Application of design thinking to make sustainability compelling, impactful and realizable. Analysis of contextual, functional and human-centered design thinking techniques to promote sustainable design of products and environments by holistically considering space, form, environment, energy, economics, and health. Includes Studio project work in prototyping, modeling, testing, and realizing sustainable design ideas. High school students can enroll with instructor consent, please contact the instructor and request permission.

What will American cities look like in the future? Will they be “smart”? Will they be sustainable? Will they be equitable? This course will explore possible answers to these questions by looking back towards the nation’s urban past. The city has been a polarizing space in the U.S. imagination since the nation’s inception, but in the late nineteenth century it became clear that industrialization and urbanization were undeniable parts of the nation’s future. The national conversation shifted away from debating if the U.S. should urbanize to how it would urbanize. This course will introduce students to the concept of “imagineering” in urban studies, or the process of engineering imagined urban landscapes into physical reality. Drawing on a wide range of historical sources, including engineering design publications, city planning maps and memos, and urban photojournalism, students will learn about why and how the nation imagineered (and re-imagineered) urban spaces, and trace how these activities have shaped urban inequality, politics, culture, and environments in the past and present. Using contemporary media, like Weird City (2019) and Elysium (2013), short stories like N.K. Jemisin’s “The City Born Great,” and TedTalks on the future of urban design, this course will also explore possible futures for urban America. The creative weekly assignments will ask students to step into the proverbial shoes of different city residents, writing Op-eds as a journalist, inspection reports as a city planner, and manifestos as a local activist, to discuss urban issues across time and space from different perspectives. The final research project offers students the opportunity to use their newfound knowledge to propose a solution for a contemporary urban issue with deep historical roots.

Get ready to explore the future of high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) and its influence on the way we live, work and learn, with the HPC-AI Summer Seminar Series by Stanford High Performance Computing Center and the HPC-AI Advisory Council. This 1-unit course is designed to provide practical insights and thought leadership and discuss topics of great societal importance. One such theme this year is the impact of Generative AI. You will have the opportunity to hear from renowned industry experts and influencers who are shaping our HPC-AI future and even ask them your questions. This engaging course is open to students with any academic background looking to upskill themselves. So don't hesitate, register now! No prerequisites required

Non-majors and minors who have taken or are taking elementary accounting should not enroll. Introduction to accounting concepts and the operating characteristics of accounting systems. The principles of financial and cost accounting, design of accounting systems, techniques of analysis, and cost control. Interpretation and use of accounting information for decision making. Designed for the user of accounting information and not as an introduction to a professional accounting career. Enrollment limited. Admission by order of enrollment.

Fundamental concepts and tools for the analysis of problems under uncertainty, focusing on structuring, model building, and analysis. Examples from legal, social, medical, and physical problems. Topics include axioms of probability, probability trees, belief networks, random variables, conditioning, and expectation. The course is fast-paced, but has no prerequisites.

Non-majors and minors who have taken or are taking elementary accounting should not enroll. Introduction to accounting concepts and the operating characteristics of accounting systems. The principles of financial and cost accounting, design of accounting systems, techniques of analysis, and cost control. Interpretation and use of accounting information for decision making. Designed for the user of accounting information and not as an introduction to a professional accounting career. Enrollment limited. Admission by order of enrollment.

With the recent developments in generative AI, the value in human creativity is increasingly a focus. Course draws from lessons from creativity in the arts to teach engineering students methods for creativity derived from musicians and artists. For our engineering students to learn creativity as a skill that is distinguishable and differentiated from generative artificial intelligence, this course explores, for instance the anatomy of a Hollywood pop song and the process behind the creation of globally impactful art. Students learn how to transfer these skills into the creation of engaging entrepreneurial solutions, for effective storytelling, and in developing their unique personal and professional stories. Students learn skills to unlock creative power which they will apply in the course as a design vehicle for a wide range of applications in engineering, self-expression, technological exploration, and the development of solutions that are centered around human connection and emotional engagement with the user. Sessions are practical, drawing tools and lessons from interdisciplinary individuals with wide-ranging careers. No artistic or entrepreneurial experience necessary.

There are few issues more important for human life than those concerned with sustainability. Current global trends, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, rising inequality, and increasing urbanization, raise critical questions about future environmental and social sustainability. Changes are necessary for the survival of our species. But how can we bring them about? In this course we explore the historical and cultural diversity of human-environment interaction, and analyze sustainability in a variety of contexts: from the local to the global, in the past and present, in the U.S. and among small-scale societies. We’ll look at development through the lens of food and agriculture, and discuss sustainability in the context of globalization– whether social movements around food justice, or the new world of lab-based meats. From behavioral psychology, and how it contributes to environmental action, to the individual choices we make every day, this course will help you reflect on the world, and how to act in it.

An overview of the interdisciplinary study of cognition, information, communication, and language, with an emphasis on foundational issues: What are minds? What is computation? What are rationality and intelligence? Can we predict human behavior? Can computers be truly intelligent? How do people and technology interact, and how might they do so in the future? Lectures focus on how the methods of philosophy, mathematics, empirical research, and computational modeling are used to study minds and machines. Undergraduates considering a major in symbolic systems should take this course as early as possible in their program of study.

Dreamed up in the heat of the Cold War, game theory has encouraged generations of strategists in politics, law, the military, and academia to see conflicts as games with rules, players, choices, and payoffs. But game-theoretical situations hardly resemble the competitions people conside “games” in their everyday lives. During this course we study and develop social theory based on how people play games outside of behavior labs and thought experiments. We question what causes people to join games and how games keep players engaged. We study how people devise strategies and when they deploy them. The readings pay special attention to playfulness and come from a variety of social science disciplines. What is the relationship between play and competition? How would explicit consideration of play affect how we model the behavior of competitive communities?