumnus Philip H. Knight, MBA '62, philanthropist, American businessman and co-founder of Nike Inc., who is contributing $400 million, and Stanford's outgoing 10th President John L. Hennessy. For more information, visit https://knight-hennessy.stanford.edu/ SUSTAINABILITY GRANT PROGRAMS Students are eligible for sustainability grants through Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment and Stanford’s TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy. Woods Institute’s Mel Lane grant program provides funding for student research related to sustainability. TomKat Center’s Innovation Transfer Program helps entrepreneurial students from all majors bridge the gap between research and commercialization of products supporting global sustainability. Visit https://woods.stanford.edu/educating-leaders/education/mel-lane-student-grants-program and https://tomkat.stanford.edu/innovation-transfer.