George Washington University
AC-10: Support for Research

The GW Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships: This office seeks to enhance independent student research or student research with faculty. GW undergraduate students have a number of opportunities to apply for research funding, including the GW Undergraduate Research Award, the Luther Rice Undergraduate Fellowship, and the Sigelman Undergraduate Research Enhancement Award. The Center also offers advising and resources to students seeking to develop funding proposals and report on their work. Many projects funded through this office focus on sustainability. For example, two GW Students participated in the Sea Education Association’s 12-week oceanography research trip in the South Pacific to explore various environmental threats. Additionally, a group of undergraduate students and a professors from GW and Moscow State University embarked on a month long trip to Siberia where they worked together to examine the environmental, economic and social aspects of life in the Arctic. Eco-equity Challenge: In 2014, the Office of Sustainability and the Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service established a new grant opportunity - the Eco-equity Challenge - to enable GW students to address environmental and social justice issues in order to fulfill the needs of communities in the Washington, D.C. region. The grant came as part of the ongoing collaboration between GW and the Siemens Corporation, and is part of their joint commitment to environmental and social sustainability. In the past three grant cycles, the grant has funded many research-based projects. Three students worked with a high school in Ward 8 of DC to create a community-mapping program with the high school students, two others are currently working with Professor Houston Miller in the Chemistry department to test levels of CO2 in Wards 7 & 8.. The Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service provides students multiple opportunities to engage in community-participatory research. http://serve.gwu.edu/eco-equity-challenge Culminating Experience for the Minor: As part of the sustainability minor, students participate in a “culminating experience” and are encouraged to engage in sustainability research under the mentorship of a GW faculty member. Two recent examples of student research: working with the Research Director for Sustainability, one student assessed differences in animal welfare sanctuaries in Maryland and Maine. Another undergraduate research project surveyed the lack of minority leadership in environmental non-profits. In the fall of 2016, the Executive Director of Sustainability led a directed research class on the environmental benefits of automatic milking systems in dairy production. Research Days: Each spring, the Office of the Vice President for Research celebrates "Research Days," a two-day exhibition of undergraduate, graduate, and faculty research. Faculty and graduate students in the School of Public Health are featured on the second day of the event. On the first day, undergraduates and graduates from the other GW schools present their research in a day-long poster session. Winners are chosen from each school at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In 2017, the Sustainability Collaborative sponsored two special prizes for students who conducted research related to sustainability. After viewing the undergraduate posters, the faculty team assembled to select the winners for these first Sustainability Special Prizes elected to award three prizes: one for undergraduate research on energy and the environment, another for undergraduate research related to development, equity and social justice, and the third for graduate research in sustainability. CCAS undergrad Elyaa Hammad won the prize for Sustainability Research in Development, Equity, and Social Justice with her project on “Muslim Women and Low-Income Families Learning Basic Computer Skills.” SEAS undergrad Joseph Schiarizzi took the Sustainability prize for research on Energy and Environment for his project using a “Raspberry Pi Cluster Load Balancer to Conserve Electricity in a Server Farm.” And Marietta Gelfort, who is completing a master’s degree in geography, won the graduate prize for her poster on “Green Infrastructure Implementation for Stormwater Management through the Lens of Lessons Learned: Cleveland, OH, and Milwaukee, WI.” The Commitment Maker Challenge: GW students are invited to compete for funding to support their Clinton Global Initiative University Commitments to Action. Awards are available to supplement travel to the annual Clinton Global Initiative University gathering, the 2017 gathering was at Northeastern University on October 13-15, 2017 and also to directly fund their CGI U Commitments to Action, which are new, specific, and measurable social entrepreneurial projects. The five focus areas of the CGI U Commitments to Action meetings are Education, Environment and Climate change, Peace and Human Rights, Poverty Alleviation, and Public Health, all of which can connect to sustainability research. To illustrate, this student team took a tested, known solution to provide natural lighting to homes and worked with a community to give more families access to light. In this vein, GWupstart has teamed up with D-Prize to offer a $5,000 award to a student team to pilot a plan to distribute a known solution to a poverty issue in a specific developing world community. The Challenge’s theme is meant to spark GW students’ imaginations, and students are equally encouraged to submit ideas outside this theme, for example, by proposing a DC- or US-focused project. Planet Forward Storyfest and Correspondents: As part of the School of Media and Public Affairs, Planet Forward has a Correspondents program for students across the nation, including GW students. These students are given the opportunity to use Planet Forward as a vehicle for writing research-based articles about sustainability across the nation throughout different sectors. Planet Forward also has a Storyfest competition in which students across the nation, including all GW students in the Sustainability Reporting course, tell a story about sustainability related to the year’s various questions within the topics of food, water, energy, mobility, the built environment, and biodiversity. The grand prize winners will take a trip with Lindblad Expeditions for a once-in-a-lifetime storytelling expedition aboard the National Geographic Sea Lion next summer, exploring the incredible ecosystems of Alaska between Sitka and Juneau. Knapp Fellowship for Entrepreneurial Service-Learning: This annual award recognizes one or more innovative proposals each year and distributes $10,000 to winning proposals from undergraduate and graduate students. Applicants must demonstrate knowledge and innovative thinking about the issue or problem to be addressed. Once chosen, fellows work throughout the project with a faculty advisor who guides research on the issue, implementation of the proposal, ongoing reports and assessments, and a final work of scholarship. The recent awardee worked with the Executive Director of Sustainability on a project relating to food waste in Washington D.C. public schools. http://serve.gwu.edu/knapp-fellowship-entrepreneurial-service-learning The GW New Venture Competition: This annual competition distributes $130,000 and is considered to be one of the top 10 new venture competitions in the U.S. The competition provides GW students, faculty, and alumni with a real world educational experience in developing, testing, and launching their own startups. . The competition fosters entrepreneurship at GW through workshops, mentoring, non-dilutive cash grants, in-kind prizes, networking opportunities, publicity, and concept validation. Beginning in 2014, two prizes are reserved for social entrepreneurship, one for the best for-profit idea and one for the best non-profit idea. In 2017, many of the winners had sustainability focused new ventures. Urgent Wellness, community-placed community health worker-operated telemedicine and medical vending machines, will reduce costs while improving health for vulnerable populations. Clean Condense provides gardeners and growers with clean water to run their operations, in both an affordable and environmentally friendly way. The Forgotten Fruit creates delicious snacks using misshapen produce discarded by our agricultural system, to increase revenue for farmers and decrease waste. http://newventure.gwu.edu/ Sustainability Collaborative Minigrants: Undergraduate and graduate students at GW are eligible to receive $250 minigrants to do research, travel, conference registration, host sustainability events on campus, and other academic pursuits. The proposals must include a timeline of action and how the proposal relates to the three E’s of sustainability. Previous grant-funded projects have included the installation of a GW Food Recovery Network chapter, a pop-up dinner hosted by the GroW Community Garden, and an event with Fossil Free GW hosting Nick Mullins, an environmental activist and former coal miner.

The GW Cross Disciplinary Research Fund provides the Sustainability Collaborative nearly $100,000 over two years to support research efforts addressing a range of sustainability efforts. The funds supported a series of seminars examining issues related to the food-energy-water nexus and calculations on the food and energy requirements if Americans were to shift to a more sustainable diet based on greater consumption of fruits and vegetables. Additionally, they supported conferences examining how capital cities, such as Washington, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Cairo, and Hanoi, can make uniquely important contributions to the development of sustainability policy. The expected publications will add to the growing literature on how cities can make life more sustainable. The University Seminars Fund has provided approximately $2,000 for the Sustainability Collaborative to bring together faculty and staff from 11 affiliated institutes on campus. These institutes address issues ranging from health policy to solar power and international development. The gatherings will give participants a solid block of time away from day-to-day concerns to identify methods for collaborating in a more comprehensive and holistic manner. The Sustainability Collaborative and its research director support GW faculty by helping put together multi-disciplinary teams to address various sustainability issues. These teams focus on our core areas of work: urban sustainability, climate and energy, and food and health. The research director seeks to identify funding opportunities and match them with new and on-going research projects on campus to help ensure that GW sustainability researchers have the support that they need to pursue their intellectual interests. The research director also provides assistance with all areas of research development, from identifying the research question, clarifying the hypotheses, writing the narrative, and identifying collaborators, to preparing the budget and submitting the proposal. The GW Sustainability Collaborative holds regular meetings of the affiliated sustainability research institutes and centers across campus. These institutes include: The Antibiotic Resistance Action Center, The Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis, The Environmental and Energy Management Institute, The Food Institute, The Institute for Corporate Responsibility, Institute for International Economic Policy, Partnerships for International Strategies in Asia, The Redstone Center for Prevention and Wellness, The Rodham Institute, The Solar Institute, the Sustainable Energy Initiative, and Planet Forward. This meeting is an opportunity to convene on current and future ways to collaborate with regards to research and other activities. GW Faculty in Sustainability find support for external grants through the Office of the Vice President for Research. Working collaboratively with principal investigators and their department staff, the Sponsored Projects Administration team ensures successful submission of proposals and compliance throughout the life of the project. The Office of Sponsored Projects Administration (SPA) serves as a central resource to support the research community at GW by providing guidance and stewardship for researchers and administrators. SPA is responsible for the effective and timely handling of research proposals, as well as the preparation, interpretation, negotiation, and execution of agreements on behalf of GW for projects funded by federal and state agencies, foundations, and other public and private sources. They also draft, negotiate, and execute awards and subawards for collaborative research. The George Washington Institute of Public Policy twice annually awards the Shapiro Policy Research Scholar. This competition is open to all GW tenure-track, tenured, and full-time contract faculty. The Shapiro Policy Program promotes and encourages proposals that focus on research topics directly relevant to Sustainability Policy. http://gwipp.gwu.edu/past-cohorts

The GW Strategic Plan for 2020, embraces innovation through cross-disciplinary collaboration. As a major theme of the strategic plan, cross-disciplinary research and teaching is strongly supported. The strategic plan states: "The university's commitment to cross-disciplinarity recognizes the importance of rigorous grounding in specific disciplines and the value of a broad liberal arts undergraduate education. Cross-disciplinarity builds on this foundation to foster new and exciting intellectual endeavors." Sustainability is the most prominent research area within GW that is both interdisciplinary and pan-university. Furthermore, the GW Executive Director of Sustainability reports directly to the Provost, where she is well-positioned to advocate for tenure for scholars pursuing interdisciplinary sustainability research.

The GW Library is a great partner to sustainability. They often co-host events with the Sustainability Collaborative and are a frequent partner in classes and student events. Examples of the events co-hosted with the library include: The Color of Water, a teach-in about the Flint, MI water crisis; The Francis Effect, a discussion of the political impact of Pope Francis' 2015 visit to Washington, his speech before Congress in particular; Sustaining Sustainability in the Trump Years, a convening allowed students to voice their concerns and to get a better sense of where environmental progress is still possible. The library also provides electronic copies of the core texts required for sustainability signature courses.