Portland State University
AC-2: Learning Outcomes

Campus-wide Learning Outcomes:

Disciplinary and/or Professional Expertise: Students will gain mastery at a baccalaureate level in a defined body of knowledge through attainment of their program’s objectives and completion of their major.

Creative and Critical Thinking: Students will develop the disposition and skills to strategize, gather, organize, create, refine, analyze, and evaluate the credibility of relevant information and ideas.

Communication: Students will communicate effectively in a range of social, academic, and professional contexts using a variety of means, including written, oral, numeric/quantitative, graphic, and visual modes of communication using appropriate technologies.

Diversity: Student will recognize and understand the rich and complex ways that group and individual inequalities and interactions impact self and society.

Ethics and Social Responsibility: Students will develop ethical and social responsibility to others, will understand issues from a variety of cultural perspectives, will collaborate with others to address ethical and social issues in a sustainable manner, and will increase self-awareness.

Internationalization: Students will understand the richness and challenge of world cultures and the effects of globalization, and will develop the skills and attitudes to function as “global citizens.”

Engagement: Students will engage in learning that is based on reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationships, and through this engagement will apply theory and skills in diverse venues, linking the conceptual to the practical.

Sustainability: Students will identify, act on, and evaluate their professional and personal actions with the knowledge and appreciation of interconnections among economic, environmental, and social perspectives in order to create a more sustainable future.

For all undergraduate and graduate program, we looked specifically at learning outcomes and required courses to determine if it was sustainability-focused, has a sustainability learning outcome, or required a sustainability focused course.

A sample of programs that include sustainability learning outcomes include:
-Educational Leadership and Policy (Leadership for Sustainability Education): fosters skills in sustainability education and collaborative emergent leadership. Learn to design and implement sustainable solutions in a variety of settings including schools, nonprofit organizations, local governments, and businesses.
-Earth, Environment, and Society: help students, scientists, managers and educators carry out research to improve environmental understanding and implementing adaptive management.
-Environmental Management: teaches students how to analyze and manage natural environments for human benefit and ecosystem health.
-Public Interest Design: prepare future leaders in architecture, urban planning, sustainability, community development and other fields to aid currently underserved populations through sustainable, human-centered design methods.
-Economics: understanding of the critical linkages between economics and key environmental issues.
-Sustainable Food Systems: provides students with a foundation of knowledge and practical experience to help them confront the pressing challenges currently facing sustainable food systems.
-Energy Policy and Management: students develop an understanding of climate change and how energy management can help mitigate efforts on people, economy and our environment
-Urban and Regional Planning: develop an understanding of the growing social and economic inequalities between different places and population groups within the metropolitan region, environmental problems related to the prevailing pattern of urbanization, and the lack of effective institutions of regional governance.
-Sustainability: in-depth understanding of the connections between social, environmental, and economic systems, and equips them with the knowledge to apply sustainable, integrated problem solving approaches in their lives and careers.
-Civil and Environmental Engineering: An ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability and sustainability.
-Global Supply Chain Management: prepare global leaders in developing strategies that support markets and innovation in a sustainable and efficient manner.
-International Management: provides students with international as well as general business skills, proficiency in a foreign language, and a deep knowledge of political and economic environments in which global business leaders work, all gained while working with a culturally diverse group of students from around the world.
-Entrepreneurship: Delve into your focus area using Human-Centered Design best practices; Practice storytelling techniques to effectively promote your work and share your ideas
-Public Administration: Use multidisciplinary and multicultural lenses to provide student with an understanding of responsibility leaderships in environmental and natural resources policy and administration.
-Real Estate Development: multidisciplinary approach to real estate development that aims to create sustainable, healthy communities.