CCES Grant Program

Community Colleges for Environmental Sustainability (CCES)

Today’s students will be facing complex issues, like climate change and water quality, in their communities, and entering a highly competitive global workforce that demands a diverse skill set. Recognizing that these challenges cannot be solved through one discipline alone, a four-state Campus Compact consortium aims to engage teams of faculty from a wide variety of disciplines in collaborative efforts to integrate environmental service-learning projects into the curriculum.

Campuses will be selected to receive a sub-grant of up to $4500 to create institutional change by embedding service-learning projects into courses, thereby strengthening teaching and curriculum, student learning outcomes, and interdisciplinary approaches to education. Each campus will be required to deliver a minimum of 4 related service-learning courses, each partnering with community organizations to address climate change and water quality. Teams will receive training in service-learning pedagogy and apply this interdisciplinary model to environmental stewardship challenges as a part of their participation in the grant. Training will take place at a Faculty Development Institute in June 2016.

Program Goals:

To complete environmental service-learning projects that enhance student learning outcomes, and to tie this learning to issues of civic importance and real world application;
To create and sustain changes in campus delivery of courses for experiential and environmental education for students in fields of study; and
TO create a strengthened and replicable model for interdisciplinary approaches to service and problem-based learning.

The NH community college selected for this grant program is NHTI, Concord’s Community College. Click here to learn more about their project.

Funding provided by a grant from the EPA