Teaching and learning data

Courses Focused on/Including Sustainability

The course inventory is based on over 6,000 course descriptions within the undergraduate and graduate calendars. The Sustainability Office used keyword matching for each of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, using keywords that had been developed by SDSN Global, to do a first pass of course descriptions. This method was complemented by manual review of the course descriptions from the Sustainability Office to either corroborate or reject the keyword findings, or to identify courses that may have been missed. The final inventory includes a list of courses where there are:

• Likely connections to each SDG, where there was a keyword match and upon manual review there seemed a clear connection to the specific SDG targets
• Potential connections to each SDG, where there was a keyword match but upon manual review it was determined that more information was needed about the course, OR that there was no keyword match but upon manual review there looked like thematic connections to the SDGs and their specific targets

The most recent inventory is based on the 2023/24 Academic calendars. In previous years, the Sustainability Office has worked through academic department chairs to confirm/validate connections to more environmental sustainability-themed courses.

Limitations and Exclusions:

• Course descriptions are not exhaustive, and it is possible that there are many more courses that have units, modules, or case studies related to sustainability that were not included in the description. Further analysis could be conducted by looking at course syllabi.
• Some department chairs did not respond to requests for confirmation in the past, in which case the original inventory was used. Approximately 81% of courses were verified at the time, though inclusion of the SDGs and their targets as a basis of analysis significantly widens consideration.
• Special Topics courses were normally excluded from the count, unless the description provided a list of specific topics that could be related to sustainability. Transfer courses, high school courses, Laurier courses, and any courses that appeared in the calendar but were noted not to be offered until future years, were also excluded.
• The academic calendar lists all courses that are available at the University of Waterloo, but does not indicate whether they were actually scheduled. Further analysis could be done through the Quest system to analyze the number of courses and sections offered.
• Course numbers and descriptions may change year-over-year, which sometimes impacts the ability to see comparative change over time.