University of Maryland, College Park
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

University of Maryland’s Do Good Faculty Fellows program supports faculty members as scholars, teachers, advisors, and educational leaders. The Fellows explore social innovation broadly and deeply, identifying opportunities to design and implement more effective and just solutions to systemic social and environmental issues with the aim of improving the welfare and wellbeing of civil society. They consider how students can engage in social innovation in its various forms (e.g., service-learning, civic engagement, philanthropy) and how they can engage students in their courses to address social and sustainability-related problems. They consider various forms of social change and how they relate to their disciplines and courses.

The Fellows program helps faculty integrate sustainability and social innovation content into existing courses or new courses. For example, social innovation, civic engagement, and sustainability have been integrated into existing GEMS 104, COMM 301, and COMM 107 courses, and new courses focusing on topics like Maternal, Child, and Family Health; the Relationship between Media, Democracy, and Underserved Communities; and Policing, Education, Wealth, and Healthcare in Prince George’s County.

A 2020 Fellows participant is creating an experiential learning program in collaboration with existing programs on campus focused exclusively on resiliency: how local governments are addressing the impacts of climate change. The class would examine the work being done by local communities across the country in relation to mitigation and adaptation strategies and develop a toolbox for best practices. Students would develop solutions to these challenges and learn how to advocate for necessary changes in land use regulations.

Each Faculty Fellow receives a stipend of $2,500.

The Sustainability Teaching Fellows program is an initiative to integrate sustainability across the curriculum of the University of Maryland. Central to the project is a two-day workshop where participants learn about core concepts of environmental, economic, and social sustainability and explore unique ways of integrating sustainability into their existing courses across all academic disciplines. In 2021, the Office of Sustainability hired a UMD professor to lead a two-year project called the Sustainability Curriculum Project to refresh the Sustainability Teaching Fellows program and find new opportunities for integrating sustainability across the curriculum.

Each faculty member receives a $500 stipend for attending the workshop and submitting a written description of how they will integrate sustainability into at least one course they teach during the following academic year. (https://www.sustainability.umd.edu/sustainability-teaching-fellows)