| Overall Rating | Gold |
|---|---|
| Overall Score | 72.36 |
| Liaison | Andrew D'Amico |
| Submission Date | Nov. 13, 2024 |
Princeton University
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses
| Status | Score | Responsible Party |
|---|---|---|
|
2.00 / 2.00 |
Andrew
D'Amico Assistant Director Office of Sustainability |
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? :
A brief description of the incentive program(s):
Through its Grand Challenges Program (GC), High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI) provides seed research grants to faculty seeking to redirect their research to address environmental challenges including energy and climate, urban sustainability and resilience, water issues, and biodiversity.
Funding priority is given to faculty proposals that involve undergraduate students and expand the undergraduate curriculum to capture themes emerging from their Grand Challenges work.
Professor Robert Pringle and David Wilcove's research on biodiversity in Mozambique is a recent example of new academic opportunities stemming from a Grand Challenge Award. The award--which ran from 2021-2023--funded a collaborative project with communities in and around Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park to help promote biodiversity and strengthen local economies, while also optimizing the landscape’s climate resilience and potential for carbon storage.
Undergraduate students contributed substantially to the project, both through their junior and senior independent research and the HMEI Environmental Internship Program. The project’s work and findings were integrated into Pringle’s undergraduate course, “Ecology: Species Interactions, Biodiversity and Society,” which featured the recovery of Gorongosa as a core theme and included philanthropist Greg Carr of the Gorongosa Project as a guest speaker. The project supported a new postdoctoral researcher position supervised by Wilcove and Pringle.
Visit https://environment.princeton.edu/research/grand-challenges-overview/ for a list of Grand Challenges research awards.
A brief description of the incentives that academic staff who participate in the program(s) receive:
To date, the Program has awarded more than $36 million in funding for 125 faculty-led projects that demonstrate new directions in research and strategic collaborations across disciplinary lines.
Funding priority is given to faculty proposals that involve undergraduate students and expand the undergraduate curriculum to capture themes emerging from their Grand Challenges work.
Calls for proposals are conducted annually in announcements circulated to all Princeton faculty.
Optional Fields
Additional documentation to support the submission:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
Modest support is also available through the High Meadows Foundation Sustainability Fund for faculty research projects and enhancement of courses that use the campus as a living laboratory for place-based sustainability investigation and problem-solving. See https://sustain.princeton.edu/resources/high-meadows-fund
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