Stanford
Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education

2022 SGSI Course Overview

Adventures in Design Thinking: A d.school Experience - Course Closed

  • Leticia Britos Cavagnaro, PhD, adjunct professor and co-director, University Innovation Fellows program, d.school
  • Sam Seidel, PhD, adjunct professor and co-director, K-12 Lab program, d.school
  • Meenu Singh, instructor, Teaching and Learning Studio, d.school
  • Aleta Hayes, lecturer, Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS)

If you want to succeed in a rapidly changing world, you will need to work with others outside of your discipline and learn from everyone and from every situation. This hands-on workshop will give you the opportunity to develop abilities used by designers towards these goals.

Audience: Open to all graduate students in any discipline who are interested in design thinking as a methodology for interdisciplinary collaboration and have not previously taken a quarter-long d.school course. This is not a product or service design class.

Coaching High-Performance Teams & Individuals - Course Closed

  • Evelyn Williams, teaching professor, Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business; formerly director, Stanford Center for Leadership, Development, & Research and lecturer at the Graduate School of Business

How can you take any group of reasonable people and turn them into a high-performing team?  That’s the central question we answer in this boot-camp style experiential class.  The purpose of the Coaching High-Performance Teams & Individuals course is to change the way you think about team problems, opportunities, and yourself. Through challenging team exercises, coaching sessions, and lots of hands-on experiences, this course is definitely NOT a spectator sport.  However, in one week, participants leave this course with team analysis and coaching tools that will empower you to impact the world in profound ways.

Audience: Open to all graduate students in any discipline, as well as postdoctoral scholars, if space allows.

Designing an IDEAL Course - COURSE CANCELED

  • Kritika Yegnashankaran, PhD, associate director of Faculty and Lecturer Programs, Center for Teaching and Learning

Would you like to teach courses that welcome and inspire all of your students and serve as a model to other instructors at Stanford? Would you like to be part of the campus Presidential Initiative to create Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access in Learning Environments (IDEAL)? Join us to apply evidence-based principles and start designing an IDEAL course, one that represents diverse identities, integrates peer-to-peer learning, makes success accessible, and equitably assesses student learning.

Audience: Open to all graduate students in any discipline, as well as postdoctoral scholars, if space allows. If oversubscribed, preference to those more advanced in their teaching careers and ready to start designing courses of their own.

Designing the Professional: Addressing the question, "Once I get my degree, how do I get a life?"- Course Closed

  • Kathy Davies, MS, managing director, Life Design Lab
  • Chris Simamora, lecturer and fellow, Life Design Lab
  • Shanice Webb, MEd, lecturer and fellow, Life Design Lab
  • Urmila Venkatesh, lecturer and fellow, Life Design Lab

What do you want out of life after Stanford? Wondering how to weave together what fits, is doable, and will be truly meaningful? Join us for Designing the Professional. This course applies the innovation principles of design thinking to the "wicked problem" of designing your life and vocation in and beyond Stanford. We'll approach these lifelong questions with a structured framework set in a seminar where you can work out your ideas in conversation with your peers.

Audience: Open to all graduate students in any discipline, as well as postdoctoral scholars, if space allows. If oversubscribed, preference is given to doctoral students near completion of their degree.

Energy@Stanford & SLAC: Energy Research for the 21st Century - Course Closed

  • Yi Cui, PhD, director, Precourt Institute for Energy; professor, Materials Science and Engineering 
  • Harold Hwang, PhD, deputy director, Stanford Institute for Materials & Energy Sciences (SIMES); professor, Applied Physics and Photon Science

Jumpstart your energy education at Stanford! Build your personal energy network and hear about current research from distinguished Stanford energy faculty and expert speakers. Develop a broad perspective on energy and meet Silicon Valley energy entrepreneurs. Compete in the En-ROADS team challenge. This four-and-a-half-day course will allow you to meet fellow incoming graduate and professional school students who share and interest in energy, and build an interdisciplinary cross-campus community.

Audience: An energy background is not required. Open to incoming graduate and professional school students in any discipline are encouraged to apply.

Ethics & the Academy - Course Closed

  • Anne Newman, research director, McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society

Ethical questions arise in all aspects of campus life. How should speech be regulated to create an inclusive community and to promote knowledge generation? What should we expect of members of the campus community given people’s varied roles (e.g., as learners, researchers, mentors, and employees)? What can be done in the academy to promote racial justice? 

We will explore these questions and their underlying values by considering current debates on campuses (e.g., about admissions, free speech, anti-racist policies and practices, and most broadly, what a justice-promoting university would be like). Discussions will be informed by short readings and guest speakers.

Audience: Open to all graduate students in any discipline, as well as postdoctoral scholars, if space allows.

Exploring Planetary Stewardship: Sustainability Solutions in a Rapidly Changing World - Course Closed

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

Explore planetary stewardship from a range of perspectives, including systems and solutions orientations. Through guest speakers, large- and small-group discussions, hands-on workshops, and a panel with faculty designing Stanford’s new climate and sustainability school, you will hone your knowledge and skills in areas from alternative energy 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.

Audience: 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.

Flourishing: The Art and Science of a Life Well Lived - Course Closed

  • Aneel Chima, PhD, director, Division of Health and Human Performance and the Stanford Flourishing Project
  • Frederic Luskin, PhD, director, Stanford Forgiveness Project

Explore human flourishing and how to practice it in an age of hyper-complexity and ever-accelerating pace. This course will engage these ideas through research-informed reading, class discussion, and guided practice related to the psychological, emotional, and social factors that promote a well-lived life. Graduate students from a range of disciplines will learn how to transform this learning from concept to lived experience.

Audience: Open to all graduate students in any discipline, as well as postdoctoral scholars, if space allows.

Jumpstart Your Academic Job Search - Course Closed

  • Chris Golde, PhD, assistant director of Career Communities–PhDs & postdocs, BEAM, Stanford Career Education
  • Arne Bakker, PhD, director of Meetings and Community for Science, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

Are you about to enter the job market for a faculty position? Get a jumpstart on preparing yourself and your application materials. This course is practical and experiential, involving practicing and editing. We will work on both written and oral parts of your job search preparation, including CVs, cover letters, research and teaching statements, and the job talk. Experts from across Stanford will present. An interdisciplinary class of peers will support you.

Audience: Open to advanced doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars entering the faculty job market during 2022-23.

Public Policy Negotiation: Multiparty Problem-solving and Conflict Resolution - Course Closed

  • Janet Martinez, PhD, senior lecturer, Law; director, Gould Negotiation & Mediation Program, Stanford Law School
  • Brenna Marea Powell, PhD, lecturer, Law, Stanford Law School

As a professional, you will probably negotiate more than you do anything else. You will negotiate with your boss, your colleagues, your assistant, as well as with other organizations, the public, perhaps the media, and so on. In doing so, you will communicate across institutional, cultural, linguistic, even national boundaries.

This course will help you develop an understanding of negotiation, as well as practical skills for collaborative problem-solving. The experience is highly interactive with simulations, small- and plenary group discussions, reflections, and feedback.

Audience: Open to all graduate students in any discipline interested in the public policy decision-making processes (particularly those who have not had a chance to explore these issues extensively through their coursework), as well as postdoctoral scholars, if space allows.

Research with Impact: Developing Skills as a Community Engaged Scholar - Course Closed

  • Luke Terra, PhD, associate director of community engaged learning and research, Haas Center for Public Service
  • Joanne Tien, PhD, director of RAISE Doctoral Fellowship Program, Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education

Stanford’s vision calls on the university to pursue research that accelerates solutions to the world’s most pressing problems and there are many efforts on campus that engage graduate students in carrying out this kind of problem-focused research. Join us to learn from leading scholars about different approaches to community engaged scholarship and how you can develop a research agenda that addresses priorities and needs of the broader community. Each session will involve scholars from across campus, and by the end of the week participants will draft a brief research memo to guide their next steps.

Audience: Open to all graduate students in any discipline, as well as postdoctoral scholars, if space allows.

For any additional questions, please email vpgeapplications@stanford.edu.