California State University, Fresno
AC-1: Academic Courses

The University's Course Catalog was consulted to identify course offerings that are "sustainability-focused" and "sustainability-inclusive" between Fall 2020 and Spring 2022:

A. To count as sustainability-focused, the course title or description must indicate a primary and explicit focus on sustainability*. This includes:
"1. Foundational courses with a primary and explicit focus on sustainability (e.g., Introduction to Sustainability, Sustainable Development, Sustainability Science).
2. Courses with a primary and explicit focus on the application of sustainability within a field (e.g., Architecture for Sustainability, Green Chemistry, Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Business). As sustainability is an interdisciplinary topic, such courses generally incorporate insights from multiple disciplines.
3. Courses with a primary and explicit focus on a major sustainability challenge (e.g., Climate Change Science, Environmental Justice, Global Poverty and Development, Renewable Energy Policy). The focus of such courses might be on providing knowledge and understanding of the problems and/or the tools for solving them."

*The course title or description does not have to use the term “sustainability” to count as sustainability-focused if the primary and explicit focus of the course is on the interdependence of ecological and social/economic systems or a major sustainability challenge. If the course title and description do not unequivocally indicate such a focus, but it is evident from the course description or syllabus that the course incorporates sustainability challenges, issues, and concepts in a prominent way, the course may qualify as sustainability-inclusive (see below).

B. To count as sustainability-inclusive, the course description or rationale provided in the course inventory must indicate that the course incorporates a unit or module on sustainability or a sustainability challenge, includes one or more sustainability-focused activities, or integrates sustainability challenges, issues, and concepts throughout the course.

C. A list was drafted based on these criteria and distributed to each Academic Department for confirmation. Department Chairs were asked to consult their faculty on whether any courses they taught were not counted, and if so, provide an explanation for how sustainability is included in the course. This explanation was then evaluated to determine whether the class was sustainability- focused or inclusive, based on the aforementioned criteria, and verified that it was offered during the reporting time period.**

**Courses were verified to have been taught during the reporting period by cross-comparing with a list provided by the Scheduling Office.

The time period for this course audit did not include more recent offerings because we collected a comprehensive list of course offerings from the Scheduling Office before the academic year 2022-2023. Because of this, we did not look at courses from that academic year to ensure consistency and accuracy. Future reports will capture more complete depictions of sustainability offerings.