Colorado State University’s School of Global Environmental Sustainability has awarded seven projects for 2022 Sustainability Curriculum Innovation Grants, created in partnership with the President’s Sustainability Commission. 

The grants fund projects that improve students’ exposure to interdisciplinary sustainability content in CSU’s curriculum. The grant winners will develop existing and new classes that offer creative approaches to improve the quality and quantity of student exposure to complex sustainability concepts. 

A quick look at all seven grant recipients: 

• A Radical Library of Ceramic Materials: Del Harrow, professor, Department of Art and Art History, College of Liberal Arts; Lynn Badia, assistant professor, Department of English, College of Liberal Arts – A series of videos will be made about the sustainability of each substance in the pottery lab. Social-environmental-economic impacts are often overlooked from materials that must be mined, refined and shipped via complex global distribution networks. 
• Circular Economics for the Built Environment: John Killingsworth, assistant professor, Department of Construction Management, College of Health and Human Sciences; Zachary Schaller, assistant professor, Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts – This project will develop a new course that will be the first to feature circular economics as a guiding theme. It will explore the built environment, which consumes the most energy and produces the most waste of any other industry. 
• Development and Integration of Sustainability Concepts into Introductory-Level Geoscience: Sean Bryan, senior instructor, Department of Geosciences, Warner College of Natural Resources; Sean Gallen, assistant professor, Department of Geosciences, Warner College of Natural Resources; Michael Ronayne, associate professor, Department of Geosciences, Warner College of Natural Resources; Lisa Stright, associate professor, Department of Geosciences, Warner College of Natural Resources – This project will develop new teaching modules focused on mineral, water and energy sources and communities being impacted by hazards from flooding, mass wasting (landslides) and sea level rise. 
• ECON240: Economics of Environmental Sustainability: Joanne Burgess Barbier, associate professor, Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts – The project will sharpen the focus of this course to address sustainability, including initial concept, how economics approaches environmental degradation and how to approach environmental and policy implications for economic development. 
• Finance for a Better World: Tianyang Wang, associate professor, Department of Finance and Real Estate, College of Business – This project will develop a curriculum in finance courses that introduces students to new advances in the environmental, social and governance framework and sustainability in the business world.
• Global Product Flows: A Teaching Toolkit for Integrating Supply Chain Management and Sustainability: John Macdonald, associate professor, Department of Management, College of Business – The project will create several tools to learn about systemic interconnections of sustainability concepts in supply chain management, especially as it relates to environmental and social aspects. 
• Sustainability-in-LIFE: Infusing Sustainability Principles and Science into the Introductory Biology Curriculum at CSU: Tanya Dewey, assistant professor, Department of Biology, College of Natural Sciences; Lauren (Ren) García-Hellmuth, professional science master’s student in Zoo, Aquarium, and Animal Shelter Management, College of Natural Sciences; Kim Hoke, professor, Department of Biology, College of Natural Sciences – This project will create laboratory activities that engage students around the science of sustainability in the context of basic biological principles for LIFE 102 and 103, with 10 labs to be revised to highlight the relevance of sustainability in human life.