Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 68.35
Liaison Andrew Porter
Submission Date March 3, 2023

STARS v2.2

University of Cincinnati
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 2.00 / 2.00 Andrew Porter
Director
Planning + Design + Constuction
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

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

A brief description of the incentive program(s):

Sustainability is embedded in the 5th of 9 principle of our institutional Strategic Plan, and one specific goal is to "Integrate sustainability into educational programs, research, reporting, and community outreach." The Deans of the various colleges are tasked with achieving this goal, and have implemented numerous and varied programs to support faculty in their colleges to integrate sustainability into existing courses and/or create new ones.

As one tool for doing so, UC launched a new Sustainability Course Incentive program in spring 2020. Through this program, faculty from across the university are invited to apply for small grants to support their professional development in content or technology that will aid them in adding or improving sustainability elements to existing courses, and/or creating new sustainability courses.
A trans-disciplinary set of faculty have been supported in creating and/or augmenting courses through this program, including the following:
- "Interpretation in Non-Formal Educational Settings" in the College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services;
- "Coffee in Latin America: History, Culture, Environment," "Soils," and "Personal Health and Minorities" in the College of Arts and Sciences;
- "Anesthesia Machine and Equipment;" "Climate Change, sustainability and Public Health" in the College of Medicine;
- "Operations Strategy" in the Lindner College of Business;
- and "Globalization, Innovation and Sustainability" in UC Clermont's Business, Law and Technology program.

The original program was slated to be piloted for three years; in 2022 another round of funding for the program was approved to continue. Courses awarded for creation, or augmentation with sustainability content, in AY22-23 include:
- "Achieving Net-Zero Emissions via Hydoogen Power Aircraft," "Interdisciplinary Innovation for Engineers," "Introduction to Smart Contract Programming," "Cloud Computing," "Interconnection Networks," Advanced Smart Contract Programming, " Distributed Blockchain Technology and Smart Contracts," and "Distributed Operating Systems" in the College of Engineering and Applied Science
- "Francophone World Cultures" and "Everyday Sustainability" at UC Blue Ash
- "Systems Thinking" in the College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services
- "Resource Conservation" in the College of Arts and Sciences
- "Nature-Based Therapies and EcoPsychology" offered by College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Medicine
- "Aesthetics" in the Conservatory of Music
- "Quantitative Reasoning" and "Ecology and Evolution" at UC Clermont

The program is in high demand and has offered meaningful resources and support for faculty across all colleges and disciplines at UC to offer critical sustainability content and perspective in their curricula.


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

Support, professional development, collaboration, recognition.
Also, cash awards between $500-$1000 to offset technology or professional development costs.


Website URL where information about the incentives for developing sustainability course content is available:
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Additional documentation to support the submission:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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