Overview
Interdisciplinary Sustainability Curriculum Initiative: A Proposal for Adoption

We are proposing a layered and phased approach to infusing sustainability-related material throughout the University curriculum.  This Initiative has three components:

  1. the introduction of a core set of three foundational courses that establish a systematic and systemic approach to sustainability education—these would be interdisciplinary in content and in structure, offered under the sponsorship of the Institute for Sustainability; and be available as well under the General Education Curriculum;
  2. the identification of existing courses that substantively relate to sustainability, and the strengthening of their sustainability-related content—these courses would be “flagged” in some suitable way within the University Catalog, so that students can find and follow a track of their own interest, and across disciplinary lines;
  3. the voluntary establishment of specializations or options in sustainability by as many Departments as are interested in developing this concentration within the structure of their own disciplinary content—these options would comprise of perhaps two to four courses, at the discretion of the Departments, that build where possible on existing courses.

To the extent possible, existing and established courses would be used to develop this Initiative, so as to most effectively use the resources already deployed by the University.

Departments would be encouraged to develop disciplinary emphases in sustainability while at the same time promoting interdisciplinarity, seeking out opportunities to link to courses in other but related Departments.  It could well be, for instance, that each Department that chooses to participate in this Initiative would offer its students a specialization module comprising, say, four courses, but that only some of these would be actually housed within that specific Department—the other courses being drawn from the offerings of different Departments, with their students having some discretion in picking the courses that most interest them.