University of Saskatchewan
AC-1: Academic Courses

Based on our university's definition of sustainability, we identifed sustainability focused and sustainability related courses in the U of S curriculum. Using the open courseware program, the information about the course offerings is publicly available and thoroughly searchable. Initially, a set of search terms were used to filter out likely courses from this database. These search terms were: • Renewable • Sustainable (sustainable/sustainability) • Corporate social responsibility (CSR) • Urbanization, urban-planning • Globalization • Biodiversity • Conserve (conservation) • Environment • Ecosystem • Biosphere • Stewardship • Impact assessment • Climate change, global warming • Greenhouse gas emissions • Ecological footprint, carbon footprint • Deforestation • Greenwashing • Pollution • Extinction • Non-renewable • Remediation • Desertification The following information was tracked for each course. • Course title • Course number • Instructor name • Link to syllabus • Course description • College/department of the course • Link to open courseware site When the open courseware inventory was completed we had a fairly thorough scan of where and how sustainability is present in the University’s curriculum. At this point the spreadsheet was used to reach out to the professors of the individual courses. It was important to us to know whether the instructors themselves identified the courses as sustainability-related or sustainability-focused, and their assessment of where the course fell was respected in cases in which were able to successfully communicate with them.