University of Massachusetts Amherst
IN-2: Innovation 2

The Sustainability Curriculum Initiative, launched in the fall of 2012, supports teaching faculty interested in revising existing courses to include or augment sustainability topics. Faculty interested in developing a new sustainability course.

Sustainability plays an increasingly prominent role in the curriculum at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In essence, sustainability courses address interconnections between economy, society, and environment. To foster the connections, the University Libraries, the Provost’s Office, Sustainable UMass, and the Center for Teaching and Faculty Development all collaborate in providing this resource for faculty.

The program is supported currently by the Libraries Sustainability Fund. Tenured faculty, tenure-track faculty, full-time contract faculty, part-time faculty are all eligible to apply for the program, which includes a $1,000 mini-grant to assist in curriculum development and release time. Faculty are asked to participate in monthly SCI Faculty Fellows meetings scheduled throughout the academic year to share ideas and learn about each other's curriculum development, as well as hear about what sustainability programming is available to them and their students on campus.

Priority is given to faculty proposals which address either one or both:
The Climate Action Plan (CAP) for UMass Amherst. This document identifies goals in operations, finance, and engagement, and metrics for measuring progress of sustainability at UMass.

AND/OR:

The reporting of STARS (Sustainability tracking Assessment & Rating System) for the UMass Amherst campus. This transparent, self-reporting framework is used by colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance.

AND/OR:

Integrate proposal writing assignments geared towards developing proposals for the Sustaianability, Innovation, & Engagement Fund.

Faculty are given examples of how a course might integrate the CAP or STARS into sustainability courses, such as:

• Integrate critical analysis of the CAP into assignments, to challenge students and identify key areas not yet addressed.

• Assign a research project that addresses a specific STARS credit for UMass advancement.

Once faculty begin the program, Campus Sustainability Manager, Ezra Small is available to assist with the design of projects, papers and assignments based on the CAP or STARS, and provide guest lectures to their courses.

In addition to the sustainability focus of the program, the faculty are also encouraged to integrate one or more licensed library databases into a course assignment(s). Liaison Librarians are assigned to every faculty participant who are available to assist with the design of assignments to incorporate specialized library databases and other resources and provide guest lectures. There is a heavy emphasis on understanding of Information Literacy standards (to promote effective searching, evaluation, citing of sources).

In the first year of the program, 11 faculty from over 9 disciplines completed the program and successfully integrated sustainability into their courses. Currently, during this academic year of 2014-2015 there are 10 faculty fellows from over 9 disciplines in the program.

During the first year of the program, large faculty and staff curriculum forums were convened to discuss the development of campus-wide Sustainability Literacy Outcomes which were developed and submitted in a white paper to the UMass Amherst Provost.