Overall Rating Silver
Overall Score 64.57
Liaison Sherri Mason
Submission Date June 14, 2023

STARS v2.2

Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
AC-10: Support for Sustainability Research

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 3.00 / 4.00 Sherri Mason
Director of Sustainability
School of Science
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Student sustainability research incentives 

Does the institution have an ongoing program to encourage students in multiple disciplines or academic programs to conduct sustainability research?:
No

A brief description of the student sustainability research program:
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Faculty sustainability research incentives 

Does the institution have a program to encourage academic staff from multiple disciplines or academic programs to conduct sustainability research?:
Yes

A brief description of the faculty sustainability research program:
Penn State provides seed grant funds to faculty that are specifically targeted to interdisciplinary teams and research focused within the sustainability sphere. These program include:
- the Institutes for Energy and the Environment (IEE) runs annual seed grant competitions under their thematic foci - all of which have sustainability relevance: Climate and Ecosystem Change, Future Energy Supply, Health and the Environment, Smart Energy Systems, Water and Biogeochemical Cycles;
- the Materials Research Institute (MRI) seed grant competition; and
- the Smeal College of Business annual Sustainability Research Grants.
In the last three years, these distributed seed grant programs have invested over $1.5 million to support over 60 new sustainability research projects.

Recognition of interdisciplinary, transdisciplnary and multi-disciplinary research 

Has the institution published written policies and procedures that give positive recognition to interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary research during faculty promotion and/or tenure decisions?:
Yes

A copy of the promotion or tenure guidelines or policies:
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The promotion or tenure guidelines or policies:
Penn State's Administrative Guidelines for Promotion and Tenure state, under the heading of Assessing The Scholarship of Research and Creative Accomplishments, that: "It is expected that units encourage and support collaborative and interdisciplinary research and that units will develop methods to assess these activities." (see Part II,D on page 6)
https://www.vpfa.psu.edu/files/2019/07/2019-2020-Administrative-Guidelines-Final.pdf

Library support

Does the institution have ongoing library support for sustainability research and learning?:
Yes

A brief description of the institution’s library support for sustainability research:
The Penn State University Libraries provide access to a plethora of materials and searchable databases that support sustainability research including GreenFILE, Environment & Energy Newsletters, Ecology Abstracts, and many others. Examples of library resources can be found here:
https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/sustainable-development

Optional Fields 

Website URL where information about the institution’s support for sustainability research is available:
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Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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