Stanford University
AC-1: Academic Courses

n/a -- please see uploaded list

For many years, the Earth Systems Program within Stanford's School of Earth Sciences has compiled and published a list of environmental courses (http://pangea.stanford.edu/programs/esys/academics/undergraduate-program/undergrad-courses). This list served as the starting point for the sustainability course inventory, and staff began the inventory process by reviewing this list and designating classes as sustainability classes, classes that include sustainability, or neither. However, since Stanford offers such a vast array of classes that fluctuate significantly year to year, Stanford staff and faculty felt it was important to re-evaluate the full list of Stanford class offerings in the 2012-2013 academic year in order to compile a truly complete list of Stanford's sustainability classes and classes that include sustainability. To accomplish this, staff audited the entire 2012-2013 course bulletin and identified (based on course descriptions), whether or not courses should be included in the sustainability course inventory. Staff also worked closely with the university's Institutional Research and Decision Support (IRDS) team to determine the number of individual/independent study classes, classes with enrollment of 4 or fewer, and 1 unit classes, in addition to reviewing the total number of classes with and without sections. With the support of the IRDS, staff decided that individual/independent study classes and classes with enrollment of 4 or fewer should be removed from both the total number of classes and the sustainability course inventory. One-unit classes were kept in the inventory because these classes are often extremely substantive despite only being worth one unit of course credit. This detailed analytic process was performed very carefully and with the input of many campus stakeholders, including Stanford faculty, in order to ensure utmost accuracy. After this decision-making and calculation process and consultation with Stanford faculty, staff generated a final list of sustainability courses and courses that include sustainability based on all of the above criteria. Th new list has been uploaded to the Sustainable Stanford website and has been disseminated to several interested parties, including the Haas Center for Public Service and the School of Earth Sciences. Based on this thorough process, Stanford feels confident that it generated the most accurate and complete list possible of sustainability courses and courses that include sustainability at the university.

All courses where any section of the course had enrollment of 4 or fewer students have been removed, both from the list of sustainability courses and courses that include sustainability and from the total number of courses. Courses that were deemed as independent/individual study by the University's Institutional Research and Decision Support team have also been removed from both lists.