Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 68.39
Liaison Sam Lubow
Submission Date June 29, 2012
Executive Letter Download

STARS v1.2

Stanford University
ER-14: Incentives for Developing Sustainability Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 3.00 / 3.00 Jiffy Vermylen
Sustainability Coordinator
Sustainability & Energy Management / Office of Sustainability
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution have a program that meets the criteria outlined above?:
Yes

A brief description of the program(s):

Stanford provides incentives for developing sustainability classes through multiple departments and institutes, including the Woods Institute for the Environment, Precourt Institute for Energy, and School of Earth Sciences. Affiliation with these organizations offers faculty who teach sustainability courses numerous professional development and other incentives.

The Woods Institute was founded in 2006 as part of The Stanford Challenge, a university-wide initiative to address the world’s most pressing problems of the modern era, including the Initiative on the Environment and Sustainability. The Woods Institute supports environmental research, teaching, and learning at all levels of the university.

The Precourt Institute for Energy (PIE) serves as a hub for a number of centers, programs, and projects related to interdisciplinary energy research and learning at Stanford. PIE provides funding and associated support for cutting-edge energy research, creates and maintains avenues for effective communication and intellectual exchange among scholars and others seeking energy solutions, and develops energy-literate leaders and communities through educational programs and the dissemination of research results.

Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences houses two of the university’s largest interdisciplinary sustainability programs: the Earth Systems program and the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources. Both of these programs seek to educate the next generation of environmental leaders and scholars.


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

The Woods Institute and the PIE have the ability to appoint their own faculty fellows. Faculty who accept affiliation with one of these programs have access to a range of resources and incentives for creating sustainability courses, including complimentary TAs for sustainability courses and professional development. PIE administers the ongoing Energy Seminar, a weekly lecture series in which professors and researchers are invited to speak about sustainability issues. Through the weekly Environmental Forum series, the Woods Institute holds academic interdisciplinary talks for Woods Faculty and Woods Affiliated Faculty throughout the academic year on a weekly basis.

The Woods Institute recently made it easier to teach sustainability courses by creating its own course catalog designation, ENVRINST. Now, sustainability courses at Stanford need not be confined by the designation of a particular department, but instead can be taught under the Woods Institute designation. This enables an incentivizes non-traditional faculty, such as staff and Institute Fellows, to teach courses.

In 2010, the university launched the Study of Undergraduate Education at Stanford, which seeks to re-evaluate how the undergraduate curriculum and requirements are determined. Sustainability courses will play a large role in the revised curriculum.

In addition, Stanford has created university-wide momentum for teaching more sustainability courses. As stated in President Hennessy's 2011 Annual Report, "the Stanford Challenge also provided essential facilities to support groundbreaking research and teaching. By the campaign’s conclusion, 26 new buildings — including 10 that support multidisciplinary research and teaching — had been constructed. Many replaced buildings that were more than 50 years old and completely unable to support modern research or teaching." An opportunity to teach in a world-class facility has incentivized faculty members to develop sustainability and other multidisciplinary courses.

For more information, please visit:
http://annualreport.stanford.edu/2011/
http://woods.stanford.edu/
http://pie.stanford.edu/
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/undergrad/sues/


The website URL where information about the program is available:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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