Cal Poly Humboldt
IN-1: Sustainability Course Designation

Process: 1. A committee of faculty and staff first convened to evaluate courses and give them sustainability designations during Fall 2012. 2. The committee decided to create an inventory of existing courses that are broadly associated with the three concepts of sustainability: society, economy, and environment. This would be a listing of courses already offered, with no curricular changes proposed. 3. The committee created a description of what connotes the two categories of sustainability courses: sustainability focused and sustainability related. • Sustainability-focused: course includes social, economic, and environmental dimensions, or examines a topic using sustainability as a lens • Sustainability-related: course includes two of the three dimensions (social and economic, or economic and environmental, or environmental and social) 4. One staff member was tasked with conducting a keyword search of all course descriptions in the HSU catalog. 40 terms were searched and were assigned a relationship with one of the three concepts of sustainability • environment keywords: environ*, natur*, habitat*, natural resourc*, carrying capacity, ecolog*, species*, wildlife, forest, fish*, ecosystem*, fauna, flora, plant*, air*, water*, land*, energ*, climat*, pollut* • economy keywords: econom*, business*, financ*, development, developing • society keywords: social*, societ*, socio*, ethic*, justice, right*, policy*, regulat*, politic*, future generation • economy/social keywords: poverty*, third world, civilization, communit* • environment/social keywords: conserv* 5. If the staff member found one of the keywords in the course description, it was flagged for potentially including a concept of sustainability and needing a second review by the full committee to confirm its relationship to the concept. 6. All courses confirmed by the committee to have a relationship to either two (related) or three (focused) sustainability concepts were published to department chairs, who were asked to further confirm, add, or subtract from the list. 7. After reconciling revisions, the final list of sustainability designated courses was sent to HSU course catalog administrators. Courses deemed sustainability-focused or sustainability-related were given a graphical representation of “leaves” next to the entry in the catalog. (See attachment for example.) 8. Class schedules were published with a new column (Sust*) and the footnote “*Sustainability (Sust) classes are either SF for Sustainability Focused or SR for Sustainability Related.” 9. The process of convening a committee, conducting a keyword search of course descriptions, and vetting selections through faculty was repeated during the academic year 2016-2017 for all courses that were new to the catalog since Fall 2012. It is anticipated that an updated catalog with these revisions and additions will be published for the 2018-2019 year because the committee does not anticipate meeting the deadline for changes to the 2017-2018 catalog.

To see how and which courses have been designated as sustainability related or focused, download attachment (2016-2017 Catalog) and scroll to page 208 where course descriptions are located by department. Look for "leaf" symbol next to each course as described above.