Curriculum
Introduction
One of the primary functions of colleges and universities is to educate students. By training and educating future leaders, scholars, workers, and professionals; higher education institutions are uniquely positioned to understand and address sustainability challenges. Institutions that offer courses covering sustainability issues help equip their students to lead society to a sustainable future.
Featured Resources
Latest News from AASHE Bulletin
New Resources
The influence of sustainability education on students’ entrepreneurial intentions
- American University of Sharjah
- Bucharest University of Economic studies
- Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja
Purpose:This study aims to examine the influence of sustainability education in 15 Indian universities and the mediating role of the theory of planned behavior in predicting students’ intentions to start …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Enlightening and empowering students to take action: Embedding sustainability into nursing curriculum
- Curtin University
- University of Wollongong (New South Wales)
Graduate nurses are set to face complex global challenges in their future careers. Yet, current pedagogical practices fall short in preparing the future workforce for what lies ahead. There is, …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Sustainability in supply chain management: using drawings to understand undergraduates' perceptions of sustainability
- Technological University Dublin (Dublin)
Purpose: This paper presents an interpretation of freehand drawings produced by supply chain management undergraduates in response to the question: “What is sustainability?” Having to explain sustainability pictorially forced students …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Exploring conceptions of sustainability education in initial teacher education: Perspectives from Australia, Canada and Scotland
- University of Toronto (ON)
- University of Edinburgh
- James Cook University (Queensland)
This paper draws on interview data to explore Australian, Canadian and Scottish teacher educators’ conceptions of sustainability education (SE) within initial teacher education (ITE). Findings were generated across three themes: …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Walking the talk: organising for social impact through performance management in European business schools
- University of St. Gallen
- Vienna University of Economics and Business
Universities, and business schools specifically, are experiencing a transformation of their societal mission. Similar to the STEM fields, business schools are nested in global competitive environments facing multiple competing pressures, …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Embedding a sustainability mindset in responsible management education
- Oxford Brookes University
Purpose: Organisational responses to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals depend on the competency and mindset of business leaders to lead responsibly. This study is informed and underpinned by the …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Seeing the wood for the trees: a heuristic framework to enable the integration of sustainability education in higher education settings
- Cardiff University
- De Montfort University
- Université Côte d’Azur
This paper puts forward a conceptual framework to support the dual challenges of strategic and practical integrative action of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) across Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). There …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
To know, feel and do: an instructional practice of higher education for sustainable development
- National Taichung University of Science and Technology
Purpose: The importance of multidimensional and engaging instruction for sustainable development goals (SDGs) in higher education cannot be overstated. Such instructions should motivate students not only to memorize and contemplate …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Sustainability and Environmental Communities of Practice’s Impact on News Content Diversity
- Michigan State University (MI)
Communities of practice (CoP) are distinct community groups that share a common interest in which they interact with one another to address problems and reach goals. In the present study, …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Transdisciplinary learning as a key leverage for sustainability transformations
- Leuphana University of Lüneburg
- Stockholm University
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Learning and transdisciplinary research are widely acknowledged as key components for achieving sustainability; however, the links between these concepts remain vague in the sustainability literature. Recently, emphasis has been given …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Recommendations to align higher education teaching with the UN sustainability goals – A scoping survey
- Loughborough University (Leics)
- Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
Global challenges such as climate change, limited resources, and an ever-growing world population demonstrate a perceptible impact on the lives of people around the globe. To tackle the arising issues …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
The Sustainability Literacy of Students: A Comparative Study between Turkey and the UK
- Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University
In recent years, the sustainability literacy has become crucial for building more sustainable future. In this regard, a shift toward sustainability requires literate society on sustainability issues at global scale. …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Integrating sustainability into a higher education science communication course
- University of Copenhagen
The global problems faced today call for universities to prioritize science communication education and training. This article describes how sustainability was integrated into a master-level course in science communication through …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Evaluation of UN SDG-related formal learning activities in a university common core curriculum
- The University of Hong Kong
Purpose: Higher education plays an essential role in achieving the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, there are only scattered studies on monitoring how universities promote SDGs through their …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Implementing action competence teaching model as a framework for achieving sustainable development goals: insights from students
- China University of Petroleum
- Rauf Denktas University
Purpose: This paper aims to explore the potential of implementing an action competence teaching model as a framework for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) in higher education. The paper seeks …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Knowledge, urgency and agency: reflections on climate change education course outcomes
- Lakehead University (ON)
- Mount Royal University (AB)
This research arose out of conversations among climate change education instructors teaching at Lakehead University and our shared interest to better understand student experiences in our courses, with the intention …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Sustainability evolved for experts but students fell behind: teaching interrelated social, economic and environmental goals
- University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (IL)
Purpose: While sustainability experts point to interrelated social, economic and environmental goals, students may think about sustainability primarily as natural resources. To prepare students to tackle global challenges to well-being, …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Higher education curriculum design for sustainable development: towards a transformative approach
- Kanda University of International Studies
Purpose: Education is widely recognized as a key domain for the promotion of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), prompting an increased focus on sustainable development in foreign language education. Despite …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
University language students’ evaluations of ecological, social, cultural and economic sustainability and their importance in language teaching
- University of Turku
Purpose: This study aims to explore how university language students evaluate different sustainability themes and examine the overall relevance of ecological, social, cultural and economic sustainability dimensions in language education. …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Looking within: cultivating compassion for shaping sustainable mindsets in accounting education
- Monash University (VIC)
Purpose: This paper aims to explore the role of individual inner dimensions in fostering sustainable mindsets in accounting students and graduates. Individual inner dimensions such as compassion shape our behaviour …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Environmental Literacy Differences Based on Gender Identity and Race: A Social Justice Concern
- Indiana State University (IN)
- University of North Carolina, Wilmington (NC)
Environmental literacy can empower students to make positive changes in their environment. Understanding the rates of environmental literacy in college students of color is particularly important because African American, Asian, …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Do we really make a difference? A case study on the value of taught environmental sustainability postgraduate programmes within geography
- University of Exeter (Devon)
- University of Bristol
Purpose: The purpose of this research was to discover the impacts of taught environmental sustainability-focused geography postgraduate programmes on student attitudes, behaviours and practices in relation to environmental awareness within …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Towards sustainable development: antecedents of green entrepreneurship intention among tourism and hospitality students in Egypt
- University of Sadat City
Purpose: This paper aims to examine the antecedents of green entrepreneurship intention (GEI) amongst tourism and hospitality higher education students and further explores the effect of green entrepreneurship intention on …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Transdisciplinary education for sustainability. Creativity and awareness in teacher training
- Universitat de València
Teacher training is a strategic aspect to achieve quality education and, therefore, bring closer Horizon 2030 and sustainability. The aim of this work is to present the outcome of an …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Instructors’ Perspectives on Enhancing Sustainability’s Diffusion into Mechanical Engineering Courses
- University of Colorado Boulder (CO)
This research strives to catalyze a more extensive integration of sustainability topics into mechanical engineering (ME) courses. The process through which higher education instructors choose to integrate sustainability topics into …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Knowledge and engagement of the sustainable development goals among undergraduate business students
- Universidad del Pais Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (Bizkaia)
This paper analyses the level of knowledge and engagement of the students of the Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration and Management (GADE) of the Faculty of Economics and Business (Gipuzkoa …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Breaking Down Barriers: Exploring the Potential of Participatory Visual Research to Promote University Students' Active Participation in Sustainable Development Initiatives
- McGill University (QC)
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a promising approach to addressing the global sustainability crisis, with universities playing a critical role in preparing graduates as sustainable citizens. However, traditional top-down …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Sustainability and challenge-based learning in higher education
- Universidad del Pais Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (Bizkaia)
The article presents a guide for integrating sustainability into university degrees using Challenge-Based Learning (CBL). In order to achieve this, the article starts with a literature review on education for …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Life Writing for Sustainability Education
- Bowling Green State University (OH)
This paper argues that in order to address wicked sustainability problems, such as climate change and rapid biodiversity loss, it is necessary to draw from the humanities and use methods …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Education in collaboration with cities: the intentions of transdisciplinary courses
- Technische Universiteit Delft
- Wageningen University
Purpose: In collaboration with their home cities, universities increasingly develop courses in which students investigate urban sustainability challenges. This paper aims to understand how far-reaching the collaboration with urban stakeholders …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Teaching with A Rounder Sense of Purpose: a survey study on education for sustainable development competences in Latin America
- University of Vechta
- Universidad de Antioquia
- Universidad EAFIT (Antioquia)
- Universidad Tecnica del Norte
Through support and guidance in fostering competences in ESD, educators can help students to evolve into engaged citizens capable of addressing the current ecological crisis. However, in order to provide …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Assessing University Students’ Beliefs and Attitudes towards Sustainability and Sustainable Development: A Systematic Review
- Universita degli Studi di Padova
(1) Background: contents and strategies related to sustainability and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are being introduced in academic curricula, and the organization of the university environment is evolving to adopt …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Emotions and transformative learning for sustainability: a systematic review
- Freie Universität Berlin
- Technische Universität Braunschweig
As multiple global sustainability crises worsen and become more existential, understanding how individuals undergo deep personal transformations related to sustainability is increasingly important. Transformative learning theories are widely used in …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
The sustainability-to-employment pipeline: the impact of SDG-related curricula on graduates’ employability
- Università di Bologna
Public and private organizations—including higher education institutions—frequently adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to facilitate a better future. In their efforts to realize the Agenda 2030, universities are focusing on …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Learning for Sustainability Action Model: Lessons Learnt from Community Living Labs
- Siam University
Initiating a practical model for embedding transformative learning in education that will promote sustainable development is a challenge for higher education. Siam University decided to assign a task force with …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Sustainable development in Portuguese higher education institutions from the faculty perspective
- Polytechnic Institute of Santarém
- University of Aveiro
Higher education institutions play a fundamental role and have great responsibility in promoting sustainability and achieving sustainable development goals. It is therefore essential to study the teacher's perceptions of incorporating …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
The formation of a field: sustainability science and its leading journals
- University of Borås
This study investigates the scholarly field of sustainability science between 2001 and 2021 from the perspective of 18 frequently cited journals. For this purpose, the article employs the concept of …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Pathways to decarbonization, circular construction, and sustainability in the built environment
- Florida International University (FL)
Purpose: The built environment is responsible for approximately 40% of the world’s energy consumption, 30% of raw material use, 25% of solid waste, 25% of water use, 12% of land …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Advancing sustainable entrepreneurial universities: sustainability transformations of university business incubators in Germany
- Technische Universität Berlin (Berlin)
Given the profound environmental and societal challenges, many higher education institutions (HEI) have adopted sustainability as a central mission to induce desirable societal impacts. While previous research investigated the transformation …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Beyond the classroom: Influence of a sustainability intervention on university students’ environmental knowledge and behaviors
- Southern Illinois University Carbondale (IL)
On college campuses, environmental science education largely takes place in classrooms, thereby limiting impact on the full student body. By implementing an educational intervention in an informal campus setting, this …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Enhancing curricular integration of the SDGs: fostering active methodologies through cross-departmental collaboration in a Spanish university
- Universitat Internacional de Catalunya
Purpose: This study aims to assess the effectiveness of active teaching methodologies, namely, problem-oriented learning and the case method, to develop sustainability competencies. It also analyses the advantages and challenges …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Assessing engineering students’ attitudes towards corporate social responsibility principles
- Tampere University of Applied Sciences
- Tallinn University
Ethical and sustainable thinking is an important competence in the engineering education to support students’ abilities to act and perform in a responsible manner in corporate contexts, and consequently contribute …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Exploring education for sustainable development (ESD) course content in higher education; a multiple case study including what students say they like
- Rowan University (NJ)
This paper aims to contribute to the field of knowledge surrounding Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) curricula with a view to filling a gap in ESD literature by identifying features …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Environmental and sustainability education in teacher education research: an international scoping review of the literature
- Brock University (ON)
Purpose: Halfway into the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals (SDGs) timeline, we deemed fruitful an injunction into current teacher education (TE) practices at higher educational institutes (HEIs). The scoping …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Predictors of Motivation and Barriers to ICT-Enabling Education for Sustainability
- Frederick University
- Open University Malaysia
- University of Crete
There is an increasing interest and effort in reorienting university curricula to address sustainability and preparing teachers to get involved in embedding sustainability and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Development and validation of a sustainable education scale
- Sinop Üniversitesi
This study introduces the Sustainable Education Scale (SES), a novel instrument designed to elicit teachers' perspectives on sustainable education. Grounded in human rights education, sustainable development, social justice, and psychometrics, …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Sustainability education in information systems’ curricula: A conceptual research framework
- Murdoch University (Western Australia)
In recent years, “sustainability education” in Higher Education has become an increasingly popular topic among researchers driven by the constant calls for the research community to contribute novel research that …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Service-Learning as a niche innovation in Higher Education for Sustainability
- United Nations University
- Universidad EAFIT (Antioquia)
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a framework proposed by UNESCO to develop knowledge, skills, values, and behaviors in youth for sustainable development. As part of the global development agenda, …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Traversing the Evolution of Research on Engineering Education for Sustainability: A Bibliometric Review (1991–2022)
- Mahidol University (Bangkok)
Engineering education plays a pivotal role in cultivating the engineering capacity for sustainable development. Nonetheless, there has been no comprehensive review that examines sustainability as a distinct knowledge domain within …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
Integrating Sustainable Development Goals into the Architecture Curriculum: Experiences and Perspectives
- Ain Shams University
- Helwan University
- Impact Circles
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) play a crucial role in architectural education, as buildings contribute 39% of global energy-related carbon emissions and 40% of extracted materials are used in construction. …
- Posted Aug. 13, 2025
- Publications
- View more
This tab provides access to data collected through AASHE’s Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System™ (STARS). STARS is a transparent, self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance. STARS enables meaningful comparisons over time and across institutions using a common set of measurements developed with broad participation from the campus sustainability community.
All responses reference content from reports under the latest version of STARS, version 2.2. AASHE membership and log-in is required.
AC 1: Academic Courses
- Percentage of courses that are sustainability course offerings
- Percentage of academic departments with sustainability course offerings
- Inventory of sustainability course offerings (upload)
- Website URL - Sustainability course offerings
AC 2: Learning Outcomes
- Description of institution level sustainability learning outcomes
- List of degree programs that require an understanding of the concept of sustainability
- Percentage of students who graduate from programs that require an understanding of sustainability
- Website URL - Sustainability learning outcomes
AC 3: Undergraduate Program
- First sustainability-focused undergraduate degree program
- Second sustainability-focused undergraduate degree program
- Third sustainability-focused undergraduate degree program
- First sustainability-focused undergraduate minor or concentration
- Second sustainability-focused undergraduate minor or concentration
- Third sustainability-focused undergraduate minor or concentration
AC 4: Graduate Program
- First sustainability-focused graduate-level degree program
- Second sustainability-focused graduate-level degree program
- Third sustainability-focused graduate-level degree program
- First sustainability-focused graduate-level minor or concentration
- Second sustainability-focused graduate-level minor or concentration
- Third sustainability-focused graduate-level minor or concentration
AC 5: Immersive Experience
- Description of the sustainability-focused immersive program(s)
- Second sustainability-focused graduate-level degree program
- Third sustainability-focused graduate-level degree program
AC 6: Sustainability Literacy Assessment
- Copy of the sustainability literacy assessment (upload)
- Copy of the sustainability literacy assessment (description)
- Website URL - Assessment of sustainability literacy
AC 7: Incentives for Developing Courses
- Description of the course development incentives
- Website URL - Incentives for developing sustainability courses
AC 8: Campus as a Living Laboratory
Additional analysis on scores and quantitative fields can be conducted using the STARS Benchmarking Tool.