University of New Hampshire
AC-1: Academic Courses

Staff at the Sustainability Institute coordinated the data gathering and assessment for AC1. Below is the process the staff followed to conduct an inventory of sustainability in UNH undergraduate and graduate courses. 1. The Sustainability Institute staff and five interns met to review the process and agree upon criteria for assessing what courses were sustainability focused or included sustainability. The criteria used in this assessment were grounded in the guidance given by AASHE in section G. A course was considered sustainability focused or inclusive of sustainability if it addressed environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and economic vitality to meet the needs of present and future generations and courses that furthered our collective commitment to human dignity for all people and ecological integrity in all places. To differentiate between courses that focused on sustainability and those that included sustainability, the following parameters were utilized: • Courses that focused on sustainability needed to have a clear focus on sustainability as a theme or an application. Examples include Principles of Sustainability, Politics & Policy Warming World, and Renewable Energy. • Courses that include sustainability were defined as courses that are focused on another topic but incorporate a sustainability section or weave sustainability throughout the course. Examples include Introduction to Food Management, Wildlife Ecology, Feminist Thought, and Community Ecology. 2. Once the process and criteria were agreed upon, Sustainability Institute staff gathered the undergraduate and graduate course catalogs and the UNH Registrar's Time/Room Schedule to ensure that the courses reviewed were active. 3. Sustainability Institute staff and interns then met weekly for three months to review courses. In the meetings, batches of course descriptions were analyzed, discussed, and then categorized into “Sustainability Focused,” “Includes Sustainability,” or courses without ties to sustainability. 4. If designation was not obvious (focus on or related to sustainability) from personal knowledge of the course and/or from the course description, syllabi were reviewed to make the determination. If designation was still unclear, course instructors were contacted to gain further information. Sustainability Institute staff then made a determination as to appropriate course categorization. 5. Through this three-month closely monitored process, we were able to inventory active UNH undergraduate and graduate courses that focused on or contained sustainability. The list is up to date as of summer 2017.

If a course was open to both undergraduates and graduates, it was counted as both an undergraduate course and a graduate course. A course was only counted once if it was taught in a year, regardless of whether it was offered more than one semester.

https://sustainableunh.unh.edu/education https://sustainableunh.unh.edu/sites/sustainableunh.unh.edu/files/media/sust_courses.pdf