Overall Rating Silver
Overall Score 53.24
Liaison Alicia Gowan
Submission Date June 18, 2024

STARS v2.2

Kwantlen Polytechnic University
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 2.00 / 2.00 Alicia Gowan
Sustainability Specialist
Campus and Community Planning
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution have an ongoing program that offers incentives for academic staff in multiple disciplines or departments to develop new sustainability courses and/or incorporate sustainability into existing courses? :
Yes

A brief description of the incentive program(s):
KPU's Climate+ Challenge is a KPU-wide initiative that aims to engage students, staff, and faculty in learning about climate change through an empathetic and solutions-oriented lens. It is called Climate "Plus" due to the inherent social, cultural, economic and more ("Plus") elements that intersect with climate change challenges and solutions. Their goal is to get more people at KPU talking, learning, thinking about and finding solutions to the climate emergency, and various climate-related challenges. Climate+ Challenge believes "the more we talk about this, the more capacity we build to meet the upcoming challenges". Their hope is that this will become a permanent part of KPU's sustainability vision, and the teaching and learning at KPU. With a major focus on enhancing KPU's climate+ related course offerings, instructors who want to add climate-change content to their courses, labs or programs can sign up as to be a part of the challenge if they have one course assignment or an entire course dedicated to climate+ issues. These are listed on the Climate+ Challenge website so students, faculty, and the wider KPU community can learn about the climate+ related courses offered at KPU in real-time. This program falls under the Office of the Provost. There are three faculty time releases each year that enable a faculty member each semester to take the lead on the program to encourage and work with other faculty members in incorporating climate+ issues into the courses.

https://wordpress.kpu.ca/climatepluschallenge/

KPU also hosts a UN Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Fellowship program. Open Pedagogy enables students, through experiential learning, to become creators of information rather than only consumers of information. This practice also emphasizes sharing teaching practices with others to improve education, including teaching and learning, rather than being a gatekeeper of it. The UN SDG Open Pedagogy Fellowship program at KPU "provides faculty with an opportunity to work with their colleagues and students to impact change through open pedagogy and engagement. This fellowship is designed to assist faculty with creating renewable assignments (all of which will carry a creative commons license) to help students become agents of change in their own communities". The international partnership enables faculty to work across interdisciplinary teams of faculty and students from across institutions that share a common teaching, learning, and/or research goal. During the fellowship program, the team must create 3 renewable assignments of which at least 2 must be deployed in each members classes in the following semester.

https://www.kpu.ca/open/un-sdg-fellowship

A brief description of the incentives that academic staff who participate in the program(s) receive:
KPU Climate+ Challenge offers time release for staff to develop the program. The Open Pedagogy Fellowship Program offers successful applicants $500 in professional development funding from KPU Open Education.

Optional Fields 

Website URL where information about the incentives for developing sustainability course content is available:
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Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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