General Education Requirements
Not currently certified for a requirement. Courses are typically considered for Ways certification a quarter in advance.
Please note: A strong technical background is not assumed, but willingness to push yourself into unfamiliar intellectual territory is welcome. Also, familiarity with some particular island ecosystem will be welcome.
Course Description
If you know any place well, you know something about the world. If the place you know is an island, in some real senses it is a world in itself. The world can learn a great deal about evolution, ecology, conservation biology, human-land interactions, and the sustainability of human societies by studying islands, and this seminar will explore how. Discussions will emphasize the ecosystems (including social/environmental systems) of the Hawaiian Islands, asking how Hawaiian climate, geology, organisms, and societies work and how they can serve as a model for understanding how the world works. Throughout the course, each student will pick his/her place (island or continent; it could be your home or a place you would like to know), and discuss how its features relate to those of islands we're discussing. A strong technical background is not assumed, but students should be willing to push themselves into unfamiliar intellectual territory. In addition, familiarity with some particular island ecosystem will be welcome.
Meet the Instructor: Peter Vitousek
“I am a professor in the Department of Earth System Science, and a senior fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment; I’ve been teaching at Stanford since 1984. My research includes studies of what controls ecosystem structure and function, and analyses of global environmental change caused by human activity, using Hawai‘i as a model for understanding. I was born and raised in Hawai‘i, where most of my research is now centered, but I have also worked in Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil, and the continental United States. I have recently extended my Hawai'i-based research to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Aotearoa (New Zealand), and to studies of how features of islands contribute to shaping features of island societies in the Pacific. I am co-director of the First Nations Futures Institute, a collaboration between Stanford and Native Hawaiian, Alaska Native, and New Zealand Maori organizations, and I am involved in conservation-related activities in Hawai‘i in cooperation with state and federal agencies, Native Hawaiian organizations, and private landowners.”
