Western University
AC-10: Support for Research

Environmental Science 4999E (an Honors Research Thesis) or Environmental Science 4970F/G (an Independent Study in Environmental Science) are major research project courses that upper-year undergraduate students undertake. Environmental Science 4999E is a major laboratory or field project that emphasizes experimental design, instrumentation, collection and analysis of data, and communication of experimental results by oral (presented at Earth Day Colloquium) and written presentations. On a more related note to sustainability, Environmental Science 4970F/G is a course in which students conduct a research project in a particular field under the direction of a faculty member who is a member of the Centre for Environment and Sustainability. Environment and Sustainability 9200: Interdisciplinary Consulting Project, is a course in the MES program that gives students an opportunity to work with a client in a non-academic, applied setting to undertake environmental research. Each consulting group is responsible for completing a professional quality report and a formal presentations of their research findings and recommendations to their client.

Western will continue to encourage and pursue research that promotes sustainability accomplishments and knowledge at the local, regional and international levels. Details of the scope of these commitments can be found in the link provided below: Creating a Sustainable Western Experience: 10-Year Goals and 5- Year Action Plan (2012) (http://sustainability.uwo.ca/documents/strategy/SustainableWesternExperience.pdf). Western invites innovative partnerships - on and off-campus - to research and propose solutions to society’s most pressing sustainability challenges.Collaboration is encouraged internally to increase opportunities for transdisciplinary sustainability research and raise awareness on the scope of Western’s research activities in fields of sustainability. A sustainability fund designed to encourage sustainability initiatives on campus has been explored and is supported by the President's Advisory Committee on Environment and Sustainability. A detailed report has been prepared to establish the logistics of the fund.

The University of Western Ontario's policies, procedures and commitment to collaborative research are: "The University is committed to research excellence and innovation. To date, the University’s strengths as a research-intensive institution have derived in good measure from the efforts of individual scholars within the established scholarly disciplines. Increasingly, however, such areas are expanding to include a wide array of topics of investigation posing challenges best met through the development of more complex models of research. To meet this challenge, the University encourages the formation of collaborative research entities, both within and across traditional disciplinary boundaries."