Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 72.62
Liaison Lisa Kilgore
Submission Date March 7, 2014
Executive Letter Download

STARS v1.2

Cornell University
ER-6: Sustainability-Focused Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 3.99 / 10.00 Lauren Chambliss
Communications Director
Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

The number of sustainability-focused courses offered :
163

The total number of courses offered :
4,087

Number of years covered by the data:
One

A list of sustainability-focused courses offered:
The website URL where the publicly available sustainability course inventory that includes a list of sustainability-focused courses is available:
A copy of the sustainability course inventory:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

The Atkinson Center (ACSF) oversees the delivery (publicly, via the web) and annual review of the most comprehensive list of sustainability-related courses at Cornell. With last year's submission, we changed our tracking system internally to identify courses as "focused" or "related" following the STARS criteria.

Total unique courses - for the 2010-2011 survey, the Cornell University Registrar and the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future spent a great deal of time identifying the unique courses offered at Cornell in the 2010-11 academic year by selecting distinct (not cross-listed) courses and excluding labs/fieldwork/clinics (required for another course), internships, independent studies, and special degree required work (like honors thesis, masters & doctoral research). For 2010-11, we reported 3965 total unique courses. For 2011-12, we reported 4000 total unique courses by using an estimate, rather than an exact count, based on the Registrar's reported 0.86% increase in the number of courses. Applying the same method for 2013-2014 data, we calculate a 2.2% increase to 4087 total unique courses for the denominator.

Additionally, a thorough search through Cornell's Course Roster was conducted, and new sustainability-related and focused courses were identified. The list of Sustainability Curricula provided by the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future was updated in July of 2013 to show these changes. The previously reported sustainability course list was also reviewed and some courses previously identified as focused were moved to the related category upon further review of the materials. Since last year's report, 95 net courses were added and 38 new/edited courses were added to the sustainability-focused category.

This submission reflects the courses offered in the 2013-2014 school year.


The Atkinson Center (ACSF) oversees the delivery (publicly, via the web) and annual review of the most comprehensive list of sustainability-related courses at Cornell. With last year's submission, we changed our tracking system internally to identify courses as "focused" or "related" following the STARS criteria.

Total unique courses - for the 2010-2011 survey, the Cornell University Registrar and the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future spent a great deal of time identifying the unique courses offered at Cornell in the 2010-11 academic year by selecting distinct (not cross-listed) courses and excluding labs/fieldwork/clinics (required for another course), internships, independent studies, and special degree required work (like honors thesis, masters & doctoral research). For 2010-11, we reported 3965 total unique courses. For 2011-12, we reported 4000 total unique courses by using an estimate, rather than an exact count, based on the Registrar's reported 0.86% increase in the number of courses. Applying the same method for 2013-2014 data, we calculate a 2.2% increase to 4087 total unique courses for the denominator.

Additionally, a thorough search through Cornell's Course Roster was conducted, and new sustainability-related and focused courses were identified. The list of Sustainability Curricula provided by the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future was updated in July of 2013 to show these changes. The previously reported sustainability course list was also reviewed and some courses previously identified as focused were moved to the related category upon further review of the materials. Since last year's report, 95 net courses were added and 38 new/edited courses were added to the sustainability-focused category.

This submission reflects the courses offered in the 2013-2014 school year.

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.