Indiana University Bloomington
IN-26: Innovation C

To advance the 2020 Transitions Lab (IU’s name for its sustainability living learning lab) and support the Sustainability Working Groups as they work to make IU a leader in campus sustainability, the Provost has allocated $50,000 per year for the next three years to launch the new IU Sustainability Innovation Fund. The Innovation Fund supports IU Bicentennial Strategic Plan Priority Three, “Catalyzing Research,” offering “support for innovative campus living laboratory initiatives that provide opportunities to integrate campus operations, faculty and student research, education, student life, and community engagement to applied, solutions-oriented sustainability research.” The fund offers an exciting opportunity to build and leverage existing IUOS Working Group capacities to generate productive operations-academics solutions for sustainability, all while welcoming new campus collaborators to participate. Through a competitive process, the Innovation Fund will catalyze campus efforts that fulfill the following goals: -Leverage Working Group structure to create and fund at least one major innovation per year that measurably advances campus sustainability by using campus as a lab. Improve IUB’s score in at least one category of the AASHE STARS metric. -Provide high-impact learning experiences for students. -Make measurable progress towards one or more Bicentennial Strategic Plan goals. -Generate success stories to publish in university and public media to create opportunities for sustainability advancement and donor opportunities.

This fund is designed to enhance our STARS performance, support Indiana University's Bicentennial Strategic Plan goals, offer high-impact learning for students, enhance communication between our adaptive operating and hierarchical operating systems (as a Common Ground experiment), and energize our working groups with faculty-operations collaboration.