Arizona State University
AC-1: Academic Courses

This course inventory was completed with support from the University Technology Office, School of Sustainability, and University Sustainability Practices. The data set used for this report reflects one academic year - Fall 2018, Spring 2019, and Summer 2019.

The following logic was used to filter our course catalog and create the data set that we ultimately inventoried:
- Courses with zero enrollment were removed
- Individually-directed courses were removed
- Remedial English Courses & ASU Bridge/Orientation Courses were removed
- Non-credit courses were removed
- Courses that are strictly practice-oriented, e.g. medical courses dedicated to clinical practice, art courses dedicated to performance, technique, or composition, and physical education courses that are activity-based were removed.
- Cross-listed courses were removed
- Duplicate sections were removed

The final data set provided by UTO was further reviewed to filter out ROTC courses as their content is determined by an external body. It was also reviewed to remove additional practice-oriented courses that were not automatically removed by UTO.


To identify sustainability-focused and sustainability-inclusive courses, the following steps were taken:

(1) Courses offered through the School of Sustainability were automatically designated as sustainability-focused -- generally courses with the following prefixes:
SOS (School of Sustainability)
BMY (Biomimicry)
EMS (Executive Sustainability Leadership)
SFS (Sustainable Food Systems)

(2) Sustainability Scientists and Scholars across ASU were surveyed to identify courses that may not have appeared to be sustainability-related based on their catalog descriptions.

(3) Course descriptions were reviewed to determine if courses were clearly identifiable as sustainability-focused based on the criteria in the Technical Manual

(4) Course descriptions were reviewed to determine if courses had connections to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Targets in order to mark them as sustainability-inclusive.

(5) The Office of the Provost sent an email out to deans asking them to help identify sustainability courses in their areas.

Notes:
(1) Some special topics courses did not have full descriptions available in the course catalog. In these instances, course titles were reviewed for clear connections to sustainability.

(2) When considering sustainability-inclusive courses, efforts were made to differentiate between conceptual courses that would provide knowledge that was useful in sustainability work with those that applied it to real-world situations. For example, SWU 320, Research Methods in Social Work, was not marked as a sustainability-inclusive course (Course description: Applies scientific principles to field practice, problem formulation, intervention procedures, and impact assessment in social work.) However, SWU 374, Diversity and Oppression in Social Work was marked as a sustainability-inclusive course (Course description: Issues of social inequality related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. Emphasizes populations of the Southwest.)

(3) During the reporting process, individual faculty and deans provided feedback about which courses in their areas were sustainability-focused or sustainability inclusive. Faculty were provided with the STARS definitions for both course designation options. Most faculty simply marked their courses as "inclusive" or "focused" and did not provide additional information about how their course addressed sustainability. Given this limited information, each faculty identified course was individually reviewed. For the most part, courses identified by faculty as "inclusive" or "focused" were entered as such into our inventory. However, approximately 25% of courses identified by faculty as "inclusive" or "focused" were not entered as such based on the available information and context.

Each course was counted as a single course regardless of the number of offerings or sections. For example, if a course had multiple sections that were offered over different campuses (including online) or over different semesters, the course was only counted once.

Notes regarding the number of departments reported for AC-1, Academic Courses and AC-9, Research and Scholarship:

Academic departments are defined in varying ways across ASU to encourage trans-disciplinary research.

For the purposes of AC-1 and AC-9, departments were determined using two criteria:
(1) If they are the academic sub-division of a "school" or "college" headed by a dean. Note that not all divisions headed by a dean have further subdivisions and that some "schools" or "colleges" are not headed by a dean (and are thus counted as departments).
(2) If they are listed as "departments" as they are defined in this list of instructional faculty: https://catalog.asu.edu/faculty_list



Within the course inventory, while courses are listed with a subject (three letter prefix), departments are not included for each course because a given course may be offered by multiple departments (especially when a course may be offered on different campuses). In order to calculate course offerings by departments, departments were manually matched with sustainability courses where possible. The course catalog was further manually reviewed to confirm that a course was listed as being offered by that department.