Sustainability Education Funding

Who Can Apply?

Faculty: All faculty are eligible, including untenured, tenured, emeriti and temporary faculty. Applications are encouraged from faculty in all academic divisions: arts and humanities, social sciences and physical sciences. Preference generally will be given to untenured faculty.

Staff: All full-time staff and administrators are eligible for projects that are expected to have significant benefits for Dickinson students, the college and CSE.

Students: Dickinson students are not eligible to apply directly for funding opportunities, but may participate in projects proposed and submitted by faculty, teaching staff, other staff and administrators.

Non-Dickinson Faculty: Faculty from other colleges or universities are eligible to apply to participate in some Dickinson workshops, but only Dickinson faculty are eligible to apply for Sustainability Education Funds (SEF Grants) and for participation in the Valley and Ridge project.

What Criteria Are Used to Determine Funding?

• Expected contribution to curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular opportunities for learning about sustainability problems and their solutions
• Expected enhancement of the capabilities of faculty and students for research, scholarship and creative work that contribute to greater understanding of sustainability
• The use of assessment-based learning outcomes to improve teaching
• Potential to benefit the campus and community by advancing sustainable practices, behaviors and policies
• Intellectual merit
• Cross-disciplinary inquiry
• Development and use of innovative and active learning pedagogy
• Support for untenured faculty
• Support for faculty who have not received other grants recently from CSE or R & D
• Explicit intent to use outcomes of the project to seek additional external funding
• Applicant's previous history of grant applications with CSE and R&D, including accomplishment of promised outcomes, prudent use of awarded funds and timely submission of final reports

What Are The Priorities for Sustainability Education Funding (SEF)?

• Holistic curricular, research and creative projects that encompass multiple dimensions of sustainability (e.g. social, economic and/or environmental)
• Gateway courses that have no or minimal prerequisites and introduce students to sustainability concepts, problems and inquiry in the context of departmental majors and programs
• Sustainability focused courses that take interdisciplinary, systems-based approaches to address social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability
• Sustainability related and focused courses in departments and programs that have few or no such courses
• Courses and research that explore sustainability in a global context and in relation to problems of security, peace, justice and/or development
• Courses and research that connect sustainability with civic learning and civic engagement in Carlisle and other communities
• Courses that address sustainability principles with respect to food systems, energy systems and built environments
• Assist with institutional assessment of teaching and learning
• Capstone experiences
• Use campus operations, campus energy projects, residential life, the college farm, ALLARM, Reineman Wildlife Sanctuary, other co-curricular resources and the local community as ‘living laboratories'