Stanford is recognized internationally as a forefront for technological advancement. Stanford and the surrounding Silicon Valley is an exciting place to be, especially for those studying greentech, biotech or web ventures. With that unique access to true technological innovation, students have a huge potential to incorporate interdisciplinary projects in their studies and extra-curricular activities. Traditional disciplinary distinctions are quickly breaking down as the private and public sector alike are finding immense value in interdisciplinary innovation to solve the world’s problems.
Areas that were traditionally for engineers or scientists increasingly need input from different disciplines to improve the success of projects. With this in mind, Stanford students are creating exciting projects on campus to incorporate the very different skills and talents available across disciplines. Dozens of organizations on campus are involved in this trend, in areas as different as environmental sustainability, disaster response, medical innovation, social-entrepreneurship or public service. A great many student groups are working on this goal of greater interdisciplinary solutions. Two projects that stand out as very purposefully seeking these goals, however, are BASES’ Social-E Challenge and LotusOne.
A coalition of students, faculty and staff are collaborating on a new housing initiative as an incubator for innovation they call ROW (Reinventing Our World) 2.0, beginning with the design and construction of a new residence called LotusOne (1.0). This house would be an adaptive community that seeks creative, interdisciplinary solutions for functional and sustainable high-density residences. Applied student research would go into innovative building systems, design and construction processes and emerging technologies. Its aim to incorporate students from majors as different as Civil & Environmental engineering, Biology, Urban Studies, Earth Systems, Design, CS or anyone else interested in the initiative speak to its philosophy for holistic problem solving.
BASES’ Social-E Challenge is a business plan competition for entrepreneurial ventures whose primary goal is to effect social and/or environmental change. Participants ranged from for-profit businesses with a strong sense of social responsibility, to nonprofits with sustainable revenue-generation models. The companies seek to create a positive impact on our society and the environment through thought leadership, student engagement and community engagement. The event provides participants with $50,000 in final round prizes, as well as the resources, mentorship and training to launch their startups. Its participants range from countless disciplines–the event provides students an amazing amount of resources to grow their business plan for a much more effective product.
These two projects are just two recent and visible examples of the immense amount of student-led initiatives to combine our differing passions and skill sets. There is also much growing faculty, staff and institutional support for expanding this philosophy. As the academic year comes to an end, the Editorial Board invites students to pursue new creative projects which embrace interdisciplinary collaboration, at Stanford and beyond. As for graduating seniors, we ask them to remember that combining the talents of those with different backgrounds and experiences often yields the best solutions to our world’s ever-growing challenges.