Santa Clara University
AC-1: Academic Courses

DEFINITIONS:
1. "Sustainability Course" (sustainability-focused)
Courses primarily about any of:
• the concept of sustainability (e.g., “Sustainable Development”)
• the application of sustainability within a field (e.g., “Sustainable Agriculture” or “Environmental Communication”)
• a sustainability challenge addressing 2 or more pillars of sustainability (e.g. climate change, global poverty and inequality, natural resource depletion, environmental degradation, or any targets in the UN SDGs)

2. Courses that "Include Sustainability" (sustainability inclusive)
Primarily focused on a topic other than sustainability, but include any of the following:
• a module on sustainability (e.g. environmental determinants of mental health in a Psychology course)
• a sustainability challenge addressing 2 or more pillars of sustainability (e.g. an assignment on financing sustainable energy in a Finance course)
• one or more sustainability activities (e.g. a simulation or field trip)
• sustainability issues integrated throughout the course (e.g. in intro Biology or Chemistry labs, Calculus problem sets)

METHODOLOGY: The inventory was based on academic year [2020-21] course offerings provided by the Registrar’s Office. Courses were identified as Include Sustainability (IS) or a Sustainability Course (SC) based on these steps:

STEP 1: Reviewing New Courses
All courses offered for the first time in the academic year under review (new courses) are reviewed on an individual basis based on title and course description using SCU’s CourseAvail. Courses are tagged either IS or SC if they are a part of the Sustainability Pathway, or, if the Curriculum Development Student Coordinator identifies sustainability content based on the course description.

STEP 2: Historical Tagging
All tags from the previous academic year are transferred over to the current academic year. This includes tags we have saved for courses that may not have been offered in the previous academic year but have been offered and tagged in past academic years (tagged but not offered courses). Tags from previous years were tagged for a variety of reasons based upon previous tagging protocol.

Courses within the core curriculum such as Experiential Learning for Social Justice (I_ELSJ) or Diversity (E_DIV), Civic Engagement (E_CIV), or Ethics (E_ETH) were flagged as having the potential to include sustainability. These courses were reviewed (through course title and description) and then tagged if they fit IS or SC. The course component was then used as the primary reason for the tag.

Courses apart of one of the following academic pathways including: Applied Ethics (PATH_AE); Food, Hunger, Poverty, Environment (PATH_FHP); Global Health (PATH_GH); Human Rights (PATH_HR); Law & Social Justice (PATH_LSJ); Leading People, Organizations, & Social Change (PATH_LPOS); Race, Place, & Social Inequalities (PATH_RPSI); Sustainability (PATH_SUST); and Values in Science & Technology (VST) were also flagged as having the potential to include sustainability. These courses were reviewed (through course title and description) and then tagged if they fit IS or SC. The pathway was then used as the primary reason for the tag.

Lastly, we used the Earth Charter and Sustainable Development Goals to identify sustainability that may exist in any course left untagged through the core curriculum and pathway evaluations. These tools were helpful to ensure a thorough and accurate initial tagging of all of the courses offered at SCU to provide a great baseline for our tagging process each academic year. EC or SDG was then used as the primary reason for the tag.

STEP 3: Faculty Review (FR)
Department chairs were asked to identify the sustainability courses taught in their department in a campus-wide form distributed annually. Unless we were told that all sections of a course included a sustainability component, we only tagged sections taught by specified instructors. Selected faculty reviewed and provided further clarification regarding course tags.