One-unit course offers buffet of research paths in sustainability

The world of research comprises a wide range of questions, skills, and problem-solving methods – especially when it comes to the Earth’s climate and sustainability issues. But embarking on the path of research can also seem inaccessible and hold many unknowns about day-to-day life, future applications, potential career paths and more. 

Know Your Planet: Research Frontiers, a 1-unit course that has been reinstalled course in the new Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, aims to address these unknowns and answer questions about research in a highly engaging and accessible way. The course offering doesn’t have prerequisites and looks to attract a breadth of undergraduates from across the university.

Featuring a different guest speaker each week, Know Your Planet allows students to participate in discussions, ask questions, and connect with faculty members in an intimate and low-pressure environment. It’s about “getting up close and personal” with the kinds of questions that are being asked and the people answering those questions, according to Audrey Yau, director of educational affairs at the Doerr School of Sustainability. Yau initially formulated the course’s structure for the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and adapted it to include its current sustainability focused guest speaker lineup.

“The course creates a venue to learn about different kinds of research and different approaches to research that can expand the students’ notion of what research can be as well as give them useful tools and insights,” said Felicia Marcus, a visiting fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and guest speaker for the course.

Along with learning about the research that is presented each week, students are also informed on how to get involved with research. Through exposure to 10 different faculty speakers, they can hear about a large variety of interdisciplinary research projects – any of which can be found in a popular science article.

“We want to ground everything that our students are exposed to in what they are actually seeing in the real world,” Yau said.  

While some students may find approaching faculty members intimidating, Anna Michalak, director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Science, said that students should feel comfortable and empowered to have casual conversations with faculty.

“When I speak with a freshman, I take them just as seriously as when I speak to one of my colleagues because everyone has something very interesting to contribute to the conversation," Michalak said. “We’re here because we’re in the profession of hopefully creating future colleagues.”

Susanna Newsom, an undergraduate student who took the class in fall quarter of 2022, said she has already felt the encouraging support from faculty members during her time in the classroom.

“I haven’t had much experience with research prior to Stanford, and taking this class emphasizes the accessibility of research opportunities here,” Newsom said. “All the visiting speakers have been enthusiastic about student partnership and seem very open to teaching student the ropes of their lab.” 

Know Your Planet: Research Frontiers (SUSTAIN 1A), offered during fall quarter, is part of a triad of 1-unit courses that aim to offer undergraduates a taste of ongoing research in climate, sustainability and Earth sciences. The course will be followed by Know Your Planet: Earth in the Laboratory (SUSTAIN 1B), available during alternating winter quarters, and will include class visits to campus labs such as Sonia Tikoo’s Planetary Magnetism Lab, Tiziana Vanorio’s Rocks and Geomaterials Lab, and many more. The final component of the series is Know Your Planet: Science in the Field (SUSTAIN 1C), where students visit fieldwork sites and engage with the research that takes place beyond the Stanford campus. Open to all students, each class offers insights into different aspects of research and the methods that are used to in problem-solving the Earth’s most pressing issues.

“A key takeaway for these students is understanding the interdisciplinarity of the challenges that face our Earth today,” said Yau, “and how interdisciplinary people’s backgrounds need to be in order to tackle these questions.”