Last modified: Friday, April 30, 2010
Sustainability Course Development Fellowship recipients announced
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 30, 2010
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Two Sustainability Course Development Fellowships have been awarded to Indiana University Bloomington faculty by the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs, with support from IU's College of Arts and Sciences.
This year's recipients are Laurel Cornell, associate professor in the Department of Sociology, Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts, and Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures; and Christine Barbour, clinical assistant professor, Department of Political Science.
"These courses will be of great interest to our students, many of whom have eagerly embraced the values of sustainability," said Tom Gieryn, vice provost for faculty and academic affairs. "Professors Cornell and Barbour should be commended for their efforts to extend interdisciplinary research projects into the domain of curricular development and pedagogy."
David Zaret, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said the program is an outstanding example of cross-campus and cross-disciplinary collaboration, and an important component of efforts to link classroom learning to real-world applications.
"The College is both pleased to be a co-sponsor and very proud that both of this year's faculty recipients come from College departments," he said.
The Sustainability Course Development Fellowships represent an instructional component of a broad-based initiative originally developed by the Indiana University Task Force on Campus Sustainability. They are intended to provide support for individual faculty members interested in expanding their teaching into topics related to sustainability and environmental stewardship.
Fellowships were awarded for the first time in 2009 and aided in the development of new graduate and undergraduate courses that focused on different aspects of sustainability, including social statistics, communication, environmental science and policy, environmental entrepreneurship and sustainable development. This year's recipients also plan to develop courses related to sustainability within the context of their respective disciplines. The newly developed courses will be offered as part of the College of Arts and Sciences' Fall 2010 themester, sustain.ability: Thriving on a Small Planet.
"Last year's award winners produced important work that transcended campus and community boundaries. This year's outstanding winners will continue to elevate and expand our understanding of what it means to live sustainably," said Bill Brown, director, IU Office of Sustainability.
- Laurel Cornell's proposal, "Designing a Sustainable Campus Landscape," focuses on the development of a new course in art and design that increases student environmental literacy by encouraging students to learn to see the landscape in new ways, to represent it using various media, to analyze how human beings have created it, and to design a sustainable landscape that will address specific campus sustainability issues including sustainable planning for Dunn's Woods, planning for stormwater management, and creation of new campus landscapes that include edible fruits, nuts and vines for the IU Bloomington campus.
- Christine Barbour's proposal, "Living a Sustainable Life," focuses on the development of a new introductory-level course to be team-taught by faculty from across campus as part of the College of Arts and Sciences' sustainability themester. Students will be introduced to the broad range of sustainability issues, including food, transportation, energy, architecture, recreation and computing. The course will make connections between global-scale philosophical and political issues of sustainability and the practical, local applications that directly affect students' lives. The course will end with a focus on the greening of the IU Bloomington campus itself.
For more information on the Sustainability Course Development Fellowships, visit the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs site at https://www.indiana.edu/~vpfaa/grants.shtml.
For additional details about the Indiana University Office of Sustainability, see https://www.indiana.edu/~sustain.
