University of Vermont
AC-1: Academic Courses

A list of all courses offered at the institution in academic year 2014-2015 (Fall 2014, Spring 2015, and Summer 2015), including meta data about the courses (e.g. department, semester, professor, etc.), was generated by the Registrar. The Education & Outreach Coordinator in the Office of Sustainability then modified the list according to the selections below (i.e. deletion of thesis credits, etc). Two columns were added to the sheet: one labeled “sustainability designation” and another labeled “sustainability justification.” The designation column had the following choices: “sustainability course,” “course that includes sustainability,” and “neither.” The justification column was intended to capture a description of what each course entails and how it relates to sustainability. Directions were written under each column heading, and another tab on the Google sheet contained a list of FAQs about the inventory and how to complete it. A second tab included text from the STARS technical manual defining the sustainability designations. The Education & Outreach Coordinator and a Graduate Student Fellow pre-populated a small percentage of the designation column using lists of previously identified sustainability-related courses from past exercises carried out by the Sustainability Curriculum Review Committee, the group that oversees implementation of the sustainability general education requirement at the University. Courses belonging to faculty who served in the Sustainability Faculty Fellows program were also pre-designated. In both instances, strict criteria was followed, which can be found in the “Codebook for Course Inventory” in the University’s Google Doc system. The list of courses was then transferred into a Google Doc spreadsheet. To complete the inventory, the Office of Sustainability worked with the Associate Provost for Teaching & Learning (APTL) and the Provost to generate a letter that went out to all Deans, asking them to “crowd-source” collection of the data in their departments, using the Google Doc sheet. In addition to the letter, the APTL, Provost, and Office of Sustainability attended a meeting of all the Deans to explain what needed to be done and by when. Deans then either opted to complete the work themselves, assigned the task to department chairs, or asked all faculty in the department to complete their individual portions. After a series of three deadlines and extensions, a large portion of the inventory was complete. The APTL, Education & Outreach Coordinator, and a Graduate Student Fellow then worked on acquiring data directly from a targeted list of deans and individual faculty who likely had a large percentage of sustainability courses. In some cases, faculty were given specific course titles to respond to, and in other cases syllabi were solicited. After data collection, review began. The Education & Outreach coordinator reviewed all 3,841 courses, editing for grammar and clarification of justifications. If the link to sustainability was not clear, the Education & Outreach Coordinator had a conversation with the faculty member to clarify. Some courses were de-listed as sustainability-related courses. The final version was then reviewed by the APTL, as well as the Assistant Director of the Center for Teaching & Learning.

Although multiple offerings of each course were counted as separate courses in the inventory, it is important to note that there was no double-counting of cross-listed courses. Cross-listed courses were collapsed into a single, tangible offering of the course. The Registrar’s Office used their own methodology to decide which department each cross-listed course would fall under. This methodology is described further in our codebook.

The inventory was for Academic Year 2014-2015, which includes Summer 2015. The reason the number of academic departments does not match IC-3 is because the number used for IC-3 comes from our Office of Institutional Research and their list is more based on political control. The Registrar's list is more based on academic subject matter. The reason political control and subject matter do not match is because some academic departments are controlled by more than one political unit. For example, a department that offers mostly Gen Ed courses does not squarely fit under one politically controlled department, since it serves many. We considered re-coding the Registrar’s department designations so that they matched the department designations development by Institutional Research (IR) for the other academic credits. However, after examining IR employee Larry Granillo’s document comparing the department lists, it was determined that many Registrar departments will not easily fit under IR’s department designations as they are either shared by multiple IR departments or not directly under any department’s purview. Arbitrarily forcing the Registrar department designations into the IR department designations would be inherently biased.