Education Draft Policy:
To make climate neutrality and sustainability a part of the curriculum and other educational experiences for all students at USU and sister campuses.
Recommendations and progress to date (July, 2008):
- Introduce climate and sustainability in the” Connections” curriculum for incoming freshmen. Connections curriculum has created information pages for the Connections instructor manual and student manual. Instructors will receive information on sustainability issues and suggestions for incorporating activities into the Connections curriculum.
- Sustainability information has been included in the USU New Student Planner. During SOAR (new student orientation) students are being directed to the information and opportunities to be included in sustainability efforts.
- Modify the objectives and criteria for USU Breadth Courses to encourage faculty to include climate and sustainability components into all newly approved General Education Breadth courses. These modifications are ready to be sent to the General Education subcommittee of Education Policies Committee (EPC) for their consideration.
- Modify the objectives and criteria for USU Depth Courses to encourage faculty to include components of climate and sustainability into newly approved Depth Courses. Encourage the development of new USU Depth Courses with emphasis in areas of climate and sustainability.
- Review existing General Education Courses on a 5-year cycle using the newly revised criteria to include issues of climate and sustainability.
- Include specific questions on sustainability in the freshman/sophomore survey and the survey of recent USU graduates. Craig Peterson, Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, has worked with this committee to allow the addition of a few questions on these issues.
- Create a position for someone to collect and disseminate information on courses and other educational experiences presently offered at USU that relate to climate and sustainability. This committee has compiled a list of courses taught at USU that relate to climate and sustainability issues.
- Include sustainability in the service learning projects associated with general education courses.
