University of Minnesota, Duluth
AC-10: Support for Sustainability Research

The Institute on the Environment Mini Grant is open to students on any UMN campus. Projects led by students do need a faculty/staff advisor designated through a letter of support and willingness to help manage the funds, but student applications are led by the students https://environment.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/IonE-Mini-Grant-Application-Guide-1.pdf

In Fall 2023, a Biology undergraduate student, Gavin Buerskin, applied and was awarded a mini-grant in support of his second community tree planting project where he worked with local elementary schools to educate participants about the ecosystem services of trees, teach about the impacts of climate change on our region's existing trees, and organize a volunteer event to plant tree seedlings in their school forests. Gavin grew some of the seedlings as well as used the grant funds to purchase local seedlings that are projected to do well in our region under predicted future climate conditions. This project culminated in a May 2024 planting with over 1,000 seedlings planted between two school forests and over 40 volunteers assisted with the project. 

The Institute on the Environment provides a number of incentives to encourage research (including research by staff) on sustainability topics. Examples include: 1) Impact Goal Grants ($50k-$200k). With this program, the Institute on the Environment aims to launch multi-disciplinary, community-engaged partnerships to research sustainability-related topics aligned with IonE's impact goals. 2) Mini Grants ($3k). These grants are intended to help spur new collaborative efforts by providing small amounts of funding and space (for meetings, small conferences, new courses, reading groups, etc.) to interdisciplinary groups of faculty, staff, and students from across the University system. The grants are meant to encourage scholarly collaboration across disciplines, units or campuses at the University of Minnesota.

The UMN Board of Regents Policy: Faculty Tenure provides general criteria for awarding indefinite tenure to candidates, which includes, "Interdisciplinary work, public engagement, international activities and initiatives, attention to questions of diversity, technology transfer, and other special kinds of professional activity by the candidate should be considered when applicable."   https://regents.umn.edu/sites/regents.umn.edu/files/2024-09/policy_faculty_tenure.pdf

Each department must document how this criteria is met in a 7.12 document, of which, each department has their own document, which can be accessed at this link: UMN Duluth Approved 7-12 Documents

The University of Minnesota Duluth Kathryn A. Martin Library provides a variety of ongoing sustainability research support for UMD faculty, staff, students, and community users. UMD liaison librarians provide research assistance regarding sustainability research within their subject expertise roles, including support for the Swenson College of Science and Engineering, Institute on the Environment at UMD, Environment, Sustainability & Geography B.A. program, and others. The library regularly purchases sustainability materials (e.g., books, streaming video, journals, and more) via discretionary purchase by expert librarians, including those with assigned subject areas that include sustainability. The library supports information literacy for sustainability through online and in-person instruction and subject guides that are mapped to departments/subject disciplines, and course-specific library course pages. As part of the University of Minnesota system, the UMD campus community has access to University Libraries’ support for open access publishing through faculty and student projects on PressBooks, negotiating open access of journal articles, and depositing materials in our institutional repository, University Digital Conservatory, and DRUM, our data repository.