ACS Environmental Alliance - Curriculum and Faculty Development

	ACS Environmental Alliance

Curriculum and Faculty Development Alliance
Objectives

Description - Sustainability and environmental citizenship throughout the curriculum are the overriding themes of the Curriculum and Faculty Development Alliance. Specifically, the program's objective is to make the environment a focus of teaching, learning and research, while developing environmental studies concentrations, majors, minors and courses on all of our campuses. CFD will seek to overcome institutional obstacles to curricular and pedagogical innovation (e.g., evaluating student learning in nontraditional settings and tasks, securing faculty release time for work on curriculum and pedagogy, obtaining release time for creating field programs and evaluating and rewarding faculty commitment to such work).

Program Areas - The Curriculum and Faculty Development Alliance devoted special attention to institutions in the process of defining their environmental programs, enabling them to learn from the experience of institutions with established environmental curricula. The Alliance features the following programs:

Faculty Development Workshops - The Alliance will organize and host workshops and conferences for ACS faculty who want to incorporate sustainability and environmental citizenship into their courses. Through these workshops, the Alliance provides a forum for faculty to share best practices in environmental education and consult with other interested colleagues on how to create and maintain an effective environmental program. These workshops also explore multidisciplinary approaches to environmental studies and prompt discussion on how to prepare students for a sustainable future.
Instructor Resources - The Alliance, with the support of ACS staff, created an online clearinghouse of ACS syllabi for faculty seeking to infuse sustainability and environmental citizenship into the curriculum.
Curriculum Development Grants - These grants provide the means for faculty to devote time and resources to create courses and refine existing courses in order to incorporate environmental awareness into the curriculum. The grants emphasize support for innovative interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration in course development, and may be leveraged by faculty release time. Priority will be given to projects meeting one or more of the following specifications.
1. courses in mathematics, social science, or humanities that focus on the environment or contain an environmental module. Examples:
2. courses in foreign countries, bringing global environmental awareness to our students; special consideration will be given for courses created to collaborate with South Africa’s FOTIM (Foundation of Tertiary Institutions of the Northern Metropolis)
  courses that create or improve an interdisciplinary course
3. courses that fill a demonstrable void in an existing Environmental Studies minor, major, or concentration
4. new courses that have not previously received funding
5. professors who have not previously received a grant from the CFD alliance

Foundation - The greatest accomplishment of the current Environmental Initiative has been the growth of environmental studies curricula throughout the consortium. Since the inception of the grant:

The number of institutions offering Environmental Studies (ES) majors, minors or concentrations has increased from 3 in 1997-98 to 16 in 2007.
69 students were enrolled in ES programs in 1997-98 compared to 185 in 2005.
The number of courses with environmental topics as a main, underlying or minor component has increased from 202 in 1997-98 to approximately 500 in 2005.
Hendrix College has adopted a course with environmental content, "Challenges of the Contemporary World," as a requirement in its core curriculum.

Significant early growth of the environmental curriculum can be traced to 3 workshops before 2001:

The Environmental Curriculum was held at the University of Richmond in June of 1998. At the workshop, 35 faculty from 11 ACS institutions gathered together to share information about environmental studies curricula and exchange information on existing programs.
Sustainability and the Liberal Arts: Course Development and Institutional Transformation was held at Hendrix College in October of 1998. This workshop explored these dimensions of education at a liberal arts college: curriculum, campus design and operations, career planning, social outreach and research. It was attended by 50 faculty, 2 students and 22 staff from 14 ACS institutions and 5 non-ACS institutions.
Broadening the Classroom was held at Birmingham-Southern College in October of 1998. This workshop featured a multi-disciplinary approach to environmental teaching and research and was attended by 27 faculty, 6 students and 4 staff from 13 ACS institutions.

Growth of the environmental curriculum after 2001 can be traced to the following 8 conferences and workshops (for more information, please go to http://www.colleges.org/enviro/workshops/index.html):

Sustainability, Humanities and the Environment Curriculum Workshop (Southwestern University). The primary purpose of this workshop was to introduce ACS faculty to the integral connections between the humanities and ecology. The workshop examined the interface between the environment and literature, religion, and philosophy, with focuses on course development, the Earth Charter in the Humanities curriculum, community-based learning, and the ideas of pilgrimage and sacred space as pedagogical possibilities.
Environmental Curriculum: Sharing Ideas (Furman University). Twenty faculty representing 11 ACS institutions and 4 non-ACS institutions participated. This workshop brought representatives from 12 ACS institutions together to describe their programs and to inform others who are building programs about best practices at their campuses, as well as strengths and weaknesses of their programs. Twenty faculty participated.
Greening The International Experience (Rollins College). Workshop activities included an introduction to the concept of sustainability and sustainable development; discussion of best practices in existing international environmental courses; how to create new international environmental courses; and how to add an environmental module to a pre-existing course that currently had no environmental content. Twenty-seven faculty from 11 ACS institutions and 3 non-ACS institutions.
Religion and Animals (Hendrix College). In addition to other funding, this workshop was supported by funds from the Sustainability, Humanities, and the Environment Alliance. The purpose of the conference was to enable scholars of religious studies throughout the nation, including those in the Associated Colleges of the South, to share work done in the area of religion and animals. Thirteen faculty from 3 ACS and 7 non-ACS institutions participated.
Green Teaching Symposium (Furman University). This collaborative conference was sponsored by four of the ACS Environmental Initiative Alliances: Campus and Community Partnerships, Curriculum and Faculty Development, Sustainability in the Global Community, and Sustainability, Humanities, and the Environment. Each alliance hosted a session in which recipients of development grants shared their projects. There were also sessions on green pedagogies and green grant writing. Fifty-three faculty, along with a number of students and staff from 15 ACS institutions had an excellent opportunity to see how green teaching works at our ACS schools.
Creating Change: Environmental Studies and the Arts (Spelman College). In addition to other funding, this intensive two-and-a-half day workshop was supported by funds from the Sustainability, Humanities, and the Environment Alliance. Devoted to exploring and establishing links between the creative and performing arts and environmental studies/science, this meeting brought together creative artists, scientists, and scholars in humanities, fine arts, and religion/philosophy. Conference activities included exhibits, performances, lecture-demonstrations, study groups (discussions), paper sessions, and film/video showings.
Undergraduate Environmental Research and Faculty Development Conference (Spelman College). In addition to student presentations and faculty development opportunities, guest speaker was environmental justice guru Bob Bullard, and an EPA spokesperson spoke on the topic of writing EPA grants.
Environmental Summit (Morehouse College). The first ACS Environmental Summit brought together students, staff, and faculty from ACS institutions in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Wide varieties of sessions were held, highlighting undergraduate research (presentations and posters), faculty development, international course development, green campus innovations, and green careers and internships. In addition, student leadership and engagement sessions and an environmental activism workshop were presented.

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This page updated on 9/14/07