Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 65.20
Liaison Denice Koljonen
Submission Date Feb. 17, 2022

STARS v2.2

Boston College
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 2.00 / 2.00 Tara Pisani
Assistant Professor
Earth and Envronment
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution have an ongoing program that offers incentives for academic staff in multiple disciplines or departments to develop new sustainability courses and/or incorporate sustainability into existing courses? :
Yes

A brief description of the incentive program(s):

Boston College's Core Renewal: Toward a 21st Century Core involves two different types of courses:

Complex Problems courses are large team-taught, six-credit classes that address a contemporary problem. All of the complex problems courses deal with some aspect of sustainability in society.
Enduring Questions courses are linked pairs of distinct three-credit classes of approximately 20 students that meet separately, each taught by a faculty member from a different department. Both classes are connected by a common topic and set of questions as well as share some readings and assignments.

These courses are interdisciplinary in design. Faculty are incentivized to partner with a faculty member in another department to teach either a core Complex Problems course or an Enduring Question course. Some of the new core classes are:

Global Implications of Climate Change - EESC1501/SOCY1501
Crisis and Storytelling in the Age of Climate Change - ENGL1744/EESC1702
Science and Ethics of Climate Change - EESC1505/PHIL1505
Grief and Resistance: Theological Responses to Climate Change - THEO1713
Our Ocean: Understanding & Protecting the Seas in the Wake of Climate Change - BIOL1706/ENVS1075
Planet in Peril: History and Future of Human Impacts - SOCY1509/HIST1509
Living on Water: Venetian Art, Architecture, and the Environment - EESC1701/ARTH1701
Humans, Nature, and Creativity - ENGL1703/PHIL1703
Being Human: Philosophical Problem – Nature and Math - MATH1705/PHIL1705
Powering America: The Past and Future of Energy, Technology and the Environment - EESC1507/HIST1513

This means that more students (200+ per year) are being exposed to sustainability as part of their core foundational education at Boston College.


A brief description of the incentives that academic staff who participate in the program(s) receive:

Faculty receive extra stipend and course relief during the first semester they teach a complex problems or enduring question course.


Website URL where information about the incentives for developing sustainability course content is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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