Academics

125+ courses include sustainability content and are found across 24 academic departments

Courses with sustainability content are offered across disciplines, allowing for deeper learning across the curriculum and cultivates collaborative solutions. Explore curriculum with sustainability elements.

In a huge step toward integrating sustainability into the curriculum, a goal of our Climate Action Plan, in 2023 faculty have proposed including a “Sustainability” attribute in the Common Course of Study.

Students have the opportunity to explore Lafayette’s existing systems, analyze improvements, provide recommendations, and implement their solutions to sustainability challenges on campus. Here are a few examples of courses taking action when it comes to sustainability in the 2022-2023 academic year:

• Interconnectivity: Students in environmental studies created “The Web,” an interactive art installation, to display a vision of an interconnected community and encourage engagement, interaction, participation, and reflection on the meaning of community, sustainability, and restoration.
• Exploring Emissions : The data club explored the topic of energy data using our on-site solar array data and students in civil engineering analyzed energy data of key campus buildings to identify how energy audits could influence future campus energy efficiency projects. 
• Zero Waste: Capstone mechanical engineering students created a recycling robot to educate the Lafayette community on how to better sort trash from recycling and improve contamination rates. Additionally, social entrepreneurship students studied local and peer institution thrift store models and surveyed students to provide recommendations for a permanent on-campus thrift store.
• Food & Farm: Mechanical engineering students designed an improved wash station for produce at LaFarm. Additionally, a civil engineering class designed a brochure to inform the local community about a new plant sale at LaFarm, which was launched for the first time in May 2023.