Santa Clara University
AC-1: Academic Courses

Definitions:
1. Sustainability courses include any of the following:
- Courses primarily about the concept of sustainability (e.g., Introduction to Sustainability, Sustainable Development, etc.)
- Courses primarily about the application of sustainability within a field (e.g., Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Business).
- Courses primarily about a major sustainability challenge, including climate change, global poverty and inequality, natural resource depletion, environmental degradation, any of the principles in the Earth Charter, or any of the targets in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These courses should address more than one of the three dimensions of sustainability (environmental health, social wellbeing, economic prosperity).

2. Courses that include sustainability are primarily focused on a topic other than sustainability, but incorporate:
- A unit or module on the concept of sustainability.
- Or a sustainability challenge (addressing more than one of the dimensions of social, economic, and environmental sustainability).
- Or one or more sustainability-focused activities.
- Or sustainability issues integrated throughout the course.

To count, these units/modules, activities or issues should be documented in course descriptions or syllabi.



Methodology:
Inventory was based on academic year [2018-19] course offerings provided by the Registrar’s Office.

Courses were identified as Including Sustainability (IS) or a Sustainability Course (SC) based on these steps:

1. Reviewing new courses

All courses offered for the first time in the academic year under review (new courses) are reviewed on an individual basis based on title and course description using SCU’s CourseAvail (https://www.scu.edu/apps/courseavail/?p=schedule). Courses are tagged either IS or SC if they are a part of the Sustainability Pathway, or, if the Curriculum Development Intern identifies sustainability content based on the course description.

2. Historical Tagging

All tags from the previous academic year are transferred over to the current academic year. This includes tags we have saved for courses that may not have been offered in the previous academic year but have been offered and tagged in past academic years (tagged but not offered courses). Tags from previous years were tagged for a variety of reasons based upon previous tagging protocol.

a) Courses apart of the core curriculum such as Experiential Learning for Social Justice (I_ELSJ) or Diversity (E_DIV), Civic Engagement (E_CIV), or Ethics (E_ETH) were flagged as having the potential to include sustainability. These courses were reviewed (through course title and description) and then tagged if they fit IS or SC. The course component was then used as the primary reason for the tag.

b) Courses apart of one of the following academic pathways including:
Applied Ethics (PATH_AE),
Food, Hunger, Poverty, Environment (PATH_FHP)
Global Health (PATH_GH)
Human Rights (PATH_HR)
Law & Social Justice (PATH_LSJ)
Leading People, Organizations, & Social Change (PATH_LPOS)
Race, Place, & Social Inequalities (PATH_RPSI)
Sustainability (PATH_SUST)
Values in Science & Technology (VST)
were also flagged as having the potential to include sustainability. These courses were reviewed (through course title and description) and then tagged if they fit IS or SC. The pathway was then used as the primary reason for the tag.

c) Lastly, we used the Earth Charter and Sustainable Development Goals to identify sustainability that may exist in any course left untagged through the core curriculum and pathway evaluations. These tools were helpful to ensure a thorough and accurate initial tagging of all of the courses offered at SCU to provide a great baseline for our tagging process each academic year. EC or SDG was then used as the primary reason for the tag.

3. Faculty Review (FR)

Department chairs were asked to identify the sustainability courses taught in their department in a campus-wide form distributed annually. Unless we were told that all sections of a course include a sustainability component, we only tagged sections taught by specified instructors. Selected faculty reviewed and provided further clarification regarding course tags.

Note:
In previous reporting, we have made an effort not to double count tagged IS or SC courses by making a note of which department offering the course is the “primary” department and only counting these course offerings. However, we realized that we failed to do the same analysis for untagged courses, leading to an under reporting of IS and SC courses and an over reporting of untagged courses. Therefore, this year we are double counting all cross listed courses, both untagged courses and IS/SC courses.

In previous reporting, we have made an effort not to double count tagged IS or SC courses by making a note of which department offering the course is the “primary” department and only counting these course offerings. However, we realized that we failed to do the same analysis for untagged courses, leading to an under reporting of IS and SC courses and an over reporting of untagged courses. Therefore, this year we are double counting all cross listed courses, both untagged courses and IS/SC courses.