Teaching & Learning Progress, 2018-22

We use sustainable principles to prepare students to lead lives of impact through a supportive environment focused on holistic and individualized approaches to learning inside and outside the classroom. 

2018 Pitt Sustainability Plan Goals 

  • ADVISORS: Engage all undergraduate advisors and give them the tools necessary to connect interested students to sustainability-themed courses, majors, minors, internships, and community activities. 
  • FIRST-YEARS: Incorporate sustainability education into all first-year seminars. 
  • CERTIFICATE: Annually increase the number of students applying for and graduating with the Undergraduate Certificate in Sustainability starting Academic Year 2017-18. 
  • SERVICE LEARNING: Increase sustainability-related service-learning opportunities. 
  • CURRICULUM: Create faculty tools, workshops, and incentives to encourage the incorporation of sustainability components into current syllabi. 

Where We Are: Engaging Advisors

Undergraduate Advisor Toolkit: In 2019, the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI) rolled out Pitt’s Undergraduate Advisor Toolkit for Students Interested in Sustainability.  Regularly updated and distributed to advisors across campus, the toolkit provides advisors with the most up-to-date information to help students find academic sustainability courses, majors, minors, internships, and community activities. 

Where We Are: Sustainability for First-Year Students

The original 2018 Pitt Sustainability Plan goal was to reach first-year students by incorporating sustainability education into first-year seminars; however, the Pitt Sustainability team found multiple opportunities to embed Sustainability into a wide variety of incoming and first-year experiences as described below.  

Online Pre-Orientation: All first-year and transfer undergraduate students take Pitt’s Online Orientation modules. To help students learn about campus sustainability efforts and positively contribute to the University’s culture of sustainability, an information module on sustainability was added to online orientation in Fall 2019 – and has been annually updated since.   

Pre-Orientation Connections: Pitt offers pre-orientation opportunities for incoming first-year students to explore campus, connect with Pitt, serve the community, and develop friendships prior to enrollment.  Recently dubbed “Panther Connect,” sustainability has been integrated into pre-orientation experiences since 2015.  In 2022, sustainability-related first-year pre-orientation experiences included a wide variety of sustainability-related activities including planting a campus green wall, helping maintain Oakland trees, and assisting with post-Clutter for a Cause (move out) materials sorting. 

Sustainability in Orientation: Since 2013, Pitt Green Team has been a way for incoming first-year students to become eco-ambassadors, as trained by the Student Office of Sustainability. Though involved in multiple campus sustainability activities throughout the year, the 60 first-year student Pitt Green Team members are most visible at Arrival Week, during which they are responsible for recycling dozens of tons of cardboard. 

Additionally, since 2015, a growing number of in-person Orientation events have added composting and/or zero waste strategies.  In Fall 2021, Welcome Week featured 15 Pitt Green Events with ~7,400 attendees (including the Chancellor’s Picnic and Global Carnival).  The Pitt Green Event designation evolved into the Pitt Green Host format late in Fall 2022. 

Sustainability Living Learning Community: Developed by Pitt undergraduates and launched in Fall 2022, Pitt’s Sustainability Living Learning Community (LLC) helps students living on the same residence hall floor explore and engage with sustainability across all disciplines together. Both first-year and upper-level students thrive in the Sustainability LLC, learning best practices for living sustainably and how to model these behaviors for their peers and the Pitt community. 

Nature-Cities-Humans First-Year Academic Community: Pitt’s Academic Communities are an opportunity for first-year students to meet others who share their academic passions. Established by an MCSI Len Peters Faculty Fellow, Pitt’s Nature-Cities-Humans academic community was founded on sustainability in 2019 and has been offered annually since, with 15 students enrolling annually; the associated sustainability-focused First-Year Seminar is currently taught by an MCSI-affiliated staff instructor. 
 

First-Year Seminar Sustainability Presentations: While select faculty and students offered sustainability presentations to First-Year Seminars for at least a decade, MCSI standardized and centralized these offerings in 2019. Since then, MCSI-trained student and staff instructors have provided campus-wide Pitt Sustainability presentations to first-year and other departmental seminar courses, helping introduce undergraduate students to Pitt Sustainability initiatives and how they can engage with sustainability on campus. From 2019 through 2022, over 4,028 students from a wide variety of academic departments have experienced these presentations.  

Where We Are: Academic Sustainability Programs

Undergraduate Sustainability Certificate: Launched in 2015, the University of Pittsburgh’s Undergraduate Certificate in Sustainability allows students to formally enhance their education by focusing on sustainability through interdisciplinary coursework. To date, 178 students have been awarded this certificate, with an additional 169 students pursuing it. 

Sustainability Transcript Distinction: Launched in 2021 as one of four piloted distinctions, Pitt’s Sustainability Transcript of Distinction provides students with a mechanism to gain recognition on their transcript for their high impact sustainability endeavors outside the classroom — and broaden the number of undergraduate students participating in sustainability activities throughout campus. Still a new offering, through 2022, 6 undergraduate students have graduated with the Sustainability Distinction, with an additional 28 students pursuing it. 

Sustainable Engineering Master’s: Launched in 2018, Pitt’s Master’s of Science (MS) in Sustainable Engineering explores applying sustainable solutions in various professional settings by learning strategies to identify and solve our grand challenges using systems approaches in the context of the triple bottom line of environmental, societal, and economic problems. From 2018 through 2022, 13 students have graduated with the degree, with an additional 32 students currently enrolled. 

Where We Are: Service Learning

Across a wide swath of Pitt courses and research, faculty integrate academically relevant service activities that address human, environmental, and community needs into the course.  Examples of new and expanded sustainability-themed service-learning coursework and partnerships include, but are not limited to the following:  

  • Oasis Farm & Fisheries Partnership:  Since 2015, MCIS has partnered with the Oasis Project’s Farm and Fisheries, an urban micro-farm in the Pittsburgh’s Homewood neighborhood. A 2020 Year of Engagement grant funded a high tunnel greenhouse at the Homewood site to ensure year-round production of fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Constructed in Summer 2021 by the Pitt Hydroponics Club and sustainability interns, the new greenhouse provides a larger growing capacity and new space for community members and students to gather and learn.  

  • Food Systems: Re-envisioned with support of a John C. Mascaro Lectureship in 2021, the “Introduction to Sustainable Food Systems” course now includes hands-on, real-life experiences with inspirational changemakers. Students visit Pittsburgh urban farms and work with community leaders on food issues. The course highlights the importance of nutrition as a catalyst for a sustainable food system and how a quality diet for people is healthy for the planet.   

  • Provost Academy: Starting in 2019, Pitt’s Provost Academy offers a pre-orientation Urban Ecology and Sustainable Food Systems-based project for incoming students. Projects have included helping Grow Pittsburgh establish a farm stand in an area designated as a food desert, setting up protective deer fencing around native plants, helping Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy remove invasive species, and planting 63 native pawpaw tree seedlings. 

Where We Are: Course & Curriculum Advancements 

Sustainability is a broad, deep, and diverse cross-and transdisciplinary topic. As a result, efforts to identify, expand, and create sustainability-related courses have been varied and evolving since 2018.   

Course Attribute Codes: Starting in November 2019, Pitt students can use  2 course attribute codes (sustainability-focused and sustainability-related) to filter and identify courses with sustainability content.  Faculty apply for the designation for existing and future courses in Curriculog, with syllabi reviewed to ensure content integrity. Through 2022, 20 courses have acquired these official course attribute codes.  MCSI continues to work with faculty to designate existing and new courses in the system — and to adapt their syllabi and course content to include greater sustainability integration and focus.  

Regardless, the 2022-23 academic calendar alone lists 34 courses with “sustainability” in their titles or course descriptions – and MCSI has catalogued 86 courses as contributing to the cross-disciplinary Undergraduate Certificate in Sustainability.  Through a broader definition, the University reported 446 sustainability-focused and “-inclusive” courses in its 2021 AASHE STARS documentation. Future efforts are focused on developing a more comprehensive and accessible  catalog of sustainability-focused and -related course options for students.   

2019 Sustainability in the Curriculum Series: In 2019, MCSI and the Pitt Engineering Education Research Center (EERC) delivered a series of 3 workshops to help faculty integrate sustainability content and experiential learning into their curricula.  A total of 67 faculty of various disciplines participated in the series, resulting in the addition of new sustainability and service-learning components in their courses.

    

MCSI Faculty Fellows: Since 2014, MCSI faculty fellowships have supported faculty in developing new sustainability-focused courses and/or reimagining current courses by incorporating sustainability content; new courses created since 2017 include, but are not limited to: 

  • Design for Circular Economy (Engineering) 
  • Freedom Seminar: Environmental Justice & Collective Economies (Education; Environmental Studies) 
  • Freedom Seminar: Global Water, Activism, & STEM Pedagogies (Education; Environmental Studies) 
  • Happiness and Human Flourishing (Nursing; Engineering) 
  • Introduction to Engineering for Humanity (Engineering) 
  • Introduction to Sustainable Food Systems (Honors) 
  • Seminar in Composition: Sustainability (English) 

Faculty Sustainability Resource Hub:

In 2022, the MCSI Faculty Sustainability Task Force initiated the creation of an online resource hub for Pitt faculty interested in integrating sustainability topics into their curricula. Still in development, the Faculty Resource Hub will provide various course materials and pre-developed content across disciplines. 

Check out other sections of the 2018-22 Progress Report on the Pitt Sustainability Plan: