University of Massachusetts Amherst
IN-2: Innovation 2

To support sustainability teaching and learning, the UMA Library awarded 11 Sustainability Curriculum Initiative mini grants of $1,000 per course to faculty through its Library Sustainability Fund. Faculty recipients collaborated with Liaison Librarians to create sustainability focused assignments, to develop online guides, and to integrate licensed library databases into their curriculum. Grant recipients and librarians met regularly to discuss student learning outcomes specific to sustainability topics. To support the growing demand for sustainability knowledge and skills the UMA library purchased new resources, including journal article databases such as GreenR, a global reference on the environment, energy, and natural resources, and Sustainability Watch, a curated set of articles on best practices in the areas of pollution, corporate citizenship, and sustainable business practices. The grants encourage faculty to better understand these library resources and then expose students to the reliable sustainability related information they provide. The grants currently span a breadth of the university’s offerings, including the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University Without Walls, Isenberg School of Management and College of Natural Sciences. The grants were designed to forge ongoing partnerships between the Academic Liaison Program, faculty across disciplines, and the Sustainable UMass student, faculty and staff leaders throughout the campus. Madeleine Charney, the Sustainability Studies Librarian at UMA, developed the program along with Ezra Small, the Campus Sustainability Manager, Craig Nicolson, the Sustainability Science Program Director, and Mei-Yau Shih, of the Center for Teaching and Faculty Development. Funding for the mini grants and sustainability-related library resources came directly from the Libraries’ Sustainability Fund which won the 2013 Gale Cengage Learning Financial Development Award. At the funds inception an outreach campaign was conducted and thousands of UMass Amherst alumni made gifts of nearly $180,000 in support of the sustainable resources and subsequent educational mini grants which have helped to foster green learning initiatives across the entire UMass Amherst campus.

http://guides.library.umass.edu/sustainabilitycurriculuminitiative