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

The Institute on the Environment's ACARA Program

The Acara Challenge is an annual competition for students who have taken an Acara course or have been in the Acara Graduate Changemaker Lab to compete to win up to $8,000 to develop solutions to social and environmental challenges. Competition finalists will receive mentorship on developing proposals and pitches, as well as support in refining their goals and creating a viable launch program.

Acara is a leadership incubator program open to students from any discipline who want to be part of solving real-world challenges, like equitable access to clean water, health care, energy, and healthy food. We support students with a passion, project, or idea as they take it to the next level – whether that be developing an app or student group, starting an advocacy campaign, or developing a social enterprise.

This happens through programming that includes:

-Courses for undergraduate and graduate students
-Non-credit programs, such as the Graduate Changemakers Lab
-Funding to pilot change making ideas
-Free coaching from incredible faculty and community leaders

2021 Winners and Impact
This year’s Fellowship prizes went to the following teams:

EcoCiclo, a graduate student startup in Brazil that produces biodegradable sanitary pads and employs women in vulnerable situations, received the gold award.

Two lucky teams received the silver award. Undergraduate team OUROGAMI is promoting a circular economy by upcycling popular plastics including PET. And Doktah Telemedicine is a graduate student collaboration focused on providing health care services through voice call and SMS in Ghana.

The bronze award was awarded to five teams in the competition – two graduate projects and three undergraduate. The undergraduate teams included HEAL ED, focused on decreasing alcohol consumption among Ugandan entrepreneurs through career development programming, and Open Spaces Healing Initiative who are creating urban green space and environmental justice in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis. The final undergrad team is our first winners from the University of Minnesota Duluth campus: Students for Lake Superior Sustainable Farming are focused on food waste reduction, demonstration, composting education, and closing gaps within the food system at UMD.

Graduate student projects at this level included Co-Creating Through Design, a project focused on creating student-ready postsecondary institutions in order to increase the postsecondary outcomes of underserved learners through equity-centered design thinking and STEMtelling, a storytelling project focused on centering student interests and experiences in scientific exploration and innovation so they can see themselves as scientists.

Finally, we have an additional team receiving a Fellowship. Sense of Self is a project seeking to create a space that will transform the way people of color address chronic stress and systemic racism by providing radical restorative tools to help them thrive.

The Institute on the Environment provides a number of incentives to encourage faculty research on sustainability topics. Examples include:

-Institute on the Environment Resident Fellowships. This program provides flexible funds for scholars to engage in innovative research and problem solving and pursue leadership training. Resident fellowships are open to faculty on all University of Minnesota campuses.

-Discovery Grants. With this program, the Institute on the Environment aims to launch cutting-edge research activities with a one-time investment of venture capital funding. We look for projects that will make a major difference in research and discovery.

-IonE Mini Grants. These 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 collaboration across disciplines, units or campuses at the University of Minnesota.

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. The awarding of indefinite tenure presupposes that the candidate's record shows strong promise of his or her achieving promotion to professor.

https://faculty.umn.edu/faculty-review-recognition/promotion-tenure-review

Sustainability research is supported by a subject librarian and searchable databases. These databases are subscribed to by the University of Minnesota and specifically for sustainability.

*The ACARA program has sunsetted as of 2022 but was active and providing research funding throughout the reporting time period (last 3 years)