Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 68.89
Liaison Natalie Sobrinski
Submission Date Feb. 27, 2024

STARS v2.2

Muhlenberg College
AC-1: Academic Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 12.07 / 14.00 Richard Niesenbaum
Professor, Biology, Director, Sustainability Studies Program
Biology
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Part 1. Sustainability course offerings

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 823 0
Number of sustainability-focused courses offered 38 0
Number of sustainability-inclusive courses offered 115 0

Percentage of courses that are sustainability course offerings:
18.59

Part 2. Sustainability course offerings by department

Total number of academic departments that offer courses:
46

Number of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
32

Percentage of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
69.57

Documentation

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?:
Two

A brief description of the methodology used to complete the course inventory :
Sustainability Courses offered were identified using the requirements for the Sustainability Studies major (https://muhlenberg.edu/academics/sustainability/courses/) and the UN SDG. Courses that addressed four or more of the SDGs were identified as a sustainability focused course. Courses that addressed one, two or three of the SDGs were identified as sustainability-inclusive. Workday was used to verify whether these courses were being offered in the past two Academic Years. The included spreadsheet indicates which SDG topic is covered by the class.

Course descriptions were taken from Muhlenberg's online Catalog and Workday the software Muhlenberg uses for course registration. https://www.muhlenberg.edu/aboutus/catalog/

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:
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Optional Fields 

Website URL where information about the sustainability course offerings is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
To calculate the # of academic departments that offer a sustainability-based or sustainability-inclusive course, the attached spreadsheet was used. Intergroup Dialogue; Languages, Literatures and Cultures; and Geology were not counted as formal academic departments. The number of departments was calculated using the list of majors and minors in the attached Source Book data; if a major and minor were offered under the same name, it was only calculated once. Education was also counted as an academic department.
There were 823 unique courses offered in 2021-2023.


The information submitted is to the best of the knowledge of:
Richard A. Niesenbaum, Biology Professor, Director of Sustainability Studies Program, richardniesenbaum@muhlenberg.edu

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.