Rebecca Watts Hull, Ph.D.
Assistant Director, Faculty Development for Sustainability Education Initiatives
Rebecca Watts Hull leads strategic initiatives and faculty professional learning that advance education for sustainability. She engages faculty from diverse disciplines to incorporate real-world problem-solving into their course design and teaching practices. Watts Hull co-manages a grant program, offers workshops, and facilitates an ongoing community of practice for faculty that fosters peer learning, reflection, and growth in sustainability teaching and learning. As part of the Center’s Faculty Teaching and Learning team, she also collaborates with her peers to integrate these evidence-based approaches into the Center’s signature programs.
Watts Hull advances Georgia Tech’s strategic initiatives related to sustainability education through the Sustainability Education and Curriculum Committee and other partnerships and she manages Tech’s responsibilities as an Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Center for Sustainability Across the Curriculum. Her leadership beyond Georgia Tech includes facilitation of an international community of practice she founded in partnership with AASHE on “Scaling up Sustainability Across the Curriculum” and service on AASHE’s Advisory Council.
rwattshull@gatech.edu
Office
Clough 457
Teaching Interests
Social movements
American environmental history
Community development and community organizing
Organizational leadership and change
Environmental and sustainability studies
Research Interests
Changes in faculty teaching practices and student self-efficacy
Identity, attitudes and competencies associated with curricular change
Impacts of learning embedded in real-world problem-solving on student self-efficacy with respect to “improving the human condition”
Education
Ph.D. and M.S. in History and Sociology of Technology and Science, Georgia Institute of Technology
M.S. in Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan
B.A. in Psychology, Bucknell University
Recent Publications
Hull, R. A. Watts. (2025). Scaling Up Faculty Engagement in Education for Sustainability Across the Curriculum: Five Strategies for Amplifying Impact. In Higher Education’s Leadership in Climate Action and Sustainability (pp. 77-106). IGI Global Scientific Publishing.
Hull, R. Watts., Hammer, B. K., & Leavey, J. K. (2025). Improving Understanding of the Role of Biology in Advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The American Biology Teacher, 87(4-5), 254-262.
Schulz, A., Shriver, C., Patka, A., Greiner, C., Seleb, B., Hull, R. W., Sullivan, C. S. , Sonnenberg-Klein, J. M. & Moore, R. (2025). “Intradisciplinary Growth of Sustainability-Minded Engineers through Conservation Technology.” Advances in Engineering Education, 13(3).
Hull, R. Watts (2024). “Three ways universities can enhance teacher engagement with the Sustainable Development Goals.” Times Higher Education, October 30, 2024.
Raphael, C., Young, S., Byers, T., Dripps, W., Gruter, F., Hull, R.W., Johnson, V., Kim, E., Kimura, A.H., Pogglioli, N., Szczys, P., Vasashth, A., Wang, G. (2024). Teaching Sustainability Competencies across the Disciplines: A Guide for Instructors. Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE).
Pucha, R., Newton, S. H., Alemdar, M., Watts Hull, R., Bhagat, A. (2020). Contextualized design projects in graphics and visualization course: Student perceptions and sustainability systems-thinking knowledge. Paper presented at the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, June 22-26, 2020.
