Rowan University
AC-1: Academic Courses

Office of Institutional Research and Analytics Methodology for Rowan’s SUSF & SUSI Course Inventory

This is the first attempt at identifying active courses that meet the Sustainability-Focused and Sustainability-Inclusive criteria provided by STARS guidance AC-1.  

• Sustainability-Focused

• To count as sustainability-focused, the course title or description must indicate a primary and explicit focus on sustainability.

• The course title or description does not have to use the term “sustainability” to count as sustainability-focused if the primary and explicit focus of the course is on the interdependence of ecological and social/economic systems or a major sustainability challenge.

• Sustainability-Inclusive

• To count as sustainability-inclusive, the course description or rationale provided in the course inventory must indicate that the course incorporates a unit or module on sustainability or a sustainability challenge, includes one or more sustainability-focused activities, or integrates sustainability challenges, issues, and concepts throughout the course.

Pulled a report of all active courses available at Rowan University, then crosschecked the Course Title, Long Title Description, and Course Narrative against the ASHEE STARS “Core Keywords”.  An Institutional Research Analyst with the most experience in Rowan’s sustainability profile and survey submission reviewed the courses that explicitly focused on sustainability to assigned SUSF; any course that contained an ASHEE STARS core keyword in the context of sustainability or sustainability challenges was assigned SUSI. Every course title and narrative that contained an ASHEE STARS core keyword was reviewed and categorized.

This inventory is not in its final state, next steps include validation from academic department leaders affirming the categorization or requests for missing data will be completed as part of the university’s course catalog annual revision.