San Jose State University
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

The ‘Campus as a Living Lab’ Grant Program is a unique opportunity to partner faculty and facilities management staff in using the campus as a forum for the exploration of sustainability concepts and theories. The program aligns the California State University’s long-standing commitment to sustainability with the fundamental goal of preparing students for the workforce. One positive outcome of this CSU program is that in academic year 2015/2016, a faculty member in the Journalism/Mass Communications department created a student advertising agency team to promote sustainability to both the campus and the surrounding community. The team is comprised with six individuals who report their efforts on a weekly basis to the entire class. The project this past year (August-May) has two phases, with the first phase being the promotional campaigns and the second phase being the designing of the campus sustainability annual report submitted by FD&O. ​Budgets were proposed and approved. A variety of contests, campaign awareness materials, promotional giveaways and behavioral changes were implemented. ​During the development of these campaigns, the team has had numerous meetings with the campus sustainability board, FD&O, PG&E, Sustainability Circle, the campus marketing team and campus housing. ​A major contest between the residence halls was initiated in saving energy by promoting the turning off of lights and unplugging unused electronic devices. The contest will take place from March 7th to April 30th. We’ve already seen an overall 82% decrease from all the buildings. ​During this promotional period, the team has made weekly updates to SJSU’s sustainability website. This entire program has been structured to be an ongoing multiyear program. That will be executed by DB&H Communications as funding permits. ​A new team is being hired for next year, which will develop and implement additional ideas and campaigns. In 2013 and 2014, SJSU faculty and the Sustainability Board created and shared transferable curriculum modules that can be utilized by all faculty using campus features and local partnerships to teach sustainability. Specifically, we achieved these program objectives: 1) Developed maps and lists of sustainability features at each campus; 2) Produced teaching modules for nine sustainability features that any instructor can access for their courses; 3) Developed a learning community of instructors from the three campuses who are using Campus as Living Lab features in their classes to link sustainability and course principles. Further Program Description can be found here: http://www.sjsu.edu/sustainability/livinglab/description/index.html

The ‘Campus as a Living Lab’ Grant Program will provide funds for the redesign of a course that ties elements of sustainability into opportunities for learning using the campus physical plant. Funds of up to $12,000 will be awarded to support the preparation of the proposed course.