Overall Rating Silver - expired
Overall Score 60.83
Liaison Parker Long
Submission Date March 2, 2018
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.1

Virginia Commonwealth University
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 2.00 / 2.00 Joseph Costa
Sustainability Projects and Program Coordinator
Sustainability
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution have an ongoing program or programs that offer incentives for faculty in multiple disciplines or departments to develop new sustainability courses and/or incorporate sustainability into existing courses?:
Yes

A brief description of the program(s), including positive outcomes during the previous three years (e.g. descriptions of new courses or course content resulting from the program):

Most recently VCU has started a program that incentivizes re-using old textbooks, and moving to cheap or free online platforms in order to decrease the environmental impact of their course, as well as decrease the financial burden on students.

The initiative, sponsored by VCU Libraries, the Office of the Provost, the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence and the ALT Lab, will incentivize faculty members to adopt existing low-cost or free course content by offering monetary awards, thereby lowering the financial burden on VCU students.


A brief description of the incentives that faculty members who participate in the program(s) receive:

Adopt Awards: Redesign your course to incorporate existing low-cost or free educational resources. $500 per person, capped at $3,000 per course (though special considerations will be given to large departments and other special scenarios).
Author Awards: Create a substantially new open textbook or open course content when it is possible to demonstrate that quality resources are not currently available to meet learning objectives. $2,000 per person with a project cap of $6,000 per course.


The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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