Cornell University
AC-1: Academic Courses

Please see the attached file.

The Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future (ACSF) develops and delivers (publicly, via the web) the most comprehensive list of sustainability-related courses at Cornell (please see link below). It annually reviews the overall Cornell course listings to identify new sustainability-focused and related courses. In June 2013, the entire course catalog and course descriptions were analyzed to ensure that the courses on ACSF’s Sustainability Curricula list were relevant to environment, energy, and/or economic development. All courses were identified as either sustainability-focused or sustainability-related based on STARS definitions of the two. This analysis yielded a more up-to-date list with additional sustainability focused and related courses. In 2014, all courses on the ACSF’s Sustainability Curricula list were checked to verify that all courses were still being taught at Cornell. Those that are no longer offered were deleted from the list, and those that are still offered were updated. This year, professors were also given the opportunity to tag their own class as a sustainability course upon course registration; however, there was a slight glitch in this program, and not all professors could tag their courses. This self-selecting methodology did prove useful, as new courses were added to the ACSF Sustainability Curricula list. Additional courses with ‘sustainability’ in the course name or course description were also added. Through this process, about 60 courses were added and about 55 were deleted from the list. Courses that were previously tagged as sustainability focused or related were re-evaluated to meet STARS new definitions of “sustainability course” (which is still called ‘focused’ on ACSF’s list) and “course that includes sustainability” (‘related’). Professors of questionable courses were contacted; they were asked to confirm whether or not their courses fit one of the definitions provided by AASHE. Through this process, about 40 courses were deleted as per request of the instructor, 14 were deleted as they were unclear and the professor did not respond; and 386 were confirmed. Semester at Sea programs and other study abroad programs that are not directly affiliated with Cornell were not added to the list because they do not satisfy what STARS considers part of the course roster. Programs like SHOALS and other courses that include an abroad trip, however, were added to the sustainable course directory because they are directly affiliated with Cornell. Courses that were not added to the list (and in few cases, deleted from the list) include honors thesis credits, research credits, independent study options, and internship credits. Crosslisted classes were only added once. Some of the courses that were added and/or kept on the list are only offered alternate years, and they were noted as alternate-year-courses on the list. This helps students plan their schedules in advance, and also helps to eliminate the need for the Atkinson Center to update the list annually. A list of alternate-year-courses was kept. If there are any questions or concerns regarding the methodology as described here, please contact Mark Lawrence (mal64@cornell.edu).

Crosslisted courses were only counted once. However, there are courses offered to both undergraduate and graduate students. These courses were counted twice in the total graduate courses, total graduate sustainability courses, total undergraduate courses, and total undergraduate sustainability courses.