New York University
ER-7: Sustainability-Related Courses

The attached list includes a tab with sustainability-focused (highlighted title) and sustainability-related (highlighted course # AND title) courses, as well as a tab with total courses. There is an additional tab with sustainability-focused and total non-credit / continuing education courses (*not included here, accounted for in Credit PAE-21.

Data for this submission was provided by NYU’s Office of the University Registrar for Academic Year 2009-2010. In picking out classes that are sustainability-focused or sustainability-themed, NYU asked multiple researchers to independently review a master list of course titles and affiliated programs, supplementing their review with content and syllabi posted on academic programs’ websites. NYU removed duplicative recitations, distance learning courses, academic journals, and non-credit bearing workshops and clinics from this list. Courses designated as sustainability-focused or sustainability-related addressed one or more of the following topics: ** Discussion of issues of collective action in relation to policy, economics and resource use; ** Concern for issues of preservation and environmental regulation; ** Integration of multiple disciplines to analyze human-environment interactions; ** Cost-benefit analysis of issues relating to the social, economic, and ecological welfare of future generations in relationship to resource use; ** Discussion of solutions to socioeconomic and environmental challenges, including energy, technology, social enterprise, ecosystems, social transformations, food systems, policy, law, education, and governance. Some courses listed as requirements for sustainability-focused degree programs were included as sustainability-related courses on that basis. Due to the multiple-disciplinary approach to tackling global problems, the courses included in the inventory reflect some of the broader skill set needed to both analyze and apply solutions in an ever-shifting environment. This "screen" deliberately did not include many potentially-relevant but "borderline" courses in subjects such as economic policy, social work, environmental health, biology, chemistry, urban policy, world cultures, global affairs, or political science, if these courses did not appear to substantively address these issues in contact with one another or from the perspective of systems (or relational) thinking. A broader screen may be applied in the future, and this methodology will be revised as NYU's academic infrastructure adapts to more formally tackle the challenge of sustainability in higher education.