| Overall Rating | Silver - expired |
|---|---|
| Overall Score | 52.36 |
| Liaison | Matthew Williams |
| Submission Date | Dec. 4, 2020 |
| Executive Letter | Download |
University of Florida
AC-1: Academic Courses
| Status | Score | Responsible Party |
|---|---|---|
|
2.63 / 14.00 |
Liz
Storn Program Coordinator Office of Sustainability |
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 | 4,145 | 3,672 |
| Number of sustainability courses offered | 46 | 37 |
| Number of courses offered that include sustainability | 93 | 71 |
Percentage of courses that are sustainability course offerings:
Total number of academic departments (or the equivalent) that offer courses (at any level):
Number of academic departments (or the equivalent) that offer at least one sustainability course and/or course that includes sustainability (at any level):
Percentage of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
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?:
A brief description of the methodology used to determine the total number of courses offered and to identify sustainability course offerings, including the definitions used and the process for reviewing and/or validating the course inventory :
Office of Sustainability Staff perused all syllabi for courses initially identified as being sustainability focused and sustainability related. Initial selection was performed by a consulting company Sustainability Education Services (SES) employing NVivo(TM) a qualitative data analysis application especially effective for identifying thematically related content. From the initial lists, further refinements were made by reviewing the course syllabi, and additional courses that had not been initially selected but were known to be related to sustainability were added to the list.
The initial syllabi survey utilized the content analysis software, NVivo. Syllabi were collected by the Office of Sustainability from the internet, and then provided to the analyst. Maintaining departmental and college information as attributes, the data were uploaded to the software. Key word searches were run on the text of every document using the following sustainability related terms: air quality, appropriate technology, community development, earth charter, ecology, ecological economics, environment, environmental, environmental economics, environmental justice, environmental politics, green building, green business, green design, limits to growth, millennium development goals, new urbanism, our common future, resilience, social capital, social justice, social wellbeing, soil quality, soil science, sustainability, sustainable, sustainable development, waste, and water quality. This list of key words was derived from the analyst’s last five years of research and development within the sustainability education literature and sustainability curricula in higher education. From the original dataset of 5,666 these word frequencies narrowed the list of potentially relevant courses to 3,000. Those courses with only a single hit on any of the key words were next examined, and irrelevant courses were eliminated. The remaining courses were renamed to correspond with their course number and course title, and then examined and qualitatively assessed to be either sustainability focused, sustainability related, or unrelated. The sample was scanned three times during this process, searching for courses that were fully focused on sustainability. The resultant initial sample included 382 syllabi. Sixty three courses were identified as sustainability focused and 319 were identified as sustainability related
How were courses with multiple offerings or sections counted for the figures reported above?:
A brief description of how courses with multiple offerings or sections were counted (if different from the options outlined above):
Are the following course types included in the inventory? :
| Yes (included) or No (not included) | |
| Internships | No |
| Practicums | No |
| Independent study | Yes |
| Special topics | Yes |
| Thesis / dissertation | No |
| Clinical | No |
| Physical education | No |
| Performance arts | No |
The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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.