University of Wisconsin-River Falls
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

The UW-River Falls Sustainability Faculty Fellows Committee meets regularly to advance sustainability principles in the classroom. In the previous three years, a total of thirty-six Sustainability Faculty Fellows have participated in the annual sustainability across the curriculum project, known as "The Kinnickinnic Project". The Kinnickinnic Project is unique, in that it cultivates and supports a cross campus initiative and model, which encourages faculty members to modify or redesign existing curriculum so that students are prepared to understand and meet 21st century sustainability issues within all aspects of their lives. All tenure-line faculty are invited to apply and a limited number of spaces are reserved for academic staff as well. As a result, our university curriculum has been transformed to include courses that integrate sustainability, courses that have been substantially altered to include critical course objectives addressing sustainability, and new courses developed to place sustainability issues at the forefront of the discipline. Since the inception of the 1st Annual Kinnickinnic Project, over forty faculty members across four colleges have either integrated sustainability or have substantively re-designed courses and in some cases have created new courses toward this aim.

Faculty who participate receive support in an ongoing series of workshops designed to help sculpt curriculum around sustainability principles. Faculty receive recognition for their work with a poster (developed and submitted by the participants themselves) at the Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity Day. Participants of the Kinnickinnic Project are given financial incentives based on three levels of commitment: 1. Create a new course, in a two-phase process. Phase 1: $750. Phase 2: $2500.00 2. Substantially revise an existing course, in a two-phase process. Phase 1: $750. Phase 2: $1000. 3. Integrate a course module into an existing course, $750.