Pittsburg State University
ER-5: Sustainability Course Identification

Sustainability-focused courses concentrate on the concept of sustainability, including its social, economic, and environmental dimensions, or examine an issue or topic using sustainability as a lens. Sustainability-related courses incorporate sustainability as a distinct course component or module, or concentrate on a single sustainability principle or issue. The goal of sustainability education is to provide students, regardless of their courses of study, the knowledge and skills to help create a healthy economy, society, and environment. Sustainability is "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts: • the concept of 'needs', in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and • the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs." In order to determine whether or not a course has this goal in mind, it is useful to ask whether or not a given course will help students to achieve one or more of the following. • Understand and be able to effectively communicate the concept of sustainability. • Develop and use an ethical perspective in which they view themselves as embedded in the fabric of an interconnected world. • Become aware of and explore the connections between their chosen course of study and sustainability. • Develop technical skills or expertise necessary to implement sustainable solutions. • Understand the way in which sustainable thinking and decision-making contributes to the process of creating solutions for current and emerging social, environmental, and economic crises. • Contribute practical solutions to real-world sustainability challenges. • Synthesize understanding of social, economic, and environmental systems and reason holistically. A course does not have to accomplish all of these things to be designated as sustainability-related or sustainability-focused.

Each academic department chair was asked to complete an inventory of sustainability-focused and sustainability- related courses, sustainability focused academic programs and sustainability-related research conducted by faculty using definitions approved by the university sustainability committee.