Academics
Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit and historic dedication to public service, the university’s academic community leads cutting-edge research and innovative teaching on the planet’s resources, stewardship, and challenges.
Central to Stanford’s approach to sustainability research and curricula is the belief that solutions to the world’s environmental problems require an interdisciplinary effort. Dozens of laboratories, research centers, and student organizations work together to solve the most urgent challenges facing humanity – from food security to clean water and energy.
Sustainability Course Offerings
Across the institution, Stanford offers a myriad of sustainability-inclusive and sustainability-focused courses.
Literacy (and Culture) Assessment
Assessing the Stanford community’s knowledge, identities, values, beliefs, and attitudes related to sustainability is a critical first step in understanding, and ultimately, shaping the cultural context that drives behaviors across campus. To assess sustainability literacy and culture among Stanford’s student body, an online survey, designed with input from Stanford students, faculty, and academic staff, is released bi-annually to assess differences between incoming and outgoing cohorts.
Read More About the Survey
The survey was first released to a random sample of ~50% of graduating undergraduate and graduate students in June, 2025, and to ~50% of matriculating undergraduate and graduate students in October 2025. To learn more about the results and survey structure, reach out with the website contact form.
School of Sustainability
In September 2022, the university launched its first new school in more than 75 years, the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability which strives to advance scholarship critical to the long-term prosperity of the planet. The school has a distinctive three-part structure: multiple institutes and centers, various departments to round out the necessary interdisciplinary approach to solving climate problems (natural sciences, engineering, social sciences, and humanities), and a Sustainability Accelerator to drive technology and policy solutions at a global scale.
Sustainability Principles
Sustaining life on Earth is one of the key university values, and all seven schools integrate this vision by providing a wide range of environmental and sustainability-related courses and research opportunities. Environmental and social considerations as institutional learning outcomes for all students are two of the driving values at Stanford, as directed by former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy. The Provost instituted this institution-level sustainability learning outcome:
“Stanford University fully engages in sustainability challenges through research programs, projects and partnerships; campus buildings and student residences; energy, water, dining and transportation operations; and many courses, academic programs and learning activities. The Stanford community aspires to the goal of human wellbeing across generations and around the world and is committed to including social, ethical, economic, ecological, environmental and resource considerations in decision making. We hope every student at Stanford shares this goal and learns how to engage effectively in reaching it.”
– Provost John Etchemendy
The university has established the following core sustainability principles related to academia, planning, and operations.
Advance Sustainability Knowledge
- Ensure all Stanford graduates, regardless of degree received, understand how the work they do contributes to creating a sustainable world.
- Achieve excellence in research that can help solve the complex problems involved in creating a sustainable world.
Establish Sustainability as a Core Value
- Lead sustainability by example.
- Integrate environmental awareness into campus culture, and make sustainable practices part of everyday life.
- Incorporate considerations of sustainability into all aspects of campus purchases of products, services, and food.
Minimize Environmental Footprint and Preserve the Ecosystem
- Dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from campus operations by reducing energy use in existing buildings, minimizing energy use in new buildings, and greening our energy supply process and procurement.
- Use water resources efficiently, minimizing total water demand by continuing to implement water conservation measures and incorporating infrastructure for future water-saving measures into new facilities.
- Construct and renovate buildings to provide safe, productive indoor environments that use energy, water, and other natural resources efficiently.
- Reduce the number of drive-alone commuters, and avoid increasing the total number of trips taken during peak commuting hours.
- Conserve resources through reuse, recycling, source reduction and composting – moving towards a zero waste campus.
- Preserve and manage environmental resources to allow the functioning of natural ecosystems and the long-term persistence of native species.
- Preserve and manage heritage resources to retain their historical and archaeological value and maximize their usefulness for producing knowledge.
Additionally, in January 2025, an Undergraduate Sustainability Education Working Group was established to enhance the existing commitments by the Provost, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, and the Doerr School Dean and Senior Associate Dean for Education. The group was tasked by university and school leaders with ensuring that 100% of undergraduate students have the opportunity to engage with sustainability-related learning and the group has released a comprehensive plan for equipping undergraduates with the knowledge and skills needed to address pressing environmental and social challenges. Their report calls for a “big tent” approach to governance, encouraging collaboration between the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and the university’s six other schools to foster innovation and share resources.
Spotlight on Course Collaborations
Academic-operational course collaborations integrate real-world sustainability challenges with the teaching, research, and studies of students, faculty, and staff—transforming theoretical knowledge into tangible solutions. Check out a selection of courses below that demonstrate opportunities for students to incorporate Stanford’s use of the campus as a living lab for sustainability in their academic journeys. If you are a faculty member interested in using coursework to advance your sustainability research, please inquire through the Contact Form.
SUSTAIN 119/219
Living Laboratory for Sustainability at Stanford
Stanford functions as a dynamic urban system, with infrastructure and utilities that support daily life while advancing ambitious sustainability goals. Living Laboratory for Sustainability at Stanford offers an immersive exploration of these systems, providing students with a firsthand understanding of the energy, water, waste, land management, and food systems that shape campus operations. Through expert-led discussions, field-based learning, and direct engagement with Stanford’s infrastructure, the course examines both the challenges and opportunities of implementing sustainability at an institutional scale.
SUSTAIN 120
Leading Organizational Change for Sustainability
The course constitutes the academic component of the Living Lab Fellowship Program. This course will demonstrate why change fails, teach fellows to avoid common pitfalls, introduce powerful frameworks and strategic approaches for leading successful change, and provide fellows with tools that can be applied at any scale. Using the Stanford campus as a living laboratory where material from the course can be meaningfully applied, this course emphasizes learning through doing. By the end of this course, fellows will deepen their understanding of the challenges, techniques, and opportunities associated with leading change in organizations and will be equipped to continue to build their capacity to lead successful change and foster healthy, just, sustainable, and resilient organizations.
EARTHSYS 210A/B/P
Earth Systems Senior Capstone
The Earth Systems Senior Capstone and Reflection allows students to synthesize and reflect on their learning in the major. Students participate in guided career development and planning activities and initiate work on an independent or group capstone project related to an Earth Systems problem or question of interest. Students learn and apply principles of effective oral communication through developing and giving a formal presentation on their internship.
ME 206A
Design for Extreme Affordability
Design for Extreme Affordability (fondly called Extreme) is a two-quarter course offered by the d.school through the School of Engineering and the Graduate School of Business. This multidisciplinary project-based experience allows students to design products and services to change the lives of the world’s poorest citizens. Students work directly with course partners on real-world problems, the culmination of which is implementation and impact.
CEE 26
Life Cycle Assessment for Complex Systems
This course focuses on the life cycle modeling of products, industrial processes, and infrastructure/building systems; material and energy balances for large interdependent systems; environmental accounting; and life cycle costing. These methods, based on ISO 14000 standards, are used to examine emerging technologies, such as biobased products, building materials, building integrated photovoltaics, and alternative design strategies, such as remanufacturing, dematerialization, LEED, and Design for Environment: DfE. Student teams complete a life cycle assessment of a product or system.
BIO/EARTHSYS 105A/B
Ecology and Natural History of Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve
This is a multidisciplinary field course conducted at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve (‘Ootchamin ‘Ooyakma) during the winter and spring quarters. The course is designed to use the preserve as a “living laboratory” to learn ecology and natural history via expert lectures, discussions, and hands-on field experiences. During the spring quarter, students develop a place-based independent research project that contributes to the preserve with data-driven research, education, and/or outreach.
A Living Laboratory
Stanford’s campus serves as a dynamic testing ground for innovative ideas to solve operational challenges, drive sustainability innovation at the university and beyond, and develop the next generation of leaders to impact systems change – locally and globally.
A History of Sustainability in Academia
Stanford’s academic focus on the Earth and its resources dates back to the founding of the university in 1891, well before the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability was established.
