Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 67.92
Liaison Ann Drevno
Submission Date Feb. 16, 2023

STARS v2.2

Saint Mary's College of California
AC-10: Support for Sustainability Research

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 4.00 / 4.00
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Student sustainability research incentives 

Does the institution have an ongoing program to encourage students in multiple disciplines or academic programs to conduct sustainability research?:
Yes

A brief description of the student sustainability research program:
Yes, we offer Sustainability Research Internships. These interns focus on research that increases sustainability on campus through a variety of topics - energy, waste, food, climate, etc. The intern(s) works closely with and is supervised by the Sustainability Director.

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:
Every year the Academic Subcommittee of the President's Sustainability Committee provides a faculty development workshop called "the Annual Sustainability Symposium" intended to increase sustainability research and communities of practice around sustainability.

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:
The promotion or tenure guidelines or policies:
See section 2.6 "Promotion and Tenure" of the attached 2019-2020 Faculty Handbook, and specifically subsection 2.6.1 on "Scholarly Interests & Pursuits" and "Service to the college" which reads explicitly states "Scholarship aims not only at expanding the store of knowledge in the disciplines or in an interdisciplinary field, ..." and "Service can include...Participation in activities inside the College such as colloquia, fora, public lectures, reading and study groups, which foster the intellectual community, institutional identity, and interschool/ interdisciplinary collaboration"

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 library supports the Environmental & Earth Science and the Environmental Studies undergraduate majors through collection development, library and information literacy instruction, and specialized research support from a dedicated liaison librarian. Examples of this support during the past academic year include the purchase of the 2019 Earth & Environmental Sciences ebook package from SpringerNature, featuring more than 560 DRM-free environmental science titles, as well as library guides and information literacy instruction for courses such as EES-196: Senior Project and EES-110: GIS / Remote Sensing. The library also coordinates with the Sustainability Office to showcase book displays or host student work (e.g., a senior project about seed libraries) in the library.

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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