Department: Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

Code Name Description
EARTH251 Negotiation Students learn to prepare for and conduct negotiations in a variety of arenas including getting a job, managing workplace conflict, negotiating transactions, and managing personal relationships. Interactive class. The internationally traveled instruc...
SUSTAIN100 Research Preparation for Undergraduates For undergraduates planning to conduct research during the summer with faculty in the Doerr School of Sustainability. Readings, oral presentations, proposal development. May be repeated for credit.
SUSTAIN101A Decision Making for Sustainable Energy All people and societies face challenges and opportunities for living sustainably in our world. We must make many difficult and complex decisions in our lives as individuals, citizens, and leaders. Through participation in this course, students will...
SUSTAIN101C Climate 101 This course provides an introduction to Earth's climate system, including how climate has changed in the past, how it is changing now, and how it could change in the future. Topics include quantifying signal-to-noise ratio for detecting long-term cha...
SUSTAIN103 Human and Planetary Health Two of the biggest challenges humanity has to face - promoting human health and halting environmental degradation - are strongly linked. The emerging field of Planetary Health recognizes these inter-linkages and promotes creative, interdisciplinary...
SUSTAIN115 Wrigley Field Program in Hawaii Preparation Preparatory course for the Wrigley Field Program in Hawaii. This course will introduce students to the faculty and topics that will be covered during the fall program. It will also include logistics content, readings, and an introduction to Hawaiian...
SUSTAIN116 Ecology of the Hawaiian Islands Terrestrial and marine ecology and conservation biology of the Hawaiian Archipelago. Taught in the field in Hawaii as part of quarter-long sequence of courses including Earth Sciences and Anthropology. Topics include ecological succession, plant-so...
SUSTAIN117 Earth Sciences of the Hawaiian Islands Progression from volcanic processes through rock weathering and soil-ecosystem development to landscape evolution. The course starts with an investigation of volcanic processes, including the volcano structure, origin of magmas, physical-chemical fa...
SUSTAIN118 Heritage, Environment, and Sovereignty in Hawaii This course explores the cultural, political economic, and environmental status of contemporary Hawaiians. What sorts of sustainable economic and environmental systems did Hawaiians use in prehistory? How was colonization of the Hawaiian Islands info...
SUSTAIN128 Upstreaming Health Reimagine systems to make everyday life healthier by design. Good health doesn¿t begin the minute someone walks into a doctor¿s office. If we want everyday life to become healthier by default, we need to shift our interventions from downstream to ups...
SUSTAIN130 Empirical Environmental Economics Are you interested in environmental and energy policy? Do you want to improve your data science skills? If so, Empirical Environmental Economics is for you. In the first few weeks of class, you'll use data and microeconomic modeling to quantify the...
SUSTAIN131 Imagining Adaptive Societies The ecological, social, and economic crises of the Anthropocene suggest it is time for us to re-imagine how best to organize our communities, our institutions, and our societies. Despite the clear shortcomings, our society remains stuck in a rut of i...
SUSTAIN140 Environmental Humanities: Finding Our Place on a Changing Planet The rapid degradation of our planet threatens the health and survival of communities and ecosystems around the world. How did we get here? What cultural, philosophical, and ethical challenges underlie the separation of humanity from nature and precip...
SUSTAIN156 Media and the Environment How are environmental issues represented in various media, from cinema and television to videogames, VR, and experimental art? And how are these media themselves involved in environmental change? In this course, we look at media and the environment a...
SUSTAIN1A Know Your Planet: Research Frontiers Discover the challenges that face our planet today and the people working on solving those problems now. Planet Earth is our only home and so it is critical that we understand what is driving global change. In this course, we focus on climate and sus...
SUSTAIN1B Know Your Planet: Earth in the Laboratory Explore how Earth¿s big questions are answered inside the laboratory. The challenges that face our planet today are large and wide ranging. In this course, you will discover how these questions are studied and tackled inside some of Stanford¿s cuttin...
SUSTAIN1C Know Your Planet: Science in the Field Science isn't just in labs or on computer screens. From mountains, deserts, and forests to oceans, ice fields, and clouds, Stanford researchers work in a wide variety of locations, studying processes and phenomena where they happen. This course will...
SUSTAIN1D Know Your Planet: Big Earth Get a taste of how we use big data to solve Earth¿s big problems. Interested in Big Data and how to apply it to global environmental and sustainability challenges? This course provides an introduction to Big Data and its applications in solving globa...
SUSTAIN2 Climate and Society How and why is the climate changing? How might a changing climate affect human society? And what can we do to alter the course of climate change and adapt to any climatic changes that do occur? This course provides an introduction to the natural scie...
SUSTAIN200A Your Professional Development Navigating the transition from student to professional is a daunting and often times unpredictable journey. This course is designed to help start the process of career planning and development early on. Beginning with navigating career uncertainty, t...
SUSTAIN200B Your Personal Development Success in both your professional and personal life requires emotional, financial, and social intelligence. This course is designed to build on those soft skills that will better prepare you to successfully navigate your life. Develop skills in areas...
SUSTAIN200P Your Professional Development Practicum Developing a strong portfolio of skills and tools takes resources and partners. This practicum enables the freedom to explore and develop a specific component of your professional portfolio with instructor support. You will set a professional develop...
SUSTAIN203 Diversity and Inclusion in the Geosciences This course will prepare students to address the participation and inclusion challenges uniquely faced in the geosciences. By bringing awareness to specific tools and tactics which improve learning and working environments, we hope to help others dev...
SUSTAIN210 Justice 40 Policy Lab The Executive Order for Tackling the Climate Crisis (14008) establishes a procedural policy, Justice 40, that applies principles of recognition and distributive equity to hundreds of federal policies and programs. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)...
SUSTAIN222 Philanthropy for Sustainable Development This course teaches students how to pursue social change through philanthropy with a focus on sustainable development. Students learn about the approaches, history, and key debates in philanthropy, and apply their knowledge by collaboratively making...
SUSTAIN223 Confronting Emotions in the Climate Sciences Traditional climate change courses introduce students to a wide array of scientifically and emotionally challenging subjects without acknowledging the significant distress that climate learners often experience from studiously bearing witness to ecol...
SUSTAIN226 Global Social Change, Sustainable Development, and Education Focuses on the relations between education and sustainable development from a comparative cross-national perspective. The course covers questions and debates around education for sustainable development and the nature of "the global"; global influenc...
SUSTAIN231 Imagining Adaptive Societies The ecological, social, and economic crises of the Anthropocene suggest it is time for us to re-imagine how best to organize our communities, our institutions, and our societies. Despite the clear shortcomings, our society remains stuck in a rut of i...
SUSTAIN237 Sustainable Human Behavior We will discuss pioneering research on the three key pillars that make human behaviors sustainable: health, wellbeing, and a sense of responsibility for the world we share. The class is designed to facilitate dialogue, knowledge exchange, and the dev...
SUSTAIN242 Negotiations This is an introductory course on negotiations. It is partly experiential: in every session students will engage in negotiation exercises. Data from these exercises will be discussed in the following session. This experiential component will be suppo...
SUSTAIN305A Teaching in the field: Basic skills for working with students in the field This workshop series introduces the basics of teaching, working, and living in the field with students, from first aid to university policies to pedagogy. We will discuss skills and techniques necessary to keep students safe, to maximize their learni...
SUSTAIN305B Teaching in the Field: Field Practical Participate in the logistics and academic content of a SUSTAIN field trip and serve as primary trip leaders. Discussions prior to, and during, the field trip that cover pedagogic, safety, risk management, and social issues that pertain to teaching f...
SUSTAIN321 Organizations and Sustainability This course reviews social science research on the role of organizations in environmental sustainability. Modern human activity is known to be dramatically changing the earth's ecosystem with far-reaching consequences: altering the climate, reducing...
SUSTAIN324 Philanthropy and Civil Society Cross-listed with Law (LAW 7071), Political Science (POLISCI 334) and Sociology (SOC 374). Associated with the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS). Year-long workshop for doctoral students and advanced undergraduates writing senior these...
SUSTAIN328 Policy Practicum: Integrating Water and Land Use Policy in the West: The Missing Link The western United States is currently experiencing what may be the longest and most severe "megadrought" in modern U.S. history. Current U.S. drought data shows virtually all of the Southwest in severe, extreme, or extraordinary drought. Reservoir...
SUSTAIN329 Policy Practicum: Smoke Clients: Various California legislative and executive branch decision makers. Wildfire smoke has emerged as one of the most pressing air pollution and public health threats in the Western United States. Last year, despite decades of progress in redu...
SUSTAIN331 Ethics in the Anthropocene Today, in the Anthropocene, humankind impacts the environment on a massive scale, with severe outcomes for species, ecosystems, and landscapes. The consequences of this impact raise many ethical questions, with new dilemmas forcing us to consider new...
SUSTAIN332 Climate Tech for Rapid Decarbonization This course examines alternative pathways for economies around the world to achieve deep decarbonization within a couple of decades. The overall perspective is to analyze the global decarbonization process at the intersection of technological improve...
SUSTAIN345 Global Leaders and Innovators in Human and Planetary Health: Sustainable Societies Lab Are you interested in innovative ideas and strategies for addressing urgent challenges in human and planetary health and creating sustainable societies? This 7 session lecture series features a selection of noteworthy leaders, innovators, and experts...
SUSTAIN348 Public Policy for Climate Innovation This course considers the form and content that climate innovation policies should take as well as implementation strategies to help climate tech companies cross the proverbial "valley of death". The course begins with an evaluation of the advantage...
SUSTAIN349 The Financial Economics of Climate and Sustainability The purpose of the course is to (a) introduce graduate students to questions and methods in the rapidly evolving fields of climate/sustainable finance; (b) connect researchers from across the globe interested in this topic to stimulate more rigorous,...
SUSTAIN350 The Sustainability of the Human Record What happens in the year 12,021 when future generations seek to understand the extensive record of human endeavour, experience, and life, today and previously? What will constitute a future Rosetta Stone that makes accessible surviving monuments, tex...
SUSTAIN352 Power in the Anthropocene: Pasts, Presents, Futures The Anthropocene designates the present geological epoch, in which humans have irreversibly changed planet Earth, with impacts discernible in the atmosphere, biosphere, and more. The term has also become a "charismatic mega-category" in the humanitie...
SUSTAIN356 Media and the Environment How are environmental issues represented in various media, from cinema and television to videogames, VR, and experimental art? And how are these media themselves involved in environmental change? In this course, we look at media and the environment a...
SUSTAIN400 Directed Research Independent research for graduate student projects.
SUSTAIN401 Curricular Practical Training Curricular Practical Training
SUSTAIN5 Geokids: Earth Sciences Education Service learning through the Geokids program. Eight weeks of supervised teaching to early elementary students about Earth sciences. Hands-on teaching strategies for science standards-based instruction. Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center f...
SUSTAIN51N Ecologies of Communication What remnants of our culture will future generations discover and decipher and how will they interpret these? How will they access the technologies we have created? How will they understand the environmental changes that current humans have caused? A...
SUSTAIN81 Doerr School of Sustainability Spring Break Field Trip Spring break field trip to various locations in Eastern California (may include Owens Valley, eastern Sierras, White Mountains, Death Valley). Exact locations will vary by term. Topics may cover natural history, geology, and ecology. Students will...
SUSTAIN83 Nature Journaling This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of nature journaling. Nature journaling is a practice of observing and recording the natural world, much as one might record their lives in a daily journal. Nature journaling provides a path for...
SUSTAIN85 Virtual California This course will give students a sense of place about California through virtual environments and guest lectures that show the geography, geology, ecology, and natural history that help make California a place, not just a space on a map. Students wil...