New Undergraduate Program Wins Award for Sustainability in Business Curricula

The Desautels Faculty of Management congratulates the Marcel Desautels Institute for Integrated Management (MDIIM) and Desautels faculty members who were recently named recipients of the 2014 Dr. Alfred N. and Lynn Manos Page Prize for Integration of Sustainability Issues in Business Curricula, for conceiving and implementing the new Managing for Sustainability Major and Concentration (MSUS) programs for Bachelor of Commerce students at McGill University.

Dr. Alfred N. Page is dean and professor emeritus of the Henry Bloch (H&R Block) School of Business of the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Lynn Manos Page is an accomplished painter and printmaker currently working in Florida. They established the Page Prize at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina to encourage efforts to expose business students to state-of-the-art sustainability knowledge relevant to the natural environment and to demonstrate the Moore School's commitment to promoting environmental sustainability in business education.

The award-winning team, led by Steve Maguire, Director of the MDIIM and Professor of Strategy and Organization who holds the Desautels Chair in Integrated Management, includes faculty members from multiple management disciplines: Emmanuelle Vaast (Associate Director of the MDIIM, leading its Social Economy Initiative; and Associate Professor of Information Systems), Tamer Boyaci (Professor of Operations Management), Dror Etzion (Associate Professor of Strategy and Organization), Pavlo Kalyta (Assistant Professor of Accounting), and Jeroen Struben (Assistant Professor of Strategy and Organization).

The Managing for Sustainability Major and Concentration programs were acknowledged for their interconnection and integration across course offerings, encouraging students to think about sustainability and business from various angles. Informational documentation including select course syllabi have been made publicly available to other educators looking to strengthen sustainability offerings within their business schools.

Professor Morty Yalovsky, Interim Dean of the Desautels Faculty of Management: "We would like to thank the Page Prize Committee and the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina for this award.  It's a great honour and testament to the strength of sustainability education and scholarship at Desautels to be recognized and counted among the world’s leading management and business schools in terms of integrating sustainability topics into our programs."

Professor Maguire: “The Managing for Sustainability programming offers a mix of in-classroom and experiential learning for students who wish to apply their managerial and business knowledge to enable positive change towards sustainable development. Whether it is with new sustainability-focused start-ups or social enterprises, established businesses in sectors where current realities are resulting in considerable changes to business models and practices, government departments, or NGOs, there are lots of opportunities for our graduates, whom I am confident will go on to change the world for better. I am very proud of the new programming and thank the Page Prize Committee for this tribute.” 

About the Dr. Alfred N. and Lynn Manos Page Prize for Sustainability Issues in Business Curricula:

The Page Prize aims to encourage and support efforts aimed at integrating sustainability into the curriculum of business schools, both nationally and internationally.   The prize has been awarded to leading universities since 2008 and has resulted in the creation of a database of winning curricula and syllabi available on the Darla Moore School website and the Aspen Institute’s www.caseplace.org for use by business faculty around the world.

For more information about the competition: Phone: 803-777-5966
Email:  pageprize [at] moore.sc.edu
Website: http://mooreschool.sc.edu/about/sustainableenterprisedevelopment/pageprize.aspx

About the Managing for Sustainability Programming:

Launched in September 2014, Desautels BCom students can now pursue two designations focused on sustainable development while also completing the Desautels “Management Core”, which ensures they have a solid foundation in all management disciplines. The Concentration in Managing for Sustainability, which is a bundle of five courses (15 credits), is designed to complement concentrations and majors in traditional management disciplines, better preparing management students for the sustainability challenge confronting contemporary organizations across all sectors. The Major in Managing for Sustainability, which is a bundle of thirteen courses (39 credits) of which seven are through the McGill School of Environment and the Department of Geography, provides a rigorous foundation in the natural and social sciences relevant to sustainability, in addition to management and business, thus preparing management students for sustainability-focused careers in each of the private, public and plural sectors.

The programs were developed through a collaborative process that included consultations with BCom students; Desautels alumni; sustainability professionals and potential employers of program graduates in each of the private, public, and plural sectors; Desautels administrative and academic units. The major in Managing for Sustainability was developed in partnership with the McGill School of Environment and the Department of Geography at McGill University.

For more information on how Desautels is integrating sustainability into management education, please watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpzrqCr2kE4

About the Marcel Desautels Institute for Integrated Management

Through teaching, research, and outreach initiatives, the Marcel Desautels Institute for Integrated Management (MDIIM) advances an integrated approach to management, working closely with professors, academic units, administrative units and students from within the Desautels Faculty and from across McGill.  MDIIM defines integrated management as management that appreciates the validity and innovative potential of different perspectives on value, constructively facing them to implement strategies that, over the long term, transcend rather than accept putative trade-offs.  Over the past three years, MDIIM has become an important hub at McGill for developing and implementing transversal programming that breaks down and bridges traditional faculty and disciplinary siloes. 

For media inquiries at the Desautels Faculty of Management:

Leilani Ku
514-398-7131
leilani.ku [at] mcgill.ca