New Mexico State University
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

Introduction to http://greening.nmsu.edu grant from the University for 3 years to develop ongoing sustainability programs.

After a Teaching Academy session “Sustainability Across the Curriculum” David Boje of the NMSU Management Department, and outgoing chair of Sustainability Council at NMSU submitted a funding application, as outgoing Chair of Sustainability Council that was awarded December 17, 2013. The Sustainability Council notification that it succeeded in being funded $15K FY 2014 from the Presidents' Performance Funding to enact the Greening of the NMSU Curriculum, including appointing a faculty coordinator of the initiative, and money to market the initiative. Dr. Boje was Project Manager and the budget is administered through the Management Department of the College of Business, with Steve Elias, Department Head, as its administrative signatory. The Sustainability Council reviewed this initiative on January 8, 2014, which endorsed the project in several unanimous motions. On January 13, 2015 there was a second presentation of Greening of the NMSU Curriculum to Associate Deans Administrative Council.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF Greening the Curriculum @ NMSU

Our proposal is to offer an interdisciplinary minor (18 credit hours, 9 at the upper division level) with a Certificate in Sustainability at the undergraduate level in the first year, and look to doing something similar at the graduate level in the second year. We are not asking for new courses. NMSU already has undergraduate degree programs in place with offerings in sustainability, including a sustainability development minor in Anthropology. We would like to develop a university minor in sustainability, that has Sustainability Development as one track, and then develop several additional tracks. For example, these include plant and environmental sciences, Fish Wildlife Conservation and Ecology, Renewable Energy Technologies (Dept. of Engineering Technology and Survey Engineering). We propose a matrix of courses offerings (Appendix F) with the first track, and our proposal is to hire a coordinator to go meet with each department on campus, to see which courses they offer regularly, that would could be part of track, such as a track in economic sustainability, and another suited for people with engineering, math, and physical or biological sciences majors.

MILESTONES: If successful in FY 2014, there are two additional years of funding for the initiative. We (Sustainability Council) have a contract to achieve three milestone outcomes:
1.June 2014 Establish interdisciplinary undergraduate minor in sustainability
2.June 2014 Establish database of sustainability courses and prerequisites
3.Oct 2014 Use database to evaluate dept, course and student engagement
4.Dec 2014 Implement marketing campaign
5.June 2015 Establish graduate certificate in sustainability

5 of the Vision 2020 goals of the university relates to sustainability

The NMSU Sustainability Council offers training for faculty and lecturers developing or pursuing course changes to make courses sustainability-related or sustainability-focused

See presentation about history of Sustainability Research at NMSU at http://greening.nmsu.edu It shows how each goals of the university relates to sustainability.