University of California, Santa Barbara
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

"Turning over a New Leaf: Greening Your Course": Mini-Grant Program for Faculty Infusing Sustainability Into Curriculum

The goal of the New Leaf Grant Program is to catalyze the infusion of sustainability in courses across disciplines at UCSB. Those applying may consider integrating sustainability by asking students to:
• Identify one or more serious environmental problems and examine its underlying causes and possible consequences.
• Explore the conceptual foundations of our environmental attitudes, values, and challenges from a variety of cultural perspectives.
• Examine humanity’s role as the planet’s ecologically dominant species and how that affects the continuing viability of habitats for life on Earth.
• Demonstrate the interconnectedness of environmental, economic, and social systems.
• Investigate how our relationship to the natural world has been shaped historically, politically, and/or economically.
• Examine the controversies surrounding questions of values and ethics as they relate to creating a sustainable future.
• Utilize tools to communicate effectively about sustainability issues

Successful proposals seeking to infuse sustainability into undergraduate courses will encompass one or more of the following:
•Service learning experiences that make use of the university or local community as a “living laboratory”: There are ample demonstration sites (solar panels, bioswales-biological filtration for stormwater, organic gardens, and farms, etc) which could be used as teaching tools in academic courses. With each of these locations, there are opportunities to use campus staff and community members as guest lecturers or mentors for student projects.
•Opportunities for the broader campus or community to learn from student research/projects: Class assignments/projects that are structured such that they can be shared with a larger audience, by students, or instructors (or both).
•Community building: Provides an opportunity for community outreach or community building around environmental issues.
•Demonstrated Learning Outcomes: Student learning of sustainability is measured/demonstrated.
•Interdisciplinary: Collaborative projects which involve faculty and/or students from different disciplines to explore cross-cutting themes, such as environmental justice, human food systems, and scarcity of natural resources (water, air, soil, etc.).

Faculty can also apply for a grant to develop sustainability “modules” that can be used by a wide range of instructors within their department or campus-wide. These modules should be in a format that is easy for instructors to use (such as video, with chapters, study questions, and project ideas) and should relate to “core topics/questions” related to sustainability).

There is an interactive workshop hosted by Instructional Development for those interested in infusing sustainability into their courses.

Examples of positive outcomes:
- (2012-13): To incorporate sustainability awareness into Religious Studies 185, "Food, Religion, & Culture in the Middle East." Revisions include developing the following topics: the Neolithic Revolution and its impact on the environment; environmental impacts of irrigation systems; sustainability and Bedouin culinary culture; the Medieval Arab "Green Revolution" and its environmental impacts; agricultural sustainability; politics of food sovereignty; ecological factors and their impacts on the Arab uprisings of 2012-13.
- (2012-13): To incorporate sustainability awareness into Sociology 134EC, "Earth in Crisis." Revisions include making a digitalized film of approximately 45 minutes that documents in a compelling fashion the climate crisis faced by human society, and focuses on a global social movement composed importantly of youth from around the world, devoted to working on the issue in a variety of ways, including movement organizing, dissemination of information, and direct pressure on the national delegations seeking to negotiate a climate treaty by the time of the 2015 meetings of the U.N. COP 21 (Conference of the Parties) in Paris.

For more information about the New Leaf Grant Program in particular, please visit: http://grants.id.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/NewLeafGrant_CallforProposals_0.pdf

Funding awards for successful proposals for infusing sustainability into the curriculum or creating sustainable course modules range from $500 to $1000.

In addition to the New Leaf Grant Program, which is focused on sustainability, Instructional Development offers two additional grant programs which can be used for infusing sustainability into courses; however, neither of them are specifically promoted with this purpose. Both grants do specifically highlight support for electronic learning tools, such as course websites and GauchoSpace which reduce paper usage substantially. More information on these grants can be found here:

Instructional Improvement Grants http://grants.id.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/2011-2012_Call.pdf

Faculty Mini-grants: http://grants.id.ucsb.edu/faculty-mini-grants