Pomona College
AC-10: Support for Sustainability Research

The Schultz Fund for Environmental Studies is a Summer Research Award for Pomona College non-senior students; ten-week summer research grants in sustainability are also available to students in other fields through the college’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program. Students are encouraged to give lectures or lead seminars the following year, and special consideration is given to projects approaching an environmental issue from a multidisciplinary approach. In addition, seniors in the Environmental Analysis Program are required to complete two capstone experiences, a thesis in the fall and team-based, real-client project completed in the spring semester. Many theses and all of the projects are sustainability in focus, design, and application.

The Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) enables faculty to conduct extended, focused research with students. Research projects, which receive funding from Pomona and from public and private foundations, take place both on campus and in the field across the U.S. and the globe.

Interdisciplinary research and teaching are valued in the tenure and promotion process. The College's criteria for reappointment, promotion, and tenure are as follows (in order of importance): 1. Intellectual leadership – lecturing, leading discussions, guiding student research; 2. Professional achievement – excellent work in one's field recognized outside of Pomona College, scholarly productivity in the form of books, significant articles, the completion of publishable manuscripts, or artistic creation or performance; and 3. Effective service to the department, Pomona College, and the Claremont Colleges, to one's discipline and professional organizations, in activities such as committee work that support the common educational and scholarly enterprise. Interdisciplinary research is to be assessed within the criterion of professional achievement. Although all professors are appointed to a department, professors can be given a joint or a hybrid appointment in which the professor is contracted to teach partially or mostly for an interdisciplinary program. Professors can also be formally or informally affiliated with an interdisciplinary program. In the procedures for reappointment, promotion, and tenure, if a candidate is jointly appointed, the second department or program compiles its own dossier or reviews the dossier presented by the first department. If a candidate has received a hybrid appointment, the program and the department share equally in the review, with both the program and the department submitting an independent letter of evaluation. If a candidate is affiliated with a program, a letter from the program is included in the candidate's dossier.

The Claremont Colleges Honnold Mudd Library provides research guides for students and faculty to the Claremont Colleges. The library has an Environmental Analysis Portal that contains both course guides and subject guides. In addition, there are librarians whose subject knowledge is Environmental Analysis. The library also provides students with access to specific online databases related to the subject of Environmental Analysis. The Special Collections area of the Honnold Mudd Library contains great resources on water and water history for the region, among others.