Florida State University
AC-10: Support for Sustainability Research

FSU offers a variety of ways for students to engage in research opportunities, including sustainability topics:

Sustainability Fellows
The Sustainability Fellows program provides an opportunity for students of any discipline to participate in furthering sustainability efforts on the FSU campus and in the Tallahassee community. Sustainability Fellows can be selected from any major or field of study. Fellows work in collaboration with campus and community partners to actively engage in research, propose strategies, and identify opportunities for sustainability issues. From Spring 2020 to Fall 2021, 35 undergraduate and graduate students have been partnered with 18 campus and community partners on a total of 25 unique projects. Specifically, project have included ‘ArcGIS Story Map for Apalachicola Basin Trails’, ‘Sustainable Business Program’, and ‘Tallahassee At Home Resilience Guide’ among others.

IDEA Grants
The Center for Undergraduate Research and Academic Engagement (CRE) aims to involve FSU students in the highest levels of academic engagement, helping students take advantage of the very best a major research university like FSU has to offer. CRE works across the university to enhance the educational engagement of students. Specifically, the CRE’s IDEA Grant provides students with a summer spend to fund their self-designed work on a topic, project, problem, artistic product or performance, or other entrepreneurial or creative idea. Projects last 8-12 weeks and are under the mentorship of a supervising faculty member . In 2018 and 2019, IDEA grant recipients investigated sustainability-related topics including ‘Decolonizing Land & Reindigenizing Body’, ‘Redeveloping Las Colonias’, and ‘The effect of fluctuating river flow, salinity, and tidal cycles on the activity of bull sharks and bonnetheads’.

The Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP)
The Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) engages students and faculty in research in a way that gives students on-on-one access to faculty and gives faculty access to the next generation of researchers. First and second-year student researchers in the UROP program explore academic and career interests, choose from hundreds of projects representing all areas of study, join an established researcher or team, and gain hands-on knowledge and application of research principles. UROP students conduct research 5-10 hours per week, meet twice a month with UROP student leaders and fellow UROP students, and present at the annual undergraduate research symposium. At the 2021 symposium, 56 student projects focused on sustainability, including varied topics such as an oil well explosion in Indigenous Veracruz, Hurricane Michael government aid impact on health disparities, and conservation education.

Garnet & Gold Scholar Society
Research experiences through the Garnet & Gold Scholar Society are sustained scholarly or creative projects developed under the direction of a faculty mentor that culminate in a formal presentation, publication, performance, or exhibition. Through the Research Experience, students will demonstrate the ability to apply research methods appropriate for the student's discipline and engage in ongoing critical discussion within their chosen field.

The Office of Research Development (ORD) primarily works to enhance the competitiveness of FSU researchers. ORD’s professional development programming covers a wide range of topics including funding and proposal development strategies, science communication best practices, introductions to new research and assessment methodologies, and building connections with industries, government, and communities. In particular, ORD’s Research Mentor Academy provides training in optimizing mentoring relationships for mentors and mentees using an evidence-based curriculum from the NIH NRMN and CIMER. ORD also organizes FSU’s Collaborative Collision program.

Collaborative Collision is a guided team development program with three parts: Connector, Incubator, and Accelerator. The Collaborative Connector is an event that refines the Collaborative Challenge into more manageable problems, through a group exercise to determine the top research questions we are interested in collaborating on. As of April 2021, the 15 Collaborative Connector events have featured 774 research profile presentations and had over 1000 total participants joining from every college and most departments at FSU. Past topics have included resilience (Fall 2021), climate solutions (Spring 2021), anti-racism, equity, and inclusion (Fall 2020), smart cities (Spring 2018), and environment (Fall 2017) among others.

The Collaborative Incubator is a series of four guided team development sessions that guide participants through the process of developing a new project. Finally, the Collaborative Accelerator is a live, interactive competition event in which one team receives up to $50,000 to conduct the pilot project developed in Collaborative Incubator. In December 2021, Collaborative Accelerator proposals created by interdisciplinary teams focused on: 1) developing a platform to incorporate net-zero targets in upgrading infrastructure resilience in the Florida panhandle, 2) investigating the environmental impact of prescribed burns in Florida, and 3) protecting Florida communities against sea level rise with equitable and resilient nature-based features.

FSU also supports numerous research centers, research partnerships, and large-scale collaborative grant/research consortia to enhance the scholarship of sustainability disciplines. Sustainability research centers include the Florida Climate Institute, the Florida Resources and Environmental Analysis Center, and the Resilient Infrastructure & Disaster Response Center among others. Research partnerships include the Apalachicola Bay System Initiative, which aims to gain insight into the root causes of decline of the bay’s ecosystem and develop a management and restoration plan for the oyster reefs. A Florida State anthropologist is also a part of a team of researchers from five institutions across the country that will conduct fundamental research in support of holistic decision-making for historically underrepresented communities impacted by coastal hazards.

Finally, FSU’s Council on Research and Creativity (CRC) is a major faculty committee appointed by the Vice President for Research. CRC provides a number of grants, awards, and seed funding for full-time FSU faculty and visiting professors. Specifically, CRC hosts the Multidisciplinary Support (MDS) Program, which provides up to $25,000 in support of the initial formation of multidisciplinary FSU alliances planning research and creative activity. Past CRC grant awardees include The Climate Witness Project (2019), which explored citizen observations of a changing climate in Norway.

As mentioned in "Successful Faculty Performance in Teaching, Research, and Service" (2010, FSU Dean of Faculties office): programmatic research and focused creative work should not be constrictive. A faculty member’s research or creative work should be flexible enough to take advantage of serendipity, as well as collaboration with students and colleagues...Faculty members also collaborate with their colleagues by adding their specialized research or artistic expertise to a project even though the project is tangential to their own work...While a certain amount of diversity in research and creative work is appropriate, a faculty member’s Vita should still show clear evidence of a research program or creative focus that is long-term, or periodically evolving, if substantive contributions are to be made to his or her field of study or expression. There should be an obvious coherence in the titles of publications, presentations, and contracts and grants.

University Libraries partner with faculty in research, creative activities, and teaching by providing a wide range of services, a wealth of resources, and professional expertise. Subject librarians are appointed to academic units to work with faculty to acquire necessary resources, consult on research and publishing, participate in courses, and collaborate on grants or research projects. Events, such as lectures, symposia, and receptions, provide opportunities for faculty to share ideas and research and to connect with others across disciplines. For example, FSU Libraries hosted the Fall 2018 Symposium: Climate: Science and Society, in which 14 researchers from across campus reflected on the changing nature of climate and its effect on human society.

The FSU libraries also offer Research Guides which are created to help faculty and students locate needed information. The FSU Library Environmental Science research guide is dedicated to navigating the various databases, journals, and articles provided by Florida State University (FSU) Libraries related to environmental science. The FSU Environmental Studies research guide assists researchers in environmental studies.

Additionally, in 2020, the FSU Libraries’ Special Collections partnered with Sustainable Campus to host an online, virtual exhibit titled “Earth Day 50: Environmental Activism at FSU and Beyond.” The exhibit featured the work of students, alumni and researchers at FSU, as well as artists, journalists, government officials and educators in Florida. The exhibit was part of Sustainable Campus’ ongoing mission to forge partnerships and host events that bring awareness to environmental problems and inspire action to work toward solutions.

https://www.lib.fsu.edu/faculty-services
https://guides.lib.fsu.edu/environmental_science
https://guides.lib.fsu.edu/environmentalstudies