George Mason University
AC-10: Support for Sustainability Research

Sustainability Summer Fellows for Graduate Research Partnerships Program. The Institute for a Sustainable Earth launched this new program in partnership with Mason's Graduate Division in 2022. This fellowship pairs Mason doctoral or masters students with organizations engaged in applied and impactful research on a host of sustainability, resilience, and environmental justice initiatives. (https://ise.gmu.edu/2022-sustainability-summer-fellowships-for-graduate-research-partnerships/)

The Institute for a Sustainable Earth is one of three university-level institutes situated centrally in the Office of the Vice President for Research, Innovation, and Ecoomic Impact. ISE is working to develop and advance an innovation ecosystesm that puts research and scholarship into action to support a just, prosperous, and sustainable world. The Institute provides a number of programs and resources to encourage transdisciplinary sustainability research. For instance, ISE's Network Catalyst Program provides funding and support to help faculty build communitiies of research and practice. The Living Labs Program encourages and supports faculty and students to pose questions, experiment, gather data, monitor changes, and propose novel solutions to a range of sustainability challenges associated with the university's campus environment and socio-environmental systems.
(https://ise.gmu.edu/)

The Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities (C-RASC) is on of five university-level transdisciplinar research centers for advanced study. C-RASC is committed to creating an inclusive environment that enables active transdisciplinary research collaborations and innovation in the areas of community resilience and sustainability through a bottom-up, community-led approach that addresses resilience in comprehensive and measurable ways. (https://c-rasc.gmu.edu/)

The Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center (PEREC) is an interdisciplinary group of faculty that include expertise from chemistry, ecology, geology, environmental science and education. PEREC faculty participates in a variety of research and community outreach programs. This facility encourages faculty to conduct research on restoration of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay, suburban sustainability, global climate change, management of natural ecosystems, and community outreach and education. (https://perec.science.gmu.edu/)

The Virginia Climate Center (VCC) works with Virginia’s communities to enhance Virginia's resilience to the impacts of climate variability and climate change. Operating as a climate extension service to Virginia municipalities and businesses, the VCC partners with stakeholders to co-produce locally relevant data, products, and services. The VCC includes faculty from 9 of Mason's 10 colleges and schools. (https://www.vaclimate.gmu.edu/)

Each college/school has a customized, comprehensive tenure and promotion guideline to set consistent teaching, research and service expectations within the unit. Guidelines recognize disciplinary differences and connect to the annual assessment and reappointment processes.

Each college's tenure process is listed here: https://provost.gmu.edu/administration/policy/promotion-and-tenure-guidelines

Mason's library provides a resource librarian for Integrative Studies and the Environmental Science and Policy department, which jointly offers the Environmental and Sustainability Studies BA. This librarian has created an online infoguide to support sustainability research carried out by students in this major. This website assists students in finding articles, books, and databases for action research involving sustainability. (https://infoguides.gmu.edu/ESP; https://infoguides.gmu.edu/INTS)

Mason's library created and maintains a dataverse site for the Mason as a Living Lab Program to store data about Mason's campuses and infrastructure for research purposes. Students and faculty who are collecting data on any of Mason's campuses are encouraged to publish their data to the dataverse (following appropriate attribution, privacy, and security protocols). Data generated by Mason Facilitates and Operations can also be made available to faculty and students for research purposes. (https://ise.gmu.edu/malila/)