University of West Georgia
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

In the spring of 2016 the Director of Sustainability and one other faculty member offered an all-day workshop on incorporating sustainability into the curriculum. Both had previously participated in an Emory Piedmont workshop focused on how to create such an event. The UWG workshop was taken by 10 faculty from across colleges. The aim was to get faculty to find ways of incorporating sustainability themes and topics into their teaching, regardless of discipline. Each participant was asked to come up with a concrete way of doing this in one of their courses at the end of the workshop. The additional documentation below shows the results of this workshop. With time now past, several of the participants have indeed found ways to incorporate sustainability into their teaching. One instructor, for instance, has made her English 1101 composition classes focus on sustainability by taking the class outside on on to the campus to observe and then write about sustainability issues. Another worked on an assignment in their Intro to Communications course in which sustainability was the theme. Each participant came up with a proposal to incorporate sustainability into a particular class. Considering the success, the Director of Sustainability decided it would be wise to offer such workshops every two years. The next one, however, will be a collaboration with Emory University, in which Emory will conduct the Piedmont workshop aimed at changing a specific course to include sustainability. UWG's Center for Sustainability will organize and application process, pay the fees, and administer the stipend.

Participating in the program and developing a proposal afterwards that offered a concrete way to incorporate sustainability into a specific class resulted in a $300 professional development stipend.