University of Utah
AC-10: Support for Research

Global Change and Sustainability Center (GCSC) hosts three programs that promote interdisciplinary sustainability related research: 1) GCSC Student Research Grant program Applications for research funding are solicited biannually and a rotating interdisciplinary faculty committee reviews and selects awardees. Projects are required to be interdisciplinary and relate to sustainability and/or global change. 2) GCSC Travel Grant program Funds to help support student travel to professional meetings to present their sustainability research. Since 2013, the GCSC has awarded $201,650 in sustainability student research funding to 205 students from 16 different departments. Awardees are required to present their work at an annual Environment and Sustainability Research Symposium held at the University of Utah. 3) GCSC Graduate Fellowship program. Aimed at recurring outstanding and diverse graduate students to the University of Utah whose research focuses on sustainability themes. From 2011-2017, the GCSC funded 52 graduate fellows. URL: Student Research and Travel Funding: http://environment.utah.edu/programs-projects/student-funding/ Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources & the Environment (S.J. Quinney College of Law) Offers an array of awards and fellowships to students in Environmental and Natural Resources Law. URL: http://www.law.utah.edu/research/stegner/stegner-awards-and-fellowships/ iUtah ( 2011-2017) iUTAH is an interdisciplinary research and training program aimed at strengthening science for Utah’s water future.iUTAH brings together a network of researchers, universities, governmental agencies, industry partners, and non-profit organizations state-wide. This five-year project is funded by the National Science Foundation through July 2017. URL: http://iutahepscor.org/ U.S.-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water at the University of Utah (USPCASW, UU) A world class education and applied research center dedicated to resolving Pakistan’s water crises through applied research, developing specialist human resource and technologies; academia-industry collaboration; and policy formulation. URL: http://water.utah.edu/ Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) provides undergraduate students and faculty members the opportunity to work together on research or creative projects. UROP provides assistantships up to $1,200 for students who assist with a faculty member’s research or creative project, or who carryout a project of their own under the supervision of a faculty member. A sustainability UROP supplemental grant program began in 2016. URL: http://envst.utah.edu/research/

Global Change and Sustainability Center (GCSC) Programs The GCSC provides a cross-college community for faculty and students pursuing interdisciplinary research and training related to the environment and sustainability from local to global scales. The GCSC provides a hub to help promote, facilitate, and accelerate interdisciplinary research and training on issues related to the environment and sustainability. The GCSC does this through various inclusive programs designed to help to promote faculty success, enhance student engagement, provide student scholarships and fellowships, build relationships across traditionally “siloed” campus communities, and promote utilization of the campus as a living laboratory. The GCSC provides incentives to facilitate, promote, and accelerate interdisciplinary faculty research. These includes include funding for students (as described above), as well as faculty support for grant preparation. The GCSC hosts informal and formal meetings and events to gather interdisciplinary faculty and to facilitate research endeavors around sustainability themes (e.g., air quality, built environment and communities, climate change, ecological and environmental change, energy, food systems, justice equity and diversity, nature and culture, and water). Additionally, the GCSC provides seed funds to faculty to help launch new interdisciplinary research initiatives, and works with the campus and community to facilitate new sustainability research. Examples of positive outcomes include multiple very large (>$10M) interdisciplinary grants focused on sustainability themes including local water sustainability and global water security. Several other large interdisciplinary grants (>$1M) have been awarded around the themes of sustainable land use, energy, air quality and health, global ecological change, environmental education, and more. Society Water & Climate Faculty Cluster (2015- ) The University of Utah has created a new, interdisciplinary faculty cluster focusing on areas of Society, Water, and Climate (SWC). This transformative cluster connects research on hydrology, air quality, climate change, societal response, and policy, seeking to meld multiple scientific perspectives to lead society towards sustainable water solutions in a changing world. URL: http://www.utah.edu/faculty/swc/ Sustaining Biodiversity Faculty Cluster (2016- ) The University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah announce the establishment of a new faculty cluster focused on Sustaining Biodiversity, where biodiversity research is combined with learning research for a novel interdisciplinary emphasis that strongly supports the University’s commitment to sustainability. This new research emphasis will combine science, practical applications and learning science in the areas of genomics, conservation biology, paleoecology, digital visualization, and informal learning. It will complement and build on current, related research at the Natural History Museum of Utah, in the departments of Anthropology, Biology, Educational Psychology, Geography, Geology & Geophysics, and at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute. URL: https://nhmu.utah.edu/sustaining-biodiversity Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources & the Environment, Research Fellows Program (S. J. Quinney College of Law) The Stegner Center’s Research Program was established to provide objective legal and policy analysis relating to Western public lands and the natural resources they contain. Our legal and policy analysis combines with option-centered advice to inform a wide range of public land management decisions. URL: http://www.law.utah.edu/research/stegner/ Wallace Stegner Prize in Environmental Humanities (University of Utah Press) $5,000 Biennial Book Publication Prize, awarded to the best monograph submitted to the Press in the broad field of environmental humanities. To compete for this award, manuscripts must emphasize interdisciplinary investigations of the natural and human environments and their fundamental interconnectedness, research in primary and secondary sources, and high quality writing in the tradition of Wallace Stegner. Preference will be given to projects that discuss issues related to the American West. URL: http://uofupress.com/wallace-stegner-prize.php Alta Sustainability Leadership Awards (annual, 2015- present) In partnership between Alta Ski Area and the University of Utah, awards are presented for excellence in fostering leadership and commitment to the health of our community and our planet through an understanding of, and actions to enhance, the stability, resilience, and diversity of our intertwined natural, social, economic, and cultural systems at the U of U. The four award categories are: Campus as a Living Laboratory, Sustainability Community Partnership, Sustainability Integration, Sustainability Research.

The University of Utah has made significant progress in their support for interdisciplinary sustainability research over the last three years. The Global Change and Sustainability Center was established in 2009 as a faculty led initiative to help gather the community of scholars working on environmental topics. The initial model for the GCSC including funding from returned overhead on relevant funded grants. The GCSC grew and was successful for those faculty who were involved. However, the GCSC was limited by funding uncertainty and a bias towards disciplinary involvement of faculty from fields with a history and culture of external federal funding. The University recognized the need for a more inclusive structure and stable funding, and thus worked over the last three years to update the funding model, reporting structure, and inclusivity of the GCSC. The GCSC is now the campus-wide research arm of the Sustainability Office, which reports to the Chief Sustainability Officer and is housed in Academic Affairs. It is inclusive institutional hub for promoting interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability related research, and is equally open to faculty from all disciplines (regardless of external funding success). Funding for GCSC programs is now requested as a part of the overall campus budgeting process, and GCSC leaders work closely as a part of the Sustainability Office team to coordinate efforts in research, education, and campus operations. These changes have been significant in broadening the reach and faculty and student engagement with the GCSC. These changes have also been important for garnering enthusiastic support from deans and department heads that rely on returned overhead. Since 2013, the number of faculty affiliating with the center has grown by ~40% (from 69 affiliates at the end of 2012, to 114 in 2016). The primary positive outcome is a thriving interdisciplinary community of faculty scholars who are actively engaged in sustainability research. There have been several large interdisciplinary grants awarded and new research collaborations and initiatives are constantly being established.

Librarians at the J. Willard Marriott Library are assigned as liaisons to campus sustainability programs including Environmental Humanities and Environmental & Sustainability Studies. In the 2016-17 academic year, a librarian is embedded in the Sustainability Office in order to assist with sustainability research. Subject librarians are listed here: URL: http://lib.utah.edu/collections/subject-specialists.php In 2012 a Sustainability Working Group evaluated Marriott Library collections regarding sustainability content and published a "Marriott Library Sustainability Collection Development Report," (2012) The report led to retrospective collection development in specific sustainability areas including Environmental Humanities, a core collection for sustainability, water issues and food justice. The only specific sustainability research database the library subscribes to is GreenFILE (EbscoHost). Most sustainability journals are bundled into electronic subscriptions, and some important sustainability journals are not included in these subscription databases. in 2016 the Marriott Library created a "Sustainability U" sub-collection within the USpace institutional Repository. This project is in response to the " Call to Action" (2015) issued by American Library Association Sustainability Round Table (SustainRT), the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development, and the Disciplinary Associations Network for Sustainability (DANS) in order to facilitate the discovery, dissemination and preservation of student sustainability projects and research.

SOURCES Global Change & Sustainability Center URL: http://environment.utah.edu/ Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources & the Environment URL: http://www.law.utah.edu/research/stegner/ Sustainability U (USpace Sub-collection) URL: http://www.lib.utah.edu/digital-scholarship/sustainability-U.php REFERENCES Green Task Force. Recommendations for Greening the J. Willard Marriott Library (2008) URL:https://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/sustain/id/2 Brunvand, Amy; Breiman, Jessica; Bullough, Emily; Lenart, Joshua; Regan, Alison. University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library: Sustainability Collection Development Policy Report. 2012. Released, 10/31/2012. URL: https://content.lib.utah.edu/utils/getfile/collection/sustain/id/0/filename/3.pdf Brunvand, Amy; Breiman, Jessica; Bulluough, Emily; Lenart, Joshua B.; & Regan, Alision. (2014) Building an Academic Library Collection to Support Sustainability. Focus on Educating for Sustainability: a Toolkit for Academic Librarians. Maria A. Jankowska, ed.: Library Juice Press,. Published, 02/2014. SustainRT, DANS, U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development. Call to Action (2015) URL: http://dans.aashe.org/#librarians