Resources

Looking for opportunities to serve your community? Whether you want to volunteer on or off campus, the Haas Center has compiled a list of links to various opportunities available to graduate students for public service, regardless of their field. Additionally the Haas Center runs the Cardinal Service program, which is the umbrella organization for the various community focused programs coordinated through the center. Take a look at some of the possibilities and see how you could help serve your community!

CareerEd, the Stanford career center, has produced this career guide to help you plan ahead as you pursue meaningful work after graduate school. In it, you will find guidance on the academic job search, as well as other career pathways for PhDs. See sample CVs and read examples of strong cover letters. Learn key details of preparing effective job materials to help launch the best career path for you. Don't start your job search before consulting this guide!

Available through CareerEd's website.

Looking for tools and materials to teach about race? RaceWorks includes: 1) a series of short videos with Stanford scholars from various disciplines that explores how people "do race" and ways to "undo racism" and 2) an accompanying digital toolkit with discussion questions and activities that complement the videos. This open access, modular resource is for educators and facilitators who want to develop students' or coworkers' racial literacy, developed by the Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity (CCSRE) and Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions (SPARQ).

The Harry and Emilia Rathbun Fund for Exploring What Leads to a Meaningful Life at Stanford was established in 2006. Intended to help students experience personal reflection, thoughtful discussion, and a deeper exploration of life's purpose, the fund has brought several notable public figures to campus, including Sandra Day O'Connor, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, and others. Watch videos of previous Rathbun Fund speakers and be inspired by their lives of service and varied personal experiences.  

Learn how to work with people of diverse backgrounds, how to be welcoming and inclusive in your language and behavior, and how to combat your own feelings of exclusion in this Fellows Forum workshop presented by Stanford School of Medicine's Terrance R. Mayes. Follow the video with the session's slides and explore more resources below. (recorded July 2016)

• Read the study: Racial Microaggressions and Difficult Dialogues on Race in the Classroom
• Check out the Racial Microaggressions in Every Day Life handout
• Browse diversity-focused programs

Want to make your own podcast, or need to record something for a class or your research? With just a quick online training session, you can gain access to the Learning Hub Recording Studio. Learn more at the link. 

Interested in other research that's happening at Stanford outside of your home department? Several independent labs, institutes, and centers engage faculty and students from across the university. Here's an alphabetical list of all of the research centers at Stanford.

Confused on how to use your department's Pcard? Preparing to travel abroad? Unclear about what Environmental Health and Safety Training (EH&S) is needed for your lab work? Whether you need guidance on how to use OFWeb or laser safety training, check out the Training Courses offered by EH&S as well as the DoResearch portal to help you be better prepared in your Stanford career.

This toolkit, created by the nonprofit Campus Compact, helps promote community-engaged scholarship--scholarship that involves engagement with communities for the benefit of those communities. To do community-engaged research well requires new understanding, practice, and epistemology that is qualitatively different than that prioritized in traditional scholarship. This Toolkit contains resources that address these matters, and is useful for graduate students interested in pursuing academic paths of this nature. 

Are you creating or teaching a class that has a community engagement component? Or maybe your research project has become community-based. The Haas Center offers a number of resources to help you learn about the pedagogy of community engaged learning and research. From individual consultations, to small group workshops to compiled text and online resources, Haas has a wealth of information and expertise to help you with your community engagement work.

Bechtel welcomes the families of international students and visiting scholars at Stanford. This page offers a number of resources and links to obtain additional information regarding employment, social events, English classes and more available to the spouses and partners of international students.   

Stanford DoResearch's Responsible and Ethical Conduct of Research is a centralized reference for all university policies, regulatory training requirements and resources on ethically responsible research. Here you'll find answers to any questions you may have about required compliance training, PI eligibility and exceptions, PI financial basics, conflicts of interest, protocols, safety, intellectual property, among others. Open to all, it is particularly directed at Stanford students and postdocs.

Feel like you never have enough time? Stanford Business School Professor Jennifer Aaker advocates reframing your concept of time in order to achieve multiple goals at once. What Aaker calls "multipliers" are single activities that fulfill multiple commitments or goals and promote being present. It is different than multitasking, which consists of trying to do several activities at once to meet different goals. Try out the linked exercises to help you build up your "time affluence." All videos from this Voice & Influence series on the VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab website include a downloadable discussion guide and links to further resources.

The Rising Environmental Leaders Program (RELP) at Stanford's Woods Institute is developing the next generation of environmental leaders. Complementing participants' formal training with experiential learning, RELP focuses on translating environmental research into national policy development. The program helps burgeoning environmental leaders to build partnerships and develop career tracks outside of academia, particularly in public service. RELP includes a one-week DC leadership training.

Doctoral and postdoctoral students from all fields, including Earth Sciences, Engineering, Business, Education, Sciences, and Humanities are welcome to apply. Preference is given to students actively working  on a Woods-affiliated project.

The Harry and Emilia Rathbun Fund for Exploring What Leads to a Meaningful Life at Stanford was established in 2006. Intended to help students experience personal reflection, thoughtful discussion, and a deeper exploration of life's purpose, the fund has brought several notable public figures to campus, including Sandra Day O'Connor, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, and others. In February 2017, the Rathbun Fund brought Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to speak at Memorial Church. View the full webcast here and be inspired by Justice Ginsburg's dedicated life of service. 

In this video, former Stanford President and editor-in-chief of Science magazine Donald Kennedy speaks to biomedical PhD students about communicating science through publications. Watch it to learn this expert's perspective on getting published, communicating ideas, and participating in the scientific community.

From the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, this website includes several resources to help you navigate the start of your career and effectively teach new generations of scientists.

Stanford University Library offers a wide array of tools to assist you with searching for articles, books, and other publications. Depending on your area of focus, you may find some of the more specific search tools useful for your research and learning. Check out the library's list of search tools today to start improving your research efficiency and quality. If you have questions about how to use these tools, check out the tutorials available here. 

Hume's Writing Consultants and Oral Communication Tutors are trained, experienced tutors, many of whom have advanced degrees in different disciplines. They will assist you at any point in the writing or speaking process on any type of speaking or writing task. Additionally, you can find support for work you do with digital media and developing presentations. Tutors can help you to brainstorm, focus, as well as organize or integrate your ideas and materials. Consultations are drop-in or by appointment. 

Course is closed

Monday, Sept. 11 – Friday, Sept. 15, 9 AM – 4 PM; optional Jasper Ridge Field Trip, Friday 9:30-2:30 PM 

Join us to explore planetary stewardship from a range of perspectives, including systems and solutions orientations. Through guest speakers, large- and small-group discussions, and hands-on workshops with faculty and academic staff deeply engaged in Stanford’s new Doerr School of Sustainability, you will hone your knowledge and skills in areas from systems thinking to waste management, from climate change to community engagement, and more. By the end of the week, you will have expanded your network of colleagues in the fields of environment, energy, and sustainability, and you will leave with actionable next steps to apply a sustainability lens to your own scholarship.

Instructors

• Nicole M. Ardoin, Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER), Woods Institute for the Environment, Graduate School of Education

Audience & Capacity

Open to all graduate students in any discipline, as well as postdoctoral scholars, if space allows. If oversubscribed, preference is given to doctoral students in the first 3 years of their program. Space is limited to 30.

Objectives

By participating fully in this course, you will:

• Have knowledge of key aspects of sustainability through various disciplinary perspectives
• Develop skills and knowledge in core sustainability mindset areas, including systems, transdisciplinary, and research-and-practice thinking
• Be able to apply sustainability mindsets to their own areas of scholarly interest

Summary

This course introduces graduate students and postdocs to key ideas in sustainability, emphasizing knowledge as well as actionable skills, including how students might apply sustainability mindsets, theoretical frames, and approaches in their own scholarship. The sustainability competencies core to this course--systems thinking, transdisciplinary thinking, and values thinking--are key not only for conducting effective research in sustainability, but also for connecting one’s work to change-making spaces such as policy, industry, and conservation organizations.

Designed around a combination of guest speakers, large and small group discussions, and skills-based workshops, organized and hosted by faculty and staff active in designing Stanford’s new Doerr School of Sustainability, students will deepen their knowledge and learn new skills while also expanding their on- and off-campus networks in climate, energy, and sustainability. Each day consists of a morning and afternoon session where students will have opportunities to hear from guest speakers, engage in reflective/interactive activities, and participate in skills-based workshops. In the morning session, speakers and facilitators will introduce the day’s sustainability competency theme through a lecture and interactive activities. Students will then hear research scholars speak about how they have applied and instantiated the competencies in their own work through topics such as alternative energy, waste management, and community engagement. In the afternoon, students will participate in workshops, including those on science communication and leadership, among others. The second-to-last day will include a design-thinking workshop in which students envision and then plan their own sustainability path. The week ends with an optional field trip to Jasper Ridge, Stanford’s 1,900-acre biological field station.

Past participants who took this course said the following about their experience:

"Even though this is a course on sustainability, it teaches you beyond that and that are many skill sets that are translatable to other areas!" -SGSI 2021 Participant

"The emphasis on workshops was a great highlight of the program, and the common thread of systems thinking was a great way to tie everything together and create a curriculum that was applicable and actionable." -SGSI 2021 Participant

Additional Course Expectations

• Optional field trip on Friday to Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve (9:30AM to 2:30PM). Sack lunch and transportation provided from main campus.

• Full attendance is expected. This course is able to accommodate students observing a religious holiday during SGSI. Please email vpgeapplications@stanford.edu for details.

SUNet ID required to log in; all SGSI correspondence sent to your Stanford email account.