By Paul Feinberg

Joining faculty from notable peer schools like Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School and Michigan's Ross School of Business, UCLA has received the 2010 Dr. Alfred and Lynn Manos Page Prize for Sustainability Issues in Business Curricula. The Page Prize encourages efforts to expose business students to state-of-the-art environmental sustainability knowledge.

In Westwood this state of the art curricula is the Leaders In Sustainability certificate program (LiS)—a joint venture between UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and Anderson School of Management. Professors Charles Corbett and Magali Delmas serve as co-directors.This certificate program, open to all UCLA graduate students, aims to provide a mechanism for students to pursue their interests in sustainability and to collaborate with students from different fields.

To earn the certificate, students must take (in addition to the core course) three other classes, at least one of which is outside their "home school." They must also complete a project that "demonstrates some form of leadership" as it pertains to sustainability.

Crucial to the program's curricula is its interdisciplinary nature. There are currently about 130 graduate students enrolled in the program. The participants come from all across campus, including (but not limited to) students in urban planning, public policy, molecular toxicology, sociology, environmental health science and civil engineering.

Institute Director Glen MacDonald stated, “The fact that the Leaders in Sustainability Program has won the Page Prize and takes its place beside schools like Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School and Michigan's Ross School of Business speaks volumes on the quality of UCLA faculty and students and our ability to achieve the very highest distinction through innovation and cooperation. This is a proud achievement."

He concluded, "LiS is something I am particularly proud of it. It is a wonderful collaborative effort that provides something very special for graduate students across campus. The partnership between an institute of the environment and sustainability and a business school to provide this educational experience says all the right things about the spirit of UCLA and more broadly about the way forward in meeting the environmental and sustainability challenges of the 21st century—cooperation.”
 

Published: Friday, April 01, 2011