George Washington University
AC-10: Support for Sustainability 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 Sustainability Scholars Award ($5000 for undergrad research), 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, in 2019 the GW Sustainability Scholars Fund funded 5 undergrad researchers, with projects focusing on such topics as Arctic urban sustainability, pollinators on campus, work place sustainability, and decarbonization in Chile.
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 2019, the Sustainability Collaborative sponsored two special prizes for students who conducted research related to sustainability.
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.
The DC Climathon and the GW New Venture Competition: The DC Climathon is a hackathon program rooted in applied research and learning that cultivates top talent to develop the innovation pipeline for sustainability issues. Partners include the European Institute for Innovation and Technology’s Climate-KIC, GW’s School of Business Institute for Corporate Responsibility, Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and Honey Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service. DC Climathon augments traditional educational and research offerings to develop leaders and create positive change within the local community, start-ups, and the public and private sectors. https://sustainability.gwu.edu/dc-climathon-gw Winning DC Climathon ideas move on to the GW New Venture Competition. This annual competition distributes $500,000 in cash and prizes 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 2019 the first place in the social ventures competition went to Last Call, which won for a proposal distributed surplus food at restaurants to underserved communities, thereby feeding food challenged populations with meals that would otherwise go to waste. http://newventure.gwu.edu/

GW provides support for interdisciplinary sustainablity research through various programs. Most directly, in 2014, the George Washington University (GW) embarked on a multifaceted partnership with Duke Energy Renewables (DER) to establish a solar purchasing partnership and a complementary intramural research fund. With a commitment over five years from DER, GW launched the Duke Energy Innovation Fund, which provides competitive grants to interdisciplinary GW faculty teams for sustainability and energy-related research. Sustainable GW – a partnership between the Office of Sustainability and the Office of the Provost – runs the annual competition, and a GW-DER team selects award winners. The competition requires faculty to build multidisciplinary teams that bring together engineers, economist, biologists, geographers and business school scholars, among others. The effort also encourages faculty to include as many students as possible in the research efforts, including through living labs. Recent projects have examined how the construction of solar farms affects local environments and economies; and how wild fires caused by utilities impact the health of local populations.

The GW Cross Disciplinary Research Fund provides Sustainable GW nearly $100,000 over two years to support research efforts addressing a range of sustainability efforts. The funds supported a series of seminars bringing together faculty from across campus to discuss a range of sustainability research topics and living labs. Current work is focusing on providing more sustainable responses to natural hazards.
The University Seminars Fund has provided approximately $4,000 for the Sustainability Collaborative to bring together faculty and staff from to address questions of energy equity in Washington DC. The funds support seminars allowing faculty to work with representatives of the DC government and community groups to provide access to cheap and clean energy for underserved communities.

Sustainable GW 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.

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.

Sustainability is a prominent research area within GW that is both interdisciplinary and pan-university. GW consists of 10 schools and each school determines the criteria for promotion and tenure. For example, faculty allocations in GW's School of Engineering and Applied Science are made to interdisciplinary research initiatives rather than to the departments, so faculty are driving these initiatives and the faculty searches. The people hired will have departmental appointments, and the strategy around faculty hiring is driven more by those areas of opportunity that aren’t limited by departmental boundaries. The Elliott School of International Affairs specifically cites "substantial contribution in a specific discipline or interdisciplinary field of study" as a criterion for advancing. All of the school criteria can be found here: https://provost.gwu.edu/faculty-governance

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." In 2020 GW is in a process to publish a new strategic plan under the leadership of President Tom LeBlanc.

The GW Library provides access to all of the key sustainability books and journals either by purchasing a copy or access to electronic resources or making those resources available through a consortium of universities in the national capital area. If GW does not have direct access to a requested sustainability resource, it can provide access to that resource through inter-library loans. Deborah Bezanson, Senior Librarian for the Sciences, Engineering & Assessment, pays special attention to sustainability issues and works to ensure that GW has sufficient sustainability resources. She is in touch with key sustainability faculty to ensure that the the resources the library purchases are appropriate.