American University
EN-6: Employee Educators Program

Each office or department selects a Green Office Liaison who attends training sessions, distributes a monthly newsletter, and conducts monthly activities in the office such as hands-on waste/energy audits and sustainable food demos. Liaisons serve for the entirety of the academic year. Some self-nominate, while others are selected by department or office heads.

The liaisons from each office attend training sessions where they learn about sustainability topics incorporated in the program, and outreach techniques to facilitate behavior change in their offices. All participating offices also get a toolkit of checklists and helpful office signage signage.

The Sustainability Manager oversees the Green Office program. Incentives and awards are provided to participants, including a dedicated tree planting in April for the office with the highest number of green "actions" taken in that year.

Faculty self select to enroll in the program. Originally started by faculty interested in incorporating sustainability into their teaching, the Center for Research Teaching and Learning now manages the program, but faculty participants initially shared their best practices to create a checklist for all faculty to use as they designed courses. The checklist items are directed at how they teach, not what they teach and best practices include things like posting the course syllabus online rather than providing printed copies. New faculty are encouraged to apply to register their courses for the program through advertisements at the Ann Ferren Teaching Conference and frequent postings on university mailing lists and newsletters.

Faculty are provided resources through the Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning on how to green their course materials. These resources are created by fellow faculty members and are altered regularly to reflect newly identified best practices that faculty have successfully incorporated into their teaching plan. Based on the number of sustainable best practices that faculty use in their teaching, they can earn between 1 and 4 "green apples", and upon completing a certain number of sustainability criteria, they can place a logo representing the number of apples they earned directly onto their course syllabus. They also receive a water bottle, lunchbox, or similar branded item that encourages sustainability and promotes the program. This program is designed with faculty members to meet the needs of faculty members as they strive to reduce the environmental impact of their teaching. This program does not focus on what is included in the curriculum, but rather in how the faculty member runs the course and how they use resources.

Staff resources from the Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning are dedicated to managing and administering this program. Faculty participants contribute resources and materials available to new participants comes directly from other faculty contributions.

The total number of employees correspond to the 2014-2015 academic year. Data for total employees was provided by the Director of Employee Compensation. The number of employees reached by the Green Office program was tallied by the Office of Sustainability and is accurate as of Fall 2015. The number of faculty participating in the Green Teaching program is reflected as of 2015.