Facts & Figures
The School of Earth Sciences
The School of Earth Sciences is home to 55 faculty members in four departments: Energy Resources Engineering, Environmental Earth System Science, Geological and Environmental Sciences, and Geophysics. In addition, SES hosts two interdisciplinary programs: the Earth Systems Program and the Emmet Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources. The School has an annual consolidated budget of approximately $45 million.
The student population of about 380 graduate students and 180 undergraduates, along with faculty and staff, occupy all or part of four campus buildings: Geology Corner/Braun Hall (Bldg 320 of the Quad), the Ruth Wattis Mitchell Earth Sciences Building, the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Earth Sciences Research Building, and the Yang and Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building (Y2E2). The Mitchell Building also houses the Branner Earth Sciences Library, which contains about 125,000 volumes and 270,000 sheet maps.
Consolidated into the School of Mineral Sciences in 1947, it was renamed the School of Earth Sciences in 1962.
Stanford University completed Geology Corner in 1904, only to have it closed soon after as a result of damage sustained during the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 (it was condemned again after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, restored, and rededicated as Braun Hall in 1996.)
Geologist John Casper Branner was hired as Stanford's first professor in 1891; he later became the university's second president. The university awarded its first PhD to geologist George Ashley in 1894. Stanford Earth sciences was the alma mater of Herbert Hoover (31st president of the United States, who earned a degree in mining engineering in 1895) and of Lou Henry Hoover (who earned a degree in geology in 1898.)
Summer geology was added to the Earth sciences curriculum in 1902; women students were allowed to participate for the first time in 1964. The school's first female faculty member, Myra Keen, was hired in 1954.
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