Fleming College
AC-1: Academic Courses

Data on sustainability content in courses were drawn from three sources and in the context of college-wide commitments to Sustainability Across the Curriculum: 1. A faculty survey was conducted in 2012 in support of STARS filing in 2013. 2. A review of all courses was conducted by the Office of Sustainability in 2015, 2017 and 2019 including updating data from the 2012 survey to reflect changes in course names, confirm if they were still offered and to review course content. In addition to the AASHE definitions, sustainability was defined using UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development Resources and, in particular, the following elements and principles within courses as defined by UNESCO: Natural Systems - Conservation: needed to ensure that natural systems can continue for all living things including the resources that sustains the economic system. Social/Cultural Systems- Peace and Equity: when people can live co-operatively with each other and have basic needs satisfied fairly and equitably. Economic Systems- Appropriate Development: needed for people to be able to support themselves in a long-term way. Inappropriate development ignores links between the economy and the other systems in the environment. Political Systems-Democracy provides ways for people to be able to have a fair and equal say over how natural, social and economic systems should be managed.” (UNESCO, 1997) 3. The Office of Sustainability conducted many PD workshops, one-one sessions and presented at school and leadership meetings on sustainability content in courses between 2013, 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019. 4. A follow-up faculty survey was conducted in Winter, 2016 that again utilized the UNESCO ESD resources as a definition for faculty to assess their courses as well as AASHE definitions. 5. The final results from the 2015 review and 2016 Faculty Survey were compiled by Fleming Data Resources and resulted in 385 sustainability courses or courses including sustainability out of a total of 1684 courses offered between the Spring of 2015 and the Spring of 2016 (spring, summer, fall and winter terms). A roll-up of this data is provided as per the link which provides the names of schools, courses, and descriptions. All courses are undergraduate courses. A course listing is also accessible to students on the Office of Sustainability webpage. In 2019, the worksheet inventory was reaffirmed and updated to remove older programs/courses and to add additional new programs and courses. The net results were 98 sustainability courses and 356 courses with sustainability totaling 454 courses. There was a significant increase in the overall number of courses offered at Fleming over the same time frame (to 2351) which resulted in a lower percentage from our previous submission (from 22% to 19%).

The link provided above links to the 2015 and 2017 course inventories posted on our public website. Note for Clarification: Fleming has seven Academic Schools led by Deans and 9 Academic Departments. The academic departments represent distinct academic disciplines that are clustered and led by Academic Chairs. The academic departments represent the "Environmental Cluster" and the "Natural Resources" cluster under the School of Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences and the "Community Development" and "Justice" clusters under the School of Justice and Community Development. Under these academic departments are the academic programs and Fleming College has more than 100 academic programs.