Strategic Assessment: The School of Earth Sciences is viewed within Stanford as a well-funded school that operates largely through endowment support for faculty, graduate students, and programs, as well as through extramural grants and contracts. School faculty have been highly successful at garnering research funds from federal agencies (60 percent of our extramural funds), as well as through corporate agreements and partnerships (35 percent of our extramural funds). Nonetheless, our assessment identified a number of important concerns about the long-term viability of such funds, recognizing both changes in industry interactions and in federal funding trends. We believe that we need to take an aggressive approach to maintain our current funding sources and to build new ones. Moreover, we recognize that new growth in terms of faculty billets and research infrastructure support will most likely need to come from growth in gifts and endowment, although innovative partnerships among faculty, using departmental, school, and university funds, may allow us to accomplish more with the funds already in hand.

Strategy 1: Strengthen existing partnerships and explore new models for partnering with industry.
• meet with industry partners (traditional and new) to develop new models and approaches for interaction, and to strengthen current approaches

Strategy 2: For each strategic goal, develop broadly based funding plans, identifying roles for faculty and dean’s office, including grants, contracts, affiliate funds, and gifts.
• organize staff/faculty teams to develop funding strategies for, e.g., computational geosciences and analytical facilities

Strategy 3: Identify new or currently untapped areas of funding from government agencies and foundations. Capture pieces of large and well-funded initiatives (like EarthScope).
• use the dean and other school leaders in outreach efforts and discussions with agencies, foundations, and other funding sources
• develop a mechanism for sharing information about agency initiatives
• recognize and encourage faculty involvement in promoting new funding programs and opportunities

Strategy 4: Increase gift support for current and long-term needs.
• design a development plan with targets, and use faculty, students, and the dean to implement the plan
• reserve 30 percent of the dean’s calendar for development-related activities
• work to harmonize our outreach and development activities

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