Our Culture
Our supportive and collaborative environment fosters a successful experience.
Civil and Environmental Engineering Newsletter
Atmosphere/Energy Newsletter
Equity, Diversity & Inclusion
Black Lives Matter
We would like to express our solidarity with the Black community and the Black Lives Matter movement. We mourn the losses of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade and countless other named and unnamed victims of racialized hatred and violence. Horrific incidents of police brutality and racial injustice have sparked a global conversation about the consequences of racism. As a Civil & Environmental Engineering community, our mission to advance education and research in engineering the built and natural environment is inextricably tied with environmental issues, and therefore, racial and social issues. We want to encourage each member of the CEE community to continue to grow, listen, learn, and reflect. We must also recognize how the field of engineering has historically failed to prioritize the value of diversity in experience, and work to change that. We plan to do so in five key focus areas, through: ensuring accountability & transparency, supporting education & training, enhancing outreach & mentorship, creating a supportive environment, and reaffirming our commitment to the value of diversity, broadly defined, in hiring and admissions.
Department Seminars & Events
Introductory Architecture Seminars
Undergraduate students can take introductory seminars to gain a better understanding of the pathways in a Civil & Environmental Engineering Major, including:
CEE 31Q: Accessing Architecture Through Drawing
CEE 32Q: Place: Making Space Now
CEE 80N: Engineering the Built Environment: An Introduction to Structural Engineering.
Further details on the Stanford Explore Courses website.
Race in Science Seminars
CEE 151A - Race in Science.
What are the roles of race and racism in science? Weekly guest speakers address the psychology and anthropology of race and racism; how race, language, and culture affect education; race in environmental science and environmental justice; the science of reducing police violence; and the role of race in genomic research.
CEE151B - Race in Technology.
What are the roles of race and racism in technology? How do race and racism affect the design and social impact of technology, broadly defined? Can new technology reduce racial bias? Invited speakers address the role of race in energy infrastructure, nuclear arms control, algorithmic accountability, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and synthetic biology.
Explore coursesCEE151C - Race in Medicine
What are the roles of race and racism in medicine? How do race and racism affect medical research and medical care? What accounts for health disparities among racial groups? What are the history, ethics, legal, and social issues surrounding racialized medical experiments and treatments?
Explore coursesCEE Program Seminars
In addition to these seminars which can be taken for credit, the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department holds seminars that are open to all Stanford community members. Detailed schedules will be posted on our Department Seminars page. These include:
- Atmosphere/Energy Seminars
- Environmental Engineering Seminars
- The Smart Grid Seminars Series
- Blume Center Latin-American Seminar on Performance Based Earthquake Engineering
Additional events can also be found on our department Events Page.
Stanford Energy Seminars
The weekly Energy Seminar, chaired by Professor John Weyant and managed by the Precourt Institute for Energy, informs the Stanford community about a wide range of energy and climate change issues and perspectives. The audience includes: faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and staff from Stanford’s seven schools and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, as well as energy professionals from the community.
Stanford Global Energy Dialogues is a virtual series where distinguished global energy thought leaders and world-renowned Stanford faculty address new challenges and unknowns that the world now faces.
Student Projects, Achievements & Interests
Lightweight Residential Construction Seismic Isolator Testing
Stanford Engineering Graduate Fellow David Lallemant
Student Profile | Stanford Engineering Student Mahalia Miller
Before the Flood: Renewables. Interview by Leo DiCaprio of students and faculty in the Atmosphere/Energy Program of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University on November 3, 2014 about clean, renewable solutions to global warming and air
Extra Curriculars
Atmosphere & Energy Rafting Trip
The A/E group has an annual tradition of rafting along the South Fork of the American River continued with former and new A/E graduate students and alumni before the start of classes.
Blume Center Tahoe Retreat
The Blume Center hosts an annual retreat to Lake Tahoe, where the students enjoy skiing and other winter activities, as well as working on building skills to help them in their careers.
Students in the Sustainable Design and Construction program are preparing for careers focused on the built environment. They research, design and consider all aspects of buildings and infrastructure with a focus on maximizing lifecycle economic value as well as net contribution to social functions and services. As such, Kolar has been thinking about everyday things like toilets and light bulbs, and how to reduce their environmental impacts by highlighting their corresponding financial costs. Each episode of the “It All Adds Up” podcast is under ten minutes long.
Kit Switch Group
Kit Switch offers energy efficient, prefabricated interior kits-of-parts to convert underutilized commercial buildings into sustainable and affordable housing units.
Kit Switch is a group of all-female Stanford graduate engineers and architects which includes Armelle Coutant, Alexandra Diabre, Anusha Krishnamurthy, Candice Delamarre and Samantha Liu, from the Sustainable Design and Construction Program. They are mission-driven, value community engagement and align themselves with social justice initiatives to create diverse and thriving mixed-use and mixed-income communities. Their women-led team, interdisciplinary backgrounds, and shared passion sets them apart. The team has domain expertise in the built environment, sustainability and leveraging digital tools for industrialized construction.
Kit Switch originated from the Stanford Venture Creation for the Real Economy course in Spring 2020, during which their common interests brought them together. Since then, the team has leveraged core courses from the SDC program to validate their value offering.
Read moreStudent Resources
Director of Graduate Studies
The Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) in the student’s degree-granting department is a faculty resource in addition to their faculty advisor and thesis committee members. DGSes serve as primary liaisons between graduate students, faculty in their programs, the Department Chair, the School, and the University.
Graduate Life Committee
The CEE Graduate Life Committee (GLC) is a group of graduate students from across the department whose mission is to improve the CEE graduate student experience. The GLC aims to facilitate communication between students and faculty by working with the Department Chair to provide effective solutions for individual problems and recurring issues.
Graduate Life FAQs
Student Organizations
There are several student organizations related to our field. Click below to find out more about the groups.
Learn moreNews and History
View a PDF copy of “One Hundred Years of Civil Engineering at Stanford: A Retrospective.” This department history was written in 1991 for its centennial celebration.
Visit Day 2020
Visit Day for Prospective Graduate Students in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. As we follow the spread of COVID-19 worldwide, the CEE Department canceled the on-campus components of Visit Day 2020. Admitted students received links to virtual information sessions.
If you missed the sessions, please see below for links to video recordings:
CEE Dept Chair's Welcome Visit Day 2020
CEE In the News
Featured news articles about Stanford Civil & Environmental Engineering’s Faculty, Students, Staff, Alumni, and ongoing research.