Connecticut College
AC-1: Academic Courses

We distributed a survey to all faculty members at the college in Fall 2017, which provided the definitions of sustainability courses and courses that include sustainability (taken directly from the STARS technical manual and listing the UN Sustainable Development Goals). The survey is uploaded as a supporting document below. We asked respondents to determine if their courses met the criteria. 55 of the 165 faculty at the college responded to this survey. We also asked faculty members to rate the degree to which their courses incorporates each of the three areas of sustainability: environmental health, social wellbeing and economic viability on the following scale (5=central theme of the course; 4=major theme of the course; 3=major theme of a unit or minor theme throughout the course; 2=mentioned occasionally; 1=not considered at all). We eliminated any courses that did not substantially include (3 or higher) in at least two of the areas. In some cases faculty did not fill out the survey, but sustainability staff had conversations with the faculty member and/or looked at the syllabus and determined that courses fit the criteria (see notes on course inventory). Course schedules from 2016-2017 and from 2017-2018 were then evaluated to determine the number of sustainability courses offered. We counted each section of a course as a separate course (but not if it was multiple lab sections of course that met all together for class). At the college we have 31 departments and 6 interdisciplinary majors. We included the total of 37 departments and programs for this analysis.

For courses taught by different professors - only sections taught by faculty who completed the survey were counted as sustainability courses