College of Charleston
AC-2: Learning Outcomes

The College of Charleston's current Quality Enhancement Plan (“Sustainability Literacy as a Bridge to Addressing 21st Century Problems") is a campus-wide reaccreditation campaign that helps the university meet standards set by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. Every 10 years, SACSCOC mandates universities plan and implement a unifying initiative, approved by the university's executive leadership team, with broad campus buy-in and reach. In Charleston, that team included the President, Provost and Executive Vice President of Business Affairs, amongst others.

Reviewed and committed to by leaders at the highest level of our institution, the goals and student learning outcomes of the current QEP on sustainability literacy are recognized as being ones that apply to the entire student undergraduate body. In fact, the first goal of the plan is specifically structured to be campus-wide (To build awareness of twenty-first century sustainability problems), and the first student learning outcome is that “Students can identify various elements of sustainability and the relationships between them (social, economic, and environmental)."

The university advances this first of five goals and this first of seven student learning outcomes by engaging in teaching modules presented to all first-year College of Charleston students, and student learning and comprehension is assessed by a formal survey.

Remaining student learning outcomes instrumental to the success of the QEP are:

Students identify the three systems of sustainability and the relationship between them (social, economic and environmental); students identify key ways to be more sustainable in their personal life and on campus; students identify policies and practices that have led to unsustainability; students synthesize knowledge from two or more systems to address a sustainability problem; students demonstrate the impact of production/consumption practices on social, economic and/or ecological systems; students design a solution to a given sustainability problem; students advocate for resiliency at the individual, institutional, community, national or international level.

The figure above was determined by accounting for the number of graduates from the following programs (listed below that require an understanding of sustainability) in 2017 and 2018.

The following programs require an understanding of sustainability and the Triple Bottom Line:

Historic Preservation and Community Planning
Business Administration
Entrepreneurship
Hospitality and Tourism Management
Leadership Change and Social Responsibility
Public Health
Health
Environmental and Sustainability Studies
Crime, Law and Society
Anthropology
Urban Studies
Women's and Gender Studies
Geology

In 2017, as part of our Quality Enhancement Plan ("Sustainability Literacy as a Bridge to Addressing 21st-Century Problems"), the Center for Sustainable Development launched a First-Year Experience lecture that exposes all incoming freshmen to the concept of sustainability and the Triple Bottom Line.

Through this QEP initiative, we anticipate that about 2,000 students each year will gain a basic understanding of sustainability literacy, and we plan to assess that understanding and report its success in future STARS applications. The first class of students will graduate in 2021.