Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 67.87
Liaison Nurit Katz
Submission Date March 6, 2020

STARS v2.2

University of California, Los Angeles
AC-1: Academic Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 5.19 / 14.00 J. Cully Nordby
Associate Director
Institute of the Environment and Sustainability
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Part 1. Sustainability course offerings

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 7,673 3,900
Number of sustainability-focused courses offered 132 51
Number of sustainability-inclusive courses offered 231 204

Percentage of courses that are sustainability course offerings:
5.34

Part 2. Sustainability course offerings by department

Total number of academic departments that offer courses:
109

Number of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
50

Percentage of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
45.87

Documentation

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 :
To identify courses at UCLA that meet the criteria we used a five-step process.
1) We started with the list of courses that had been compiled for the previous assessment and that had been updated over the years as people flagged sustainability courses and reported them to the Sustainability Office.
2) We added courses taught by faculty who have completed the "Sustainability Across the Curriculum" workshops and have successfully infused relevant concepts of climate and sustainability onto specific courses.
3) The UCLA Registrar provided a list of all new courses that have been added to the catalog since the previous STARS assessment.
4) Kamryn Kubose, an undergraduate sustainability intern, and Dr. Cully Nordby, Associate Director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, reviewed the new courses and categorized them.
5) Based on the list of courses, Cecilia Zhang in the Office of Academic Planning and Budget performed the analysis and provided the results. Thank you, Cecilia!

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 excluded three types of courses from this assessment: 1) courses that are primarily performance based (Art, Dance, Music), 2) courses that are primarily clinical practice (School of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing), and 3) courses that are individual studies or identified as "tutorial" type activity (graduate and undergraduate).

We recognize that this 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 endeavor to update the list as we become aware of new courses.

How were courses with multiple offerings or sections counted for the figures reported above?:
Each offering or section of a course was counted as an individual course

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

Website URL where information about the sustainability course offerings is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
The inventory is the full list of courses that are "on the books" in the UCLA course catalog, while the courses "offered" are those that were actually offered during the 2018-19 academic year. Some courses listed in the inventory may not have been offered that year, and others may have been offered more than once.

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.