University of Puget Sound
ER-5: Sustainability Course Identification

Sustainability-focused courses concentrate on the concept of sustainability, including its social, economic, and environmental dimensions. They also examine an issue or topic using sustainability as a lens. Sustainability-related courses incorporate sustainability as a distinct course component or module, or concentrate on a single sustainability principle or issue. Using the rubric of 7 sustainability principles adopted by the AASHE Sustainability Learning Objective Group, a sustainability-focused course will be deemed to concentrate “on the concept of sustainability” or to use “sustainability as a lens” if it engages at least 3 of the 7 sustainability principles in this rubric (using educational goals and learning outcomes in the rubric that match course content to determine "engaging the principles"). A sustainability-related course will engage at least 1 but not more than 2 of the 7 principles (using educational goals and learning outcomes in the rubric that match course content to determine "engaging the principles").

A team of three researchers (faculty member Dan Sherman, student Ellie Barber and alumna Leana Schwartz) conducted content analysis of all the syllabi collected for the university’s most recent accreditation (2009). As mentioned above, the AASHE Sustainability Learning Objective Group rubric was used to determine how many sustainability principles individual courses engaged. Engagement was assessed by considering the entire content (course description, purpose, readings, assignments, etc.) of each course's syllabus. Courses engaging 1 or 2 principles were identified as sustainability-related and courses engaging 3 or more principles were identified as sustainability focused. All three team members analyzed a sample of courses from three different disciplines to align applications of the rubric. Barber and Schwartz then analyzed the entire set of syllabi. When discrepancies, confusion or questions arose over particular syllabi, Barber, Schwartz and Sherman met to resolve them.