Overall Rating Silver
Overall Score 64.13
Liaison Michael Kensler
Submission Date Feb. 4, 2022

STARS v2.2

Auburn University
AC-1: Academic Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 10.26 / 14.00 Sarah Hamilton
Associate Professor and Director
Academic Sustainability Program
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Figures required to calculate the percentage of courses offered by the institution that are sustainability course offerings:
Undergraduate Graduate
Total number of courses offered by the institution 17,599 3,280
Number of sustainability-focused courses offered 335 228
Number of sustainability-inclusive courses offered 1,535 384

Percentage of courses that are sustainability course offerings:
11.89

Total number of academic departments that offer courses:
63

Number of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
52

Percentage of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
82.54

A copy of the institution’s inventory of its sustainability course offerings and descriptions:
Do the figures reported above cover one, two, or three academic years?:
Three

A brief description of the methodology used to complete the course inventory :

1. Using the Auburn University Bulletin (http://bulletin.auburn.edu/), we created a list of all academic units with courses offered on campus (see attached document, "Sust courses from Bulletin").
2. We went through the entire Bulletin manually and compiled a list of every course matching the STARS definitions of "sustainability-focused" or "sustainability-inclusive," based on the titles and descriptions of the courses.
3. Using the online scheduler, we pulled up the schedules of courses for each semester in the three year period. We went through all the course offerings in each semester, noting whenever one of the "sustainability-focused" or "sustainability-inclusive" courses was taught. In a small number of cases, "Special Topics" courses or other classes that were not listed in the Bulletin appeared to have a significant sustainability content, and were added to the list of courses for the semester (see attached document, LIST OF COURSES).
4. Using information from the Registrar's office and the completed lists of courses for each semester, we tabulated the following information:
A. The total number of courses taught in each academic unit during each semester in the three-year period.
B. The total number of sustainability-focused and sustainability-inclusive courses taught in each academic unit during each semester in the three-year period.


How were courses with multiple offerings or sections counted for the figures reported above?:
Each offering or section of a course was counted as an individual course

A brief description of how courses with multiple offerings or sections were counted:

Each section listed in the scheduler was counted individually. Because hundreds of sections of Auburn's non-sustainability related core curriculum courses (eg ENGL 110, HIST 1010) are offered each semester, this methodology produced a relatively low final percentage of sustainability-related courses. Nonetheless, we feel that it provides the most accurate overview of the percentage of classrooms in which sustainability content is discussed.


Website URL where information about the sustainability course offerings is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

We included special topics courses that stated a specific topic focus in the course title.
We did not include graduate or undergraduate courses based on independent research, thesis, practicum, clinical, internship, directed study, or laboratory work.
We did not include any online courses.
We excluded all courses with the following subject codes: AFROTC, AROTC, COOP, GLOB, GRAD, NROTC, UNDG, LBAR.

Descriptions of all courses, along with a designation of them as Sustainability-Focused or Sustainability-Related, are included on the attached spreadsheet. This spreadsheet also includes information about when/how many times each course was taught over the three-year period.

Please note that the total number of academic units reported for AC-1 (65 units) is larger than the number listed in AC-9 (59 units). This is because several course codes (UNIV, INTL, etc.) do not correspond to any formal department on campus. In addition, over the three-year period various programs underwent name changes, new tracks and majors were created, and certain courses were shifted from one department to another, creating some overlap and resulting in a slightly different list for AC-1 than the one generated for AC-9.


We included special topics courses that stated a specific topic focus in the course title.
We did not include graduate or undergraduate courses based on independent research, thesis, practicum, clinical, internship, directed study, or laboratory work.
We did not include any online courses.
We excluded all courses with the following subject codes: AFROTC, AROTC, COOP, GLOB, GRAD, NROTC, UNDG, LBAR.

Descriptions of all courses, along with a designation of them as Sustainability-Focused or Sustainability-Related, are included on the attached spreadsheet. This spreadsheet also includes information about when/how many times each course was taught over the three-year period.

Please note that the total number of academic units reported for AC-1 (65 units) is larger than the number listed in AC-9 (59 units). This is because several course codes (UNIV, INTL, etc.) do not correspond to any formal department on campus. In addition, over the three-year period various programs underwent name changes, new tracks and majors were created, and certain courses were shifted from one department to another, creating some overlap and resulting in a slightly different list for AC-1 than the one generated for AC-9.

The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.