Edmonds College
ER-14: Incentives for Developing Sustainability Courses

The college has offered many incentives over the past several years for developing sustainability courses or modules although consistency has been lacking somewhat. The college has offered release time for faculty to lead the Sustainability Council, but that was cut due to budgetary constraints and has not been offered in the past few years. In 2009, we received a Best Practices Innovation Grant from the State Board for Technical and Community Colleges for Developing Environmental Sustainability Curriculum for Professional Technical Programs. Through this program, 12 faculty across professional-technical disciplines worked on curriculum development for their programs. In 2009, we offered a Sustainability across the Curriculum Faculty Workshop and provided stipends for attendance and follow-up work. We had funding from a grant for 20 attendees, but 38 faculty wanted to attend, so we cobbled together funding from Instruction and Workforce Development to pay all who wanted to attend. We intended on continuing this workshop once a year, but due to staffing levels have not been able to although it is a spring goal for this year. In addition, our Workforce Development office encourages faculty to apply for budgetary dollars on an annual basis for curriculum development related to sustainability. We have several internal grants processes where faculty can apply to develop projects/curriculum, one of which is solely sustainability based. The Energy Management Department has received several national grants to help improve curriculum in the program and share results.

We have to pay faculty at a contracted rate for special assignments (currriculum development) that is currently set for $28/hour. Hours vary depending on request and budget availability.