Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 68.43
Liaison Jim Simon
Submission Date Sept. 23, 2020

STARS v2.2

Gonzaga University
AC-1: Academic Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 7.66 / 14.00 Deena Gonzalez
Provost & Senior Vice President
Office of the Provost
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Figures required to calculate the percentage of courses offered by the institution that are sustainability course offerings:
Undergraduate Graduate
Total number of courses offered by the institution 1,154 451
Number of sustainability-focused courses offered 44 4
Number of sustainability-inclusive courses offered 99 32

Percentage of courses that are sustainability course offerings:
11.15

Total number of academic departments that offer courses:
77

Number of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
37

Percentage of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
48.05

A copy of the institution’s inventory of its sustainability course offerings and descriptions:
Do the figures reported above cover one, two, or three academic years?:
Three

A brief description of the methodology used to complete the course inventory :

The course inventory covers a span of three years, covering from August 2016-August 2019. To provide a more concise inventory and manageable data set, the institution utilized the following categorical exclusions, as offered by the STARS Technical Manual.
-Elimination of True Duplicates, Leaving Cross-Listed & Graduate/Undergraduate Duplicates
-Elimination of all Special/Selected Topic Courses that lacked a course description
-Elimination of All Individualized Study Courses including: Directed/Independent Studies, Practicums and Capstones
-Elimination of All Activity-Based Physical Education Courses
-Elimination of All Arts Courses Dedicated to Performance, Technique, and Composition.

This left us with 1605 courses offered to students during this time period.

Courses were chosen to be either sustainability-focused or sustainability-related based on guidance from the STARS v2.2 Technical Manual and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. Our determinations focused primarily on the course descriptions listed in the course catalog, utilizing a keyword search followed by an internal review of all offered courses. The keyword search was based upon 62 selected words/phrases stemming from sources including in the UN SDGs, Earth Charter, and the regional Curriculum for the Bioregion. Following the keyword search, staff and faculty at Gonzaga reviewed the results for accuracy.

This left us with 48 Sustainability Focused Courses, and 131 Sustainability Related Courses.

The total number of Academic Departments were determined following the categorical elimination of courses from the inventory, leaving us with 77 Academic Departments. The number of departments offering sustainability courses of some type was determined by counting the number of individual department that had at least 1 determined sustainability course (focused or related) giving us 37.


How were courses with multiple offerings or sections counted for the figures reported above?:
Each course was counted as a single course regardless of the number of offerings or sections

A brief description of how courses with multiple offerings or sections were counted:

We eliminated "true" duplicates from our course inventory, in which we eliminated all but one offering for a course, except for cross-listed courses in which we eliminated all but one offering per department.

Example: Works, Wages, and Inequality is a cross-listed course between the SOSJ and ECON Departments. We maintained one SOSJ offering and one ECON offering in our inventory.

Additionally, we maintained courses that were cross-listed across undergraduate and graduate curriculum, keeping one undergraduate course offering and one graduate course offering per course.


Website URL where information about the sustainability course offerings is available:
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Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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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.