University of Denver
AC-10: Support for Sustainability Research

The DU Grand Challenges Urban Sustainability Cohort is one of DUGC’s four collective impact cohorts in which faculty, staff and students partner with community leaders from the public, private, and civic sectors to improve daily life, now and in the future. Each cohort aims to increase the number of faculty, staff, and students engaged in community-based scholarship, increase the number of community partners actively engaged with DU, and increase the strength of existing community-university partnerships.

The Urban Sustainability Cohort builds on DU’s long history of building community partnerships to advance the public good with a focus on five key prototype initiatives, each intended to contribute to one unifying result:
The University of Denver offers a variety of service learning courses in a diversity of academic departments in partnership with the Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning (CCESL).
This program has provided funding for students, faculty, staff and community partners, providing interdisciplinary, community based research opportunities. This has led to key partnerships with Denver Public Schools looking at sustainability education in k-12 education, as well as operational and research support of the Metro Denver Nature Alliance, a consortium of nonprofits and government agencies using a collective impact approach to address regional greenspace planning with a focus on equity and access.

Partners in Scholarship (PinS) provides a unique opportunity for students to collaborate on a project with a faculty member. Students should work with the faculty partner to develop a detailed project plan. While most partnerships involve one-to-one work with a faculty member, students can work with multiple faculty members or with other students. AND The Interdisciplinary Research Incubator for the Study of (In)Equality Conference Presentation Grant seeks to promote DU's graduate students doing research on issues of inequality, social justice, and inclusivity. All DU graduate students including MA/MS and Ph.D./Ed.D. students are eligible for grant funding for qualified conferences.

The DU Grand Challenges Urban Sustainability Cohort is one of DUGC’s four collective impact cohorts in which faculty, staff and students partner with community leaders from the public, private, and civic sectors to improve daily life, now and in the future. Each cohort aims to increase the number of faculty, staff, and students engaged in community-based scholarship, increase the number of community partners actively engaged with DU, and increase the strength of existing community-university partnerships.

The Urban Sustainability Cohort builds on DU’s long history of building community partnerships to advance the public good with a focus on five key prototype initiatives, each intended to contribute to one unifying result:
The University of Denver offers a variety of service learning courses in a diversity of academic departments in partnership with the Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning (CCESL).
This program has provided funding for students, faculty, staff and community partners, providing interdisciplinary, community based research opportunities. This has led to key partnerships with Denver Public Schools looking at sustainability education in k-12 education, as well as operational and research support of the Metro Denver Nature Alliance, a consortium of nonprofits and government agencies using a collective impact approach to address regional greenspace planning with a focus on equity and access.

The Interdisciplinary Research Incubator for the Study of (In)Equality (IRISE) provides the support and structures that empower students to turn their big ideas regarding a research project on inequality into reality. Each scholar will follow a project structure that includes: research; development of a project plan in conjunction with faculty mentor, IRISE colleagues, and other DU students; and implementation, documentation and evaluation of their public project. IRISE inequity Scholars will receive a $2,000 annual fellowship for their work between February 1 and June 30 of each academic year. In addition, each scholar is eligible to receive a $1000 annual project stipend to implement community work. Faculty mentors will receive funding in recognition of their intensive mentoring role.
http://www.du.edu/irise/research-grants/undergrad-student.html

The University of Denver is committed to academic excellence as determined principally by teaching, scholarly research and/or creative activity, institutional self-governance, and service.

Both promotion to a higher academic rank and reappointment are primary ways for recognizing such excellence in performance. Decisions about the promotion of a faculty member must be based upon high departmental standards to ensure that the candidate possesses qualifications which meet current departmental and University expectations.

Scholarly output and creative activity is defined as: including publications, creative work,
consultation, presentations in public media, public performance, exhibitions, and interdisciplinary and community-engaged research, and other activities promoting the public good.

The University Libraries supports sustainability research across a wide range of disciplines at DU through our more than 900 databases, robust book collections and online journal subscriptions in the areas of sustainability and related subjects, new faculty collection development seed grants, and University Library Association grants to support research and curricular needs, such as the 2020 ULA grant, People, Planet and Social Justice. The library also features sustainability-related book displays each year, environmental justice and sustainability research guides, and sponsors sustainability literacy efforts and advocacy through an Intersectional Environmentalist and So Long Single Use Plastics pledges, quarterly zero waste finals, and sustainability-related programming.