Ph.D. Program: Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources

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Overview & Description

The Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER) is, as its name implies, an interdisciplinary program that reaches across all of Stanford’s seven schools, but it is housed in Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy, and the Environmental Sciences (School of Earth or SE3). The program aims to teach students the knowledge and skills necessary to address the world's most challenging environmental and sustainability problems. E-IPER combines academic disciplines such as natural sciences, engineering, humanities, social sciences, law, health, policy, and business with the belief being that such an approach is more likely to yield new insights and novel solutions to urgent global problems such as energy use, climate change, food security, freshwater availability, human health and sanitation, depletion of ocean resources, land degradation, and biodiversity loss, among others.

Dr. Ardoin advises E-IPER students who pursue a range of projects with social-ecological components: designing and evaluating the effectiveness of community co-management of marine and coastal resources; using behavioral science principles to design and evaluate invasive-species management issues; and leveraging multi-criteria decision analysis tools to incorporate cultural, ecological, social, biophysical, and economic variables into land-use and marine-related decision-making.

FAQs - Ph.D. Program in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment (E-IPER) and Resources

The E-IPER program has created online information sessions as a means for prospective applicants who are not able to visit campus in person to get more information about our program.

Please find the list of information sessions scheduled for the 18-19 application cycle. https://pangea.stanford.edu/eiper/phdinfosessions

Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the program, E-IPER does not have its own faculty. Instead, we draw together a variety of faculty members from across campus into unique constellations in support of student needs and interests. E-IPER faculty affiliates, with a range of interests, are available to advise and work with E-IPER doctoral students. More details on the configuration of E-IPER student committees and how affiliated faculty relate to the program can be found at the E-IPER website.

E-IPER alumni trained through the Social Ecology Lab are in a range of positions that leverage their scholarly, teaching, and community-engagement expertise. Alumni positions include tenure-track faculty positions as well as postdoctoral fellowships in environmental studies, human dimensions of resource management, coastal and marine studies, and environmental education. Others work as social-science researchers with nonprofits, government agencies, and environmental consulting firms. For more information, please see the list of E-IPER alumni.

Normally, the doctoral program takes five years to complete. Funding is guaranteed for these five years.

First-year E-IPER PhD students take a series of courses as a cohort to build a core body of knowledge and experiences. Those courses include:

The courses are designed to introduce students to the theories, analytical tools, methods, and approaches necessary for interdisciplinary work.

The degree also offers a great deal of flexibility for students to pursue courses in their research interests.

No, the research, teaching, and course requirements are a full-time undertaking (probably more than a full-time undertaking!).

Stanford PhD-level courses are not offered online. Being on campus and being part of the community is an essential part of the PhD experience as many of the enriching opportunities of learning can only be experienced that way. That said, many of our students do pursue in-depth field work for their dissertation research, which is entirely appropriate at various times during the course of the PhD program, as discussed with and advised by the PhD committee.

Please refer to the general E-IPER website and talk with the E-IPER admissions staff to discuss the overall criteria. There is no single response to this question, but we can say that we do receive numerous applications from extraordinarily qualified individuals, and we have very few spaces available for PhD admissions. As such, we recommend that you explore programs in Environmental and Sustainability Education at several universities, and carefully consider various dimensions that might contribute to whether programs might fit with and support your interests. We then encourage to you consider applying to more than one program. Our research group tends to include individuals with some past professional as well as research experience. Broadly, we look for people who have some sense of how how bringing a theoretical frame to persistent environmental, conservation, and sustainability challenges will help in addressing those challenges, and people who are innovative and perseverant in their work in environmental social sciences, defined broadly.

See E-IPER Admissions page for application information.

See E-IPER Admissions page for discussion of GREs.

All admitted E-IPER PhD students are guaranteed five years of funding. This funding comes from teaching assistantships, research assistantships, gifts, and endowed funds. Many PhD students also pursue, and receive, outside funding sources such as National Science Foundation fellowships. See E-IPER Admissions page for more details on funding.

Students work on a variety of research projects within the Social Ecology Lab. Please visit the page that describes our Lab Members to gain an understanding of the range of work that our lab members are pursuing.

Through these research projects, students can expect to gain knowledge of the literature of their field and learn how to conduct field research. Students will also develop skills in conducting systematic reviews; developing surveys, questionnaires, and observation protocols; working with community partners in the field; applying for and writing research grants; supervising research interns; designing and implementing a research project; and writing an academic paper; among others.

The Social Ecology Lab is Dr. Ardon’s research group, and therefore is part of the Graduate School of Education and the Woods Institute for the Environment. PhD students and postdoctoral fellows are supervised by Dr. Ardoin and are therefore part of the lab. We often have visiting scholars (professors or experts from elsewhere) on campus for a quarter or a year; those experts join the lab meetings and enhance our discussions as well. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of Dr. Ardoin’s work, our Social Ecology lab group includes people from across campus pursuing a range of work. A typical lab meeting usually consists of PhD students and postdocs from various programs and schools around campus.

Work on your application. Pay close attention to your statement of purpose, ensuring that you outline an area of research interest and suggest some ways that you might pursue that work through a PhD. Then let your excitement about and passion for the work show in your writing. We look forward to reviewing your application!

Sample Emmett Interdisciplinary Environment and Resources Ph.D. Courses

Please note that, as E-IPER faculty are associated with departments and schools around campus, courses are often listed through faculty’s home departments. Please use explorecourses.stanford.edu to explore full course offerings. The below courses represent a small sample of courses offered.

ENVRES 225: E-IPER Current Topics Seminar

Weekly presentations of E-IPER students' research and other program-related projects. Occasional guest speakers. Individual or team presentation, active participation, and regular attendance required for credit. May be taken for credit a maximum of two times.

Instructors: Barsom, S. (PI)

ENVRES 240: Environmental Decision-Making and Risk Perception

Mobilizing successful conservation efforts to mitigate climate change and preserve both local and global ecosystems requires a new way of thinking. This course will investigate the barriers to pro-environmental behavior and the heuristics and biases that cloud our ability to respond effectively to environmental problems, using insights from behavioral economics, neuroeconomics, and environmental risk perception. Emphasis on interdisciplinary applications of recent research, and implications for environmental policymaking and persuasive messaging.

Instructors: Sawe, N. (PI) McKanna, K. (TA)

ENVRES 270: Graduate Practicum in Environment and Resources

Opportunity for E-IPER students to pursue areas of specialization in an institutional setting such as a laboratory, clinic, research institute, governmental agency, non-governmental organization, or multilateral organization. Meets US CIS requirements for off-campus employment with endorsement from designated school official.

Instructors: Ardoin, N. (PI) ; Vitousek, P. (PI)

ENVRES 315: Environmental Research Design Seminar

Required core course restricted to first year E-IPER Ph.D. students. Series of faculty presentations and student-led discussions on interdisciplinary research design as exemplars of the research design theories discussed in ENVRES 320. Designing Environmental Research. Topics parallel the ENVRES 320 syllabus. Corequisite: ENVRES 320.

Instructors: Barsom, S. (PI)

ENVRES 320: Designing Environmental Research

Required core course restricted to first year E-IPER Ph.D. students. Research design options for causal inference in environmentally related research. Major philosophies of knowledge and how they relate to research objectives and design choices. Identification of critical elements within a broad range of research designs. Evaluation of the types of research questions for which different designs are suited, emphasizing fit between objectives, design, methods, and argument. Development of individual research design proposals, including description and justification understandable to a non-specialist.

Instructors: Davis, J. (PI)

ENVRES 340: E-IPER PhD Writing Seminar

Required core course restricted to second-year E-IPER PhD students. Actively pursue one or more writing goals relevant to this stage in their graduate studies in a structured setting. Set specific writing goals, create and follow a plan for reaching these goals, and receive substantive feedback on their written products from their peers. Examples of writing products include, but are not limited to, the student's dissertation proposal, E-IPER Fields of Inquiry essay, a literature review, or a grant or fellowship application. By the end of the course, students are expected to have completed or have made substantial progress toward their writing goal.

Instructors: Barsom, S. (PI)

Sample E-IPER Dissertation Titles: Ardoin Social Ecology Lab Members

  • Holoholo i ka La'i o Makua, collaborative community care and management of coastal resources: Creating state law based on customary rules to manage a nearshore fishery in Hawai'i (2012), Mehana Dance Bailey Blaich Vaughan.
  • The forest has a story: Reforestation and cultural ecosystem services in Kona, Hawai'i (2013), Rachelle Kathryn Gould.
  • Designing behavioral solutions to reduce residential energy use (2013), Marilyn Cornelius.
  • Evaluating software in environmental conflict resolution: The role of MarineMap in coastal planning and decision making in California (2014), Amanda Emily Cravens.
  • The ethno-agroecology of the Kona field system, Hawai'i Island, Hawai'i: Co-evolution of environment, agricultural practice, and society (2014), Noa Kekuewa Lincoln.
  • Community-based watershed restoration in Appalachia (2014), Heather Lukacs.
  • Forests in a changing climate: Social and ecological responses to yellow-cedar decline in the Alexander Archipelago, Alaska (2015), Lauren Elizabeth Oakes.
  • The human dimensions of wave resource management in California (2015), Daniel R. Reineman.
  • Collaborating for people and nature: Assessing the impacts of collaborative governance in federal hydropower licensing (2015), Nicola Ulibarri.
  • Knowledge to action in the anthropocene: Understanding and managing biogeochemical cycles under anthropogenic global change (2016), Aaron Leigh Strong.
  • The neuroeconomics of environmental decision-making: Individual differences and behavior (2016), Nik Sawe.