The UBC Sauder School of Business’ MBA program at the Robert H. Lee Graduate School in Vancouver has been recognized among global leaders in sustainability and responsible business.
The 2016 Corporate Knights Better World MBA Ranking placed UBC Sauder 14th in the world when it comes to integrating the topics of sustainability, ethics and social responsibility into the education of future business leaders.
Professor Darren Dahl, director of the Robert H. Lee Graduate School says, “We want our students to not only have the strategic business knowledge they need to succeed, but also the tools to be the responsible and ethical leaders the world needs.”
The school does this by integrating topics such as sustainability, ethics and responsible leadership into the curriculum. Students are pushed to consider these themes as key components of the business decision-making process. Mandatory course modules in ethics, sustainability and value creation helps them learn the principles and practices of ethical and sustainable business.
In 2015, UBC Sauder became the only Canadian business school to take a focused and comprehensive approach to business ethics teaching, research and outreach with the launch of the Peter P. Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics. The centre is focused on investigating and influencing best practices across the business disciplines—from marketing and human resources to finance and accounting—while also equipping future leaders with the ethical perspectives they need to navigate the increasingly complex world of business.
Another area where the advancement of social innovation and sustainability plays a critical role is UBC Sauder’s Centre for Social Innovation and Impact Investing (S3i), which strives to build institutions that create value and produce solutions with real world impact. S3i supports the growth of impact investing through research and various collaborative initiatives between investors, funders, students, entrepreneurs, academics and policy makers.
On the social innovation side, S3i runs a number of programs to advance its goals, such as the Coast Capital Savings Innovation Hub—a social venture accelerator that brings together university resources, access to new networks, peer learning and improved investment readiness in a highly collaborative environment.
The hub’s Awake Labs is just one example of a social venture aiming to make a difference in the world. Through Awake Labs’ new wearable technology, parents of autistic children can learn when their child’s anxiety levels are about to spike, thereby enabling them to intervene before the onset of a meltdown. “We knew from the start that we wanted to create something with a real social impact, not just another consumer toy,” says its founder Andrea Palmer.
Meanwhile, Zeynep Kucukerol from Turkey with industrial engineering background enrolled herself in UBC Sauder for a Master of Management (MM) program to launch a career in green technologies.
When Kucukerol started researching masters programs in North America she found UBC Sauder’s Master of Management (MM) a perfect fit in terms of its location in a city dedicated to green initiatives, and a program that offered substantial consulting experience.
For their five-month Community Business Project, she led her group in creating a volunteer recruitment campaign for the Oiled Wildlife Society of BC, working with multiple stakeholders from government agencies, to professional wildlife responders to maximize the protection of wildlife in the event of an oil spill.
During the MM program’s final Capstone Project, Kucukerol worked with an outdoor children’s gear company called MyMayu, which she cites as one of the most transformational components of the program. Once again, she acted as project lead.
“We developed a social media marketing plan to increase MyMayu’s brand awareness, gain new customers and boost their sales,” she says. Now, she works at Solegear Bioplastic Technologies, which makes environmentally friendly plastics out of renewable, compostable material like corn.
“Vancouver is a great place to jumpstart your career if you care about sustainability because the green tech industry is evolving so fast here,” she says.
