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Greenetwork

Provost's Office

Completed

  • Sent faculty and student delegates to environmental conferences.
  • Spring '06 - held three day sustainability workshop for IWU faculty, staff, and administration.
  • Conducted a follow-up meeting with workshop participants to explore incorporating sustainability into their courses, find out “what works” and what some of the challenges these faculty members face as they move forward on sustainability in their courses.
  • Held Faculty Non-Org regarding sustainability (Dr. Given Harper, Spring 2007).
  • Conducted research and provided services for national and international organizations (Dr. Given Harper, Dr. Abigail Jahiel).            
  • Earmarked a pool of funds to encourage faculty research that has an environmental focus.  The Faculty Development Committee sent out a call for proposals, reviewed applicants, and determined recipients of the award.
    • Nov 21, 2008 update: an ongoing portion of CD or ASD grants may be available for sustainability proposals.
  • Met with Environmental Studies Professors Jahiel, Harper, and Hoffman to discuss the Environmental Studies program and their work on sustainability.
  • A formal report was requested from the participants of the Fall 2007 Ball State Conference on the “best practices” learned at the Conference.
  • Worked with Deans at the TEAGLE member institutions to explore cooperative ventures on sustainability.
  • The Academic Affairs staff transitioned to online handbooks – General Education Handbook, Faculty Development Handbook, Faculty Handbook, and Curriculum Development Handbook.  Only a few paper copies are distributed to faculty.
  • At the monthly Faculty meeting, the Provost eliminated disposable plates, cups, etc., encourages faculty to bring their own beverage cups, and recently promoted the Admissions Office’s ceramic “Think Green” cups made available to prospective students and other visitors to the new Welcome Center.
  • Met with Given Harper and other faculty who are interested in developing a field station at off-campus site. The goal of the meeting was to work toward the development of a usage statement for faculty, determine amount of resource needed to make the land useful for field-work, and make sure that the land is clearly marked, free of debris, and safe for student and faculty use.  This effort will require coordination with IWU’s Vice President for Finance and the Director of Physical Plant.  
    • Nov 21, 2008 update: faculty member most likely to create programs for the field station has taken a position elsewhere, so this idea is tabled for now.
  • Supported a successful Sierra Student Coalition proposal to establish an on-campus prairie plot which broke ground in Fall 2009.

Continuing Initiatives

  • Explore potential dual-teaching opportunities.
  • Incorporate sustainability within the General Education framework.
    • Nov 21, 2008update: review of the General Education program is about to begin. This might be the time for faculty to propose that sustainability education be incorporated, somehow, into the General Education program.
  • Encourage Education majors to develop environmentally-themed curricula for area schools.
  • Hope to design friendly sustainability initiative contests between TEAGLE member campuses.
    • Found out that Luther College is putting up a windmill and wondered how IWU might get involved in generating its own green power.
    • Also investigating whether other TEAGLE institutions have prairie plots on their campuses.
  • IWU intends to make the new transitional student housing building a LEED certified design.
  • Suggest that the GREENetwork to reacquaint our campus with the Talloires Document signed by President Wilson, and keep track of how we are progressing with the mandates outlined in that document.
    • April 2009 update: Report on campus progress completed
  • Suggest we begin to encourage all faculty and students to avoid printing off hardcopies of emails possibly by concluding address lines on IWU emails with a message to “Be Green: don’t print this email.”

Last updated: January 13, 2009