Jane Willenbring receives Excellence in Teaching Award

In recognition of her extraordinary commitment to student engagement, growth, and success, Associate Professor Jane Willenbring has received the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability’s 2026 Excellence in Teaching Award. 

The award was established to acknowledge and recognize dedication to quality teaching. Recipients are selected based on nominations from students and faculty and are announced at the end of spring quarter. 

“This award recognizes not only Jane’s exceptional abilities as an educator today, but also the lasting influence she will have on generations of students who will carry forward the knowledge, curiosity, and passion she has instilled in them,” said Arun Majumdar, dean of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “Jane embodies Stanford’s educational excellence, and this recognition is richly deserved.”

The accolade came as a surprise to Willenbring, but not to those who know her pedagogy. “It’s not every day you get to win a teaching award, and I am deeply honored by this recognition,” said Willenbring, who also holds a courtesy appointment in Earth system science. 

The nominations for Willenbring note her ability to make geoscience accessible to students of all academic and socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as her genuine investment in each student’s achievement. 

“She consistently broke down difficult material in ways that felt intuitive and engaging,” a nominator commented. “She always brought great energy to every class, and you could tell she genuinely cared about whether students were connecting with the material.”

The nominator added: “Her ability to meet students where they are while still challenging them intellectually is what makes her teaching truly exceptional.”

Skillful, fun teaching

In the award nominations, students and colleagues raved about Willenbring’s co-teaching of EPS 1/EARTHSYS 11: Introduction to Geology, a course that exposes students to the breadth of geoscience. With more than 100 students regularly enrolled, it ranks as one of the largest undergraduate courses in the Doerr School of Sustainability. A colleague said in nominating comments that Willenbring “brought new life” to the course, growing its popularity to the point that the university now offers it in both winter and spring quarters. “Much of this is due to Jane’s work ethic, dedication, and teaching skill in communicating basic science to non-majors in a fun way,” the nominator said. 

Another colleague commented: “Jane’s lectures were pitched perfectly for the non-major audience and laced with humor and anecdotes that kept the class engaged.”  

Willenbring also drew plaudits for her teaching of EPS 20: The Geoscience of Environmental Justice, which tackles climate change, air pollution, contaminant migration, and more at an introductory level. Students reported feeling invested in the curriculum’s subject matter and enlivened by Willenbring’s own experiences.

“She wove topics together, highlighting real case studies and personal stories to that of environmental justice, and truly called upon our positionality as students and academics,” a student nominator said. 

Bringing everyone along in learning

Students appreciated that Willenbring always made time for them, despite being extremely busy pursuing her own research. “I looked forward to staying for her office hours, where she told such incredible stories about her work in Antarctica,” a nominator related. “After hearing about the time that she got a sunburn on the roof of her mouth while hiking up a glacier, for example, I will never forget the meaning of albedo.” Albedo is a measure of how much sunlight – including sunburn-causing ultraviolet light – a surface reflects, with fresh snow having the highest albedo of any common natural substance on Earth.

Nominators also noted Willenbring’s advocacy for students beyond the classroom. “What touched me the most was how much she supports each student individually,” said a nominator who took the environmental justice course. “After each student’s final presentation, she actively connects them with PhD students in her network based on their interests, creating opportunities for those who want to get involved in research labs.”

A seminar Willenbring teaches, GEOLSCI 305: Invisible Curriculum, illustrates her prioritization of professional development. The seminar is designed to prepare students for graduate school and careers by imparting helpful information that may be implicitly assumed but not explicitly stated during their academic journey.

“There can be a lot to navigate in academia, and this seminar is a way to help everyone get to similar levels of awareness,” Willenbring said. 

Rich academic experiences

For her own research, Willenbring studies the evolution of Earth’s surfaces over time, including the movements of tectonic plates, the effects of long-term climate change, and physical transformations caused by living organisms. The interest traces back to her childhood in Mandan, North Dakota, a small city outside of Bismarck, where she recalls enjoying the outdoors then as she does now. “In some ways, I’m still that kid running the hose, making little rivers in the dirt,” she said. “I liked to play in the dirt, and still do.”

Following through on these interests, she went on to earn a bachelor’s degree with honors from North Dakota State University in soil science and geology and a master’s degree from Boston University in geology and Earth science. She earned her PhD, also in geology and Earth science, from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she was a Killam Scholar.

She initially pursued her postdoctoral work at the University of Minnesota, then at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Germany. She became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and subsequently at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, where she was director of the Scripps Cosmogenic Isotope Laboratory (SCI-Lab). In the summer of 2020, Willenbring joined Stanford University as an associate professor.

She credits her varied university and research experience with informing her teaching philosophy. “I’ve loved all the universities I’ve been at, but Stanford is really special,” said Willenbring. “The collaborative research environment here, the enthusiasm of the students for research – it’s been a wonderful experience teaching at Stanford.”