University of Notre Dame
AC-1: Academic Courses

The sustainability courses are those that are identified as part of the Sustainability Minor offerings at Notre Dame. From the website: https://sustainabilitystudies.nd.edu/ Welcome to Sustainability Studies at Notre Dame! Sustainability lies at the intersection of humanities, sciences, and social sciences. In order to address the complex of global challenges facing us in areas such as climate, water, food security, biodiversity, waste, poverty, and urbanization, new approaches and bold creativity are needed. We support students interested in pursuing sustainability studies from a wide variety of trandisciplinary perspectives, drawing on courses from all five undergraduate colleges and the Law School as well as internships, study-abroad programs, service opportunities, and independent research. Expanding on the university’s definition of sustainability, necessary criteria were developed for a course to be sustainability focused or related. The sustainability “criteria” are listed below: •Sustainability as a concept: the history, politics, culture, and science underlying sustainable development and sustainability •Natural limits: the role of human actions in relation to finite capacity of natural ecosystems (including the global ecosystem) to absorb throughput of matter and energy from the human economy •Maintaining ecosystems: natural resource conservation science and practices to maintain the integrity of ecosystems in the face of rising human demands •Business and economics: Re-shaping market conditions to address “market failures” with respect to the environment and to provide incentives for businesses and economic systems to better maintain the integrity of ecosystems •Reporting and disclosure: the role of mandatory and voluntary reporting of economic, environmental and social performance of organizations, addressing operational and strategic risks associated with corporate responsibility and sustainability through implementation, testing, and monitoring of processes and controls associated with the related KPIs or reported data (10K, Sustainability Reports, AICPA, IAASN, AA1000AS, GRI, GHG, ISO, STARS, SEI etc…) •Social capacity: the social factors that support behavioral shifts (including but not limited to economic choices) necessary to enable and encourage societies to live in ways compatible with maintaining the long-term integrity of ecosystems •Social equity: The mutual interactions between social inequality and environmental degradation, including theories of social reforms required to ensure an environmentally healthy and socially just society. •Sustainability discourse: the framing and discussion of sustainability in the media, politics, and everyday life. •Culture, religion, and ethics: how culture, religion, and ethics – from consumerism to environmental stewardship – shape human behavior toward the natural world. •Governance: how legal frameworks and policies shape human behavior toward the natural world. •Science and Technology: the role of basic science and technology (broadly and individual technologies) specifically in influencing human impacts on the natural world. •Planning and design: concepts and techniques from urban, regional, and rural planning and/or building design and/or product design that can influence human impacts on the environment and environmental impacts on humans. •Sustainability science: the new field of sustainability science that specifically attempts to build interdisciplinary perspectives from the themes (and related academic disciplines) listed about to promote human-environmental balance.