Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 65.98
Liaison Audrey McSain
Submission Date Feb. 26, 2021

STARS v2.2

Lehigh University
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 2.00 / 2.00 Katharine Targett Gross
Sustainability Officer
Office of Sustainability
"---" 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):
In both December 2018 and May 2020, Lehigh University held a day-long workshop entitled Educating Future Leaders: Integrating Sustainability in the Curriculum, which was open to faculty (including Professors of Practice) in all four colleges. The purpose of this workshop was to help faculty:
1. Reimagine how courses of all kinds can better incorporate environmental responsibility, social equity and financial inclusion content with the goal of providing future leaders the education and skills necessary to achieve sustainable communities and societies.
2. Identify opportunities to utilize the campus as a living laboratory by bridging theory to practice
3. Learn about the 8 ways to integrate sustainability content into any course
4. Cover campus resources available to assist faculty who wish to integrate content into their course(s).

As a follow up to the December 2019 workshop, two additional 1-hour workshops were held in February 2019 and March 2019. These workshops were mainly discussion-based where ideas were shared. Nobody in these two one-hour workshops were paid anything or asked to commit to anything.

As a follow up to the May 2020 workshop, a 1-hour long session was held in August 2020 as a check-in to see if faculty had questions as they were finalizing their syllabus revisions.

It is the expectation that Lehigh University will hold a similar day-long workshop for faculty in the 2020-2021 academic year as well.

A brief description of the incentives that academic staff who participate in the program(s) receive:
For the faculty members who attended the day-long workshop and who then revised their syllabus to integrate sustainability into their course(s), they were given a $500 stipend. Those faculty members had to submit their original syllabus and their revised syllabus to the Lehigh Sustainability Council Education Subcommittee for review and approval before the stipend was disbursed.

Optional Fields 

Website URL where information about the incentives for developing sustainability course content is available:
---

Additional documentation to support the submission:
---

Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
The data above was not impacted by COVID-19 and therefore is representative of a normal year.

The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.