University of California, Los Angeles
ER-5: Sustainability Course Identification

The Academic Subcommittee of the UCLA Sustainability Committee (whose membership includes faculty from more than six departments, other academic personnel, students and staff) established a thorough definition of courses based on the STARS guidelines as follows: “Sustainability-focused” courses concentrate on the concept of sustainability, including its social, economic, and environmental dimensions, or examine an issue or topic using sustainability as a lens. Courses should explicitly address one or more of the principles of sustainability. “Sustainability-related” courses incorporate sustainability as a distinct course component or module or concentrate on a single sustainability principle or issue. These courses are based in sustainability theory and practice, either in an interdisciplinary manner or in the context of a single discipline.

Using this definition, we excluded courses if they addressed a single, disciplinary perspective on a subject that relates to sustainability, but that did not expressly incorporate sustainability or environmental content (e.g., courses that teach the fundamentals of natural sciences, economics, social policy, etc.). To identify the courses at UCLA that meet the above criteria we used a three-step process. We first started with lists of courses that had been compiled in two previous efforts to catalog sustainability courses at UCLA. We are very grateful to those who launched these initial efforts, especially Amy Hensley and Prof. Richard Ambrose, in 2007, and Zeta Yu-Peralta, in 2008. Second, a team of dedicated and enthusiastic undergraduate interns was enlisted to augment these previous lists by scanning the entire UCLA Catalog for additional courses that might fit our criteria. Third, the combined list was then reviewed, culled, and approved by members of the Academic Subcommittee. Many of the courses on the list are “multiple-listed” courses, meaning the same course is listed as being offered by two or more different departments. We felt that listing all versions of a course was more comprehensive, more useful for students looking for courses, and better reflected the broad reach of sustainability courses at UCLA. We recognize that, even after this comprehensive effort, the list likely contains errors. We have made our best effort to be thorough in our identification of courses so as to make the list most useful for students seeking courses with substantial sustainability content. We will continue to refine the list by adding or deleting courses as errors become known to us either through periodic reviews or feedback from students and faculty.