Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 74.49
Liaison Krista Bailey
Submission Date Dec. 17, 2020

STARS v2.2

Pennsylvania State University
AC-1: Academic Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 6.53 / 14.00
"---" 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 3,520 1,387
Number of sustainability-focused courses offered 74 9
Number of sustainability-inclusive courses offered 111 22

Percentage of courses that are sustainability course offerings:
4.40

Total number of academic departments that offer courses:
88

Number of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
63

Percentage of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
71.59

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 complete the course inventory :

The course inventory developed for our previous STARS submission was updated through conducting a thorough review of the online Undergraduate and Graduate Bulletins and (1) removing courses that were no longer offered, and (2) adding new sustainability courses based on their descriptions. The Bulletin was also used as an information source for identifying and counting academic departments. See https://bulletins.psu.edu/


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:

Counts were made of each unique course offered during the 2018/19 academic year (FA18, SP19, SU19). Multiple offerings or sections were counted only once. Sustainability courses and total courses were counted in the same manner. See Notes below for exclusions.


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:

The course counts provided above include only courses actually offered during academic year 2018/19, while the full inventory attached includes all sustainability courses identified in the Bulletin.

Following guidance in the STARS Technical Bulletin, we removed from the inventory and counts, courses in the following categories: independent study, practicums/ internships, thesis/dissertation research, physical education (KINES classes numbered below 100), other individual research (294/ 494) courses, special topics courses, and instruction in the performance arts (e.g., BRASS, VOICE, KEYBD).

Note that a number of the special topics courses have sustainability themes, but because their topics can vary from one year to the next, we did not include them.

Count of academic departments includes departments and schools within colleges, and colleges and schools that lack departments (e.g., Law, Nursing, International Affairs); these were each counted as one department. Courses in the inventory were matched with their departments/ schools to determine the number of academic departments/schools offering one or more sustainability courses.


The course counts provided above include only courses actually offered during academic year 2018/19, while the full inventory attached includes all sustainability courses identified in the Bulletin.

Following guidance in the STARS Technical Bulletin, we removed from the inventory and counts, courses in the following categories: independent study, practicums/ internships, thesis/dissertation research, physical education (KINES classes numbered below 100), other individual research (294/ 494) courses, special topics courses, and instruction in the performance arts (e.g., BRASS, VOICE, KEYBD).

Note that a number of the special topics courses have sustainability themes, but because their topics can vary from one year to the next, we did not include them.

Count of academic departments includes departments and schools within colleges, and colleges and schools that lack departments (e.g., Law, Nursing, International Affairs); these were each counted as one department. Courses in the inventory were matched with their departments/ schools to determine the number of academic departments/schools offering one or more sustainability courses.

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.