The Office of Campus Sustainability is pleased to announce the launch of the Sustainability Seed Fund that gives students, faculty, and staff the opportunity to advance sustainability across campus.  In spring of 2015, the President and Cabinet have allocated $50,000 of one-time funding to support campus sustainability initiatives.

SUNY New Paltz earned a STARS Silver rating in March of 2015.  The Sustainability Seed Fund is one of the Office of Campus Sustainability’s main strategies to earn STARS Gold the next time New Paltz conducts a campus-wide sustainability self-assessment.

Sustainability Seed Funding Goals:

1. Foster a thriving, resilient, sustainable campus & community through cooperation, partnership, awareness and education.
2. Support sustainability leadership across campus.
3. Infuse sustainability into your day-to-day work and identity as a student, faculty or staff member.
4. Incorporate a sustainability consciousness into other priorities and trends.
5. Plant the seeds for SUNY New Paltz to be nationally recognized as a sustainable higher education institution.
6. Achieve STARS Gold by spring of 2018.

Who can apply?

• Faculty
• Staff
• Students
• Student Organizations

Eligible Funding Requests:

• Paid on-campus student internships and research projects, with close supervision from a faculty member.  The intention for this work is for the outcome of this research to have a lasting impact on campus, such strengthening faculty sustainability-related teaching or research or that knowledge gained from findings will inform actual sustainability thinking or planning on campus.
• Professional development (off-campus, on-campus, or online)
• Materials and supplies for sustainability research, projects, and programs, in and outside of the classroom
• Conference fees as a presenter or attendee
• Guest speakers for a targeted audience for a narrow educational or co-curricular purpose (ie. to bring in an outside expert to connect classroom teaching to the “real world” or to a res life RA professional development program)

If you seeking funding that does not fall under the categories above, please discuss with Lisa Mitten.  Asking your supervisor, dean, or Provost for matching funds is strongly encouraged.

Ineligible Funding Requests

Ineligible funding requests include but are not limited to:

• Guest speakers for general sustainability programs
• Faculty stipends
• Catering
• Travel expenses including mileage, rental cars, hotels, and meals

Consider asking your supervisor, dean, or the Provost for matching funds if you are seeking funding for expenses that are ineligible for Sustainability Seed Funding.

Application Materials

Proposal Application Form
Proposal Expense Form

Submit your proposal to the Office of Campus Sustainability via email at mittenl@newpaltz.edu.

Suggested Sustainability Topic Areas 

The following are the main sustainability topic areas covered by the STARS rating system:

• Air & Climate
• Buildings
• Dining Services/Food
• Energy
• Grounds (ie. Landscapes & Biodiversity)
• Purchasing
• Transportation
• Waste
• Water
• Coordination, Planning & Governance
• Diversity, Inclusion & Affordability
• Health, Wellbeing & Work
• Investment
• Public Engagement
• Adaptation & Resiliency

Funding Priorities:

Funding requests that infuse sustainability into an existing SUNY New Paltz, SUNY System, or New York State priority will strengthen your request.  Funding requests that infuse sustainability in a current trend in higher education or bring a sustainability trend or best practice in higher education to our campus will strengthen your request.  Below are some sample trends and priorities for you to consider:

• Campus as a Living Lab (See also this guide for ideas.  It’s targeted for community colleges, but the principles are relevant)
• Sustainability Literacy (Check out this “glocal” sustainability literacy test and request the SUNY New Paltz-focused STARS-inspired sustainability literacy test)
• Sustainability outreach campaigns with a specific segment of the campus community (certain staff, incoming freshman, commuter students, on campus residents)
• STARS Credit Categories
• Adaptation and Resiliency (Check out Second Nature’s Alliance for Resilient Campuses and DOD’s 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap)
• Experiential Learning
• Liberal Education
• Proposals that can lead to larger grant proposals, ie. the SUNY Research Foundation’s 4E Grant Funding.
• Regional Engagement
• Community Engagement
• Energy (Check out Energy Smart New York, Reforming the Energy Vision, and Executive Order 88 about mandated NYS public agency source energy use reduction)
• Building relationships across the SUNY System
• Building relationships and partnerships across division lines
• Connecting with professional organizations and professional networks that bridge sustainability to your profession, discipline, or focus area.

Targeted Offices and Departments

The Office of Campus Sustainability especially encourages faculty and staff the following offices and departments to apply for funding.

• Non-academic offices, departments, and student organizations that historically have not an explicit/public sustainability focus
• School of Education
• School of Business
• Black Studies
• Communications
• Communication Disorders
• Digital Media and Journalism
• Disaster Studies
• English
• English Composition
• Latin American & Caribbean Studies
• Psychology
• Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
• Art History
• Music
• Theater Arts
• Biochemistry
• Computer Science
• Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Mechanical Engineering
• Mathematics
• Physics & Astronomy

Please note that the academic departments listed above did not earn credits in one or both of the academic courses or the faculty research categories in the 2015 STARS submission.  A few of the departments listed above may have earned credits in both areas, but the number of faculty involved in sustainability leadership in the particular department is low compared to the total number of faculty in the department.  Fostering sustainability leadership in these departments is part of the Sustainability Committee and the Office of Campus Sustainability’s strategy to “earn STARS Gold by 2018.”

Funding requests from faculty, staff, and students with a solid track record of sustainability leadership will be seriously considered for award.

Processing Funding and Paperwork:

The Office of Campus Sustainability has a small staff of 1.5 employees and a few student workers.  We do not have capacity to do extensive paperwork to process your request.  Please mentally prepare yourself to do paperwork to process your funding request or coordinate efforts so that funding can be easily transferred from the Office of Campus Sustainability account to an account in your division.  Materials, supplies, and conference attendance under $2,500 can be purchased easily via p-card.  Mileage and hotels associated with travel for professional development and conference attendance will be more time consuming to process on your end than simply conference fees.

How to Apply:

Funding requests will be considered on a rolling basis.  Click the following links to download the Proposal Application Form and the Proposal Expense Form.  Feel free to run concepts by Lisa Mitten to help focus your request.  Contact Lisa Mitten at x3325 or by emailing her at mittenl@newpaltz.edu.