Student Spotlight: Selena Sun on sustainability research and community support in California agriculture
Stanford students are getting a head start on careers with education and leadership programs offered by the Woods Institute for the Environment. We talk with Selena Sun, a senior who brought her studies to life outside the classroom through the Forum for Undergraduate Environmental Leadership (FUEL) program.
Through an internship with the California Department of Food and Agriculture, Sun learned about sustainability challenges, water policy, cover crop research, and community support systems in the state. Her work involved interactions with farm workers, researchers, and government agency staff.
What part of your fieldwork or research has been most meaningful or eye-opening?
We met a farmer who woke up every day at 4 am, made breakfast for her kids, drove them to school, then spent nine hours toiling away on her 2-acre farm. Between her and her Kubota tractor, she was clearly the more formidable machine. I asked her, in classic start-up interview fashion: “What are your hair-on-fire problems?’ I pulled out a notepad, ready to jot down her costs per acre. She said, ‘I want to grow the best beans outside of Mexico and make tacos for my community.’ Some people chase wealth, others chase recognition, but it’s rare to find someone whose highest ambition is simply to give back.
How has this opportunity influenced your academic or career aspirations?
If I were to start any lab, it’d be a plant biology lab. Golden rice could solve child blindness from vitamin A deficiency, high-GABA tomatoes could lower your blood pressure, and strawberries could be twice their size. There are so many crops to invent! I’ve also set up Zillow alerts for 2-acre plots of potential farmland near Santa Cruz. No near-term plans, but this program has planted the seeds.
What advice would you give other Stanford students considering research, internships, or fieldwork in environmental or sustainability topics?
Every field has a sustainability angle to it. A roboticist can work on automating solar panel construction, an economist could meaningfully influence EV adoption with tax policy. Although the global North Star is to keep warming below 1.5°C, the local metrics that matter differ wildly for each field and problem. Understand what matters in yours, and sprint to move the needle!
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