Overall Rating Bronze
Overall Score 36.20
Liaison Laurel Pikcunas
Submission Date March 3, 2022

STARS v2.2

University of Hawaii at Manoa
AC-1: Academic Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 9.25 / 14.00 Makena Coffman
Professor and Director
Institute for Sustainability and Resilience
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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 5,538 1,217
Number of sustainability-focused courses offered 98 9
Number of sustainability-inclusive courses offered 487 123

Percentage of courses that are sustainability course offerings:
10.61

Part 2. Sustainability course offerings by department

Total number of academic departments that offer courses:
100

Number of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
75

Percentage of academic departments with sustainability course offerings:
75

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 :
A graduate student assistant at the UHM Institute for Sustainability and Resilience created a list of keywords to identify sustainability course offerings. The keyword search included sustainability-inclusive keywords related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The SDG keywords were largely drawn from research completed by the University of Toronto students, titled “Expanding Student Engagement in Sustainability: Using SDG- and CEL-Focused Inventories to Transform Curriculum at the University of Toronto.” Their research report outlines the methodology of choosing keywords related to each of the UN SDGs. For the STARS report, the student graduate assistant built upon the 68 keywords outlined in their research paper and added 22 keywords that included more Hawaii-specific terms in line with SDGs, as well as other keywords that closely matched the SDG keywords.

The student started with a list of all courses from Fall 2020, Spring 2021 and Summer 2021. After removing all classes with course enrollments of 4 or fewer students and deleting duplicate cross-listed courses, the student used conditional formatting in excel to highlight course descriptions that included the keywords. The student then screened the list for accuracy, removing any that were obvious mistakes (e.g. “Wind Ensemble” that picked up keyword “wind,” meant to refer to wind energy). The final list comprised the Sustainability-Inclusive course number.

The Institute for Sustainability and Resilience also manages the cross-listed courses in the Sustainability course listing (denoted as SUST). These courses undergo individual review by the ISR Curriculum Committee, an interdisciplinary committee made up of nine professors from different colleges. The courses offered during the three semesters surveyed (Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Summer 2021) that were designated SUST were counted as Sustainability-Focused. For more information about those courses, please visit: https://manoa.hawaii.edu/isr/curriculum/.

The submission team then copied and pasted course descriptions from the catalog for sustainability-inclusive courses, and copied descriptions from the database of SUST curriculum for sustainability-focused courses.

Graduate courses are those numbered 500 and above; undergraduate courses are those numbered 400 and below.

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:
Notes:
The campus designates all courses which earn the SUST listing as "Sustainability-focused".
"Sustainability-inclusive" courses were identified using the methodology listed above.

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.