Developing sustainability leadership through faculty professional development

Abstract

An increasing number of faculty are seeing the need for integrative teaching that is relevant for the grand challenges of our times. Faculty professional development can provide an effective avenue to support innovative pedagogy and curricular leadership related to sustainability. The University of Vermont (UVM) Sustainability Faculty Fellows Program (SFF) was developed by a group of academic and community partners to address this challenge. Over the course of 6 years, the program grew from a handful of faculty funded by one-time competitive funds to just over 100 faculty and staff participants with base level funding from the Provost’s Office. Through the leadership efforts of sustainability faculty fellows, a sustainability general education requirement was developed and approved through the UVM Faculty Senate in 2015. Drawing on data sets prepared by Rowse (2013) and Natkin (2015), this paper reports findings of three assessment efforts evaluating the long-term impacts of the SFF program to develop faculty leadership in sustainability curricula. In 2013, a 4-year report analyzed course and faculty information (i.e., enrollment, course level, type of course, faculty rank, and disciplinary field). In 2014, interviews of program alumni revealed benefits of participating in a professional learning community, common challenges in teaching sustainability concepts, and examples of changes in fellows’ teaching strategies. A 2015 survey of SFF alums provided further data about fellows’ leadership in campus sustainability initiatives and their needs related to implementation of UVM’s new sustainability general education requirement. The paper concludes with reflections on the stages of leadership development generated through faculty engagement in sustainability curricular initiatives.