| Overall Rating | Gold - expired |
|---|---|
| Overall Score | 68.72 |
| Liaison | Greg Maginn |
| Submission Date | Jan. 18, 2019 |
| Executive Letter | Download |
The Ohio State University
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses
| Status | Score | Responsible Party |
|---|---|---|
|
2.00 / 2.00 |
Mike
Shelton Associate Director Office of Energy & Environment |
Does the institution have an ongoing program or programs that offer incentives for faculty in multiple disciplines or departments to develop new sustainability courses and/or incorporate sustainability into existing courses?:
A brief description of the program(s), including positive outcomes during the previous three years (e.g. descriptions of new courses or course content resulting from the program):
In 2014, Ohio State established a new inter-disciplinary program titled the Discovery Theme Initiative. Strategically centered on eight widespread social dilemmas, the Discovery Theme Initiative seeks to accelerate new discoveries and translate knowledge into practical solutions for meaningful impact.
Of the eight focus areas, sustainability is a defining component within three of the Discovery Themes:
- Food and Agricultural Transformation
- Materials and Manufacturing for Sustainability
- Sustainable and Resilient Economy
Each Discovery Theme is charged with increasing the university’s faculty ranks in order to generate new student learning opportunities and interdisciplinary research.
Focusing just on the Sustainable and Resilient Economy Discovery Theme, over the past three years (FY16-FY18), 27 new faculty members were hired across six colleges, representing 16 different academic disciplines.
These new Sustainable and Resilient Economy Discovery Theme faculty members are provided with incentives to conduct their work, including new sustainability course development. In the past year alone, the following new and revised courses were offered by these faculty members:
- CIVILEN 2050: Probabilistic Applications and Data Interpretation in Civil and Environmental Engineering.
- ENVENG 5195/PUBHEHS 5195: Engineering Design for Environmental Health.
- ENVENG 5195/PUBHEHS 5195: Engineering Design for Environmental Health. (ONLINE COURSE)
- HISTORY 2710: The History of the Car.
- HISTORY 3706: Coca-Cola Globalization – American Business and Global Ecological Change, 1800-Today.
- NCS 7806: Introduction to Concepts in Bayesian Statistics.
- HCS 7194: Genome Analytics.
- ENR 5194: Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior.
Similar results could be provided in relation to the other Discovery Theme topic areas.
A brief description of the incentives that faculty members who participate in the program(s) receive:
Discovery Theme faculty members benefit from a variety of incentives, including cohort development trainings, peer-to-peer networking opportunities, special occasions to present ongoing research work to the university community, as well as time to develop new sustainability-related courses.
Discovery Theme faculty members are also eligible for a seed grant funding program provided by the university to advance their research with student research assistants, develop new course curriculum, or advance co-curricular student learning opportunities.
Again focusing just on the Sustainable and Resilient Economy Discovery Theme, during the 2017-2018 academic year, eleven seed grants totaling nearly $430,000 were awarded to Discovery Theme faculty members within four different colleges, representing 18 different academic disciplines.
Some examples of how the seed grant funding has supported faculty efforts to develop new sustainability courses include:
- Funding a multi-day workshop with national academic, corporate, and non-profit experts to design new project-based learning courses centered on sustainability topics while involving external partners.
- Funding to develop interdisciplinary undergraduate capstone course programming in partnership with the University of Dodoma (Tanzania) to address the complex challenges and opportunities of sustainable development and resiliency in rural Tanzania, through service learning actions and studies.
The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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