Endicott College
AC-1: Academic Courses

Endicott is committed to supporting the personal and professional development of its students, preparing them to assume meaningful roles within the greater community both domestically and internationally. As a result, sustainability topics including social well-being, economic prosperity, and environmental health contribute to the depth of the curriculum. Our undergraduate majors ALL include several internships and a student thesis or design project. To assess the courses we downloaded the complete current academic year course catalogs for undergraduate and graduate students and evaluated each course based on our detailed knowledge of the course through direct interaction with faculty or through its description. Internships and thesis were counted in departments/majors where we have direct knowledge that students have undertaken sustainability-related internships and observation of thesis presentation at the college-wide thesis day and/or a role in advising students. Student theses with sustainability themes span departments from education to sports management and are usually focused on environmental sustainability. Student theses in criminal justice and psychology very often include issues related to social well-being. We know too that there are many courses that we have not captured. Many of these are in the arts where nature and the environment are often the topics for art, graphic design, and photography. In addition seminar courses or courses that are taught as special topics were not counted. For example there have been special topic courses on Climate Change that have not been included in the course catalog previously. Sustainability courses are courses in which the primary and explicit focus is on sustainability and/or on understanding or solving one or more major sustainability challenges through techniques such as science, policy, business, or design. A course that includes sustainability is primarily focused on a topic other than sustainability, but incorporates a unit or module on sustainability or a sustainability challenge, includes one or more sustainability-focused activities, or integrates sustainability issues and themes throughout the course.