Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 67.19
Liaison Mark Youndt
Submission Date May 30, 2021

STARS v2.2

Skidmore College
AC-1: Academic Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 13.49 / 14.00 Mark Youndt
Director of Sustainability for Academic Affairs
Management and Business
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Figures required to calculate the percentage of courses offered by the institution that are sustainability course offerings:
Undergraduate Graduate
Total number of courses offered by the institution 804 0
Number of sustainability-focused courses offered 40 0
Number of sustainability-inclusive courses offered 154 0

Percentage of courses that are sustainability course offerings:
24.13

Total number of academic departments that offer courses:
34

Number of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
28

Percentage of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
82.35

A copy of the institution’s inventory of its sustainability course offerings and descriptions:
Do the figures reported above cover one, two, or three academic years?:
One

A brief description of the methodology used to complete the course inventory :

In order to gain the most accurate assessment of the opportunities our students have to engage in the concepts and practices of sustainability in the classroom, we took a snapshot of a typical academic year (2018-19). While we have many additional sustainability courses and courses that include sustainability in our full course catalog, a subset of those courses may not be offered in a given year because of sabbatical leaves, changes within departments, enrollment pressures in other areas, etc. By taking a snapshot of a typical year, we believe we are getting a fairly precise calculation of the sustainability focused and inclusive course opportunities our students have. We wanted to note that we did include special topics courses in our snapshot because we have a rich array of sustainability-related special topics offered each and every year, and the special topics course rubric at Skidmore is often used for a first-time course offering by our permanent faculty. In other words, the special topics rubric is often an indication of the development of a long-term course offering.

We maintain a fairly comprehensive, ongoing inventory of sustainability-related courses through our Environmental Studies and Sciences program. An interdisciplinary steering committee for the program reviews new and revised courses that faculty from across the College are developing. As a validation of this inventory for STARS, we asked departments to review their 2018-19 course offerings for sustainability-focused and inclusive courses. It is worth noting that in addition to undertaking a formal course designation project for Civic Engagement courses at Skidmore, we are beginning to work on a formal course designation for sustainability-related courses.


How were courses with multiple offerings or sections counted for the figures reported above?:
Each course was counted as a single course regardless of the number of offerings or sections

A brief description of how courses with multiple offerings or sections were counted:
---

Website URL where information about the sustainability course offerings is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
---

Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
---

The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.