University of Waterloo
AC-1: Academic Courses

The Sustainability Office reviewed all courses within the 2017/18 Academic Calendar for keywords that were related to sustainability following the STARS-provided definitions and major sustainability challenges such as climate change, water management, pollution, land use, biodiversity and conservation. Many cross-listed courses are offered given the interdisciplinary approach to the particular issues (i.e. Geography and Earth Sciences, or Planning and Public Health). While the inventory of course offerings includes each cross listing as a separate line item, the numbers reported in Part 1 of the credit weight a cross-listed course as a single course offering, regardless of whether it appears in the course list under multiple academic departments. The same methodology was followed for reporting total number of undergraduate and graduate courses that did not have sustainability content. This is the third year in which Waterloo has developed the course inventory. In the 2016/17 calendar, the Sustainability Office circulated a copy of all identified courses to the relevant department chairs for validation, and made minor adjustment according to department chair feedback. The total number of courses also excluded courses which are not typical for students, including transfer credits, high-school credits, credits from other institutions (i.e. Wilfrid Laurier University), and courses which were not offered until future terms but had already been integrated within the calendar.

Academic departments included all those listed as course owners within the academic calendar, including Dean’s Offices, Co-operative Education and Career Action, and Graduate Studies. Academic departments hosted primarily through the Affiliated and Federated Institutions of Waterloo were excluded based on the boundary for this report. This is different than how Waterloo typically identifies and lists academic departments, but is most appropriately aligned with the credits for STARS. Because Waterloo weighted cross-listed courses as a single course for the purposes of accuracy against the overall number courses available on campus, the spreadsheet contains more courses than reported here. The spreadsheet includes multiple iterations of the same course based on which program/department's calendar it is listed in.