At a Board of Trustees meeting earlier this week, Provost John Etchemendy Ph.D. ’83 announced a name change for the Stanford School of Earth Sciences. The change took effect on Feb. 11, and the school is now officially named the Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.
“Our School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences has been engaging in and has been a leader in these efforts and now has a name that more clearly conveys the scope of its contributions,” said Steven A. Denning, chair of the Board of Trustees.
The new name marks an effort to reflect the school’s increasingly diversified programs. For example, the school recently collaborated with the School of Engineering’s Institute for Computational & Mathematical Engineering to create an M.S. degree track in computational geoscience.
The School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences currently has 63 regular faculty members, seven of whom are members of the National Academies of Sciences or Engineering. Research conducted by the school faculty covers a wide scale of topics, ranging from oil and gas engineering to ecosystem sciences. Some notable recent research advances include predicting the severity of earthquakes shaking Los Angeles, examining connections between the California drought and climate change and measuring aquifer levels through satellite data.
“Our faculty carry out research on Earth processes on all seven continents and in all the oceans,” said Pamela A. Matson, the Chester Naramore Dean of the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. “At the same time, nearly half of them now focus on energy resources, and nearly half on environmental issues. It is fitting that we change our name to more fully represent who we are.”
The school also provides many hands-on learning opportunities for its 400 graduate and 150 undergraduate students. Wrigley Field Program in Hawaii and the O’Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm, a new five-acre facility where students gain experience in agriculture and resource management, are only two of the many resources provided by the school.
Contact Batuhan Berk Balci at bbalci ‘at’ stanford.edu.