Virginia Commonwealth University
AC-10: Support for Research

Virginia Commonwealth University’s Council for Community Engagement awards one-year grants of up to $20,000 to university-community programs, which support interdisciplinary projects to enhance and increase university engagement with the greater Richmond community and will contribute to the research and teaching of VCU units. Community engagement grants create opportunities for VCU students to do research in sustainability. The grants are awarded based on criteria including community-identified need, strength of university-community partnership, and alignment with at least one VCU Quest for Distinction Theme, one being sustainability.

Virginia Commonwealth University’s Council for Community Engagement awards one-year grants of up to $20,000 to university-community programs, which support interdisciplinary projects to enhance and increase university engagement with the greater Richmond community and will contribute to the research and teaching of VCU units. Community engagement grants create opportunities for VCU faculty to do research in sustainability. The grants are awarded based on criteria including community-identified need, strength of univeristy-community partnership, and alignment with at least one VCU Quest for Distinction Theme, one being sustainability.

Candidates for promotion and tenure must meet or exceed the basic standards for effective teaching. They must be competent classroom teachers and academic advisors. They must demonstrate mastery of their subject matter and be adept at communicating this understanding to their students. Most fundamentally, their students should learn. Their success in teaching should be documented by the following indicators including, specialized teaching; for example non-classroom based teaching, such as interdisciplinary teaching. Candidates for promotion, tenure, or promotion and tenure should be continuously and productively engaged in scholarly activity. Through his or her scholarly activity, the candidate should make a substantive contribution to the discipline that reflects high standards of quality in creativity, scholarship, and professional competence. The quality and significance of scholarly activity will be affirmed by peer evaluations and letters of evaluation from experts, particularly those outside of the University. The nature of a given candidate's contribution will vary in terms of experience, level of development, and the demands of particular fields and disciplines. Nevertheless, there are several general criteria for evaluating scholarly activity including educational research, including the development of innovative teaching methods incorporating technology into education and novel interdisciplinary courses. VCU's Strategic Plan, Quest for Distinction, has included increasing interdisciplinary collaborations that bring new perspectives to complex problems and mobilize creative energies that advance innovation and solve global challenges.

VCU Libraries supports sustainability research and learning with collections, research consultations, and discipline-based instruction activities. Collections include access to databases like GreenFILE, GREENR, and Web of Science, as well as over over 100,000 titles with the subject heading sustainability. Some examples of research guides covering specialized resources and include Sustainable Design (http://guides.library.vcu.edu/sustainable-design) and Environmental Sciences (http://guides.library.vcu.edu/environmental-sciences). Librarians also offer customized research consultations and instruction sessions to help students and researchers studying sustainability and related topics.