Stanford University
EN-3: Student Life

Stanford has more than 10 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 environmental justice, food waste, and sustainability in Stanford's planning, education, media, and waste.

Another example of a sustainability-focused student group includes Engineers for a Sustainable World, which aims to inspire and enable Stanford students to make a lasting impact in the world through service learning. By designing engineering solutions with partners, the students strive to empower local and international communities to achieve their developmental goals.

See here for more details on student sustainability groups: https://sustainable.stanford.edu/be-cardinal-green/students/student-groups

GARDENS
R&DE Stanford Dining supports organic teaching gardens across campus, and multiple dorms and coops have student-run gardens as well. The R&DE Stanford Dining organic teaching gardens offer multiple workdays a week in addition to workshops to teach students how to grow their own produce. Stanford Dining also has a greenhouse in one dining hall and hydroponic towers in another dining hall. In addition, the Seed Library run by R&DE Stanford Dining gives students and the Stanford community free seeds each month that they can plant at home or in the gardens by their dorms. See here for more details: https://roblesustainability.stanford.edu/initiatives/garden

FARM
In 2014, the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences established the 6-acre O'Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm. The farm is a living laboratory offering academic and experiential learning opportunities for the Stanford community and beyond. The farm utilizes agroecological relationships and natural diversity to grow over 200 varieties of vegetables, flowers, herbs, field crops and fruit. Students come to the farm to test new ideas about the biological, social and environmental aspects of farming and gain experience in the practice of sustainable agriculture. On-farm research provides students hands-on learning opportunities. Over the course of a year, the farm harvests thousands of pounds of organically-grown produce, and R&DE has bought thousands of pounds of that produce since the farm opened. Those crops feed into a new farm-to-campus program, with fresh vegetables featured at R&DE Stanford Dining in the dining halls and in campus cafes. See here for more details: https://earth.stanford.edu/farm

COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AGRICULTURE (CSA)
The R&DE Sustainable Food Program supports the availability of a CSA produce box through the Market at Munger at Munger Hall. The monthly box includes seasonal produce from Stanford's O'Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm and other local growers. See more details here: https://rde.stanford.edu/hospitality/market-munger

Additionally, the Hillel at Stanford organization hosts a monthly Spreading Plenty festival, which includes a CSA program and family-friendly activities such as live music, yoga, arts, crafts and more. It is offered through Hillel’s SHEFA Health and Well-Being Initiative, which elevates student well-being on campus and is now focusing on two issues magnified in the pandemic: food security and mental health. See more details here: https://news.stanford.edu/report/2022/01/03/hillel-stanfords-monthly-spreading-plenty-festival-celebrates-well/

FARMERS MARKET
A weekly farmers market is hosted on the Stanford campus in front of Tresidder Student Union. See more details here: https://www.wcfma.org/stanford

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. Their mission is to promote sustainable solutions to complex environmental challenges. Through consulting projects and other interactive, professional development activities, members learn and practice technical and business skills used in the consulting field. Prior SSEC clients include nonprofits, government agencies, local startups, venture capitalists and Fortune 500 companies. Both undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to join.

Additionally, Leaders of the Built Environment represents students in the Sustainable Design and Construction program and seeks to build community within SDC, generate interest in sustainable engineering from development to delivery, expose students to industry leaders, provide opportunities for academic and professional development, and positively impact the community.

See more details here: https://cee.stanford.edu/our-culture/student-organizations

The Stanford Graduate School of Business Social Impact Fund provides MBA students with hands-on experience in generating a beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return. The program provides funds to give students a hands-on experience with philanthropic “impact investing."" Faculty, alumni, and expert practitioners provide strategic guidance to students 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) education; (2) environment and energy; (3) fintech; (4) food and agriculture; (5) healthcare; (6) justice; and (7) urban development. 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. See more details here: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/experience/learning/social-innovation/experiential-learning/stanford-gsb-impact-fund

Stanford hosts a vast array of conferences and events targeted at engaging students in sustainability. The list below describes a representative sample, but is not comprehensive of all Stanford’s offerings.

CELEBRATING SUSTAINABILITY
The Office of Sustainability organizes an annual "Celebrating Sustainability" event around Earth Day. Celebrating Sustainability is 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. Related events are often hosted by various members of the campus community, including staff, faculty, and students groups. In 2020 and 2021, this typically single-day event was transformed into a week-long series of virtual events to keep attendees safe during the Covid-19 pandemic. See more details on the recent "Earth Week" event here: https://sustainable.stanford.edu/cardinal-green/cardinal-green-events/celebrating-sustainability

STANFORD EXISTENTIAL RISKS INITIATIVE
The Stanford Existential Risks Initiative is a collaboration between Stanford faculty and students dedicated to mitigating existential risks, such as extreme climate change, nuclear winter, global pandemics (and other risks from synthetic biology), and risks from advanced artificial intelligence. Our goal is to foster engagement from both within and beyond the Stanford community to produce meaningful work aiming to preserve the future of humanity. We aim to provide skill-building, networking, professional pathways, and community for students and faculty interested in pursuing existential risk reduction. Our current programs include a research fellowship, an annual conference, speaker events, discussion groups, and a Thinking Matters class (Preventing Human Extinction) taught annually by two of the initiative's faculty advisors. In 2021, SERI is held a two-day virtual conference around mitigating existential and global catastrophic risks — large-scale threats which could permanently curtail humanity’s future potential. Plans for the next conference in February 2022 are underway. See more details here: https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/stanford-existential-risks-initiative

The ongoing series Rooted Words is a community reading series, emerging from the Earth Systems Program and the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences but enthusiastically open to all. The group meets each quarter at the O'Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm. Students, staff, faculty, friends and community members are all welcome to bring a short sample of their own writing to share or to enjoy listening to others read from original prose, fiction, poetry, journalism and more. This event series is free and open for all to attend. See more details here: https://earth.stanford.edu/events/rooted-words-lost-found

In 2019, Stanford Repertory Theater and Planet Earth Arts tackled environmental and social justice issues by creating a play and film to address these critical issues. The performances included three original theatrical works: Voices of the Earth: From Sophocles to Rachel Carson and Beyond…, a compilation of voices on humans and the natural world; and two new plays commissioned by Planet Earth Arts and Playground, Polar Bears, Black Boys & Prairie Fringed Orchids, a play in which well-meaning environmentalists confront the tragic realities of Black Lives Matter, and Anna Considers Mars. See more details here: https://news.stanford.edu/2019/08/08/stanford-repertory-theater-planet-earth-arts-tackle-environmental-social-justice-issues/

The Stanford Adventure Program offers exciting outdoor trips, courses and clinics each quarter and over intersession breaks. All outdoor trips organized by the Adventure Program follow Leave No Trace Principles. A listing of trips and clinics offered by the Adventure Program can be found here: https://rec.stanford.edu/adventure/

Stanford Adventure also operates the Outdoor Center, which is home to a full-service rental and retail facility, a lounge, an outdoor resource library, a trip planning area, a multimedia classroom and one of the largest collegiate climbing walls in the country. The lounge of the Outdoor Center serves as a central meeting space for Stanford community members who are interested in outdoor adventures.

Each year, Stanford runs Three Books, which is a signature common reading program for undergraduate first-year and new transfer students. Each year, the faculty moderator carefully selects a​n overall theme and ​will work with a committee of faculty, staff, and students over several months to select the books/media for incoming new students to read and discuss with each other over the summer. The program culminates in discussions with the authors and guests during New Student Orientation and Autumn Quarter.

In 2021, one of the selected three books, Notes From the Field by Anna Deavere Smith, focuses on issues of equity by investigating a justice system that pushes minors from poor communities out of the classroom and into incarceration. Urgent and inspiring, it depicts the personal accounts of students, parents, teachers and administrators caught in America’s school-to-prison pipeline.

In 2019, the three books were focused on the theme of cities and were moderated by Sarah Billington, a Stanford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. One of these selected books was The Just City Essays: 26 Visions for Urban Equity, Inclusion and Opportunity by Multiple authors, edited by Toni L Griffin, Ariella Cohen, David Maddox. The series of essays highlights the persistence of injustice in the world’s cities—dramatic inequality, unequal environmental burdens and risks, and uneven access to opportunity—demands a continued and reinvigorated search for ideas and solutions.

MY CARDINAL GREEN
The Office of Sustainability offers a comprehensive engagement and educational portal to all students called “My Cardinal Green." My Cardinal Green empowers students to engage with sustainability regularly, while tailoring specific actions for targeted groups (e.g. year, dorm type, department). In creating a platform that the individual can engage with year-round, sustainability and the specific actions that one can take to contribute to the effort become standard operating procedure, rather than one-time asks. Engagement in the platform entails taking a 15-minute survey about campus lifestyles and current sustainability behaviors in order to inform the personalized recommendations made available through the platform. Individuals earn points by taking sustainability actions, and they earn incentives once they accrue enough points. Recommendations span a wide range of difficulty, from “take a first step” actions, such as “Learn how to properly dispose of 5 new materials” to more advanced actions such as “Establish a home composting program.”

ENERGY THEMED DORM
In 2021, it was announced a new Explore Energy Dorm is in development and scheduled to open in Fall 2022. This University Theme House-Academic aims to create a vibrant residential community and living laboratory that expands energy and sustainability education through interdisciplinary dialogue, exploration, and action. The dorm will host events, workshops, alumni seminars, student-initiated and led workshops, and more for those that care about energy, sustainability, climate change, corporate social responsibility, social equity, and justice. See more details here: https://energy.stanford.edu/explore-energy/theme-house

SEASONAL CAMPAIGNS
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 are asked to pledge to sort their waste properly in conjunction with the Campus Race to Zero Waste campaign, and in the spring, students have the opportunity to learn about water conservation and systems on campus.

SUSTAINABLE STANFORD INTERNSHIPS
The Sustainable Stanford Internship Program (managed by the Office of Sustainability in partnership with sustainability staff and organizations across campus) provides 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. See more details here: https://sustainable.stanford.edu/cardinal-green/cardinal-green-students/sustainable-stanford-internship-program

CAREER PLANNING
In 2021, the Stanford Conservation Program and Students for a Sustainable Stanford offered a series of workshops and networking sessions to celebrate diversity in environmental fields. The series facilitated students to meet and network with professionals in several environmental fields from underrepresented backgrounds and learn about skills and resources to support them along their professional journey in environmental spaces. Each participant was also paired with a mentor for a one-on-one informational interview. See more details here: https://conservation.stanford.edu/education-outreach/webinars-and-presentations

HAAS CENTER CARDINAL CAREERS
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. See more details here: https://haas.stanford.edu/people/staff/careers

Specifically, Stanford's Haas Center for Public Service offers the Community Service 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. See more details here: https://haas.stanford.edu/student-programs/fellowships-and-internships/community-service-work-study

HAAS CENTER UNDERGRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS
The Haas Center also runs the Undergraduate Fellowships 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. See more details here: https://haas.stanford.edu/student-programs/fellowships-and-internships/undergraduate-fellowships