McGill’s MDIIM wins Award for Sustainability in Business Curricula
By McGill Reporter Staff
A team led by Steve Maguire, Director of the Marcel Desautels Institute for Integrated Management (MDIIM), has been named winner 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.
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.
“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,” said Professor Morty Yalovsky, Interim Dean of the Desautels Faculty of Management. “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.”
Launched in September 2014, the programs allow Desautels BCom students to 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. The Major in Managing for Sustainability prepares 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.
“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,” said Maguire. “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.”