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Humans have immense impact on our environment and open and ongoing conversations are needed to generate informed actions toward sustainability. A sustainable future must grow from a changed mindset, one of critical thinking, problem-solving, and continuous learning and active practice. In higher education we are uniquely placed to share with students a sustainability-infused curriculum toward such a changed mindset. At Brookhaven College faculty self-selected to participate in a Teaching Sustainability Mini-Pilot during Fall semester 2018. The innovation was initiated to encourage students to become mindful of sustainability, inspired to get involved in sustainability efforts, and to become immersed in satisfactory real-world learning.

The purpose of this article is to describe the successful collaboration between faculty in Eastern Kentucky University Libraries and the University's Occupational Therapy Department in supporting a graduate student learning community, and the benefits of stepping outside of typical liaison activities to play an active role in this new educational paradigm.

In 2006, graduate students and faculty in Occupational Therapy at Eastern Kentucky University, with a librarian and with the support of a national professional organization, facilitated the completion of a graduate thesis through the use of a topic‐based learning community. This team completed an in‐depth, evidence‐based review of occupational therapy journal articles in the context of a regional university environment. This article focuses on the collaboration between faculty and librarian as they facilitated this new learning paradigm, the enhancement of the liaison partnership, and the results of the project especially in terms of student learning outcomes.

Collaborating with faculty to support a student learning community, and supporting students in atypical ways, contribute in valuable ways to strengthening the relationship with academic departments, increasing the perceived value of library services, and promoting student success.

Library liaison programs benefit from innovative partnerships with faculty, and from seeking opportunities to participate in new educational models.

This paper addresses the benefits of participating in student learning communities.

An important element of more closely linking science – as a process as well as its outcomes – to society is to create interdisciplinary approaches to scholarship, teaching, and learning. Such interdisciplinary work directly improves the way that ideas and skills are taught in the classroom as well as encourages more creative scholarship, more collaborative research projects, and more effective applications of research findings. Creation of consistent and on-going interdisciplinary contact, cooperation, and collaboration between faculty members from the social sciences, humanities, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields can be encouraged with the development of pedagogical partnerships through engagement with Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs). In this chapter, we first describe FLCs and then discuss how they can encourage interdisciplinary intellectual and scholarly community development. We provide examples to illustrate the role that personal and intellectual community building plays in linking the different disciplinary approaches. Finally, we highlight the potential impact that interdisciplinary collaborations can have on creating permanent links between science and society.

In this chapter, we, the authors Bishop, Etmanski and Page, argue for the need to disrupt the traditional notion of faculty solely as expert. We redefine the online faculty role to be that of a facilitator who creates the space for students to engage with both content and other students in the class. We discuss the adult learning principles behind our practices and our attention to building community. To illustrate what our online teaching work looks like in practice, we begin by providing a creative script on what online learning could look like. We then speak to utilising the specific strategies of online forums, behind the scenes outreach, synchronous meetings and assignments to create rich engagement in the online environment for higher education and learning.

We place a strong emphasis on building community among our students from the start of course and throughout. Recognising that people respond differently to different scenarios and have different learning preferences, we seek to offer a diverse range of options for experiencing community, with the intention of offering the possibility of belonging for everyone. The intention to create space for engagement in online learning has challenged us to continually ask ourselves how we can adapt or create new activities and experiences for the online learning environment, so as to enhance engagement.

Although the number of higher education institutions adopting sustainability-focused faculty learning communities (FLCs) has grown, very few of these programs have published evaluation research. This paper aims to report findings from an evaluation of the University of Vermont’s (UVM’s) sustainability faculty fellows (SFF) program. It discusses how utilization-focused program evaluation is an important tool for developing and improving sustainability-focused FLCs. The SFF program aims to enhance sustainability education by bringing faculty members together to expand their knowledge of sustainability concepts and offer pedagogical support for integrating those concepts in higher education curricula.

A utilization-focused evaluation framework guided the evaluation’s design and implementation. Multiple methods were used to collect evaluation data, including in-person interviews and an online survey with SFF program participants.

The evaluation’s findings suggest that UVM’s SFF program expanded faculty understanding of sustainability concepts, encouraged curricular and instructional reform and made progress toward developing a community of faculty interested in sustainability education. The evaluation’s utilization focus was instrumental in providing useful information for improving the SFF program.

Evaluation findings expand what we know about the potential effectiveness of sustainability-focused FLCs, as well as challenges institutions might encounter when adopting such an approach to faculty development. Findings also point to ways in which utilization-focused evaluations can inform program development and improvement efforts.

At Abilene Christian University, a variety of programs and training sessions in our Center for Teaching and Learning encourage faculty to reconsider academic conventions of pedagogy, to step out of the traditional sage on the stage model and connect with students through practices of hospitality and vulnerability. To truly engage in deep learning, risk is required on the part of both faculty and students, and these practices promote a decentered power structure within the classroom that allows authentic connection with the material and one another. Creating a student-centered classroom space that allows for respectful dialogue about challenging topics is one way to make our classrooms’ places of respect and collaboration, where all voices are an essential part of learning. In this chapter, the authors explore the literature on the benefits of practices of hospitality and vulnerability, share information about some well-established faculty development series that aid faculty in creating classroom environments that promote the practice of hospitality and vulnerability, and provide specific strategies for creating this type of environment. Authors share a variety of resources that readers can use to promote practices of hospitality and vulnerability in their own classrooms.

A boarding school research center annually invites students, professors, and others to collaborate with faculty members, forming interconnected communities of practice. The authors interviewed visitors to determine how their experience contributed to their identity as a scholar and the extent to which they felt part of a community of practice. Categorizing emergent themes according to Wenger's (1998) categories of communities of practice, we identified six subthemes that characterize their experience. All participants valued their stay and expressed a desire to remain connected to the school, visiting scholars, and other people they met and now consider part of their network.

The racial and ethnic representation of individuals in the workforce is not comparable to that in the general population. In 2010, African Americans constituted 12.6% of the US population. However, African Americans represented less than 5% of PhD recipients in 2010; African American women comprised less than 1% of the degrees awarded in that same year. These disappointing statistics have sparked conversations regarding the retention of underrepresented groups with a focus on what helps to ensure these individuals will transition through the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline. This chapter provides insight into the elements of the Spelman College learning environment that empower women of African descent to become agents of their success while facilitating their movement through the STEM pipeline. The chapter focuses on interventions and resources developed in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department to foster student-centered learning. Described herein are cocurricular strategies and course-based interventions are used synergistically to enhance student outcomes. The approach to curricular innovation is framed by theories related to community of inquiry (CoI), metacognition, agency, and self-regulated learning. Strategic institutional investments have underpinned these efforts. In addition to providing a snapshot of student outcomes, the authors discuss lessons learned along with the realities of engaging in this type of intellectual work to elucidate the feasibility of adopting similar strategies at other institutions.

Key elements of a curriculum are presented for a faculty development program that integrated sustainability content with effective course design methodology across a variety of disciplines. The study aims to present self-reported impacts for a small number of faculty participants and their courses.

A yearlong faculty development program to introduce content and effective course design for teaching about sustainability was created through a content-driven, backward design approach. Faculty participants from two cohorts were surveyed electronically to evaluate their perceptions of the impact of the program on their courses and professional development either one or two years after completing the program.

The theoretical model, curriculum and assignments for the sustainability-enhanced program are presented and discussed. Faculty participant responses to a survey (n = 14) following completion of the program indicated that the process changed pedagogical approaches, created a sense of community and raised awareness of campus resources. Faculty perceived that sustainability content enhanced their course redesign by providing “real-world” relevance, awareness and engagement. More than half of the respondents reported using tools they learned in the program to redesign elements of other courses. Three respondents indicated that integrating sustainability content into their courses had little to no benefit.

The study did not explore the impact of the program on faculty and student learning.

The tools presented are practice-ready.

This study can inform the design and evaluation of other sustainability-related faculty development programs.