Managing for Sustainability (MSUS)

Sustainability has emerged as one of the foremost challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. All organizations, from businesses to governments to civic organizations, seek to generate value with finite resources. We have a deep need to recognize that economic sustainability can be achieved in the long term only by realigning business models and strategies to become ecologically and socially sustainable. MSUS graduates should not only understand the managerial challenges to realizing sustainability, but also possess the courage and passion for achieving sustainable environmental, social and economic goals. Students’ knowledge and managerial competence should grow through studying theories and concepts from a range of relevant disciplines, engaging in experiential learning, dissecting key organizational successes and failures, crafting oral and written reflections, and honing analytical abilities with multiple types of data. By building our students’ awareness of sustainability issues on all levels – from local to global – our program strives to develop the managers that organizations need to meet the sustainability challenge.

In the spring of their sophomore year, all BSBA students will, in consultation with their advisers, select a major from the Freeman College of Management departments and will complete the specific major requirements in addition to the Freeman College core curriculum requirements. Transferring between majors within the Freeman College of Management is possible as long as the student will be able to meet all degree requirements of the new major and still graduate on schedule.

Managing for Sustainability Major Requirements

Beyond completion of the Freeman College core curriculum requirements, all MSUS majors must take the following courses:

MSUS Core Requirements

MSUS Electives

Beyond the MSUS core requirements, all MSUS majors must work with their faculty adviser to determine five (5) elective courses that create a coherent course of study in sustainability, broadly defined, that can be applied to the management of organizations. The following restrictions and guidance apply to the selection of these electives:

• At least three of these electives must come from outside the Freeman College of Management; two may come from within the Freeman College of Management. 
• At least one of the electives must be a course that provides significant background in science associated with the environmental challenges of sustainability.
• At least one of the electives must be a course that provides significant background in social or cultural challenges associated with sustainability.

For the use of MSUS majors, the MSUS program will maintain a list of courses approved as MSUS electives; students may request program approval for courses not on the approved list.

Culminating Experience

All BSBA majors must satisfy the Culminating Experience component of the Freeman College of Management General Education Curriculum. MSUS majors typically fulfill this requirement by successfully completing MSUS 400 Consulting for Sustainability. 

Drawing upon their professional and liberal education, Freeman College of Management students will be able to collaboratively create positive societal impacts through:

Analysis

• Students will demonstrate the ability to understand organizations and analyze them rigorously.

Integrity

• Students will possess the judgment, vision, and integrity necessary to serve society and their professions.

Morality

• Students will identify creative and morally responsible solutions to organizational and societal issues.

In addition, students in the Managing for Sustainability major will complete a curriculum designed to help them achieve four specific MSUS learning objectives:

1. They will understand sustainability as an interdisciplinary phenomenon that includes science, technology, history, ethics, socio-cultural circumstances, legal aspects, political conditions, and economic factors.
2. They will understand organizational roles in sustaining our world, including how the various functions of an organization – such as finance, marketing, operations, and others – can contribute to meeting sustainability challenges.
3. They will be stimulated to reflect regularly on the knowledge they have acquired and on their particular experiences in order to determine additional areas to explore, and they will use this reflection to foster innovative ways to address sustainability challenges.
4. In senior-level Management Consulting for Sustainability Projects, MSUS students will have opportunities to manage actual efforts to foster change and to grapple with potential barriers to success.

Faculty

Professors: Neil Boyd (Chair), Tammy B. Hiller, Eric C. Martin

Associate Professor: Jamie R. Hendry

Visiting Associate Professor: Vivienne Wildes