Sustainability Learning Objectives

Sustainability Learning Objectives that will take effect at Cal Poly with the 2026-27 academic year

Sustainability combines the understanding, foresight, and practices necessary to cultivate just and equitable ecological, economic, political, and social systems.  Sustainability is a shared responsibility to nurture and regenerate long-term planetary health and well-being for all through the prioritization of social equity, environmental justice, and the protection and restoration of nature and ecosystems.

Sustainability requires intergenerational strategies and responsibilities that prioritize how all living things interrelate and depend on their environment.  As a comprehensive polytechnic university committed to a hands-on pedagogy of Learn by Doing, Cal Poly offers a wide breadth of academic programs designed to prepare students to advocate for sustainable solutions in a rapidly changing world.  The interdisciplinary collaboration of students, faculty, and staff across all fields and programs prepares students to address sustainability challenges in their personal, civic, and professional lives.

As an AASHE STARS member, Cal Poly is committed to addressing sustainability challenges through research projects and partnerships; campus buildings, campus events and student residences; energy, water, dining, and transportation operations; and infusing sustainability literacy into courses, academic programs, and learning activities.

All students who complete an undergraduate or graduate program at Cal Poly should be able to:

1. Describe the global interdependence of natural environmental systems with human social and economic systems and how the equitable balancing of these systems is essential for the long-term health of all.

2. Explain the basics of climate science, including the causes and impacts of climate change, and the role of human activities in exacerbating or mitigating it.

3. Analyze how structures, institutions, and practices can and have contributed to social and economic inequities, including inequitable access to resources, social and political marginalization, environmental injustice, poverty, and inequitable exposure to the impacts of climate change.

4. Evaluate how resource extraction, production, distribution, disposal, and waste impact the stability and resilience of natural and human systems, with explicit attention to the long-term health of those systems and to social and environmental justice.

5. Apply sustainability and climate change knowledge in their respective disciplines and in collaboration with other disciplines.

6. Critically examine personal beliefs, attitudes, and biases about sustainability and climate change to better communicate with audiences across political, cultural, and socioeconomic differences and to effectively participate in civic life.

These six Sustainability Learning Objectives address, respectively, the areas of: General Human and Environmental Interdependence, Climate Literacy, Intersectional Inequity Impacts of Human Systems on Each Other, Human Systems' Impact on the Environment and Other Humans, Application and Interdisciplinary Collaboration, and Social and Civic Responsibility.

Sources:

Cal Poly Academic Senate Resolution: AS-976-24 "Resolution on Sustainability Learning Objectives" (PDF). Approved 27 August 2024.

Cal Poly Strategic Plan.

Cal Poly Sustainability Initiative: "Sustainability Catalog".

CSU Policy: "California State University Sustainability Policy". Reviewed 15 May 2024.

CSU Academic Senate Resolution: AS-2800-07/FGA/AA "Sustainability in the California State University (CSU)" (PDF).  Approved 10-11 May 2007.