Arizona State University
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability launched its solution-oriented program in academic year 2008-2009. The goal of this program is to engage students, faculty and community members (e.g., representatives from businesses, municipalities, and nonprofit organizations) in collaborative research on pressing sustainability issues in order to identify joint problems and explore solution approaches to them. The program incentivizes faculty to develop new sustainability courses or to develop hands-on projects in existing sustainability courses.

Since the creation of the solutions-learning program, the program has grown quickly and has developed both at the undergraduate and graduate level. In total, there have been 82 solutions-learning courses that have involved 46 distinct faculty members and 2,746 students. The program and its relevant outcomes have been describe and published as a peer-reviewed article (Wiek, A., Xiong, A., Brundiers, K. & van der Leeuw, S. (2013). Integrating problem-and project-based learning into sustainability programs—A case study on the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education).

Positive outcomes of these collaborations include for instance, the creation of a pilot program for food waste composting on the ASU Tempe campus (SOS 494/594: Urban Composting Systems – Applied Case Studies for ASU, Spring 2011); or the creation of form-based codes for transit-oriented development for the City of Phoenix (SOS 594: Sustainable Solution Options for Phoenix, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013); or the implementation of a playground design fostering children’s physical movement and cognitive learning for Mountain Park Health Center, providing affordable health care in underserved, low-income communities.

Through the solutions-learning program, faculty have the support of a “Community-University Liaison”. This half-time staff position was created to assist faculty in working with local community organizations relevant to their research and teaching areas (in government, for profit, and nonprofit domains), and in designing and implementing real-world projects in sustainability (e.g., project design, coaching students, co-instruction of classes). To respond to requests for training from faculty, the Community-University Liaison also organizes annual half-day training workshops as well as a lecture series to facilitate faculty exchange about best practices in teaching solutions learning in collaboration with community partners.

Additionally, the School of Sustainability has also funded a half-time research assistantship position to assist faculty with the development of solutions-oriented projects. For example, this position is assisting with a global classroom experience on urban sustainability that brings together students from ASU and Leuphana University in Germany. Using videoconferencing and face-to-face exchanges, students from both countries engage in collaborative learning to develop solutions to sustainability challenges in cities in Germany and the U.S. Given the logistical challenges, the assistantship position has been critical for this program to be successful.

The incentives above are offered to School of Sustainability faculty, but often result in collaborations with faculty in other colleges/schools and courses are cross-listed so that a wide-range of students have access to the courses.

The President of Arizona State University also rewards innovative and socially embedded teaching techniques fostering sustainability competencies with the “President’s Award for Sustainability”. In the past, this award has been given to faculty for their development of sustainability courses that have had a positive impact on not only students in the course, but the community.

Information about the solutions-oriented program is not available online, but a link is provided to the President's Award for Sustainability.