Overall Rating Silver
Overall Score 61.51
Liaison Karen Eckert, Ph.D.
Submission Date March 5, 2021
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.1

Principia College
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 2.00 / 2.00 Karen Eckert, Ph.D.
Professor and Director
Center for Sustainability
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Does the institution have an ongoing program or programs that offer incentives for faculty in multiple disciplines or departments to develop new sustainability courses and/or incorporate sustainability into existing courses?:
Yes

A brief description of the program(s), including positive outcomes during the previous three years (e.g. descriptions of new courses or course content resulting from the program):

In furtherance of the Principia Center for Sustainability’s mission “to educate, promote, and inspire Principia College’s students, faculty and staff to become more responsible local and global environmental citizens”, one of the Center’s stated objectives is to “Be a resource for faculty development aimed at infusing sustainable concepts and content into courses.”

To this end, the Center provides enrichment grants for faculty to pursue professional training in sustainability. The primary purpose of these grants is to enrich the quality of student education, improve teacher effectiveness, contribute to Principia’s educational program, and benefit the academic community. An example is the support provided to a member of the Business Administration faculty to attend training at another university, which resulted in a new catalog-listed course (BUAD 270 Business Sustainability), and support provided to another faculty member to travel to the Republic of the Marshall Islands to develop a new unit on climate refugees for an existing catalog-listed course (SUS 240 Modern Climate Change). Both of these popular courses are now taught every year.

The Dean of Academic's office also provides faculty development grants, support for faculty pursuing advances degrees, and Sabbatical options. Positive outcomes include support for a PhD in Energy Economics for a member of the Sustainability faculty.


A brief description of the incentives that faculty members who participate in the program(s) receive:

Incentives are financial through the Center for Sustainability's "Faculty/Staff Sustainability Enrichment Grant" program, as described above, as well as through the Globalisation of the Curriculum grants through the Global Studies department. In addition, the PhD program was partially financially supported by the Dean's office.


The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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