The Sustainability Outcomes are:
- Students can have an informed conversation about the multiple dimensions and complexity of sustainability. (knowledge category)
- Students can evaluate sustainability using an evidence-based disciplinary approach and integrate economic, ecological, and social perspectives. (skills category)
- Students think critically about sustainability across a diversity of cultural values and across multiple scales of relevance from local to global. (values category)
- Students, as members of society, can recognize and assess how sustainability impacts their lives and how their actions impact sustainability. (personal domain)
The Sustainability Assessment Committee has taken a mixed methods approach that includes student focus groups, faculty interviews and end-semester surveys of faculty. The Committee worked with the student focus group leaders to develop quasi-direct assessment questions. As of the end of the Fall 2017 semester ten focus groups had been held, involving 75 students enrolled in Sustainability courses; and 31% of faculty who teach Sustainability courses have agreed to participate in the assessment activities. All of the faculty participants are Sustainability Faculty Fellows, and this underscores the importance of such faculty training programs. The Committee expects to complete its data analyses by late February 2018.
Laura Webb and Wendy Verrei-Berenback are co-chairs of the General Education Sustainability Assessment Committee.