Stanford University
AC-1: Academic Courses

All courses offered in the 2017-18 school year were perused and sorted by title and course description into the categories of “Sustainability Focused,” “Includes Sustainability,” and courses unrelated to sustainability. Each course was critically evaluated on its relationship to the multidimensional goal of promoting sustainability on both local and global levels. The definition of “sustainability” used when identifying courses was as follows: having a focus on and concern for the healthy maintenance and development of society environmentally, economically, and socially. The course descriptions were the most important factor of classification; if sustainability was a primary focus of the course, such as Stanford's Human Society and Environmental Change (EARTHSYS 112) course, that course was listed as “Sustainability Focused.” Courses that have a strong social and/or economic sustainability component but not an environmental component, such as Stanford's Introduction to Geology (EARTHSYS 11) course, were listed as “Includes Sustainability." In some cases, faculty were contacted to find out more about the course to determine its proper designation.

Staff worked closely with the university's Institutional Research and Decision Support (IR&DS) team to determine the best way to categorize the classes offered. In the totals above, one course is counted as any course offered during a single term within a single department. If a course was offered in multiple quarters, each of those offerings was counted as a single course. For instance, the course "Geokids: Earth Sciences Exploration" was offered in both Autumn quarter and Spring quarter of the 2017-18 academic year, so it was counted as two separate courses. Similarly, if the course is cross-listed under multiple departments, each section of that course was counted as a separate course within each department under which it is cross-listed. As an example, the course "Biology and Global Change" offered one section that was cross-listed under three separate departments, so it was counted as a total of three classes. These same principles were followed to count both courses that include sustainability and the total number of courses offered at Stanford in 2017-18.

In the attached sustainability course inventory, courses are only listed once even if they were cross-listed with multiple departments or were offered in multiple quarters. Thus, not all occurrences of each course are listed in the inventory. However, classes that are cross-listed under multiple departments have a note in their course titles indicating the other departments and course numbers under which that same course is listed. Taking these nuances into account, there are a total of 605 classes listed on the attached inventory, while the total tallied in the numeric fields of this credit (according to the methodology described above) is 1,138 courses that are either sustainability-focused or include sustainability.

Staff also worked with IR&DS to determine the number of internships, practicums, independent study, thesis/dissertation and special topics classes offered for credit; classes with enrollment of four or fewer; physical education classes; performance art classes; and clinical courses. Ultimately, all of these course types were removed from the inventory in 2017-18. In prior submissions, some of these courses were included, which accounts for the overall decrease in both the number of sustainability classes and the total number of classes counted in this submission compared to prior submissions. The rationale behind this shift was that independent study courses and internships are quite dependent on the interests of the student, so it is difficult to determine their exact content.

Finally, undergraduate courses are identified as any course with a course number of 0 to 199, while graduate courses are identified as any course with a 200-level course number or above. However, at Stanford, there is significant overlap between undergraduate and graduate enrollment in many courses.

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. 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.