Dickinson College
AC-1: Academic Courses

Dickinson’s inventory of sustainability courses includes courses that have been approved by a subcommittee of our Academic Programs and Standards Committee as fulfilling Dickinson’s sustainability graduation requirement plus courses that explicitly address one or more sustainability challenges.

Courses that fulfill the sustainability graduation requirement include Sustainability Investigations courses, which are consistent with AASHE’s definition of sustainability-focused courses, and Sustainability Connections courses, which are consistent with AASHE’s definition of sustainability-inclusive courses.

Faculty nominate courses for designation as either Sustainability Investigations or Sustainability Connections by completing an online form. The nominations are reviewed by staff of the Center for Sustainability Education, who often contact faculty for clarifications and further information and make recommendations to the Center’s Steering Committee of faculty, staff, and students to approve or not approve nominated courses. The Steering Committee makes decisions about approval of courses for Sustainability Investigations or Sustainability Connections designations.

Sustainability Investigations (SINV) courses correspond to sustainability-focused courses and engage students in deep and focused exploration of sustainability and its multiple dimensions as a major theme of the course. SINV courses must:

• Introduce students to one or more definitions of sustainability that are appropriate to the discipline or area of study of the course.
• Make students aware that sustainability has multiple dimensions, including, as a minimum, environmental, social and economic dimensions.
• Include student learning outcomes for students to demonstrate abilities to:
o Have students think critically about a sustainability question, problem and/or potential solution, and
o Articulate connections between the field of study of the course and sustainability.
o Apply disciplinary or interdisciplinary knowledge and methods to analyze a problem of sustainability.
• Devote a substantial portion of course instruction and work to sustainability-related content.
• Give significant weight to sustainability-related content in grading student performance.

Sustainability Connections (SCON) courses correspond to sustainability-inclusive courses and build competencies and knowledge in a field that is relevant to understanding sustainability and apply them to a sustainability issue. Sustainability is a visible and explicit part of SCON courses, but sustainability typically is not a major focus. While students will be made aware of multiple dimensions of sustainability, it is not necessary or expected that SCON courses will address more than one dimension in depth. SCON courses must:

• Introduce students to one or more definitions of sustainability that are appropriate to the discipline or area of study of the course.
• Make students aware that sustainability has multiple dimensions, including, as a minimum, environmental, social and economic dimensions.
• Include student learning outcomes for students to demonstrate abilities to:
o Have students think critically about a sustainability question, problem and/or potential solution, and
o Articulate connections between the field of study of the course and sustainability.
• Include at least one graded assignment that provides students an opportunity to demonstrate attainment of the sustainability learning outcomes. The assignment can serve multiple purposes and does not need to focus solely on sustainability. Assignments that use active learning pedagogies to engage students in problem solving, communicating, and collaborating are strongly encouraged but not required.

Additional courses at Dickinson that are not approved as fulfilling our graduation requirement but address one or more sustainability challenges are included in our inventory of sustainability-inclusive courses. Staff of the Center for Sustainability Education conducted keyword searches of Dickinson’s online course listings for fall 2023 and spring 2024 using words associated with the 17 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. Descriptions of the courses returned by the key word searches were carefully reviewed to determine whether the course clearly addresses a sustainability challenge.

All sustainability course data are managed and accessed through the registrar. Sustainability course nominations are tied to faculty members teaching the course and can vary across sections of the same course. Therefore, total sections (excluding internships, practicums, independent study, independent research, physical education, and performing arts) were obtained for each semester through the registrar. Individual sections of a course were then counted as SCON, SINV, or neither independently from other sections with the same course title.

Dickinson offers over 120 courses each academic year that help students gain knowledge about sustainability concepts, problems, and solutions while building competencies and dispositions for creating a sustainable world. Over time, these courses have been integrated throughout the Dickinson curriculum in over 40 academic departments. The courses vary in the degree to which sustainability is a focus of study and are classified into two categories. Sustainability Investigations courses (SINV) engage students in a deep and focused study of problems with sustainability as a major emphasis of the course (focus on sustainability). Sustainability Connections courses (SCON) engage students in making connections between the main topic of the course and sustainability (include sustainability). Sustainability is related to but is not a major focus of SCON courses.

Dickinson offers numerous courses in arts and humanities, social sciences, and laboratory sciences that explore the different dimensions of sustainability from a variety of perspectives. Taking a sustainability course is a graduation requirement at Dickinson, so 100% of our students take one, 88% take 2 or more and 54% take 4 or more sustainability courses during their time at Dickinson.

Dickinson students can identify sustainability courses using the course designations Sustainability Investigations (SINV) or Sustainability Connections (SCON) when conducting an online course search. Faculty nominate these courses each semester using our Sustainability Course Designation process. These two categories of course designation differ in the degree to which sustainability is a focus.

We have been doing this as a rigorous leader since 2012 and all data is available online at the links provided.

http://marcomm.dickinson.edu/dashboard/across_the_curriculum.html