The Kogod Council voted Tuesday in favor of establishing a new graduate degree program in sustainability management, marking a milestone in creating such a program at AU.
The Master of Science in Sustainability Management program would prepare graduate students at the business school to create environmentally and socially sound business practices, according to Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the Kogod School of Business Kathleen Getz.
The Coca-Cola Company’s concerns about conserving water while maintaining a financially profitable product is an example of where this degree could help in the real world, according to Director of the Kogod Center for Career Development Arlene Hill.
The 36-credit program would require four business courses, two science courses, two policy courses and one interdisciplinary systems course, Getz said.
The new degree program still requires further approval before being incorporated into the curriculum, including that of the provost and the Board of Trustees, according to Getz.
Getz led the promotion of this program along with faculty members from each school at AU because graduate students in the proposed program would have to take courses in all schools.
Kogod Dean Richard Durand said he was enthusiastic about the program.
“We think by putting this all together — the international perspective, the communication perspective, the science perspective and the business perspective and public policy — we’ll have a pretty interesting … certainly highly differentiated program,” Durand said.
Kogod was not the first school to consider a sustainability program. The Columbia School of Continuing Education at Columbia University also added a Master of Science in Sustainability Management degree to their curriculum in November 2009, according to The Columbia Spectator.
Columbia’s program is also based on a 36-credit system with studies including public policy and environmental science, but it does not include a communications aspect, according to the university’s Web site.
Based on her knowledge of career development, Hill said she recognized the potential for sustainability-focused positions in the future business world. A graduate from this degree program would be able to balance environmental concerns and profitability, according to Hill.
“Ultimately, companies will not necessarily want to go and do something that is sort of sustainable unless there’s an economic motive,” Hill said. “And why I think our sustainability degree will be so good is it’s looking at this business problem with that lens … I think that to not look at sustainability is to be very shortsighted.”
First-year Master of Business Administration student at Kogod Chimwemwe Ngwenya said anything related to sustainability would be a good step for the school to take.
“I think it’s in the business world that a lot of decisions get made, so if [leaders of industry] could be made to focus on sustainability and issues like that, it would go a bit further,” Ngwenya said.
Getz anticipated that graduate students could begin the new master’s program in the fall of 2010.
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