University of Richmond
IN-38: Sustainability Course Designation

The UR Office for Sustainability has worked closely with the Registrar’s Office on developing an internal methodology for tracking and quantifying courses that qualify as either being “Sustainability Focused” or “Sustainability Inclusive”.  This internal designation supports benchmarking and institutional reporting, in addition to serving as a mechanism for identifying courses that integrate sustainability into their curricula.

Through initial manual scans of the entire course catalog and consultation with faculty across the institution, an analysis of courses that were either “sustainability focused” or “sustainability inclusive” was developed. Since the Registrar’s Office has internally flagged these courses and is able to pull this data at the request of the Office for Sustainability, each semester, annual scans of the entire course catalog are completed to see what new courses should be added to this inventory.

• Sustainability Focused courses, designated by the internal course attribute of “SUFC” are courses that have a primary and explicit focus on the integrated concept of sustainability and/or the interdependence of ecological and social/cultural/economic systems.
• Sustainability Inclusive courses, designated by the internal course attribute of “SUIC” are primarily focused on something other than sustainability, but clearly incorporate sustainability content or address one or more sustainability challenge.  These definitions are consistent with best practice guidance from AASHE and STARS. 

Note: This list contains more courses than those included in the Sustainabiliuty Minor, which uses different attributes. To prevent confusion - and at the request of the minor - we post only the courses that are on the minor on our sustainability courses page. However, we are able to promote this information for students seeking sustainability courses beyond the minor via in-class visits, meetings, and presentations. 

Since the launch of the interdisciplinary Sustainability Minor at UR in the Fall of 2022, to not confuse students, UR has only been promoting Sustainability Minor courses as sustainability courses to students, staff, and faculty online. However, we promote the other classes in conversations with students and faculty. 

All of the Sustainability Minor courses at UR are Sustainability Focused, but not all Sustainability Focused courses are applicable in the Minor. The Sustainability Minor has its own set of attributes, which are public facing to students, staff, and faculty and are in alignment with the topical areas and requisites of the Sustainability Minor: 

• Sustainability “SUST”
• Economic Sustainability “SUEC”
• Environmental Sustainability “SUEV”
• Social Sustainability “SUSS”