Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis beginning March 16
Wake Forest University faculty members are invited to enhance their teaching by participating in the Magnolias Curriculum Project taking place May 20 -21, 2026. In this workshop, faculty across disciplines are invited to explore how they can engage with the environment and sustainability issues in their teaching. Over 130 Wake Forest faculty have participated in the program since it started in 2012.
No prior experience with sustainability-related issues in the classroom or in research is necessary, and faculty at all ranks and career stages are welcome. This innovative approach to curricular change, modeled on the nationally renowned Piedmont Project at Emory University, provides faculty with an intellectually stimulating and collegial experience to pool their expertise.
The workshop will explore how you can meaningfully integrate sustainability—broadly defined—into your courses. Although we start by taking a close look at Wake Forest University and the larger Piedmont region, we invite participants to engage in local-to-global comparisons.
The Magnolias Project kicks off with a two-day workshop that will offer opportunities to extend research and teaching horizons across disciplines and create new networks with fellow colleagues. Following the workshop, faculty participants prepare discipline-specific course materials on their own over the summer. Participants receive a stipend of $500 upon completion of a new or revised syllabus.
Project participants agree to:
- Read some materials prior to the workshop
- Participate in the full 2-day workshop on May 20 – 21, 2026
- Commit time during the summer to prepare or revise a syllabus and submit it in August
- Rejoin colleagues in the fall to discuss their insights and experiences.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis beginning March 16.
Browse the Magnolias or Piedmont Project websites for example syllabi and faculty statements. Still uncertain? Read what previous participants had to say about their time in the program below!
The Magnolias Curriculum Workshop organized by the Office of Sustainability offered an incredible opportunity to connect with fellow faculty and discover the wide range of support available at WFU for integrating sustainability into our teaching and outreach. I encourage anyone looking to bring new, innovative ideas into their courses, especially those who may need time, support, or collaboration to move those ideas forward, to take part.
The Magnolias Curriculum Project was a truly amazing experience and I urge everyone to consider participating! Rather than completely overhauling my courses or substituting chemistry curriculum with sustainability topics, I learned how to enhance my teaching methods by looking at existing content (and assignments, activities, readings, etc.) through a sustainability lens. This subtle yet powerful shift in perspective ensures that students not only learn chemistry but also understand its impact on the environment and society. By introducing – even if just incrementally – the importance of sustainable practices within the framework of traditional chemistry topics, and by tapping into the vast array of resources and learning spaces already available on our campus, I believe we can make the learning process more relevant and engaging for our students, and I am excited to try this after having completed the Magnolias Curriculum Project workshop.
It was wonderful to move between periods of individual ideation and collective/ partnered ideation with our peers, all from diverse specialisations, yet all having shared purpose. Much like a writer’s retreat is a space to develop rough ideas into a full paper, the Magnolias program was a space for ideating and shaping new teaching ideas in the wide realm of sustainability and connecting us with those on campus who share these ideals. It was two days well-spent, re-centering me in the “why” of the work and allowing a parting of the clouds when it came to the many ideas I had in my head pre-program. If issues of sustainability, broadly defined, resonate with you, take the time to attend and allow the resonance to take actionable form, in community with like-idealed people. It was fun. And, the food was good too!
The Magnolias workshop was a great place to meet other faculty and learn about all the resources we have at WFU to help us engage students and community stakeholders in learning about sustainability. I would, hands down, recommend it to anyone who has ideas of innovations they want to implement in their courses but lacks the dedicated time and/or connections to make it happen. The staff at the Office of Sustainability are fantastic resources that can connect you to the right people to provide students with the experiential learning opportunities they expect to find at WFU.