Sustainability Learning Outcomes Inventory 2014
Environmental Studies
Sustainability Learning Outcomes include:
 Develop a critical understanding of environmental issues
 Develop an understanding of systems and multi-perspective thinking
 Examine environmental issues particularly through the lenses of justice,
power, and ethics
Environmental Science
Sustainability Learning Outcomes include:
 Ability to apply scientific thinking (i.e. the scientific method) to
environmental problems, with understanding of the complexities and
constraints human cultures and societies impose on solutions to those
problems
 Understanding of the complexity and inherent multidisciplinary nature of
environmental issues
 Ability to view life decisions through a ‘sustainability filter’, especially those
involving transportation, food, and housing
Biology
Ecological Biology is a required course for the major and minor and includes the
following learning goals:
 Develop global awareness, including an understanding of the natural world
as a context for humanity. We will focus on several sustainability issues, and
how population and community ecology principles can be applied in problem
solving
 Heightened your awareness of one’s self and others as biological and
ecological beings thereby engendering a sense of the responsibility that
comes with that knowledge.
Biological Diversity is a second course required for the major and minor and has the
following learning outcomes:
 Be able to interpret evolutionary relationships (phylogenies)
 Be able to identify organisms to major taxonomic groupings, especially
common local organisms
 Be able to recognize “function” from “form” for an organisms’ anatomy and
physiology
 Be able to reconstruct the evolutionary history of major adaptations and
syndromes.
 Become aware of the conservation concern for various taxa, and how we can
mitigate their decline
Peace and Global Studies
Global Dynamics and World Peace is a required course for the major and includes
the following in its description and outcomes:
Course Description:
What does "peace" mean? Is sustainable peace possible? How can we contribute to
peacebuilding? This course addresses these questions by examining current global
dynamics, including violence, environmental destruction, and "globalization." The
word "globalization," in turn, is used here as shorthand to refer to another set of
dynamics present in the global system today, including poverty, efforts at poverty
reduction, free trade agreements, and international migration flows. How best can
we understand what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to as "the interrelated
structure of reality?" Using a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary lenses
(including but not limited to history, sociology, political science, philosophy, and
economics), we will look at different perspectives concerning the ways these
dynamics are (or are not) related and what can be done to address the complex set
of problems humanity faces today.
Course Objectives:
This course is primarily designed for sophomores who are majoring in Peace &
Global Studies. …The objectives of this course are the same as one of the principal
sets of objectives I have for PAGS majors generally. I want PAGS majors to be cleareyed regarding the constraints that face liberation movements and postcolonial
societies and to have an analysis of the source of those constraints. PAGS majors
should have reasoned understandings of what constitutes peace and of what
constitutes justice, an analysis of ways of moving toward greater justice and peace,
and of the kinds of problems that arise in that movement.