Green Mountain College
AC-2: Learning Outcomes

Green Mountain College Environmental Liberal Arts (ELA) Goals & Learning Outcomes:

All undergraduates at GMC must complete at least four ELA core and seven distribution courses. All ELA courses must make explicit connections between the course content and ELA sustainability learning outcomes, which are:

I. Systems Thinking
Students will understand the structure and dynamics of representative social and natural systems and their interrelationships.
1. Students will demonstrate knowledge of social systems and their historical development.
2. Students will demonstrate knowledge of ecological systems and how they have been historically conceived.
3. Students will demonstrate the ability to integrate knowledge of social and ecological systems to predict, assess, and analyze the effects of human activities.

II. Critical Thinking and Communication
Students will develop and apply strong problem-solving skills and communication skills.
1. Students will demonstrate the ability to communicate complex issues and ideas to diverse audiences in a variety of media.
2. Students will demonstrate the ability to evaluate reasoning and to create effective arguments that address these issues.
3. Students will demonstrate information literacy through the ability to access, understand, apply, and evaluate sources of information critically and to distinguish fact from opinion.
4. Students will apply these skills in service to their community.

III. Environmental Awareness
Students will understand the factors contributing to our domestic and global ecological challenges and demonstrate the ability to evaluate proposals for creating a more sustainable future.
1. Students will understand contemporary environmental issues such as climate change, resource depletion and biodiversity loss as well as the complexity of proposed solutions.
2. Students will understand the history of land use and the changing relationship between humans and nature over time.
3. Students will be able to articulate a positive vision for a just and sustainable society.

IV. Reflective Self Awareness and Responsibility
Students will demonstrate ethical responsibility, aesthetic sensitivity, and multicultural awareness.
1. Students will demonstrate reflective self-awareness of their strengths and weaknesses.
2. Students will demonstrate empathy for others and the ability to entertain multiple perspectives.
3. Students will demonstrate the ability to clearly identify the ethical dimensions of environmental issues.
4. Students will understand the roles that concepts such as race, gender, sexual identity, religion, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity may play in identifying problems or responding to events.
5. Students will demonstrate an ability to respond to and reason about aesthetic considerations.

V. Liberal Arts Understanding
Students will demonstrate interdisciplinary integration of traditional liberal arts areas.
1. Students will demonstrate familiarity with the subject matter and methodologies of the arts, humanities, natural sciences, mathematics, and social sciences.
2. Students will draw on the knowledge base or methodologies of two or more disciplines to analyze, evaluate, or solve a complex problem.
3. Students will demonstrate the ability to use quantitative and qualitative methodologies to interpret and analyze natural and social phenomena.

Since GMC only offers sustainability-related graduate programs, all graduate students also meet sustainability learning outcomes, which are available through the graduate academic catalog:
http://www.greenmtn.edu/flipbooks/2016-17GraduateCatalog/

Graduate Program Sustainability Learning Outcomes

Learning Outcomes for the Master if Business Administration(MBA) Program
Through the MBA program, students will:
1. Acquire a solid foundation in the core areas of business administration, including finance, accounting, marketing, organizational leadership, business law, and ethics; while grounding that knowledge in the relationships that define the communities in which they live and work.
2.Gain the knowledge to achieve economic objectives while addressing the needs of employees, their community, and other stakeholders by focusing on the triple bottom-line.
3.Demonstrate the ability to understand the environmental and social context in which economic activity takes place.
4.Acquire a thorough understanding of contemporary issues, theories, and skills related to their area of focus within sustainable business.

Learning Outcomes for the Masters of Science in Environmental Science(MSES) Program
Through the MSES program, students will:
1. Acquire and demonstrate a solid foundation in environmental science, history, philosophy, law, policy, and organizing principles.
2. Analyze contemporary environmental issues
3. Demonstrate understanding of the theories related to their area of focus in environmental studies.
4. Develop and demonstrate through projects a suite of sophisticated skills related to applying theoretical knowledge to problem—solving in a community.

Learning Outcomes for the Master of Science in Resilient and Sustainable Communities(MRSC) Program
Through the MRSC program, students will:
1. Acquire much of the knowledge necessary to plan sustainable and resilient communities, including land-use policy, economic development, energy production, food systems, resource management and their local natural history, synthesizing this knowledge in preparation for creating actionable plans for communities in their bioregion.
2. Develop a suite of sophisticated skills related to applying theoretical knowledge to problem-solving in a community.
3. Be able to evaluate the specific challenges that a community faces—environmental, economic, social, and political—in becoming more sustainable and resilient, and to research and develop effective approaches for addressing these challenges.
4. Prepare to help create more resilient, sustainable, and socially just communities by developing their skills in leadership, group organization, and conflict resolution.

Learning Outcomes for the Master of Science in Sustainable Food Systems(MSFS) Program
Through the MSFS program, students will:
1. Acquire a solid foundation in the historical context, economic realities, ecological considerations, policy aspects, and cultural values that have created our contemporary food systems, including regional differences.
2. Develop a solid understanding of best practices in sustainable agricultural production in the vegetable, fruit, and livestock sectors, including the distinctions in production methods within different scales and bioregions.
3. Develop the ability to analyze different components of a food system—production, processing, distribution, preparation, and consumption—in order to assess that food system’s strengths and weaknesses with regard to economic, ecological and social sustainability.
4. Learn how to leverage food system change within businesses, regional communities, the nonprofit sector, and/or policymaking organizations.
5. Learn to use the interdisciplinary knowledge from their masters coursework to research, analyze, and develop potential solutions for food system issues in their home bioregions.

At the heart of the College’s sustainability mission is the 37-credit Environmental Liberal Arts general education curriculum, which all GMC undergraduate students complete. ELA Learning Outcomes apply to all courses. All four graduate programs that the College offers also adhere to sustainability learning outcomes as they are sustainability-focused and train students to be sustainability professionals.

The reporting year for this question is the academic year 2016-2017. The total number of graduates includes masters students.