Sustainability Across the Curriculum Initiative

Equipping Faculty & Students to Build a Sustainable Future

Created and led by the USC President’s Working Group on Sustainability and Office of Academic Programs, the Sustainability Across the Curriculum Initiative (SACI) supports the development of new courses, programs, and curricular approaches that focus on sustainability.

USC’s mission is to cultivate engaged human beings who are empowered to have a positive impact on society. To this end, an understanding that sustainability presents one of society’s greatest challenges is essential. Sustainability is not just about the environmental effects of climate change, resource depletion, waste generation, and biodiversity loss, but also about how these factors intersect with and affect people and societies. We depend on healthy ecosystems for our survival, but a sustainable world will not be attainable unless these benefits extend to all. Indeed, the intersection of sustainability with issues of social justice and diversity, equity and inclusion are of particular importance and interest to USC as we move towards a sustainable future.

As the concept of sustainability cuts across many disciplines in both content and practice, the aim of this program is to encourage the development of expanded sustainability content through all disciplines at the university.

Please contact SACI Academic Director Jill Sohm with questions: sohm@usc.edu

a professor points to part of an environmental diagram on a project screen as students listen and take notes

Apply for a Grant

Grant eligibility is open to full-time, T/TT and RTPC faculty who have teaching as part of their work profile. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis until funding is exhausted.

Applications for the 2023-2024 cycle are currently closed.

Resources & Trainings

Resources for Incorporating Sustainability into Courses 

Prepared by SACI Academic Director Jill Sohm for the SACI Pilot Program. Includes frameworks and definitions, ways to approach sustainability teaching, concepts and topics, learning outcome examples, practices, and other potentially useful resources.

What is Sustainability? (article, PDF)

The Spring 2021 issue of the Dornsife Office of Experiential and Applied Learning newsletter focused on sustainability in experiential learning programs, including an article on the challenge and importance of defining sustainability.

SACI News