Whitney Crutchfield, assistant professor of Textile Development and Marketing in FIT’s Jay and Patty Baker School of Business and Technology, was recently selected to serve as an inaugural State University of New York (SUNY) Sustainability Faculty Fellow. The cohort comprises 11 faculty members from 11 SUNY campuses. Collaboratively, the fellows will help other SUNY educators across the system to incorporate climate and sustainability concepts into existing courses and to develop new applied learning opportunities for all students.
As a Sustainability Faculty Fellow, Crutchfield will be in connection with faculty throughout SUNY, exchanging knowledge across disciplines. The fellows will work to develop model curricula, training workshops, and a systemwide repository of resources. They will hold joint conferences and share best practices with SUNY educators. In the process, they will gain a greater understanding of how to prepare SUNY students for careers in New York’s and the world’s clean energy economies.
“I am excited—and optimistic—about sustainability and honored to contribute to sustainability leadership at FIT and across the SUNY system,” Crutchfield says. “Sustainability should shape every discipline in SUNY institutions, not just as an adjacent topic, but as a key framework. The SUNY Sustainability Faculty Fellows program brings together faculty from an incredibly wide range of backgrounds, from soil scientists to architects to healthcare experts to textile specialists, giving us the opportunity to celebrate and highlight the inherent interconnectedness of sustainability concepts.”
The Sustainability Faculty Fellows were announced by SUNY Chancellor John B. King during New York Climate Week in September. The fellowship program is part of SUNY’s Climate and Sustainability Action Plan and is aligned with New York State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which requires state institutions to take the lead in decarbonization and waste reduction. The sustainability fellows were selected following an open call for nomination.