The University of Vermont’s Sustainable Entrepreneurship MBA (SEMBA) program in the Grossman School of Business has been named the 2015 Grand Prize winner of the Dr. Alfred N. and Lynn Manos Page Prize for Sustainability Issues in Business Curricula.
The award, given annually by The Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina, is in recognition of an MBA program that has shown effective and innovative integration of sustainability into business education. A broad range of sustainability dimensions were considered including the natural environment, good governance, social entrepreneurship, cross-sector partnerships, poverty alleviation, and practices that promote environmental health and/or stewardship.
The awards committee praised SEMBA for offering strong "faculty integration and involvement that yields a demonstration of institution-wide commitment" and a "nice compendium of key readings and different approaches (especially practicum approach) for teaching sustainability." UVM joins a list of past winners that includes Cornell, McGill, University of Virginia, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, UCLA, Colorado State, The College of William and Mary and Villanova.
SEMBA was recognized for being one of the first MBA programs in the nation to rebuild its entire curriculum from the bottom up with sustainability at the forefront. Tasked by new dean Sanjay Sharma in 2011 to replace a traditional 38-year-old MBA program, an ad hoc committee decided to focus the program on addressing the world’s sustainability challenges including environment issues, ethics, poverty and inequality.
“A lot of sustainability-branded MBA programs are largely just the same old MBA horse with some sustainability courses added to their saddle bags,” said David Jones, professor of management and co-director of SEMBA. “So instead of creating an MBA program with a theme of sustainability and some extra courses, we started from scratch and rebuilt the horse by putting sustainability in everything. By ripping out traditional legacy content that’s not central to running sustainable businesses, we were able to add things that really matter like systems thinking and Base of the Pyramid Business Models. That’s what makes the program special and one of the main reasons we won this prestigious award.”
Sharma recruited top faculty to teach the courses including Stuart Hart, the world’s leading authority on the ways poverty and the environment affect business strategy. Professor Hart, co-director of SEMBA along with Jones, teaches "Business Strategy for a Sustainable World" as well as "Driving Innovation from the Base of the Pyramid" -- a well known economic theory he helped develop.
Other sustainability courses include "Strategic CSR for Transformational Sustainability"; "Sustainable Operation and Green Supply Chains"; "Sustainable Energy Technology and Policy"; and "Systems Tools for Sustainability," among dozens of others. New approaches to more traditional courses like accounting with a focus on triple-bottom-line accounting that emphasizes on social, environmental and financial dimensions were also part of the curriculum makeover.
The SEMBA program will receive $1,000 for the award, plus a framed print of “Aegean Sea #6” an original diptych by award namesake and artist Lynn Manos Page. It will also be added to the Moore School Page Prize website, making them available to educators interested in incorporating sustainability issues in their business curricula.
The Page Prize comes on the heels of multiple accolades including Bloomberg Business’ coveted “Best Undergraduate Business Schools 2016” list. The Princeton Review included the Grossman School on its list of the “Best 295 Business Schools” in the U.S. and ranked SEMBA as the 4th “Best Green MBA” in the country. CEO Magazine also included SEMBA on its list of top MBA programs in North America.