 Felly, bod eu bod yn dweud i'r ymdwyng y dyma'r pannol yma yma ar y cerddwyd, yw'r cyfan yma yma yn dweud, byddai y mawr yn yma, yw'r co-directorau y Pichord Institute, ac yn ymdweud y gallwch yn ymdweud fydd yma ar gyfer y dyma. Ond we really have the great pleasure of having three of our deans from the schools around Stanford here to talk with everyone. And the three deans that we have today, first we have Pam Mattson. She is a global thought leader. First of all she is the dean of the School of Earth Energy and Environmental Sciences. She's a global thought leader who works to reconcile the needs of people in the planet and the 21st century. am gyfnodol, uprightio, amdwylliant ac mae cymaintf daduo Keyfo. Fy warwm cymaintf jo i fynd Virginia Rydym Gwyrddiad, bydd ymwybodol, bydd cyllideil a gweithio fwyaf ar hynny, ac mae'r gweithio a'r gweithio gwirioneddau sectors yn frwyfa ar gyfer gwasanaethau ac Mae'r eich llyfr hefyd yn gweithio gyda cyflos daduaeth, next we have John Libin, he is the Dean of the Graduate School of Business, he has been a professor at Stanford for more than 15 years ac yn gyfwisnydd i'r teimlo'r chael dechrau i'r dechrau'r ddefnyddio. Felly, yw unig yn ysgrifenniol sy'n gweithio y bydd ymwylo'r llwyddiad, yw eu llwyr, yw ddefnyddio a'r teimlo'r teimlo'r cyhoes. Felly, mae'r ddeimlo yn ysgrifenniol yn gweithio'r ddefnyddio, mae'r ddeimlo yn y sgol i'r enghrainiol, mae'r professor o gyfwisnydd a'r ddeimlo yn ysgrifenniol yn ysgrifenniol, Bebesnish had served as the computer science department chair from 2009 to 2014 and the school of engineering senior associate dean from 2014 to 2016. Her research interests span many aspects of non-traditional data management and so with this distinguished panel that we have here I'll turn it over to Yvonne to thank you for your question and good morning to all Mae'n gwelch o'i wneud. Mae'n gweld yma. Gweithio. Rwy'n gyfrifau bod yna'n gweld am yw'r unig i'ch gaelio'r yr unig. Roeddwn i gaelio ar ysgol yn y Dey 1, mae'n rhaid o'n 700 o lŵtog honi drwsgol i'r program. Ond yna drwsgol yma yn unig i'ch gaelio, ond mae'n ddweud yma'n unig i'ch gaelio'r unig i'ch gaelio'r unig. Ac yn y cyfnod, rydych yn cyd-ddi'r ddeallog y gallwn, a gallwn yn fawr i ddweud ar y cyfnod o'r ddyn nhw'n gweithio'r ddau'r ysgol. Felly ydych chi ddweud y ddweud y ddweud y parwgysgol ysgol yw'r ddweud yng Nghymru? Rhywb i'n ddechrau, gallwn eich ddweud y ddweud yng Nghymru? Yn y gallwn, mae'r unrhyw wneud hynny. Pam, you have been dean for several years and in fact... A long time. In fact much of the energy research activity, educational activity on energy and environment sustainability can be traced back to you. You have been the catalyst for these institutes, the pre-court institute, the Woods Institute. Perhaps you could just give us a little insight on how it all started, how it came around, And what was the thinking at Stanford as a campus. And then we will sort of go and look ahead in future. Great, I would love to talk about that first of all. I should say I was just one of many people who created, who made these interdisciplinary institutes at Stanford and the interdisciplinary collaborations come together. I can't take all the credit but I was there at the time it happened. Let me just for a moment go back to the fact that Stanford been in the resource research area from its very beginning. One of the things that founded Stanford was the need to find resources to allow the development of the western U.S. and broader to meet the needs of people here and elsewhere. We have a long history at Stanford University. You don't think about that so much today, but that's how we started. Indeed, we've been working on energy resource issues and technologies for a very long time for more than a century. Now, you started out in the oil and gas world and we're still there in some ways, but we've evolved in a great number of different directions into energy technologies of all sorts. And I think importantly into thinking about energy as a system and as a part of a much broader system that goes well beyond energy to meeting the needs of people, protecting other things we care about in the process of doing that. So very much a systems perspective today. So back in I think 2002, I think we made our first major step as a university into the recognition that we could do more if we were all working together, if we are drawing in the expertise of Stanford 7 schools as we work on energy. And so GCEP, the Global Climate and Energy Project was the first thing led by Lynn Orr, my dean predecessor actually, and eventually Sally Benson and just built this community of researchers soon after. And I think in some ways that set the groundwork for what came after as we created the Precord Institute and the Woods Institute for the Environment Precord Institute for Energy Partner Institutes. I always with the idea that one of our challenges is to meet the needs of people of a still growing human population, of an increasingly consuming human population, but finding ways to do it in ways that don't forgo opportunities for the future, that don't make our water resources, our food resources, our climate system and other things not work well for us and for our children and grandchildren. So that's a sustainability objective that we I think together worked on energy from that perspective. The institutes were purposefully intended to bring together faculty and students from all over the university. So in many ways the deans have talked about this and been a part of this, all seven deans for 15 years or so. And that's an amazing thing about Stanford. I don't know how much you all will interact with people from across the schools, but you've already built a community that does that. And so you might be running into people who are getting an MBA or a JD or any kind of engineering degree or degrees in the sciences. And it's one of the great things about Stanford. It's one of the things we're known for. And I believe it is absolutely essential if we're going to solve the energy challenges of the future. So as you look ahead now, and you know, Stanford was ahead of its time compared to other institutions and looking at energy environment in a very strategic way. As you look ahead and see how the world is evolving outside of us, are we positioned in the right way? And for the students in particular, they're coming in in different schools. They're going to get their masters and PhD in there, and they're going to dig deep into their own field. Perhaps you could give an idea of how they should look at the experience at Stanford moving ahead. Well, I mean, we all, especially you all graduate students are going to delve deeply into your own area of research and development. Some of you are going to be focused very narrowly and deeply on new technologies or new computational approaches or new assessment approaches or whatever. There's a whole range of things. Again, all of our schools are engaged in. And that's great. Obviously you need to be expert in those areas. But I think that the ability to see your own issues as part of a broader system is essential. I think in this day and age of rapid change and chaotic change out there in the world, we all need to be systems thinkers and analysts. We need to be able to see what we're most interested in in the context of the feedbacks and trade-offs and unintended consequences potentially between what we're doing and the rest of this system in which we're, again, trying to meet the needs of people and protect the planet at the same time. So systems thinking. How do we do that? And I think that just by starting with conversations like this, you take a step in that direction. I think we need to find ways formally through our institutes of making sure that we're all having that opportunity. Terrific. Let's move on to Dean Levin. John, you are the Dean of Graduate School of Business. Before we go ahead, how many GSB students out here? They're generally the loudest crowd, by the way. I don't know if this year is louder than before or not, but that's the bar for you guys. So looking at Graduate School of Business, you've been in economics department, you've been in department chair, now in the Graduate School of Business. I spoke earlier on Monday about how this is the largest industry and $10 trillion per year, roughly, and that is going through a big transformation right now from a business school perspective. How would you advise the students when they're coming in to look at this, not only the experience in GSB, but at Stanford as a whole? First of all, it's just fabulous to see so many GSBers here. I'm delighted that we're turned out so well. I'd say a couple things about that. First, for people coming into the GSB, you're going to get the experience just at the GSB, and those of you who are non-GSB have the opportunity to take classes at the GSB as well. Actually, like Pam just said, it's focused sort of broadly on thinking about management in a holistic way, about all the different aspects of what it takes to be a great manager, a great business leader. Many of the skills are going to be broadly applicable across any industry that you go into. In fact, whether you go into the private sector or not, whether you go into the public sector or into the nonprofit sector, they're going to be just general management skills. We've had, particularly over the last 10 or 15 years, just an enormous increase in the amount of interest among students in energy and sustainability, and that's been steadily on the rise for quite a while. I think part of it is just the incredible opportunities in the energy sector and in sustainability, and part of it is just the growing social awareness of what an important issue it is for the country and the world, and that's brought students into that, and part of it is institutional. Part of it is that we have a joint degree program with EIPER, and at Stanford there's many opportunities, as Pam just mentioned, to go around the campus. I think for people interested in energy, that's just a particularly salient thing, because one of the things about Stanford that is really extraordinary, and it's hard to appreciate that this is the only place you've been as a student, and some of you have been other places before, probably most of you. The barriers here between the schools are incredibly low. First of all, it's just the physical barriers. It's only a 15-minute walk between the GSB and here, so it's just easy to get around, and it's also relative to many schools, it's culturally easier to get around. People are very open and welcoming to students from other schools if you go around to a class in another department in another school, and so I think you have an amazing opportunity when you're here, and this is true for everyone, to look around and look through that whole course cabinet and say, wow, that looks like an incredible class over there in the engineering school. Jennifer's teaching a great class this quarter, actually, and she told me the other day that the biggest contingent of people in her class is a big data class. Are people from the GSB, actually? At least they were registered so far. That's an incredible opportunity that you have, and so I would really encourage everyone to do that. The thing I would say about Stanford, and this again goes to something that Pam just said, is one thing that, as an institution, we've been really good at doing, is being able to go all the way from the most basic of technologies, all the way through to the most applied of applications, and have a relatively seamless flow from one end of that spectrum to the other, and so people who are interested in energy, you can go all the way from particle physics and crashing things into each other at Slack to more basic science in the Earth School to more applied science around batteries or potential technologies to the commercialization of those technologies in business, to the economics around those technologies, or around systems change to the law and regulation of those same technologies. Actually, we're world-class at every step of the way. I think to Pam's point, you have the potential here to get that whole perspective, everything from what's driving the technologies in this industry, what's driving some of the underlying change, to how should we as a society think about the implications, how are things going to change in a way that we need to, you know, our industries are going to change, there's going to be business opportunities, there's going to be the need for regulation and social decisions, and I think that's something you hope, you know, getting that broad perspective is something that would be an amazing opportunity for each of you. Terrific. Well, let's move on to Dean Wittam, the School of Engineering. How many engineering students out here are just numbered? So you have a big contingent out here. Yes. So, Jennifer, perhaps you could, I mean, you are the most recent dean of the three of you, but you have been senior associate dean, you have been department chair in computer science, you led the SOE Future, which was the... Co-led the SOE Future. Co-led the SOE Future. We work very closely on, and no one wanted to call it a strategic plan. No. That's just, you know, but it's about the future. Perhaps you could give us, give the students an insight of where you think the School of Engineering is going, how does energy fit in, and how does the School of Engineering connect with other schools on campus to give the student a very holistic experience? Sure. So I am the newest dean. It's been six months, just about my six month anniversary, and when I was associate dean, actually one of the things I enjoyed most was working with Arun on our, thinking about the future of the School of Engineering. And the School of Engineering, the work that goes on is from very basic, just completely intellectually driven science essentially, up to very application oriented work. And we are aiming into solve world problems. That is really what it's about, and that's what people are interested in doing. And as part of our thinking about the future process, we outlined ten big challenges. Many of them are kind of what you would expect, and certainly energy was one of those challenges that the School is focusing on. While other people were talking, I was listening, but I was also doing a mental inventory of the nine departments in the School. And I bet if I asked, shall I try it? Please, please, please. Let me just see if we've got people from every department because in my mind every department has work going on in energy. Computer science. What? But you're from computer science? Where are the computer scientists? Data driven... Oh, thank you. Data driven research in energy, how could one not be thinking about that? Do we have any statisticians here? Okay, well that's computer science with a different name, I think. That's everything with a different name. Right, yes. Okay, great. Certainly data driven work in energy is super important. We've got that going on in computer science and statistics. How about electrical engineering? We should have many of those out here. Mechanical engineering. Management science and engineering, I hope. Excellent, because I think one of our strengths is to think about energy policy. Stanford has a great engineering school in a great university with a great business school. Policy is something I think we can be very strong in and maybe historically haven't thought about our strengths in that area. Management science and engineering is a department that thinks about that type of thing. How about civil engineering? Excellent. Bioengineering? How many people think bioengineering relates to energy? Right, so we'll have to convince those bioengineers. Material science. Yes, I am not surprised. Great work going on in our material science department in, say, nanomaterials for batteries, for storage. How about chemical engineering? Surprising. That's a little surprising. Some of our departments are smaller than others, of course. Last but not least, aeroastro. I'm going to probe a couple of those departments because every department in the engineering school has a footprint in the energy area. So I want to emphasize that both within engineering and across the university, we have a lot of collaborative work going on. People want to see their work addressing world problems and I would say energy is the problem that cross-cuts every single one of our departments and it's really on a lot of people's mind. As I mentioned, nanomaterials for batteries, data analysis at sort of the other end of the spectrum. We have a faculty member joint in civil and mechanical engineering working on wind power and he's taking, he's studying how animals, how birds flock, how fish school, and how that can affect how you construct wind farms. Fascinating stuff. So really we have things across the whole spectrum. So I would encourage you to meet each other. That's what this is about. Again, the barriers here are very low. As John said, it's hard to appreciate that until you've spent time at other universities, but this is something that students tell us frequently, that that's one of the best experiences they have here. Students can be PhD students in one department and work with a faculty member in another department or another school. Students are frequently co-advised. In fact, we're very busy the faculty and some of the best way for us to get together is to have students that we co-advise working on problems that we're most interested in. We often say that PhD students are the glue that hold together the different faculty with their shared interests. You asked about the future of the school. In our future planning process, one of the things that we were interested in doing was making sure we could enable big, solving the big problems with very interdisciplinary teams. So we've started a new initiative. We call the Catalyst for Collaborative Solutions that is bringing together faculty from across the entire university, giving them funding, pretty significant funding, to work with post-docs and graduate students from all the different areas on addressing world problems. One other thing I just wanted to mention as an aside, how many of you were undergraduates here? Not many. We have great undergraduates here and our undergraduates are also very eager to work on world problems. This is something that's on their mind, all the different areas. So, if you're in a research group, I encourage you to encourage your faculty advisor to involve undergraduates, most do, and it also will give you a great experience in mentoring younger students. So one of the great experiences people can have here, particularly PhD students, is to become mentors for students who are really passionate about doing work in addressing problems that make a difference. We do have many programs here for undergraduate research funding. So something to think about, work with your co-graduate students in your department, but also across departments, work with undergraduates, work with faculty and post-docs. You'll get a really broad experience here and what will tie everybody together is their interest in this case energy. Perfect. Pam, you wanted to follow up? Yeah, I want to second what you said about really every department at university, practically. Certainly every department in our school focuses on energy across department. We did an analysis, well, a planning process a few years ago identifying four societally important things that all of our departments in our school are focused on, that their faculty and students are focused on. One obviously was energy. Every one of the departments had somebody working in these areas. Climate, food and water, the nexus of food and water especially, and hazards, risk, vulnerability, resilience, those kinds of questions. The interesting thing, of course, is we can lay those four out as cross-cutting things. It goes way beyond our school and other schools as well. But they also all interact with each other. So one of the things that we have done through the Precourt Institute in the past is sort of a thought thinking about connecting the dots. What are the connections between our efforts to meet and do research that will help address the energy challenge and how do they connect with our efforts to meet food needs or to address climate issues and so forth. That goes back to the system's perspective, but the fact is this cuts across so many parts of the university which is why, again, an institute is so important, the Precourt Institute is so important, because it acknowledges that no one place in this university owns this issue. We all have to work together to address it. I thought this would be for a familiar example to many of you, but just to take one example to think about why, when Pam talks about why systems and why different departments are wrong, you just think about, to take one example, think about something like fracking technology to drill wells, which is a technological innovation about how to do horizontal drilling and to use a different technique to get more extraction from the existing oil fields. So that's technology and that's the department of petroleum engineering, which has been a stand-up. I think it's still existing. No, it's energy resources engineering. It used to exist for a long time. We still do some of that work. Now we're looking at assessment of how to do it better and out environment. There's a technological aspect to it. There's a business aspect. We have alums who are in Texas. They're buying and selling the equipment, the oil fields, they're in project finance, they're financing equipment. That's a huge, huge business for people interested in finance. Then there's enormous economic consequences because you look at the price of oil and the shift toward natural gas that's come out of that. It's a complete transformation of the energy, domestic energy use. There's a environmental, set of environmental consequences, so there's lots of interesting questions about environmental regulation. Then there's geopolitical questions. It's completely changed the geopolitics around energy because we've gone from being an importer of fossil fuels to an exporter of fossil fuels. That's just one example. There's amazing amount of energy. There's many examples just like that. Wind energy. Lots of examples that just span so many places. If you really want to understand it, you want to get those different perspectives and that's something you can do here. That natural gas example is a great one because a few years ago the Precourt Institute and Stanford Earth together created an initiative on that that's called the natural gas initiative and NGI. It's exactly that story. It's like natural gas is a transition fuel for us. How are we going to produce it in ways that reduce methane emissions and other things? How are we going to produce it more efficiently? Then all the geopolitical, economic, international issues around it all together. Arun knows more about this than I do by far. The energy politics. We're going to have former Secretary of State George Schultz in the afternoon. He's got so many stories. I'll open it up for questions and you should ask him. I can assure you this will be entertaining. We'll be very... Going back to the systems thinking and a holistic approach to this I think that's so important because the energy world after let's say about 100 years of going along a certain direction is that ship is now turning and this is a major transformation coming. There's innovations which are needed that connects the dots as you said between technology, business, policy, finance and other aspects and just people acceptance. You mentioned about the natural gas initiative which is looking at which brings in fact the campus together and looking at it holistically. The next initiative that we started Bits and Watts and you guys had a treat from Silla talking about Bits and Watts. We're trying to do this but are we... Let's be critical of ourselves in a positive way. Are we doing enough or should we be doing more so that the students get the best experience so that they're best prepared for the future? We'll have to ask the students that I guess. I think there's always more we can do personally. I do think that those programs provide really wonderful opportunities for students to do what they need to do as graduate students. You have a job here as graduate not a job, you have an essence, a need to become expert in something, to be creative and innovative in your own area to drive in your own ideas and drive them forward. You all have to be focusing on that too but if you can think about through these larger programs larger communities of people engage in the breath of thinking around them as you do your thing you will end up much more flexible I think much more open-minded and open mindsets are critical in this world and you will appreciate your own work but you'll see how it fits more broadly. Sometimes I talk to corporate leaders who many of our students end up working in corporations and the corporate leaders say well your students are fantastic they are the strongest PhDs or master students we have, they're really creative and innovative and everything but they need to think a little bit more about where what they're doing actually fits in the larger picture and so one of our jobs is to figure out how to do that to give you an opportunity to understand more broadly as you focus relatively narrowly I would say let's ask the students so one interesting thing about Stanford that's not always so obvious to students is that we're extremely bottom up organization very faculty driven faculty sort of decide what's important even what they teach of course we have to try to cover most areas but faculty have interests and often are teaching in those interests we don't have people at the top telling everyone what to do and that can actually lead to gaps sometimes so I'd be curious actually to hear from the students you're all first year students correct they haven't started yet but you're probably looking at classes and signing up for classes and you're probably doing many in your department but also across is there anything missing there's an area I'd love to be taking a class in and I can't find one yeah so I mean we have an engineering professor an economics professor and an energy systems professor and I see this mesh going back and forth between environment and finance and energy as a whole but as I already mentioned it's a $10 trillion industry and I feel like even the smallest percentage of that could be used to drive social change as well in some way to incorporate social problems into the technology terrific so we mentioned that GSB and Stanford Earth have a program that we host basically for the whole university it's called EIPER are there any EIPER MBAs or okay there's a few here okay so it's exactly that it asks people to combine a sense of the technology or the economics with social and political policy issues and bring them together and are there classes offered or what would a first year student do to get involved yeah they would be taking core courses that bring in the economics and business and the social as well as biophysical parts of that social environmental system that we're living in here but it's a small program we need a lot more opportunities for everybody to engage in that kind of conversation and maybe next year in the energy forum or in this activity we can bring some of that to the table because we do worry about it and think about it I will say Stanford is not as strong in those areas as we should be but it's there and I don't know with John whether you have any other yeah I think part of that comes through the curriculum and comes through programs like EIPER and then part of that comes through different types of so if we have a business school we have an energy club that's really active and we have a lot of students who are just thinking broadly about social change about how to change the world in different ways and have many outlets so we have a center for social innovation for example which has lots of classes that are geared toward things like how do you do social entrepreneurship how do you develop a social venture not specifically targeted at energy or at the environment it could be many different things that you want to make change in but thinking about how do you give students the tools to be effective at advocating for change in the world or being a force for change in the world so I think there are many opportunities to do what you're talking about to think about the social consequences and I think what you hope is that in a class that say on environmental economics or energy economics some of the issues about what are the social priorities and how should we think about things broadly from society those should come to the fore at some point in the class and you sort of hope that that's going to come into the discussion and I think it mostly does but it may depend on the class and I think that's a good thing for all of you to tell us as you go through the school if there's an aspect you don't feel as coming out as not getting surfaced that you think should really be surfaced we'll open it up for a question but let me ask you another aspect that maybe isn't necessarily very pleasant is the whole concept of geoengineering which we know has of course from so many different disciplines and it's controversial and exciting at the same time I found it very fascinating and I know one of the most knowledgeable people in the world is here at Stanford and one other on the East Coast but in terms of course work I haven't seen anything regarding that and I think it's a really important area because even if it is very controversial it's on the forefront of potentially happening in the future if we have global catastrophe I mean he does sometimes teach but he is a Carnegie institution scientist as well in a consulting position in our school but he is not the only one actually there are a number of us who have fought deeply and written in that area and it's a good point especially when you think about geoengineering as going beyond managing the climate by putting something up in the atmosphere to all the geoengineering that includes carbon capture and storage of different sorts agriculture is geoengineering it can be anyway carbon farming there's a lot of ideas out there we actually know a lot about so good point if we haven't already put it together in a package we need to do so thank you so let me ask you one more question we'll just open it up for a question we talked about timing because it's a very interesting time to be in the field of energy let's talk about geography but space we are located in a what is often considered worldwide as the epicenter for innovation this is Silicon Valley and first of all how many international students out here welcome to the United States welcome to Stanford welcome to Stanford given that we are here in the middle of Silicon Valley where everyone is looking for in a thought leadership in innovation digital world for sure but now we are seeing gradually many multinational energy companies putting up little shops around here from a student point of view what would be your advice to leverage this environment out here beyond Stanford how would you think about that I was going to even mention related to the previous question that one of the advantages of being at Stanford is that people often get involved so you're likely just naturally to hear from people who are in innovation and entrepreneurship around Silicon Valley I'd be surprised if you didn't in some of your classes or other activities encounter those people and I would just say don't be hesitant to talk to them because they love to come here and meet the students and don't be shy that's why they're here they want to tell you what's going on they want you to get involved so of course our faculty are great but there is this larger ecosystem around Stanford in just about every unit and so take advantage of that sometimes people will come and speak in the evenings just keep your eyes out we're a very decentralized place so you just need to constantly be looking around for these opportunities the other of course is to do internships here locally and if you're in a one-year masters not so necessarily but if you're in a two-year masters or if you're in a PhD program I would strongly encourage you to look at internship opportunities and sometimes you can tie that in with your research it can all be a nice package connecting Stanford and at the outside first again that was fantastic when everyone raised their hands and we had all those internationalism what an amazing it just makes you reflect what an amazing place it says we really do get people from all of the world to come here and be students and of course you're going to learn a lot from each other that's a big part of being here two things I wanted to say so one was just to pick up on Jennifer's point she said about being here in Silicon Valley you get to take advantage of the other people who are outside this campus but are in this ecosystem in Silicon Valley that is just so true it's very fluid with the surrounding environment I was actually looking last night at the business school classes in energy we have a model at the business school in our elective classes where we often will take an academic faculty member and we pair them to teach with a practitioner actually every single one of the energy classes that we're offering is this model it's an accounting professor paired with a venture capitalist it's someone who works in the energy industry paired with an economist or whatever the pairing is and that's an amazing opportunity because you get to see the outside perspective then you get to see the academic perspective and I think you get that general at Stanford quite a lot I was going to say about but just to your point Arun about this being sort of the center of innovation I was in India three weeks ago and I was traveling around India for the business school and then we opened a program in Chennai the Stanford Seed program where our faculty go and work with entrepreneurial companies in the developing world it's a really fabulous program we opened in India this fall and the thing that is amazing about going there and representing Stanford in a place like that is of course everyone looks at Stanford and says when you leave here you're bringing a little bit of that innovative and entrepreneurial and sort of spirit of exploration with you wherever you go and that's a great thing that you're going to have you're going to get to be here to soak all that up and then hopefully you'll go somewhere else but you'll get to take it with you out into the world and that's just a great thing about being here so while you're here you really soak it in it's a pretty exciting thing to get to do for a few years so in addition to the points that have already been made the one thing I can think of that is maybe worth knowing about is that we Stanford is actually pretty good at purposefully building partnerships with the corporate world I mean we actually want to know that our knowledge that we're creating through your research and our research is actually useful and usable and will be used by somebody so we try to create different kinds of partnerships and we call some of these affiliates programs but GCEP was an example of that and I know that pre-court has an affiliates program many of our departments have affiliates programs and they're intended to be a conversation really where we're sharing what we're learning and we're learning from the various corporations that we're partnering with generally what their challenges are and I think that that that's a really neat thing it doesn't tell you what you have to do but it gives you a sense of where their challenges are and where we can intersect so to the extent you can you might want to look for those opportunities to learn through that kind of partnership as well as other things that the institutes can do well this is a very rare opportunity for all of you to have three deans in front of you I'm sure you have many questions let's just open it up if you have questions about Stanford in general maybe you can introduce yourself and who you are with school Hi, my name is Steve Tass I'm in mechanical engineering in the design school and I had a question I'm an engineer but I'm sure we all like to hear from each of you from your perspective as being the dean of your school how do you see your role as dean directly to us students so you know I heard you may teach a class or are you as a resource if we have ideas or the strategic thing perhaps students can get involved so I guess how do you see your role as dean of that directly to us students I'll let you start though chime in that's a tough so everything you said we did involve students in our strategic planning process we like to hear from students our job as dean is actually to support the success of the faculty staff and students that is our job and that can mean different things at different times there might be a department where the students are unhappy with some structural issues or funding issues and that will be the dean's job to go in and make sure everybody can be successful in that department just figure it out sometimes we're just problem solvers we do again to make sure everybody's successful teaching classes is something that is not actually part of our job description but we often like to do I don't know if you're teaching two of this quarter so most it's interesting most deans just don't want to be as disconnected from the students as it could happen that's actually sort of something that easily happens in the role so I would say you'd find most deans finding ways to stay connected with students you know I made a personal choice actually I didn't think that I could continue running a research group and continue teaching as dean many people don't do either of those things I chose to ramp down the research and keep the teaching going because for me that's more students I think I'm going to have like 150 this fall so that's I want to personally I want to connect with students all the time and connect with as broad a group of students as I can that's a great question though you almost stumped us no no no we actually have an official mechanism so I agree with everything you've said I just say come and talk anytime but we do have an official mechanism you guys probably do too we have a GSAC the Graduate Student Advisory Council that is the advisor to the dean and associate deans we have elected representatives from each of our departments and programs and we meet at least quarterly and they're very involved in their given resources basically to reach out to their communities and make sure there's ongoing conversations about where the challenges and where the opportunities are and what students are what their experience is and how we can help so we did that very purposefully and you know for example later tomorrow I'm going to be working with our GSAC members to plan a strategy session that they will then lead with their communities so that we get good feedback so we do that all the time but I also have to say at Stanford if you haven't already found the Vice Provost for Graduate Education you definitely will it is an incredible office in the university it has hugely hugely helpful tools and advice for all graduate students in the university lots of ways to help support student activities lots of tools that you can use as you think about your education and professional development so there are partners all the schools benefit from the Vice Provost for Graduate Education so be sure you take advantage of them too yeah there are student groups and activities at all levels so I would say in the school of engineering which is a rather large school the we don't have one graduate student advisory council for the school each department has one so in the school of engineering as far as student involvement it tends to affiliate more at the department level than the school level just because of the sheer size and sure at the GSB things have a very different flavor because it's a different setup we have a student association and that's a formal mechanism for students to to get input into to other folks at the school but I think actually what Jennifer and Pam just said I mean first of all as a dean basically you're in an enabling role and at a place like Stanford you're surrounded by so many people who are basically more talented than you are so like you're including the students the way you succeed in a leadership role in the university is that other people do great things and it works well on you it's and I'm totally serious about that it's sort of funny but that actually is how university leadership sort of works basically it's not that you do things and then other people speak for yourself doctor he's right and the second thing is everyone ends up here on the faculty and then in a dean because they just like being around the people the students I mean that's sort of why else would you be here and so that's I think that's the other part is that I think most of the time if you're in a dean's role if you can sort of find a way to just to go spend some time with the students that's like that's the best part of your day the gift to the dean so I think all of us try to do a lot of that questions actually since we have only like five or seven minutes left why don't we actually have multiple questions and then we'll sort of group them go ahead my name is Kabir I am a master's student in mechanical engineering and sort of following off of the earlier question about sort of mechanisms to you know get acclimated to Stanford in general from your vantage point what would you say the best mechanisms have been for students to sort of balance generating expertise in their own field yet still being able to you know get knowledge and meet people from other departments so how do you go deep and then how do you create the teas or the pies so that's one I'm Simon, I'm from material science and engineering I from this conference one of the main things that I've actually gotten out of it is that Stanford is clearly on the forefront of a lot of research in the technical aspect and of course in the business and financial aspects however one thing that I've also gotten is that policy change is going to be necessary in the future to help with climate change and I was wondering what Stanford is doing and what they can deal with the future and kind of create the kind of political atmosphere environment that is more adaptive and able to address these issues more than they currently are now Policy, what are we doing in policy, yes over there are the incentives aligned let's take these three and then we'll come back to a few more tea and pie policy and aligning incentives do a quick swipe of all of them just quickly I think that the tea and the pie shape I think that they're taking advantage of the energy community more broadly through the student groups through the pre-court institutes various seminar series all of the mechanism we've got a lot of ways you can do it you can probably drown in them there's so many ways but you can give yourself that experience of broadening your own thinking while you're getting your depth and they're there, that's pretty easy I think both on the policy and on the trade-offs this is a huge area I believe Stanford is going to be roaring into this area in the coming years it's a sustainability issue and sustainability is not this issue of meeting people's needs for the short and the long term is not going to be answered just by lots of new technologies they're going to be incredibly important but we've got to get the whole social environmental system right and the policy piece is huge we have expertise in our school we have a lot in business it's all around the university I think it's going to be brought to bear on these issues very, very quickly the other thing I will say to your point is Stanford is walking the walk a lot on energy and climate I hope you all get to see Sesse I hope you get to see the broader range of things that we're trying to do as a university to grapple with this and we're not stopping with the easiest things of a huge energy plant but working on a lot of other issues so engaging ourselves in that challenge is one of the best ways we can do that and the university is doing that so you guys are coming here at a great time I think we're doing a long range planning process in the university I think this is going to emerge as a huge area of importance to us I want to hear John's answer to how you balance profit and the environment because you're the economist let me take that one second actually just on the point about depth versus breadth the answer might be different depending on where you're sitting in this room and where you're starting for example if you're coming into the business schools and MBA students that's a degree that is trying to give you a broad education it's trying to prepare you to be a student leader in a variety of ways and so we want to touch a lot of bases to give you those skills that make you adaptable in your career and then if you have the opportunity you can and should try to go deep in a few areas that you're really passionate about or that excite you if you're here as a PhD student in economics for example take an area that I know you have to get all the way to the frontier of the field and then beyond and you just have to go very deep and that is your charge that's what's going to get you ahead and then to the extent that you have time to sort of get a lot of breadth that's great too but your mandate while you're here is you've got to leave and people say you're the best person in the world young person in the world in that area and it could be a little bit narrow but that's sort of what gets you ahead so I think it does depend a little bit on where you are to spread yourself out versus just sort of drill down and everyone has to sort of figure that out for themselves individually and with your advisors and mentors and so forth the other questions those are great questions and actually let me just preface it by saying it's like where it's a pretty unusual point in the world I was here we had the 25th business school reunion last weekend one of the people came and asked a question that was one of our MBA alums who's 25 years old and they basically asked a question which was like is it sort of end times for capitalism and I thought I said wow I didn't expect to be the end up as the Dean of the Stanford Business School and how people asked me whether capitalism was one of my alums asked me whether capitalism was was over but you know we're at like a time in the world where that question's not a surprise it's sort of not a surprising question and I think I mean it's a little surprising from the MBA but it's not a totally surprising question and I think you're lucky to be here at that kind of time because this is similar to your question about how do you bring in social change into thinking about energy and the environment the thing about being on this campus this is a great place to talk about those issues about how is our society going to adapt in different ways to changes and not just to technological changes in the world but to political and social changes in the world and everybody gets to take part in that discussion that doesn't have to just happen in the classroom that's the discussion that's what we're all talking about here all the time I mean that's sort of like everyone's talking about that and you're going to get to do that here with all these other people from different backgrounds and all over the world from this afternoon actually we're going to have George Shulls and you guys if he doesn't raise it himself which I think he will ask him about the carbon price about his approach to revenue neutral carbon tax and what it implies that's really aligning incentives and making sure that business and environment are aligned in some way so I'm sure we'll talk about that I have to say too that to both of those points as we speak we're running an executive ed program and I know the GSB has run similar executive programs where it's all about how you do that balancing it's all about how you be a business that cares about the long-term well-being of both the business and people and the environment all together a sustainability perspective so it's happening but I think we are in the early stages I know that Jennifer has to leave and so let's give them a big round of applause I think this could have gone on for another hour and there's so much of interest in this topic thank you so much for being here