Indiana University Indianapolis
IN-26: Innovation C

In March of 2017, the Indiana Sustainability Development Program (ISDP) was launched by Indiana University. This statewide workforce development program partners with Indiana-based private, public and nonprofit organizations to host summer externs throughout the Hoosier state to provide solutions-based sustainability expertise. In 2017, the inaugural year, a program coordinator was based out of Bloomington and only recruiting IU Bloomington (IUB) students into the program. A concerted effort to expand to the ISDP program to an Indianapolis audience led to IUPUI Sustainability taking a share of the responsibility starting the second year. IUPUI hired a part-time ISDP program coordinator to recruit partner organizations in the Indianapolis area, as well as students from IUPUI. In 2018, the program placed 9 IUPUI students in externships at nonprofits and one local government. The third year of the program, IUPUI's involvement continued to increase. The program coordinator hired by IUPUI became the sole, full-time program coordinator for ISDP. On the third year of the program, the ISDP Boot Camp was based out of the IUPUI campus - an ideal central location for a statewide program. In 2019, the third year of the program saw a cohort of 30 IU students from three campuses: IUB, IUPUI, and IU South Bend. A third of the externs were IUPUI students, placed in nonprofits, for profits, and local governments across the state. Starting in 2019, ISDP partnered with the Environmental Resilience Institute to train a select group of eight externs in conducting greenhouse gas inventories. These externs, dubbed the Resilience Cohort, were placed with Indiana cities and communities across the state where they will measure greenhouse gas emissions, the first step for these cities towards creating climate action plans.