Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 66.40
Liaison Austin Sutherland
Submission Date Feb. 21, 2018
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.1

University of Pennsylvania
IN-1: Sustainability Course Designation

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.00 / 0.50
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution formally designate sustainability courses in its standard course catalog or listings?:
No

A brief description of the formal sustainability course designation program, including the methodology used to identify and approve courses for inclusion:

The Penn Office of Sustainability in collaboration with the Office of the Provost publishes an on-line Sustainability Course Inventory every several years. This document includes over 300 courses that are focused in a significant way on environmental sustainability across all 12 undergraduate, professional, and graduate Schools. The Guide also lists all of the courses developed through the Sustainability Office program Integrating Sustainability across the Curriculum and through the Ben Franklin Scholars Course Development Grants.  The last Inventory was completed in 2015. An updated Inventory will be completed in the 2018-2019 school year.

There is a Sustainability and Environmental Management minor available to undergraduates in the Wharton Business School, the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS), and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). About 30 to 40 students graduate with this minor every year. Minors are listed on transcripts, but the individual courses toward a minor are not designated in a specific way.

Penn also has one of the oldest Masters in Environmental Studies programs in the country (started in the 1970s), as well as offering undergraduate, masters, and doctorate degrees in Environmental Science.

There are many environmental certificates and specialized programs associated with undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs at Penn, including:
• The new Penn Program in Environmental Humanities, started in 2014, received a multi-million dollar grant from the Mellon Foundation and began to implement a new Environmental Humanities undergraduate minor and graduate certificate, as well as a cluster hire in Environmental Humanities that will work across seven SAS departments.
• SEAS introduced six new or substantially updated courses in energy and sustainability, along with its vibrant Energy and Sustainability minor, undergraduate specialization in Energy Conversion and Storage, and Vagelos Integrated Program Energy Research (VIPER) started in 2013.
• Wharton offers a broad range of options to meet student demands in this area, including an undergraduate concentration in Environmental Policy and Management, an MBA major in Environmental and Risk Management, and a dual MBA/Master of Environmental Studies degree.
• The School of Design updated the existing Masters of Environmental Building Design program in 2010, renaming the program the Master of Science in Design (MSD) with a concentration in Environmental Building Design


Does the institution designate sustainability courses on student transcripts?:
No

The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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