Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 74.96
Liaison Megan Butler
Submission Date Jan. 19, 2021

STARS v2.2

Macalester College
AC-10: Support for Sustainability Research

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 4.00 / 4.00 Joan Ostrove
Director of the Jan Serie Center for Scholarship and Teaching
Jan Serie Center for Scholarship and Teaching
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Student sustainability research incentives 

Does the institution have an ongoing program to encourage students in multiple disciplines or academic programs to conduct sustainability research?:
Yes

A brief description of the student sustainability research program:
The Sustainability Office offers funding for research projects to students in the form of small grants to support books and other materials.

Faculty sustainability research incentives 

Does the institution have a program to encourage academic staff from multiple disciplines or academic programs to conduct sustainability research?:
Yes

A brief description of the faculty sustainability research program:
The Sustainability Office supports faculty-student research on Sustainability with four $500 grants each year.

Additionally, there is an endowed fund that supports one sustainability related project across campus every other year. This endowment supports a faculty stipend and a student salary for a full ten weeks in the summer, and covers research incidentals.

Recognition of interdisciplinary, transdisciplnary and multi-disciplinary research 

Has the institution published written policies and procedures that give positive recognition to interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary research during faculty promotion and/or tenure decisions?:
Yes

A copy of the promotion or tenure guidelines or policies:
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The promotion or tenure guidelines or policies:
In addition to the “typical” evidence of scholarly excellence (e.g. number and significance of refereed articles and books and publicly performed artistic works), non-traditional scholarship that interdisciplinary scholars often produce, such as “publicly disseminated reports from action research and/or service-learning projects” and “technical reports from consulting projects” are recognized as credible evidence of excellence. In addition, Macalester focuses on “the quality of the activity and involvement” rather than on simple quantitative measures of scholarship supports interdisciplinary work.

Source: Citation: Hornbach, D. (2011) Macalester College; A Cross-Cutting Case Study, in Pfirman et al, Interdisciplinary Hiring and Career Development: Guidance for Individuals and Institutions, National Council for Science and the Environment. Edited by Helen Warren, Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at Macalester College.

Library support

Does the institution have ongoing library support for sustainability research and learning?:
Yes

A brief description of the institution’s library support for sustainability research:
The library supports sustainability research and learning through the databases they provide that contain information and scholarly articles on sustainability issues. Some Sustainability Office data and documents have been archived on the institutional repository maintained by the library: (http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/sustainability/) Finally, the library creates and distributes the popular Onesies and Halfsies, free to all first year students and at a minimal cost to all others, made from single-sided paper collected from across campus.

On campus, the library also supports sustainability programming. This includes a focus on reducing the amount of paper used in printing and through book club selections which focus on sustainability issues.

Optional Fields 

Website URL where information about the institution’s support for sustainability research 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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