Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 68.01
Liaison Kelsey Beal
Submission Date March 2, 2017
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.1

Indiana University Bloomington
AC-1: Academic Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 7.30 / 14.00 Makayla Bonney
Assistant Director
Sustain IU
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

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 9,479 7,498
Number of sustainability courses offered 157 94
Number of courses offered that include sustainability 402 183

Percentage of courses that are sustainability course offerings:
4.92

Total number of academic departments (or the equivalent) that offer courses (at any level):
65

Number of academic departments (or the equivalent) that offer at least one sustainability course and/or course that includes sustainability (at any level):
52

Percentage of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
80

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?:
One

A brief description of the methodology used to determine the total number of courses offered and to identify sustainability course offerings, including the definitions used and the process for reviewing and/or validating the course inventory :

The course inventory was extracted from the IU Bloomington Course Bulletin for courses offered in academic year 2015-2016, filtered to show only courses that had been allowed to be scheduled. The list was then filtered according to 341 Sustainability Keywords. This yielded a list of ~6,000+ potential sustainability courses. Each course description was read to identify if it truly was a sustainability course, yielding 835 Sustainability Courses and Courses That Include Sustainability.

Departments with the largest numbers of sustainability courses were then consulted to verify or refute our results. School of Public and Environmental Affairs, School of Public Health, Geology, Geography, and Anthropology were consulted. Additionally, "outliers," or departments with seemingly no sustainability courses, were consulted, including Theatre, French and Italian, and Spanish and Portuguese.

We also combed this list for courses connected to the IU Office of Sustainability Course Development Fellowship. These are courses whose faculty have undergone a three day workshop to learn how to incorporate sustainability themes in new or existing curricula. This has been a successful program at IU, and has led to the incorporation of sustainability themes in courses that are not traditionally thought of as relating to the environmental sector, such as Fine Arts and Spanish.

Courses that examine a sustainability problem using two of the three domains (environmental, economic, and social) were labeled Sustainability Courses. If a course description referenced climate change, it was automatically labeled a Sustainability Course. Course descriptions that offer tools for solving a sustainability problem as defined by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, or approached a sustainability problem from only one domain were labeled Courses That Include Sustainability. We found the UN SDGs to be a helpful tool in determining sustainability curricula.


How were courses with multiple offerings or sections counted for the figures reported above?:
Each offering or section of a course was counted as an individual course

A brief description of how courses with multiple offerings or sections were counted (if different from the options outlined above):
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Are the following course types included in the inventory? :
Yes (included) or No (not included)
Internships No
Practicums Yes
Independent study No
Special topics No
Thesis / dissertation No
Clinical Yes
Physical education Yes
Performance arts Yes

The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives 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.