University of Northern Iowa
ER-14: Incentives for Developing Sustainability Courses

UNI FACULTY LEADERSHIP IN SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION The Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost has supported the UNI Faculty Leadership in Sustainability Education Program comprised of a core group of 26 UNI tenured or tenure-track faculty. Because disciplines taught in UNI’s four Colleges are all relevant to a holistic understanding of sustainability, all faculty are invited to apply. The program will be guided by the highly successful Ponderosa/Piedmont model created by Geoffrey Chase of San Diego State University and Peggy Barlett of Emory University. This model, endorsed by Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, has helped more than 250 faculties across the U.S. to take steps toward curriculum innovation in their universities and colleges. Additionally faculty have been encouraged to team teach classes at UNI, fostering creation of pilot multidisciplinary and collaborative courses. One of these courses focused involves an environmental science/physics professor and a professor from communications. Their team taught course focuses on environmental issues and the media.

Each participant in the program will receive a $2500 stipend. Selected faculty must attend a two-day workshop, conduct independent work over the summer to create a sustainability module for a course they are teaching, reconvene for a field trip , and attend a dinner to report on their experiences with revising their courses. Administration is supportive of instructors attending and giving workshops on teaching sustainability classes. Time off for this is allowed and participation is encouraged. Faculty members are also encouraged to write proposals for new courses in sustainability. Funding for this is provided by grants and the administration. For team teaching of courses, each instructor in the team taught course gets credit as if they were teaching it alone.