| Overall Rating | Silver |
|---|---|
| Overall Score | 52.37 |
| Liaison | Sergio Alza |
| Submission Date | April 5, 2024 |
Brock University
AC-1: Academic Courses
| Status | Score | Responsible Party |
|---|---|---|
|
9.77 / 14.00 |
Sergio
Alza Project Manager Facilities Management |
"---"
indicates that no data was submitted for this field
Part 1. Sustainability course offerings
| Undergraduate | Graduate | |
| Total number of courses offered by the institution | 4,029 | 600 |
| Number of sustainability-focused courses offered | 179 | 30 |
| Number of sustainability-inclusive courses offered | 252 | 42 |
Percentage of courses that are sustainability course offerings:
10.87
Part 2. Sustainability course offerings by department
43
Number of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
35
Percentage of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
81.40
Documentation
Do the figures reported above cover one, two, or three academic years?:
One
A brief description of the methodology used to complete the course inventory :
Methodology:
1. The 2018-2019 course inventory previously submitted to STARS served as the baseline document to build this updated course inventory for 2022-2023.
2. This baseline document was compared to the 2022-2023 course calendar (the most recent fully complete course calendar).
3. All undergraduate & graduate courses were cross-referenced with the most recent course calendar. If a course was not on 2022-2023 course calendar and was present on the 2018-2019 inventory, this course offering was deleted. If a course was present in the 2022-2023 course calendar (i.e. a new course that had been added over the past three years) then this was inputted as a new course offering.
4. The undergraduate and graduate courses still present from 2018-2019 in the new inventory kept the same sustainability designation. Verification of all new course offerings (i.e. courses added to the inventory) were assigned a sustainability Focused, Inclusive, or non-sustainability designation based on the course title and description (see notes below for more information).
5. When assigning these sustainability designations all crosslistings for each new course were verified to matched throughout (i.e. if 1 course had two crosslistings, these were both checked to have the same associated crosslistings and sustainability designation).
6. These sustainability designations for all new course offerings were then verified by an additional reviewer to ensure consistency.
7. Following this review, all sustainability-focused and inclusive course offerings for the 2022-2023 Fiscal year were then transferred over into a final inventory and tallied in the summary tables.
Notes:
Brock’s definition of Sustainability from our Sustainability Policy was followed when executing the methodology outlined above: “a practice that considers the preservation of present and future resources in a way that does not compromise the ability to meet the needs of those using them. Practicing Sustainability involves acknowledging the limits of available resources; it is the ability to maintain a defined and balanced system indefinitely with a focus on the conservation of resources. Sustainability can refer to environmentalism, social equity, physical consumption, cultural preservation, and economic development.” This definition was followed in conjunction to the STARS 2.2 explanation and examples of “Sustainability-Focused” versus “Sustainability-Inclusive”.
Each course was critically evaluated according to its course description to determine how it should be classified. To count as a Sustainability-Focused course, the title or description must have indicated a primary and explicit focus on sustainability. Keywords attained from the STARS, "Suggested Keywords for Sustainability Course and Research inventories," were used to determine whether a course's title or description demonstrated explicit focus. A course was counted as “Sustainability-Inclusive", if it did not have an explicit focus on sustainability but did have sustainability clearly incorporated into course content. To assist with these designations the course descriptions were also compared to the United Nations Sustainable Development goals (SDGs). If a course description had a correlation to at least one of the SDGs then the “sustainability-Inclusive” designation could be applied. If the course did not meet the criteria for “Sustainability-Focused” or “Sustainability-Inclusive”, it was deemed as a “N/A."
1. The 2018-2019 course inventory previously submitted to STARS served as the baseline document to build this updated course inventory for 2022-2023.
2. This baseline document was compared to the 2022-2023 course calendar (the most recent fully complete course calendar).
3. All undergraduate & graduate courses were cross-referenced with the most recent course calendar. If a course was not on 2022-2023 course calendar and was present on the 2018-2019 inventory, this course offering was deleted. If a course was present in the 2022-2023 course calendar (i.e. a new course that had been added over the past three years) then this was inputted as a new course offering.
4. The undergraduate and graduate courses still present from 2018-2019 in the new inventory kept the same sustainability designation. Verification of all new course offerings (i.e. courses added to the inventory) were assigned a sustainability Focused, Inclusive, or non-sustainability designation based on the course title and description (see notes below for more information).
5. When assigning these sustainability designations all crosslistings for each new course were verified to matched throughout (i.e. if 1 course had two crosslistings, these were both checked to have the same associated crosslistings and sustainability designation).
6. These sustainability designations for all new course offerings were then verified by an additional reviewer to ensure consistency.
7. Following this review, all sustainability-focused and inclusive course offerings for the 2022-2023 Fiscal year were then transferred over into a final inventory and tallied in the summary tables.
Notes:
Brock’s definition of Sustainability from our Sustainability Policy was followed when executing the methodology outlined above: “a practice that considers the preservation of present and future resources in a way that does not compromise the ability to meet the needs of those using them. Practicing Sustainability involves acknowledging the limits of available resources; it is the ability to maintain a defined and balanced system indefinitely with a focus on the conservation of resources. Sustainability can refer to environmentalism, social equity, physical consumption, cultural preservation, and economic development.” This definition was followed in conjunction to the STARS 2.2 explanation and examples of “Sustainability-Focused” versus “Sustainability-Inclusive”.
Each course was critically evaluated according to its course description to determine how it should be classified. To count as a Sustainability-Focused course, the title or description must have indicated a primary and explicit focus on sustainability. Keywords attained from the STARS, "Suggested Keywords for Sustainability Course and Research inventories," were used to determine whether a course's title or description demonstrated explicit focus. A course was counted as “Sustainability-Inclusive", if it did not have an explicit focus on sustainability but did have sustainability clearly incorporated into course content. To assist with these designations the course descriptions were also compared to the United Nations Sustainable Development goals (SDGs). If a course description had a correlation to at least one of the SDGs then the “sustainability-Inclusive” designation could be applied. If the course did not meet the criteria for “Sustainability-Focused” or “Sustainability-Inclusive”, it was deemed as a “N/A."
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 course was counted as an individual course regardless of the number of cross-listings.
- Non-credit courses were not included
- Thesis courses were included
- Co-op courses were included
- Non-credit courses were not included
- Thesis courses were included
- Co-op courses were included
Optional Fields
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Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
Any department that is listed under more than one faculty was not double counted.
Undergraduate sustainability course listings: https://brocku.ca/webcal/2023/undergrad/ensu.html#ENSU_2P02
Graduate sustainability course listings: https://brocku.ca/webcal/2023/graduate/snss.html#SSAS_5P04
PhD in Sustainability Courses:
https://brocku.ca/webcal/2022/graduate/ssci.html#SSCI_7P02
Undergraduate sustainability course listings: https://brocku.ca/webcal/2023/undergrad/ensu.html#ENSU_2P02
Graduate sustainability course listings: https://brocku.ca/webcal/2023/graduate/snss.html#SSAS_5P04
PhD in Sustainability Courses:
https://brocku.ca/webcal/2022/graduate/ssci.html#SSCI_7P02
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.