Overview: To showcase Northeastern’s sustainability curriculum, two co-op students developed the Sustainability Coursework Dashboard—an interactive tool that treats the university’s academic catalog as a living lab. The dashboard makes visible how courses across colleges align with sustainability themes and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (link to SDG page?), supporting innovation in teaching and curriculum.
How it Works: Using Tableau visualization software, the student team collected and categorized hundreds of courses across the university. The dashboard allows users to:
- Search courses by topic, department, or sustainability focus.
- Filter results by connection to specific SDGs.
- Identify gaps and opportunities for expanding sustainability education.
Expected Outcomes:
- Make sustainability-related courses more visible and accessible to students.
- Support faculty collaboration across colleges by highlighting overlaps and opportunities.
- Help Northeastern track its progress in embedding sustainability throughout the curriculum.
Campus & Global Impact: On campus, the dashboard improves student access to sustainability education and strengthens collaboration. Globally, it demonstrates how universities can innovate by aligning curriculum with the SDGs and using digital tools to track and share progress. By developing this platform, students turned a class catalog into a living lab for sustainability learning.
Contacts : Student Developers: Rohan Biju and Kevin Le (Spring 2025 Co-ops)
Access the dashboard: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/northeastern.sustainability/viz/Finalized_SustainabilityDashboardjun26/OverviewDashboard?publish=yes
Related Sustainable Development Goals:
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