State University of New York at New Paltz
AC-1: Academic Courses

To determine the total number of courses offered, we started with a list of all courses and course sections offered from the fall of 2016 to the spring of 2018, including summer and winter courses. We excluded independent studies, thesis, practicums, fieldwork, and music courses, but included theater arts courses because one theater arts course includes sustainability content. If a course was offered multiple times over the two year period, we counted it as one course. The guidance offered to faculty to identify sustainability courses included the following: Sustainability courses include subject matter that contribute to understanding or solving a major sustainability challenge such as climate change, global poverty and inequality, natural resource depletion, and environmental degradation. To identify sustainability courses and research that contribute towards understanding or solving sustainability challenges, it is helpful to ask: 1. Does your course or research contribute towards realizing one or more of the principles outlined in the Earth Charter? and/or 2. Does your course or research contribute towards achieving one or more of the targets embedded in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? In the sustainability course form, we asked faculty whether the course included environmental, economic and/or social dimensions of sustainability. We also asked whether adaptation and resiliency was addressed. Courses that only included one of the three dimensions of sustainability were excluded. Courses that only focused on adaptation and resiliency or only on environmental dimensions and adaptation and resiliency were excluded from the inventory. Each description of the sustainability dimensions of the course were reviewed for fit. Please note that the number of departments listed here differs from IC-3. This is because the Study Abroad program was not considered a traditional academic department in IC-3, but does offer one sustainability course, so we included it in this inventory as a department. We also included Study Abroad courses in the total count of courses offered.

The number of academic departments included for this credit is 32 because we chose to include a course from the study abroad department, which was not counted as an academic department in IC-3.