WM To Host Sustainability Conference

By Amber Lester Monday, September 27, 2010

Several corporations are joining the College of William and Mary’s Mason Business School to start a discussion between businesses and students about sustainability.

With IBM as the lead sponsor, the university is hosting the inaugural Corporate & College Collaborative for Sustainability (CCCS) on Oct. 1-2. It’s a chance to capture the minds of future leaders before it’s too late, according to Ragna Bell, global lead for Strategy at the IBM Institute for Business Value. “In just four years, the millennial generation will comprise half of the workforce worldwide – the time to address the gap is now,” she said in a press release.

The two-day conference on campus will bring students and businesses together to talk about how to incorporate sustainability into undergraduate classrooms. The goals for the conference include: identifying best practices and key concepts to be included in sustainability curriculums; investigating critical leadership skills for students; exploring collaborative project opportunities between corporations and universities; and discussing ways millennials can impact corporations’ sustainability practices from within.

Sample sessions at the conference include, “Changing Corporate and Campus Culture,” “Role of Finance in Sustainable Development” and “Engaging Consumers in Sustainability through Social Media & Marketing.” Students and professors will be traveling from 13 universities, including George Washington University, New York University, the University of Arizona and Boston College. The corporate sponsors include IBM, Citigroup, The Martin Agency and Saatchi & Saatchi.

“Sustainability is a dynamic and cross-disciplinary concept – and its scope is rapidly growing to encompass environmental, social, economic and cultural concerns,” said Christopher Atkins, director of the college’s undergraduate business program and co-founder of CCCS, in a press release. “To date, the focus on sustainability education has been on the graduate rather than the undergraduate level. To be effective in educating future leaders, we must co-create a curriculum for undergraduates that incorporates business, faculty and student perspectives on the evolving strategic role of corporations in shaping a sustainable future.”

The conference will begin with a presentation from IBM, which will share the findings of a recent survey of more than 3,600 students worldwide about global issues and their impact on organizations. One of the study’s key findings was that students are interested in sustainability, but find current curricula to be lacking. IBM will continue the study by launching one of the conference’s collaborative projects – an ethics-based leadership development curriculum for future leaders in profit, nonprofit and government institutions.

To learn more about the conference, click here.