New York University
IN-38: Sustainability Course Designation

The methodology to identify and approve courses for sustainability course designation is as follows:

• Candidates for potential course designation are identified by keyword searches from the NYU course catalog. Over 40 keywords were used, with boolean searches used to narrow in on likely candidates. A non-exhaustive list of keywords included:

• animal welfare

• cities AND sustainability

• climate change

• climate justice

• climate science

• conservation AND natural AND resources

• diversity AND environmental

• diversity AND sustainability

• ecology

• economic development AND sustainability

• environmental AND sustainability

• environmental ethics

• environmental justice

• environmental protection

• green AND chemistry

• human rights

• inequality AND environmental

• population growth

• renewable AND energy

• renewable AND engineering

• social equality

• supply chain AND sustainability

• sustainable

• sustainable AND engineering

• sustainability

• sustainable development goals

• urban resilience

• urban AND sustainability

• In addition, faculty propose certain courses to be designated.

• The course list from the keyword search is then human-scanned to remove false positives (course descriptions that use these words to refer to concepts not directly or indirectly related to sustainability).

• The draft final list is reviewed by representatives of the Office of the President and the Office of the Provost.

• The final approved list is given to the University Registrar for tagging in the course catalog.

Sustainability-related classes can be filtered from all classes by simply going to the Academic Thread filter in the course catalog program, Albert, and selecting “Sustainability”. There are only three categories that are part of this search, “Big Ideas Course”, “Sustainability”, and “Urban”, showcasing the level of importance.

https://wp.nyu.edu/sustainability-nyusustainablog/2023/06/12/sustainability-in-albert/