Curriculum and Faculty Development

Description – Sustainability and environmental citizenship throughout the curriculum were the overriding themes of the Curriculum and Faculty Development Alliance (CFD). Specifically, the program's objective was to make the environment a focus of teaching, learning and research, while developing environmental studies concentrations, majors, minors and programs. The Alliance sought 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 environmental curriculum and pedagogy, obtaining release time for creating field programs and evaluating and rewarding faculty commitment to such work).

Foundation - The greatest accomplishment of the Environmental Initiative was arguably 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, programs or concentrations increased from 3 in 1997-98 to 16 in 2008.
  
  
• Sixty-nine students were enrolled in ES programs in 1997-98 compared to 167 in 2000-01 and several hundred in 2008.
  
  
• The number of courses with environmental topics as a main, underlying or minor component more than tripled since 1997.

Significant growth of the consortium’s environmental curriculum can be traced to intensive workshops, especially three made possible by the original VKRF grant:

• 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.

Program Areas – Between 2001 and 2008, the Curriculum and Faculty Development Alliance devoted special attention to institutions still in the process of defining their academic program, enabling them to learn from the experience of institutions with established environmental curricula. The Alliance featured the following program areas:

• Curriculum Development Grants - Between 2001 and 2008, ACSEI supported more than 77 different curriculum and faculty development projects, motivating professors to bring the environment not only to their science courses but to those in the humanities and social sciences, designing curricular and co-curricular programs in the U.S. and abroad. These grants provided means for faculty to devote time and resources to create courses and refine existing courses in order to incorporate environmental awareness into the curriculum. They also emphasized support for innovative interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration in course development, and could be leveraged by faculty release time.

• Instructor Resources - With the support of ACS staff, CFD created an online clearinghouse of instructional resources for faculty seeking to infuse sustainability and environmental citizenship into the curriculum. The clearinghouse built upon existing online resources such as the Environmental Education Station (http://web.centre.edu/enviro/) developed collaboratively by Centre College and the University of the South. As new courses were developed, faculty were encouraged to publish syllabi, labs and exercises online to be shared with other ACS institutions and the larger academic community online at http://www.colleges.org/enviro/alliances/cfd/cfdcurr.html. 
  
  
• Faculty Development Workshops - The Alliance organized and hosted numerous workshops for ACS faculty wishing to incorporate sustainability and environmental citizenship into their courses (see http://www.colleges.org/enviro/workshops/index.html). Through these workshops, CFD provided a forum for faculty to share best practices in environmental education and consult with interested colleagues on how to create and maintain effective environmental programs. These workshops also explored multidisciplinary approaches to environmental studies and prompted discussion of how to prepare students for a sustainable future.
  
  
• Technology - CFD collaborated with the ACS Technology Center at Southwestern University to make available a number of “Teaching with Technology” Fellowships to facilitate the development of online resources. These fellowships provided stipends for the development of teaching materials or other curricular enhancements in which technology played a key role.