Saint Louis University
ER-14: Incentives for Developing Sustainability Courses

The Center for Sustainability funded the development of all core courses and electives in its new Master of Sustainability graduate degree program, which launched in August of 2010. The Center for Sustainability continues to actively engage faculty and staff members across the university with incentives to get involved with the Center and the MOS program. This includes funding for course development, retrofitting, and instruction. The Center also encourages faculty and staff to participate in Center sponsored sustainability initiatives such as field trips, conferences, symposiums, presentations, social and networking events, and speaker series. The Center for Sustainability covers the cost of all events for faculty, staff, and students who are in the MOS program or otherwise contribute time and knowledge to the Center.

The Center for Sustainability created a task force comprised of faculty and staff from multiple university departments and paid them to develop the inaugural Master of Sustainability curriculum. The core task force received significant financial bonuses, far outside of typical university pay grades, as an incentive to help launch the new degree program. The Center continues to provide financial incentives to faculty for the development of new courses, retrofitting of existing courses, and participation in sustainability seminars and speaking engagements. Faculty involved with the program have access to the Center library and a wealth of sustainability resources for research, program development, and conference preparation.