Pratt Institute
AC-1: Academic Courses

During the 2016/17 academic year, The Provost’s office and the Center for Sustainable Design Strategies (CSDS) launched a new initiative called the Departmental Sustainability Coordinator (DSC). Each DSCs role is to promote sustainability in their home department, focusing on enhancing the curriculum and promoting the achievements of students and faculty. The DSCs have worked with their chairs to identify opportunities as well as directly with faculty and students to provide resources and support. They have coordinated the department’s participation in Green Week in the spring. As a group, the DSCs meet regularly to share resources and best practices. The DSCs represent departments in the Schools of Architecture, Art, Design, and Liberal Arts and Studies (the four largest schools). They have met monthly to determine which courses in each department are sustainability courses (having learning objectives specifically concerning social and environmental sustainability) and which courses have at least some sustainability content (this may include individual assignments, meetings, studio projects, or lectures within a course). In 2018, the DSC collected course data across participating departments for the 2017-18 academic year, counting each section offered as an individual course. The numbers for "Sustainability Courses" and "Courses Containing Sustainability" in the attached Excel inventory reflect the initial effort of this process, and we intend to use this as the baseline for future efforts. We post these numbers recognizing we may not have included sustainability-related courses in departments that did not submit inventories. The overall course numbers reflect the total number of sections offered across the Institute at the Undergraduate and Graduate levels. The enclosed Excel file provides a breakdown of each reporting department's totals.

Data on courses collected by the individual departments through the Department Sustainability Coordinator initiative. The totals on the first page reflect those nine reports for sustainability courses and courses that contain sustainability. (It is likely that more such courses exist across the Institute, and one of our tasks for the future is accounting for them all.) The data for total courses was generated by the Registrar's office for every single course offered (including physical education, internships, special topics, senior theses, and related courses); 1741 undergraduate courses in the fall semester; 1683 undergraduate courses in the spring semester; 777 graduate courses in the fall semester; 773graduate courses in the spring semester.