Stanford University
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

Stanford provides incentives for developing sustainability classes through multiple departments and institutes, including the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences, the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and Precourt Institute for Energy. Affiliation with these organizations offers faculty who teach sustainability courses numerous professional development and other incentives. The School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences also has funds to incentivize and support research and outreach in its four theme areas: the energy transition, reducing disaster risk, climate solutions, and solutions at the food-water nexus—all sustainability challenges of meeting people's needs while preserving the life support systems of the planet. Both the School and the university have funds available to incentivize and aid faculty teams in developing new teaching approaches around interdisciplinary issues including sustainability. For example, in 2015 the School funded a faculty team to create a new interdisciplinary course on climate change, and it has similarly supported educational efforts around hazards and resilience. The Stanford Woods Institute was founded in 2004 and supports environmental research, teaching, and learning at all levels of the university. The Woods Institute for the Environment offers seed funding to support interdisciplinary research efforts that are focused on problem solving in sustainability challenges and that include efforts to link knowledge with action. The Woods Institute has its own course catalog designation, ENVRINST, so 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 and encourages non-traditional faculty, such as staff and Institute Fellows, to teach sustainability courses. 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. PIE administers the ongoing Energy Seminar, a weekly lecture series in which accomplished professors and researchers are invited to speak about sustainability issues. For more information, please visit: https://earth.stanford.edu/ http://woods.stanford.edu/ http://pie.stanford.edu/

The Stanford Woods Institute and 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. Finally, faculty members who develop and teach classes above and beyond their typical schedule are financially compensated for their additional effort. Therefore, there is a financial incentive to develop and offer new courses at Stanford, and some faculty have developed sustainability courses in order to take advantage of this incentive. For example, two Thinking Matters courses, "Sustainability and Collapse," and "A Transition Towards Sustainability" qualified for this financial incentive.