Ball State University
AC-1: Academic Courses

Our team presented our data collection plan to Ball State’s Academic Leadership Group (ALG) in October 2022. ALG participants included department chairs, Associate Deans, Deans, Associate Provosts from across the university; as well as the Provost. Information was presented about STARS and how we planned to map sustainability across the university’s curriculum. During the presentation, we provided a definition of sustainability as having a focus on and concern for the healthy maintenance and development of society environmentally, economically, and socially. As well, we provided definitions and examples of AASHE’s definitions of “Sustainability-Focused” and “Sustainability-Inclusive" courses. ALG participants were instructed that they would receive a survey through email with a list of all active courses in their unit and were asked to respond indicating whether courses were inclusive of sustainability, focused on sustainability, or did not include sustainability at all. AASHE definitions of “Sustainability-Focused” and “Sustainability-Inclusive" were also included in this email. If the department chair was not able to determine whether a particular course included or focused on sustainability, they were asked to list the name of the instructor for the course and our team reached out to the instructor to discuss course goals and objectives and made a determination based on their direct feedback.

Sustainability-focused courses had an explicit focus on a sustainability challenge, while sustainability inclusive courses had at least one unit or module related to sustainability. Examples of sustainability-inclusive included units that focused on the
• environmental health and well-being of a system, especially as it relates to natural ecosystems and/or the built environment in materials, facilities, venues, productions, and infrastructure;
• social equity and justice issues related to the course topic (e.g., music teacher education courses that teach about social equity as it relates to teaching diverse populations of students);
• sustaining physical health and well-being such as proper nutrition, athletic sustainability in dance or kinesiology, and vocal health in performances such as those in music and theater, creating and maintaining appropriate work/life balance for educators; and
• financial sustainability such as the long-term sustainable operations of a program.

Of the 47 departments across the University, we received an 86% response rate to the survey. We conducted a key terms search on all active courses within each of the seven departments that did not respond, active courses within the unit using key terms aligned with the UN’s 17 sustainability development goals published by Elsevier for tagging sustainability-related research. Only courses that were taught in the spring, summer, and fall of 2022 are reported here.

Course data was extracted from our student information system (Banner) on March 10, 2023.