Pennsylvania State University
AC-2: Learning Outcomes

See file above.

A required course for graduation in the Business School is BA 342 which covers four main topics: ethics, social responsibility, sustainability and diversity. Below are learning outcomes from the sustainability literacy series: - Define sustainability - Explain the “Triple Bottom Line” (Economic, Environment, Social) - Understand the importance of responsibility for/stewardship of resources (personal and corporate) - Consider the three major forces (population, intensity resource usage, climate) that drive all approaches to sustainability - Explain intensity of resource usage by applying the “Tragedy of the Commons” to sustainability - Understand population statistics and their impact on sustainability - Consider the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s impact on corporations - Understand sustainability and corporations through the use of data, cases and exercises - Learn to work with Sustainability Reporting Tools (GRI, Dow Jones, Carbon, ISO, etc.) - Consider all Smeal majors and their responsibility to sustainability through cases and data From our survey of program officers: One of our program educational objectives is that early career Biological Engineering graduates will be expected to: "Effectively identify, analyze and design sustainable solutions to address issues and opportunities throughout the world"

A list of degree programs with sustainability learning outcomes was developed in the following manner: (1) A survey was sent to all undergraduate and graduate program officers in 2011, asking them to identify academic programs that focus on sustainability, and additional programs that have specific sustainability learning outcomes. Programs that met either or both of these criteria were included on the list. (2) This initial list was reviewed and updated in 2014 by searching though the online University Bulletin, which provides detailed descriptions of all Undergraduate and Graduate degree programs. Our value for the number of students graduating from programs with sustainability learning outcomes is a conservative one, because it does not include graduates of minor programs, since we lacked sufficient information to avoid double-counting. Also, we lacked information on degrees awarded by specific inter-college programs, which include several graduate-level sustainability programs. Penn State currently does not specify sustainability learning outcomes at the institutional level.