Saint Louis University
AC-7: Incentives for Developing 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. A multi-disciplinary task-force, including faculty members from Parks College of Aviation and Engineering, the School of Social Work, and John Cook School of Business, worked together to develop the unique, inter-disciplinary curriculum offered through the Center.

In 2012 the Center expanded its program offerings when it became the new home for SLU's Urban Planning and Real Estate Development (now just Urban Planning and Development) masters program and the University's graduate certificate program in Advanced Remote Sensing and Geographic Systems.

Beginning in 2013 the Center partnered with the Business School and the Law School to develop two new dual degree programs: (1) Master of Business Administration & Master of Science in Sustainability and (2) Juris Doctor and Master of Arts in Urban Planning and Development. Both programs went online in the Fall of 2014. The Center is currently working with the business school on plans for a dual degree in Sustainability and Supply Chain Management.

Expansion and enhancement of the Center's academic offerings have provided unique opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration across the University. Center have faculty and staff have worked closely with colleagues in other schools to develop unique curricula that serve the various dual degree programs.

The core, interdisciplinary task force that developed the Center's initial curriculum received significant financial bonuses, outside of typical university pay grades, as an incentive to work outside of their primary schools to help launch the new degree program. The Center continues to offer competitive financial contracts to faculty members across the University who are interested and able to develop and teach courses for the Center.

Center faculty members also collaborate with faculty members in other departments and at other University's on research and interdisciplinary grant proposals.To solve complex sustainability problems, requires teams of experts both within the university, across disciplines, and outside of the university across sectors. For example, the collaborative research that Dr. Damon Hall is involved with integrates biophysical research with social science for the purposes of applying knowledge to decision making that fosters transitions towards sustainability. These efforts have united faculty from biology, earth and atmospheric sciences, sustainability, sociology, communication, ecology, geography, natural resources, forestry, anthropology, and information sciences departments around the country for the purpose of addressing society's most pressing problems. These problems include managing urban streams, urban sustainability design, crowd sourced hydrologic models for predictive decision making, floodplain management, drought impacts on water quality and its mitigation, and public-private partnerships for urban pollinator conservation throughout North America. The aim is collaborative contribution to methods that help shape transformational sustainability science.

The Center for Sustainability established a research innovation fund and community development fund to provide additional financial support to faculty members who pursue externally-funded, sustainability-related research and community development projects.