Sustainability Courses

sustainabilitycourses

According to the 2019 curriculum assessment, as part of UWM’s STARS submission, 69% of academic departments feature sustainability course offerings. UWM offers over 590 course sections that include sustainability across 38 departments.

The coursework was assessed based on the definition below, which was agreed upon by an interdisciplinary group of faculty.

“Sustainability is defined as the commitment to make decisions today that benefit our quality of life without compromising the long-term health of communities and citizens, biodiversity, climate, and food and water systems.

Sustainability addresses needs and growth that weigh how environmentally sound, socially just, and economically viable a practice or process develops and is implemented.

Within the above definition, sustainability rests upon two key assumptions:

  1. Nature’s capacity to deal with anthropogenic forces has limitations which must be embraced.
  2. We as individuals, campuses, and local communities are not isolated, but rather, interconnected with local, national, and global human activity across social, economic, and environmental boundaries.”

UW-Milwaukee’s Sustainability in the Curriculum Assessment