Green Teaching Resources

Sample Green Teaching Syllabus Statement

Here is an example of a section with information about the Green Teaching Certificate Program that you can include in your syllabus

Green Teaching

This is a Certified Green Course. This means, for example, that I will not hand out any printed materials, but I will use Canvas extensively to post handouts, collect assignments, and provide you with feedback on assignments. To help make our class as green as possible, I encourage you to buy used books, minimize paper use by submitting assignments electronically as instructed, and read course readings online rather than printing copies. If you choose to print, please print double-sided, and recycle the paper after the end of the semester.

Saving your PowerPoint presentations in a more printer-friendly format

To enable your students to print your class PowerPoint presentations in a more sustainable manner, we recommend that you save the files as PDF documents containing several slides on one page, and in a plain “black text on white background” format.

To do this in PowerPoint 365, follow these steps:

1. If your presentation has a colored background, or if you used one of the templates with a non-white background, click on the “Design” tab in the top navigation; then click on “Format Background and check the box “Hide background graphics, then click “Apply to All”;

2. Click on the tab “File,” then on “Save a Copy”; browse to the location where you want to save it, and change the “Save as Type” field to PDF (*.pdf);

3. Click “Options” and select “Handouts” from the “Publish Options” dropdown menu; and make sure that “6 Slides” is selected, or change this to a different number if preferred;

4. Select “Frame Slides” under “Publish Options”, then click “OK” then click “Save”.

Adding an individualized question on Green Teaching to your Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET)

At the end of each semester you will receive an email from the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment with instructions on how to add a customized question to your Student Evaluation of Teaching form.

Sample question:

“The fact that this course was a “Certified Green Course” made me more aware of the potential effects of my education on the environment.”