This program supports faculty and staff at SCU and other schools to integrate learning about sustainability into every discipline. The Program also keeps an inventory of all SCU courses that include sustainability, strengthening our reputation as a leader in higher education.
We offer professional development workshops for faculty members who want to design curricula that include sustainability, and for sustainability staff who want to train the faculty at their institutions. Our convenient online summer workshops introduce a host of educational resources and offer a community of learning with individualized support. Stipends are available to SCU participants.
The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE),recognizes SCU as one of a handful of national training centers for Sustainability across the Curriculum.
Learn more about our workshops and how to apply to participate. The application portal opens in early February of each year.
See examples of past SCU participants' curricula.
See the Sustainability Data Hub to learn more about past participants.
100% of participants in the workshops over the past three years agreed that they met their goals, and 98% would recommend the workshops to a colleague.
Hear from some of our colleagues about what they created in the workshops.
Stacey Ritter, Accounting
Jesica S. Fernández, Ethnic Studies
Kat Saxton and Laura Chyu, Public Health Sciences
"With support from the Center, we developed a lab assignment in which students use the EPA Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool and other online mapping tools to explore the relationship between place and health. These tools enable students to integrate environmental and sociodemographic indicators in geospatial visualizations of disease distributions and envision public health interventions and policies. Creating this exercise helped us be more explicit about integrating sustainability issues into Public Health and Biology curriculum and utilize current, up-to-date data sources and online mapping tools."
Chan Thai, Communication
"Integrating a unit into my Technology and Communication course on the sustainability of manufacturing and disposal of computers and cell phones gave my students tangible ways to think about how they can be more responsible consumers of technology."
According to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), sustainability courses teach about “the integrated concept of sustainability and/or the interdependence of ecological and social/cultural/economic systems.” Such courses may take this integrated approach to teaching about a major sustainability challenge, such as climate change science, environmental justice, global poverty and development, renewable energy policy, and many other examples. These courses may focus primarily on sustainability or include sustainability as a secondary focus. For more about the concept of sustainability, see AASHE’s brief article on the topic.
Drawing data from the University Registrar, department chairs, and the faculty, the Center for Sustainability compiles an annual inventory of sustainability courses taught each year and their enrollment. We report the data to AASHE, using its Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System (STARS). Visit the Sustainability Data Hub to see our progress.