Florida Gulf Coast University
AC-9: Academic Research

To inventory the amount of faculty members and departments engaged with or conducting sustainability research, we used a non-probability, purposive sampling method. We sampled research from the following places:
1) Research funded by The Center for Sustainability & Education (CESE) during the 2013-14 fiscal year.
2) Research funded by The Office of Research & Sponsored Programs during the 2013-14 fiscal year.*
3) Research funded by The Whitaker Center for STEM Education [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics] during the 2013-14 fiscal year.
4) Research presented at the Fall Undergraduate Research Symposium on December 6th, 2013.
5) Research presented at Campus Research Day on Friday, April 18, 2014**

Before sampling the research, a group of faculty members and the Sustainability Coordinator crafted a definition of sustainability as it pertains to academic research at FGCU. The following definition was agreed upon and is in line with the Earth Charter's definition: "Research that address distributing social, economic, and environmental resources in ways that make them equitably available for humans, other organisms, and future generations." This definition along with the Earth Charter's Values and Principles for a Sustainable future guided the faculty and staff members responsible for identifying sustainability research for this inventory.

The Center for Sustainability & Education and The Office of Research & Sponsored Programs identified sustainability related research funded through their offices. The Whitaker Center for STEM Education [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics] identified sustainability research funded by their Mini-Grants and Travel Grants. The Office of Environmental Health & Safety pulled appropriate research from the list of research presented at the Fall Undergraduate Research Symposium and Campus Research Day. Duplicates were eliminated to avoid double counting when calculating the amount of faculty members engaged with or conducting sustainability research out of the total amount of faculty engaging with or conducting any type of research. (i.e. Faculty members engaged with or conducting multiple research projects were only counted once).
The research inventoried from the five aforementioned sources enabled us to report on the total number of faculty engaged in sustainability research and the total number of departments with a faculty member conducting sustainability research. We reported on the on the number of departments with one or more faculty/staff member conducting sustainability research by looking at funded research (sampled in sources one through three listed above). We reported on the amount of faculty/staff engaged with sustainability by looking at all five places inventoried.

Out of FGCU’s 488 faculty, 132 received funding through CESE, The Office of Research & Sponsored Programs, The Whitaker Center or advised students participating in Fall Undergraduate Research Symposium or Research Day. 70 out of the 132 were engaged with sustainability related research projects.

We defined the 28 total academic divisions (listed in the notes) in IC-3 and AC-1 of this STARS report. The Counseling, Accounting, and Resort & Hospitality Management departments did apply for research funding or have faculty members participate in the Research Day or Symposium that we used to sample research for this credit. Therefore, we are reporting that 25 of the academic departments are conducting research for the purposes of this credit. Of those 25 departments, 22 had at least faculty member that received funds through CESE, The Office of Research & Sponsored Programs, or The Whitaker Center to conduct sustainability research. Please see the attached inventory for further details.

*The four staff members that applied for programming grants through the Office of Research & Sponsored Programs were removed from this sample. All remaining people inventoried were faculty.

**Only the Faculty Member that gave the student a grade for the project and submitted the Research Day proposal on students’ behalf is listed on our inventory. In many instances, additional faculty advisors were involved with the research inventoried on the “Research Day” sheet of the attached Excel inventory. Unfortunately, there was no record of these additional faculty members available for this inventory.

In instances where staff or faculty members were engaged with sustainability research on behalf of an office, center, or non-academic department, they were categorized within the most applicable academic department. (i.e. the academic department in which that faculty or staff member could teach a course relating to their research). The center, office, or non-academic department is noted in parenthesis on the inventory in the “Department Affiliation” column for reference.