Overall Rating Silver - expired
Overall Score 46.52
Liaison Sarah Wald
Submission Date Nov. 16, 2011
Executive Letter Download

STARS v1.1

Drew University
ER-5: Sustainability Course Identification

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 2.00 / 3.00 Sarah Wald
Assisstant Professor
Environmental Studies & Sustainability
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Has the institution developed a definition of sustainability in the curriculum?:
Yes

A copy of the institution's definition of sustainability in the curriculum?:

The goal of sustainability education is to foster the knowledge, motivation, and skills to help create a healthy economy, society, and environment. Sustainability education may occur throughout the curriculum, regardless of field of study.

In order to determine whether or not a course has this goal in mind, it is useful to ask whether or not a given course will help students to achieve one or more of the following.

• Understand and be able to effectively communicate the concept of sustainability.
• Place environmental problems and solutions in context: cultural, social, ethical, scientific, economic, or political.
• Synthesize understanding of social, economic, and/or environmental systems and reason holistically.
• Build knowledge about life on earth or about interconnections with the biotic and abiotic environment.
• Develop an ethical perspective in which students view themselves as embedded in the fabric of an interconnected world.
• Develop an understanding of the health of and/or equity within human communities and cultures at local, regional, national, and/or global levels.
• Understand the way in which sustainable thinking and decision-making contributes to the process of creating solutions for current and emerging social, environmental, and economic crises.
• Develop the technical skills or expertise necessary to implement sustainable solutions.

A course does not have to accomplish all of these things to be designated as sustainability-related or sustainability-focused. No single course may be designated both sustainability-focused and sustainability related.

Sustainability-focused courses concentrate on the concept of sustainability throughout the course engaging at least two of the above principles.

Sustainability-related courses incorporate sustainability as a distinct course component or module or concentrate on a single sustainability principle or issue.


Has the institution identified its sustainability-focused and sustainability-related course offerings?:
Yes

A brief description of the methodology the institution followed to complete the inventory:

We created an on-line survey that was sent to all faculty. Office visits were conducted to increase response to survey.


Does the institution make its sustainability course inventory publicly available online?:
No

The website URL where the sustainability course inventory is posted:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.