Luther College
AC-1: Academic Courses

Methodology for Sustainability Course Inventory:

Whereas in our institutional characteristics we report having 22 academic departments, for this portion of STARS we limited our scope to 21 academic departments. The only department excluded from this survey is music because it fell outside of our scope.

The registrar’s office provided lists of all courses taught at Luther College for the two preceding years -- 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 -- by department. These lists were uploaded onto Google Sheets in a shared folder. Each spreadsheet contained information including instructor, enrollment, term offered, etc. These spreadsheets were shared with the head of each academic department and/or a faculty member who had indicated a willingness to help with the inventory. Departmental contacts were sent the course list for their department along with a set of instructions that included definitions and examples. The instructions provided are included at the end of this document. Each department chair was asked to complete the inventory for their department in conversation with other faculty members, as needed. Members of the Student Learning Task Group of the Campus Sustainability Council followed up with department contacts until all departments had completed their inventories.

Members of the Student Learning Task Group then reviewed the results and made some adjustments in order to ensure an accurate inventory. The course lists from the registrar’s office were comprehensive and included many “courses” that the committee did not see as actual courses. For example, single student music lessons, internships, and independent studies that were done for one or two students. From this review, the faculty group made the following adjustments:

As indicated in STARS we eliminated courses in physical education and performing arts -- dance, music, and theater.
We counted only fall and spring courses and eliminated all courses during interim or January term, one month intensive classes between fall and spring semesters. Many of these courses are off campus and involve experiential learning and are not a part of our regular curriculum. We did not count summer classes. Luther offers very few summer courses and many of the students that enroll are not pursuing degrees at Luther College.
We focused exclusively on regular courses - those that are credit bearing full courses
We eliminated courses that had fewer than 8 students. As a small college we sometime offer special courses for only a handful of students. The committee thought that including these would not accurately represent the impact of sustainability in our curriculum
We chose to count multiple sections separately, rather than as one course. In most cases this hurts our inventory since multiple section courses are mostly introductions to disciplines and most intro courses do not include sustainability. The committee determined that this was the best way to accurately represent the impact of sustainability in our curriculum

The full course inventory is uploaded as an excel spreadsheet.

STARS: Instructions and Definitions for Faculty Representatives

Introduction. The Center for Sustainable Communities would like to thank you for participating in our sustainability tracking and reporting efforts. The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System™(STARS) is a transparent, self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance in academic courses.This information sheet will provide you with definitions and instructions for helping us track Luther College academic courses that fall into your respective departments.

The Task. The Center for Sustainable Communities is trying to track how many courses at Luther are explicitly related to sustainability or are courses that include sustainability. The STARS program has provided a framework and method for calculating a score for Luther that shows how well sustainability is integrated into academics. In order to make this calculation, we need you to tell us which classes in your department are either “sustainability courses” or “courses that include sustainability”. The information you share will allow us to accurately calculate how well we are doing in terms of educating Luther students about sustainability in the classroom. Deadline: Feb. 24th

Definitions. The STARS program has provided definitions of how to label different courses with their sustainability classification. Please use the definitions and descriptions below to determine if classes in your department should receive a sustainability marking.
Sustainability Courses. Sustainability courses are courses in which the primary and explicit focus is on sustainability and/or on understanding or solving one or more major sustainability challenge***. This includes:
Foundational courses in which the primary and explicit focus is on sustainability as an integrated concept having social, economic, and environmental dimensions. Ie. Introduction to Sustainability, Sustainable Development
Courses in which the primary and explicit focus is on the application of sustainability within a field. Ie. Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Business
Courses in which the primary focus is on providing skills and/or knowledge directly connected to understanding or solving one or more major sustainability challenges. Ie. Climate Change Science, Renewable Energy Policy, Environmental Justice
While a foundational course such as chemistry or sociology might provide knowledge that is useful to practitioners of sustainability, it would not be considered a sustainability course.
Courses That Include Sustainability. A course that includes sustainability is primarily focused on a topic other than sustainability, but incorporates a unit or module on sustainability or a sustainability challenge, includes one or more sustainability-focused activities, or integrates sustainability issues throughout the course. To count, these units/modules, activities or issues should be documented in course descriptions or syllabi.

While a foundational course such as chemistry or sociology might provide knowledge that is useful to practitioners of sustainability, it would not be considered to be inclusive of sustainability unless the concept of sustainability or a sustainability challenge is specifically integrated into the course. Likewise, although specific tools or practices such as GIS (Geographical Information Systems) or engineering can be applied towards sustainability, such courses would not count unless they incorporated a unit on sustainability or a sustainability challenge, included a sustainability-focused activity, or incorporated sustainability issues throughout the course.

*** Sustainability Challenges Defined
Consistent with Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2015), major sustainability challenges include (but are not limited to) climate change, global poverty and inequality, natural resource depletion, and environmental degradation. To identify courses, research, programs and initiatives that contribute towards understanding or solving sustainability challenges, it is helpful to ask:
Does it contribute towards realizing one or more of the principles outlined in the Earth Charter?
And/or
Does it contribute towards achieving one or more of the targets embedded in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

Campus as a Living Laboratory. Consistent with the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) SEED Center, living laboratories are defined as campuses that “merge academics and… facilities management to provide students with real-world skills and, for the institution, a path to meet its sustainability goals”.
A course may gain “Living Laboratory” status if substantive work by students and/or faculty (e.g. class projects, thesis projects, term papers, published papers) involves active and experiential learning with components of sustainability on campus.
Students must be utilizing the infrastructure and operations of the college for multidisciplinary learning and applied research that contributes to understanding campus sustainability challenges or advancing sustainability on campus in at least one of the following areas: air and climate, buildings, energy, food and dining, grounds, purchasing, water, coordination and planning, diversity and affordability, investment, public engagement, transportation, waste, wellbeing and work, etc.
Examples of “living laboratories” include:
A student developed and helped implement a proposal to install bicycle repair stations on campus as the capstone project of an independent study course. (Transportation)
A student completed a capstone project evaluating local carbon offset opportunities for the university. (Air & Climate)
Sociology students conducted a survey of gender neutral facilities on campus and delivered recommendations to administrators. (Diversity & Affordability)
Students published a paper detailing the university’s investments in companies that practice and support hydraulic fracking. (Investment)

How to track these courses. Along with this instruction sheet, you should have received a GoogleSheet specific for your department or program. That sheet contains all the classes taught by your department in the last two years 2014-2016. As you go through the sheet, please put an “X” in the appropriate box for any course that you think counts as a “sustainability course” or a “course that includes sustainability.” Again, you can refer to the definitions above for these categories. If the course does not meet the requirements for either category, please insert “N/A” into the field or leave it blank.

Use an “X” to mark if the course counts as a “Campus as a Living Laboratory” course and within that box provide a brief description of the student/faculty project(s) and how they contribute to understanding campus sustainability challenges or advancing sustainability on campus in relation to the topic.

Once you have completed the course inventory for your department, please send Jon Jensen or Maren Beard an email informing them of your completion of the sheet.

Final Calculations. After each department has completed the course inventory, the Center for Sustainable Communities will calculate the total Sustainability Course ranking for Luther College based on the STARS equation. Results will be shared in the spring of 2017.