Overall Rating Bronze - expired
Overall Score 30.25
Liaison Doug Oetter
Submission Date June 30, 2017
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.0

Georgia College & State University
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 2.00 / 2.00 Doug Oetter
Professor
History and Geography
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution have an ongoing incentives program or programs that meet the criteria for this credit?:
Yes

A brief description of the program(s), including positive outcomes during the previous three years:

The new Certificate in Sustainability includes an interdisciplinary course in sustainability at the sophomore level. The class is targeted to students who have declared an interest in environmental responsibility and will pursue the certificate. The main outcome of this course is to produce students who understand energy and material flows, appreciate biodiversity and carbon footprints, promote conservation and recycling, debate current issues on sustainability, and share their knowledge with other students to create a peer-reinforced culture of sustainability. The class includes numerous guest lecturers from all four of our colleges. These presenters have been incentivized to participate in the class, and to develop additional new courses and course modules in support of the certificate.

We hope this pilot program develops into a sustainability fellows program with additional incentives for faculty participation.

Our teaching circle began with several discussions about the concepts of sustainability and the most effective ways to address sustainability within an educational institution. We updated the excellent work done by the 2009-10 Sustainability Teaching Circle to catalog existing courses on Georgia College campus. We created an inventory of over 50 professors who teach and research on topics related to sustainability. Our examination included conversations about engaged learning, including concepts such as the National Wildlife Federation's Student Sustainability Educators program. To help move our work forward, we produced three posters for display at various campus functions.


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

Collaboration, access to students in the certificate program, free books.


The website URL where information about the incentive program(s) is available:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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