University of California, Los Angeles
ER-14: Incentives for Developing Sustainability Courses

Sustainability Across the Curriculum UCLA Faculty Workshop In May 2011, 20 UCLA faculty representing 16 different departments participated in a day-long workshop designed to help them infuse relevant concepts of sustainability into existing undergraduate courses. This workshop was based on the successful model from AASHE and was developed for UCLA by Dr. Cully Nordby, Academic Director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and Prof. Suzanne Paulson, Dept. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. The workshop was facilitated by Dr. Geoffrey Chase, Dean of Undergraduate Studies and the Director of the Center for Regional Sustainability at San Diego State University. The idea is that faculty attend this workshop, discuss and expand their knowledge about concepts of sustainability, brainstorm with others about how they might include relevant aspects of these concepts in their courses, get a sustainability tour of campus and have fun getting to know other faculty. They then have 3-4 months to work up a new syllabus, module, lesson plan, lab exercise, etc.. Funding for this workshop was provided by the Office of Instructional Development, the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, the Office of Academic Program Development, and a grant through the Green Initiative Fund (TGIF), a fund for student-initiated sustainability projects on campus. Follow-up networking sessions are planned, as well as additional workshops (pending additional funding). The ongoing project involves the development of an on-line resource bank that will contain teaching materials that may be of use to UCLA faculty in their sustainability-related teaching activities.

Incentives include: 1) an extra large Office of Instructional Development mini-grant (up to $1200) which can be used for assistance from a Graduate Student Researcher, instructional media, field trips, guest speaker honoraria, lab materials, etc.. 2) a $100 gift card to the ASUCLA store 3) a campus sustainability tour led by Nurit Katz, UCLA Sustainability Coordinator 4) several meals and snacks and 5) some fun and new colleagues