Skidmore College
AC-1: Academic Courses

In order to gain the most accurate assessment of the opportunities our students have to engage in the concepts and practices of sustainability in the classroom, we took a snapshot of a typical academic year (2015-16). While we have many additional sustainability courses and courses that include sustainability in our full course catalog, a subset of those courses may not be offered in a given year because of sabbatical leaves, changes within departments, enrollment pressures in other areas, etc. By taking a snapshot of a typical year, we believe we are getting a more precise calculation of the sustainability-related course opportunities for our students. We wanted to note that we did include special topics courses in our snapshot because we have a rich array of sustainability-related special topics offered each and every year, and the special topics course rubric at Skidmore is often used for a first-time course offering by our permanent faculty. In other words, the special topics rubric is often an indication of the development of a long-term course offering. We maintain a fairly comprehensive, ongoing inventory of sustainability-related courses through our Environmental Studies and Sciences program. An interdisciplinary steering committee for the program reviews new and revised courses that faculty from across the College are developing. As a validation of this inventory for STARS, we asked departments to review their 2015-16 course offerings for sustainability and sustainability-related courses. It is worth noting that in addition to undertaking a formal course designation project for Civic Engagement courses at Skidmore, we are beginning to work on a formal course designation for sustainability-related courses. In terms of definitions, we adhered to those described in AC1.G in the STARS 2.1 Technical Manual. As noted in our responses above, we do not have any graduate programs at Skidmore, but we do offer an innovative sustainability-related program for executives called the New York Executive Clean Energy Leadership Program (NY EXCEL). NY EXCEL educates entrepreneurs and executives about the markets, financing models, permitting requirements, technology solutions and other unique aspects of New York’s cleantech industry. NY EXCEL also helps participants build vital networks and provides mentoring to help participants create successful cleantech initiatives.