California State University, Monterey Bay
AC-10: Support for Sustainability Research

Nicolas Dahan, a professor in the School of Business, states, "The MBA's capstone course, BUS 698, is a "Responsible Business Capstone" where each student develops a business plan for a venture with high social impact. 100% of the students focus on developing a social venture that would address at least one of the 17 UN SDGs. About half of the students choose to focus on environmental sustainability. This is a 3-unit/5-week course and this is the only work for the entire capstone. It is an in-depth individual assignment with 1:1 feedback from the instructor every week."

Josh Gross is a computer science tenure track assistant professor. He states, " My energy research project falls under sustainability, and I have multiple students working on it. Draculog is a software and hardware system that allows students to see the results of their algorithm implementations in terms of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere. The system measures changes in energy use and reports results of running student code on a website. This work also involves evaluating student response to the system and information to determine if this increases their interest in efficiency."

CSUMB's Sustainable City Year Program is a part of the international 'Educational Partnerships for Innovation in Communities - Network' (EPIC-N). It supports faculty from diverse programs across campus to work with local municipalities on sustainability-related research projects [with their classes]. Incentives (obtained via the contract with the city or municipal partner) are provided for participating faculty who receive $1000 for each class in which they engage in a project for their class in collaboration with the municipal partner. Following each semester, funding is also provided by the contract with the municipality to provide funding to support student efforts to produce needed reports and other deliverables to the municipality. Additionally, in 2021, a 5-year contract for about $390 K was generated to support partnerships between campus faculty and their classes (up to about 8 classes per year) to engage with the Transportation Agency for Monterey County (TAMC) and their goals related to enhanced Safe Routes to School programming. Furthermore, in May, an additional $10 K was awarded from Second Nature to further document this and future efforts of the Sustainable City Year Program through an enhanced web and social media presence.

The library budget includes funding for the purchase of library materials that support the CSUMB curricula and academic programs. As sustainability is an interdisciplinary subject that is taught across a number of programs, it is covered in several areas of the library's general collection. Research databases covering sustainability are funded at both the campus and CSU system levels.

The library has developed a Sustainability Library Guide that directs students to a wide variety of library-owned and freely available sustainability-focused resources.

Electronically-archived capstone projects and theses can be categorized by topics that are of significance to campus values (sustainability, social justice and regional impact).