The Business+Impact Gateway provides you with a single location for all things impact for Michigan Ross students. In the Impact Gateway we show all of the activities, people, and key partners working to use their learning to make a real impact in the world. Explore all seven sections to map out your impact opportunities on campus.
October 2, 2020
There Are 109 Ways To Make an Impact on the World While a Student at Michigan Ross
The Ross School of Business is not kidding around when it comes to impact.
Michigan Ross fundamentally believes business can and should make the world a better place.
The Business+Impact initiative is just one embodiment of this commitment, and it serves as a gateway to the many, many activities and opportunities that Ross has been developing for years.
Students can explore the Business+Impact Gateway for a deeper look at how to get involved in social impact work at Michigan Ross.
And listed here, in no particular order, are more than 100 social impact-themed programs, clubs, action-based activities, and classes for students to explore as well.
1. Impact Gateway
2. Michigan Business Challenge - Seigle Impact Track
The Michigan Business Challenge Seigle Impact Track, with prizes totaling over $26,000, recognizes the business plan that best pursues a mission-driven goal. This award aims to stimulate the creation of new businesses, products, or services that prioritize social and/or environmental considerations. Eligible teams will be selected during the first round of MBC to compete in the Seigle Impact Track starting during the second round. This track of the competition is sponsored by the Mark and Robin Seigle Entrepreneurial Innovation Fund and co-managed by Business+Impact, the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, and the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies.
3. Nonprofit Board Fellowship Program
The Board Fellowship Program from Business+Impact prepares graduate students for mission-driven leadership. Students develop project management and executive skills as board members of nonprofit organizations in Southeast Michigan.
4. Community Consulting Club
The Community Consulting Club (CCC) provides pro bono consulting services to Ann Arbor nonprofits. CCC engagements vary in scope, but may focus on marketing, strategy, operations, or financial analysis. The club provides members with training to help to structure each project and ensure positive results.
5. Faculty Research for Impact
Faculty Research for Impact (FR4I) is a new workshop series focused on taking the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and using faculty research to develop ideas that directly impact those goals.
6. Multidisciplinary Action Projects
The Ross MBA Multidisciplinary Action Projects course is the most intense, student-driven learning experience in graduate business education. Teams of students tackle pressing business challenges for many social impact organizations — social businesses, educational entities, governments, and nonprofits all over the world.
7. Ross Give-A-Day Fund Club
The innovative Ross Give-A-Day Fund is led by MBA students to provide financial assistance to those who seek no- or low-paying internships with mission-driven organizations. The fund yields benefits not only to students pursuing careers in the nonprofit and public sectors, but also to the organizations themselves and the wider Ross community.
8. Social Venture Fund
The Social Venture Fund is a student-run impact investment fund at the University of Michigan. The fund invests in and supports innovative companies that place social and environmental impact at the heart of their business model.
9. Summer Internship Funding from Business+Impact
Business+Impact awards competitive grants for social-impact summer internships across government, education, nonprofit, and social enterprise positions.
10. Habitat for Humanity Builders
Habitat for Humanity Builders is a student-run organization seeking to sustain and increase the Ross School of Business' commitment to community service and involvement through a partnership with Habitat for Humanity of Huron Valley.
11. WDI International Investment Fund
This is the newest investment fund being developed by students and Professor Gautam Kaul. The fund will target small- and medium-sized enterprises in India. Graduate students enrolled at Ross and in joint-degree programs with other U-M schools and colleges will be responsible for investing, managing, and growing the investment portfolio as part of a course at Ross.
12. Dare to Dream Impact Grants for Student Startups
Dare to Dream is a grant program that moves students through the business creation process by offering business development seminars and awarding $500-$5,000 in grants to individuals and/or student teams.
13. +Impact Studio
The +Impact Studio is a collaboration space and an educational community passionate about design for impact. It will serve as a campus hub for design and impact. The +Impact Studio alsos engage community organizations and companies which seek to apply faculty insights and design tools to advance their impact. Throughout the year, it hosts interactive workshops, charrettes, design jams, and guest speakers.
14. Marcel Gani Interns in Social Enterprise
Funding is provided through the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies to “support Ross students who are recruiting their own internship host and shaping the internship efforts with start-up companies or venture capital firms."
15. Ross Open Road — Entrepreneurial Road Trip
Ross students design and lead treks, where teams of MBAs head out on a five-week road trip to work with visionary social entrepreneurs on implementing their work. Students learn about how local businesses are impacting their communities, and the ventures receive business support.
16. Business+Impact Student Ambassadors
Business+Impact Student Ambassadors are graduate and undergraduate students from the Ross School of Business and other peer schools who represent the student voice for the B+I initiative. Many of these students have participated in B+I programs or received funding or scholarships, and have been actively involved in the numerous impact activities at U-M.
17. OptiMize Club
Multidisciplinary teams develop their innovations and learn the skills to change the world through workshops, mentorship, and most importantly, real-world experience.
18. Social Innovation Speaker Series
The Social Innovation Speaker Series from Business+Impact brings top leaders to campus who cut across boundaries to advance innovative, practical solutions to society’s toughest social challenges.
19. Women Who Launch
Women Who Launch is dedicated to fostering a gender-equal entrepreneurial ecosystem at the University of Michigan and beyond. Through workshops, speaker series, and networking events, WWL empowers women to engage with entrepreneurship as founders, funders, or team members.
20. Women Who Launch - Gender Lens Investment Focus
The Gender Lens Investment Focus (GLIF) is a research program housed under Women Who Launch with the intention to foster a more equitable entrepreneurial ecosystem. The program is focused on translating gender bias research into actionable frameworks across the Ross and greater U-M entrepreneurship and VC ecosystem.
21. Ross Loan Repayment Assistance Program
The Ross Loan Repayment Assistance Program provides financial assistance to graduates who pursue careers in nonprofit and public-sector organizations. It pays a portion of a qualifying graduate’s Ross-related, need-based loan obligations while the graduate is employed full-time in a position within the public or nonprofit sectors (subject to annual re-application and review).
22. Office of University Development Summer Internship Program
Offered exclusively to University of Michigan undergraduates, D-SIP provides a unique, paid opportunity to work alongside fundraising professionals, develop new skills, and prepare for a rewarding future in philanthropy.
23. Service Corps Alumni
The Service Corps Alumni group brings together people who've participated in Americorps, Americorps Vista, Peace Corps, Teach for America, or any other domestic or international service-oriented program. The group focuses on recruiting potential Service Corps Alumni candidates to Ross, applying their impact oriented expertise to strengthen Ross' impact offerings, and building a network of Service Corps Alumni to aid in the professional advancement of those who have served.
24. Student Opportunities in Low- and Middle-Income Countries with the William Davidson Institute
Since its founding in 1992, WDI has been committed to supporting and enhancing the experiences of students at the University of Michigan. On an as-needed basis, students may have the opportunity to be hired as a research assistant during the school year or the summer.
25. Global Impact Internships through WDI
One of the core missions of WDI is to provide support for international projects both at the Ross School of Business and the university as a whole. To that end, WDI provides high-quality action learning opportunities for University of Michigan graduate students to work with international organizations, while at the same time providing meaningful business assistance and support to those global organizations.
26. Global Impact Speaker Series through WDI
The WDI Global Impact Speaker Series has brought highly successful business leaders from various organizations and companies to campus to share their experiences, provoke thought, and stimulate discussion around the opportunities and challenges of international development, specifically healthcare issues and poverty alleviation in emerging markets.
27. C.K. Prahalad Initiative
The C.K. Prahalad Initiative carries on the work of the late professor by focusing on research that generates innovations and creates new products and business models for consumers at the base of the global economic pyramid.
28. Emerging Markets Club
The Emerging Markets Club seeks to educate, equip, and send Michigan students into emerging markets with the ability to evoke positive change. EMC aims to make Michigan the premier school in the world addressing the most critical issues facing emerging economies today.
29. Detroit Revitalization & Business Club Conference
Launched by Ross School of Business MBA students in 2010, R&B connects University of Michigan students with Detroit’s evolving business landscape. R&B promotes Detroit’s assets and encourages students to discover, engage with and commit to the revitalization of the Motor City.
30. Revitalization & Business Detroit Impact Projects
A series of projects from the R&B Club focused on creating economic and social impact in the city of Detroit.
31. Impact Projects from the Erb Institute
The Erb Institute offers Impact Project funding to Erb students as an opportunity to drive business sustainability impact. You are invited to design high-impact projects to take your learning into your own hands during your time at the University of Michigan. Whether you have an idea for a new business you’d like to launch or an idea for a women's entrepreneurial empowerment project in Ecuador, we want to help you make an impact.
As an Erb student, you qualify for up to $30K in Impact Project funding!
32. Tauber Institute for Global Operations Team Projects
Teams of Ross and Michigan Engineering students work together with sponsor companies on paid summer projects aimed at integrating business and engineering disciplines to make sponsoring companies faster, smarter, and more efficient for today's competitive landscape.
33. Taubman Detroit Community Partnership Center
Students work to offer low- and no-cost planning and design services to community and neighborhood groups and organizations.
34. Smart Cities Club
A smart city uses technology and data to enhance the quality and performance of how cities operate. The purpose of this club is to provide a home to anyone interested in learning about or pursuing a career in Smart Cities. The club provides students with unique exposure to the inner workings of city government and operations, academic research and news, and tech companies supporting growth and innovation.
35. Academic Innovation Teach-Out Series
The University of Michigan Teach-Out Series offers an opportunity for learners around the world to come together with our campus community in conversation on topics of widespread interest. Available on an accessible, open educational platform, each Teach-Out provides opportunities for learners to contribute in significant ways by participating in community conversations, through interaction with members of the U-M campus community and diverse global audiences.
36. Social Work and Skillman Technical Assistance Center
The center is dedicated to establishing and promoting socially just communities, and deploys its interventions to support Detroit residents and stakeholders as they work to strengthen and improve their neighborhoods.
37. Ross Net Impact Club
Ross Net Impact connects people, ideas, and perspectives at the University of Michigan. The club facilitates exploration and dialogue that drive positive social and environmental change both at Ross and in the workplace, regardless of industry or career path.
38. Erb Institute Undergraduate Opportunities
The Erb Institute is proud to engage across the University of Michigan on issues related to business sustainability, and offers many opportunities for undergraduate students across U-M. Through teaching, workshops and fieldwork, they aim to broaden the reach — and deepen the impact — of the Erb Institute and to foster a community of students committed to creating a sustainable world through the power of business.
39. Energy Club
The Ross Energy Club educates its members and provides access to employment opportunities ranging from traditional energy trading to renewable energy finance to new energy technologies.
40. Renewable Energy Case Competition
Occurring each year in December, the Renewable Energy Case Competition takes 20 MBA teams from national and international top business schools and challenges them to solve one of the many significant issues facing the renewable energy industry today.
41. Design and Business Club
The Design + Business Club is a Ross student organization focused on education, practical application, and career development in design thinking fields. The mission of D+B is to provide a multidisciplinary community for graduate students interested in using design methodologies to lead organizations and facilitate innovation.
42. Ross Concentration in Business and Sustainability
The concentration complements the MBA curriculum with sustainability electives to help you consider the sustainability “triple bottom line”: environmental protection, social well-being, and economic performance. Available courses cover topics like climate change, food security, energy, water, the built environment, manufacturing, materials, and social impact.
43. Planet Blue Student Innovation Fund
The Planet Blue Student Innovation Fund offers grants of up to $50,000 annually for ambitious, student-initiated projects that reduce the university’s environmental footprint and/or promote a culture of sustainability on campus.
44. Dow Sustainability Fellowship Program
The Dow Sustainability Fellows Program at the University of Michigan supports full-time graduate students and postdoctoral scholars at the university who are committed to finding interdisciplinary, actionable, and meaningful sustainability solutions on local-to-global scales. The program aspires to prepare future sustainability leaders to make a positive difference in organizations worldwide.
45. Education and Business Club
Through dynamic programming, this club aims to create dialogue about emerging trends, challenges, and opportunities related to the future of K-12 and higher education.
46. Design for America - U-M
Design for America teaches design thinking and innovation practices that help students work together to develop solutions to social challenges.
47. Dual Degree with the Erb Institute and the School for Environment And Sustainability
With a degree from the Erb Institute, you will be in a position to promote sustainability using top-notch management skills mixed with a clear understanding of the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges.
48. Innovation in Action Competition
Innovation in Action Competition harnesses the talents of Michigan students to address public health and education problems. Within this framework, the program equips students with an innovator's toolkit in a supportive environment where they combine these skills with their creativity and passion to have a meaningful impact.
49. Ross Healthcare and Life Sciences Club and Symposium
This club organizes academic, professional, and social activities for all Ross students who are interested in exploring opportunities in the different sectors of healthcare.
50. Center for Positive Organizations
The Center for Positive Organizations, based at the Ross School of Business, is a world-class research center that brings transformational research about what makes positive organizations successful to students and leaders through articles, books, events, tools, teaching, and organizational partnerships.
51. Center for Positive Organizations +LAB
The +LAB brings together undergraduate and graduate students from across the university in an emergent and dynamic extracurricular learning environment designed to immerse students in the theory and practice of positive organizational scholarship; and to equip students to apply, contribute to, and impact the field as change agents, student researchers, and future scholars.
52. Magnify Immersion Program
A spring semester academic program for bringing positive organizational scholarship to U-M’s best and brightest students in order to learn, identify, and employ principles and practices that build high-performing organizations that enable people to thrive.
53. Positive Links Speaker Series
Gain inspiring and practical research-based strategies for building organizations that are high performing and bring out the best in people. Join the Positive Links Speaker Series to learn from leading positive organizational scholars. Connect with the CPO community of academics, students, staff, and leaders at the reception that immediately follows each session.
54. Ross Net Impact Club
Ross Net Impact connects people, ideas, and perspectives at the University of Michigan and is open to both undergraduates and graduates. The club facilitates exploration and dialogue that drive positive social and environmental change both at Ross and in the workplace, regardless of industry or career path.
55. Propel Club
The club aims to educate students at the University of Michigan on the intersection between business and social impact by working alongside local organizations and developing initiatives to maximize their impact.
56. Gordon Scholarships
Second-year Ross MBA students are eligible to apply for Business+Impact’s Skip and Carrie Gordon Scholarship. Students need to demonstrate an outstanding commitment to pursuing avenues to solve complex social challenges.
57.Detroit Accounting Outreach
58. The Black Business Students Association
The Black Business Students Association (BBSA) was one of the first organizations formed by black students for black business students. The immediate goals of the organization were to increase minority enrollment, improve member academic performance, and retain black business students at both the BBA and MBA levels. The organization holds workshops that help students prepare for the application and admission processes for both the BBA and MBA programs.
59. BBA DEI Commitee
The Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) collaborates with students, faculty, and staff in facilitating sessions, workshops and trainings on exploring identity, culture, and the concept of similarities and differences through a business organizational lens.
Courses
The following are courses available to Ross students focused on social impact themes. Follow the links to learn how to register for each course. Or check out a more complete list of 542 courses in the Impact Gateway.
60. +Impact Studio: Translating Research into Practice
The +Impact Studio teaches interdisciplinary student teams (e.g., MBAs, MSWs, MPH, MEng) how to use scholarly intellectual capital, business acumen, and design methodologies to begin to address a wicked problem. To begin to address such an issue, teams will be seeded with novel, university-generated intellectual capital (e.g., new insights on fintech or a machine-learning algorithm from marketing research) that may provide a critical piece of the puzzle to making a sustainable, scalable positive impact.
61. Business Strategies for the Base of the Pyramid
Integrating the concepts of strategy, international business, nonprofit management, and poverty alleviation, this course will stimulate the leadership skills and competitive imagination needed to design Base of the Pyramid ventures.
62. Environmental Law & Policy
This introductory environmental law course focuses on the legal regulation of pollution and waste management, covering a number of federal environmental statutes, including the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Superfund law. In studying these statutes, we will consider more general issues relating to environmental regulation, including the proper goals of environmental regulation; the roles of science and risk assessment; the valuation of environmental injuries and environmental benefits; and the choice of regulatory approach.
63. Social Intrapreneurs: Leading Social Innovation in Organizations
The course draws on the latest advances in social research, network analysis, and information technology to provide a toolkit for leading social innovation within organizations. It ends with live practice in making a compelling and brief pitch for your innovation to a client board.
64. Strategies for Sustainable Development: Managing Social Issues
This course examines how long-term competitive positioning can be secured through strategies such as environmental partnerships, technology cooperation, and collaborative planning.
67. The Corporation in Society
Leading a business that is at once socially responsive and economically competitive is a daunting challenge. This course will examine the role of the corporation in society, and in so doing begin to develop the leadership capability we need to meet these challenges.
66. Innovation in Global Health Delivery
New business models built around operational efficiency offer tremendous potential to improve people's health worldwide. This course will examine how innovations in business models, operations, financing, and supply chains are allowing far more people to access better quality healthcare.
67. Nonprofit and Social Marketing
This course embraces an action-based learning paradigm where interdisciplinary teams of students partner with nonprofits and social enterprises to collaborate on the design of behavioral change communication campaigns.
68. Business in Society
The world faces many large problems such as climate change, environmental degradation, global poverty, and inequality. The primary goal of this course is to prepare you to deal with this challenge as a top executive in a private or public organization by giving you an opportunity to explore competing views in depth and to work out your own position on them.
69. Global Information Engagement Programs
The program pairs carefully selected interdisciplinary teams of students with international partners in a variety of fields, including education, nonprofit, and research. The student groups spend winter term at the School of Information in Ann Arbor building a relationship with their partner and framing and planning a solution for an identified information challenge, then spend six to 12 weeks abroad implementing their solution in cooperation with their partner organization.
70. Food Literacy For All
Structured as an evening lecture series, Food Literacy for All features different guest speakers each week to address diverse challenges and opportunities of both domestic and global food systems. The course is designed to prioritize engaged scholarship that connects theory and practice. By bringing national and global leaders, the course aims to ignite new conversations and deepen existing commitments to building more equitable, health-promoting, and ecologically sustainable food systems.
71. Sustainability Finance
The field of sustainability finance captures the entire spectrum of financing, trading, and investment approaches that has the objective to reduce emissions, scale capital allocations, and reduce material environmental risk in portfolios, while driving “green growth." Once mainly focused on carbon markets (emissions trading) and cleantech investing, sustainability finance has become an entrepreneurial innovation space with applications encompassing the entire finance value chain, and all investment vehicles.
72. An Introduction to Innovation: Tools for Career Success
The course will expose students to a wide range of concepts and skills required to successfully navigate innovation-focused careers in small, medium, or large businesses and institutions. Students in this course will learn a variety of critical thinking skills and analytical tools to help guide them in the modern world of rapidly evolving innovation careers.
73. Managing Projects and Organizational Change
Central technical skills presented in this course will teach students to visualize and concretize program planning and development.
74. Leadership and Organizational Governance
This course will examine the attributes, skills, behaviors, problems, and issues associated with higher-level administrative roles in human service organizations, both public and private. Several executive functions will be given particular attention, including defining the mission and goals of the organization, mobilizing resources, selecting service technologies and staff, developing the appropriate internal-external structures (i.e., internal structures that link to external contexts), and adapting the organization to changing environments.
75. Policy and Management in the Nonprofit Sector
The nonprofit sector has emerged as one of the cornerstones of American society, and yet remains very much a work in progress. The “third sector” faces unique and evolving pressures in areas such as social enterprise, philanthropy, mission focus, performance measurement, sector blur, and more. This class will examine how some of these broad issues intersect with the day-to-day operation of nonprofit organizations.
76. Washington Campus: Business and the Public Policy Process
The course focuses on Congress and the legislative process, the structure of the federal courts, the impact of judicial decision making on business, the federal regulatory process, the organization of the White House, the role of lobbyists and interest groups; and the role of the media in the public policy process.
77. Organization and Management of Health Advocacy and Community-Based Nonprofits
This course includes analysis of the goals, environmental conditions, and organizational structures of nonprofit health organizations, including a variety of smaller (and largely, non-medical) community-based nonprofits. Examples of the best managerial practices for these types of organizations, and of commonly known NGOs and other nonprofits, are used throughout the course.
78. Community Development
This course examines methods of community development as a process in which people join together and develop community-based programs and services at the local level to create community change, with or without assistance by outside agencies.
79. Community-Based Policy Advocacy
Community-based policy advocacy will be presented as an empowering process that helps to strengthen intra- and inter-group solidarity as it challenges and attempts to change oppressive structures, systems, and institutions.
80. Organizing for Social and Political Action
This course examines methods of organizing people for social and political action on their own behalf or on behalf of others. Students will analyze different approaches to bringing people together for collective action, building organizational capacity, and generating power in the community.
81. The History and Future of Detroit
No metropolis played a greater role in shaping the 20th Century world than Detroit. This course focuses on the history and future of Detroit, emphasizing the private and governmental policies that now seek to revitalize the city. It includes four classroom meetings and an all-day bus tour of the city.
82. Social Activism, Democracy, & Globalization
This course investigates how multifaceted historical relationships of traumatic experience including colonization, slavery, and apartheid can be related to the ways in which we think about policy.
83. Economic Growth, Depression, & Inequality
The combination of slow economic growth and rising inequality has meant that the material living standards of the median American household have improved only slowly since the early 1970s.This course will place these recent trends in context by studying the 20th century economic history of the U.S., Europe, and Japan. The focus of this course will be on the economics of these events and the responses of economic policymakers.
84. Climate Economics and Policy
This course attacks the problem of climate change from the perspective of economics. Topics covered include (but are not limited to): the "social cost of carbon"; international climate negotiation; market-based and prescriptive policy solutions; economic efficiency vs. distributional equity; electric power; energy efficiency; and transportation.
85. Seminars on Energy Systems Technology and Policy
This course is intended to provide students with an understanding of the critical issues in energy technologies. Researchers, industry leaders, entrepreneurs and policymakers discuss technology, policy and economic drivers for sustainable global energy systems. Students complete homework assignments and a term paper on an energy-themed subject.
86. Poverty & Inequality
This course examines the nature, extent, and causes of poverty and inequality in the US relying on a multidisciplinary literature from sociology, political science, economics, and psychology.
87. Theories of Change — Social Context
This course focuses on change, particularly social change, with an emphasis on examining its characterization, explanation and perpetration. The objectives of the course are to deepen and broaden theoretical and empirical understanding of change, and to enhance capacity to pose and address analytic questions about change as well as critically considering the viability of analyses for suggesting policy adjustments or initiatives, or plans of intervention.
88. Economic Inequality & the Law
In recent years, inequality in the distribution of wealth in the United States has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression. This seminar will examine the role of law in structuring and remedying such inequality.
89. Environmental Justice
In this seminar, students will explore the intersection of social justice and environmental protection.
90. Impact Investment Lawyering
This course concerns legal issues associated with transacting investments that are intended to generate social and/or environmental returns in addition to financial returns (also called "impact investments").
91. Energy Markets and Energy Politics
The goal of this course is to give students a solid grasp of the environmental and social impacts of, and the institutions that govern, energy use so that you can play a more effective role in shaping future policy or business decisions. Students will cover scientific and technological facts regarding the major uses for and sources of energy before moving on to study energy markets. The course will wrap up with several current policy/business issues such as renewable portfolio standards and markets for renewable energy credits.
92. Fundraising and Grant Writing
Human service organizations secure resources through a variety of venues, including fees, grants, contracts, gifts, bequests, in-kind (non-cash) contributions, and investments. Instruction will be provided in assessing an agency's resource mix and how to repackage or expand its revenue streams.
93. Behavior and Environment: Transitional Thinking for the New Normal
The drop in energy and material use may be 80 percent or more this century, a shift without precedent. While energy is a key driver, the seminar is not about energy policy, nor does it develop doom-and-gloom scenarios. The seminar provides evidence for this premise but does not dwell on it. The seminar presumes that now is the time to envision responses, debate alternatives, and plan for the transition. The seminar focuses on crafting a wholesome, just, equitable, peaceful, and resilient transition. Throughout, members consider the local, regional, national, and even international dimensions of localization.
94. Positive Business Communication
The goal of this course is to improve students' effectiveness as leaders, managers, and team members by introducing frameworks for understanding how positive communicative behaviors in the workplace as a means for building exceptional performance among employees, teams and organizations.
95. Non-Market Strategy: Shaping the Rules of the Game
Managers, particularly as they move to higher-level responsibility, are increasingly called upon to deal with issues involving governmental actions, media attention and public scrutiny. This course will examine business strategies for anticipating and dealing with these issues, and consider how business can shape the “rules of the game.”
96. Business Law & Ethics
This course focuses on the role of law in positive leadership development and organizational success. The course has two main goals: (1) to develop legally savvy leaders who are able to achieve career success by understanding the legal and ethical aspects of their business responsibilities and (2) show how organizations can achieve competitive advantage by reducing legal risk and using the law to create economic value,while also encouraging responsible conduct.
97. Business Innovation and Social Impact
The course integrates concepts of strategy, international business, entrepreneurship, non-profit management, and development to stimulate the leadership skills and competitive imagination needed to design, pilot, and scale Base of the Pyramid enterprises. Emphasizing action-based learning and using carefully selected cases, readings, videos, and outside guests, class sessions focus on: 1)identifying the opportunities and challenges associated with serving BoP markets; and 2) developing a toolkit of strategies, frameworks, and processes for building sustainable, scalable enterprises that create economic and social value.
98. Values and Ethics in Public Policy
This course seeks to make students sensitive to and articulate about the ways in which moral and political values come into play in the American policy process, particularly as they affect non-elected public officials who work in a world shaped by politics.
99. Negotiating Skills in Environmental Dispute Resolution
This course is a half-term module that develops skills in bargaining and negotiation as they can be applied to the resolution of environmental disputes. It will help a student prepare for and carry out a negotiation, become a more effective communicator, and understand the psychological dimensions inherent in negotiation processes. In addition, the course examines mechanisms for assisting negotiations including facilitation and mediation.
100. Business Entrepreneurship in Thought and Action
The primary purpose of this class is to educate students about the broad range of problems and opportunities that businesses face, and the tools and skills that are necessary to face them. A secondary purpose is to show the students the richness of business activity by “peeling back the onion” via case discussions of situations and companies they have experienced in their lives.
101. Erb Institute Seminar
The Erb Seminar surveys the integration of natural and human systems and addresses ways in which science and business can move towards a sustainable human future. It is designed to enable new and prospective Erb MS/MBA students to 1) discover what each believes about sustainable development and enterprise; 2) pinpoint what each wants to know and endeavor to learn while in the program; and 3) facilitate careful reflection about each student's future path through life and work, after they graduate.
102. Urban Entrepreneurship
The Urban Entrepreneurship course is designed for students who want to learn how to make lasting improvements in urban quality of life through the creation of for-profit businesses. Urban communities can be vibrant, exciting, and highly productive places, but residents and visitors are often faced with an array of unique challenges.
103. Strategies for Sustainable Development I: Competitive Environmental Strategy
This course deals with environmental issues from a strategic perspective. It focuses on how environmental pressures (e.g. sustainable development) and environmental problems (e.g. global warming, air pollution, waste-disposal), impact corporate mission, competitive strategy, technology choices, product development decisions, and production processes. Basic concepts of ecology and environmental science are discussed and contrasted to those associated with the traditional economic paradigm.
104. Theories and Practices for Community Action and Social Change
This foundations course for the Community Action and Social Change Minor is designed to prepare students to be informed and active participants in the process of community building and social change.
105. Businesses and Leaders: The Positive Differences
Businesses and their leaders coexist with society and are both influenced by and influencers of societal issues. In this course, we explore the competing tensions of how business practices and leaders impact organizational performance as well as broader social outcomes across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.
106. Systems Thinking for Sustainable Development and Enterprise
This course fosters the skills of systems thinking and systems dynamics modeling necessary for understanding global environmental and social change.
107. Leading and Leveraging Difference
Difference and diversity impact the bottom line. Leading and Leveraging Difference teaches students formal and informal leadership skills that are essential for working across boundaries in a diverse workplace.
108. Clean Tech Entrepreneurship
This course teaches the students how to screen venture opportunities in various cleantech domains. Venture assessments are approached through strategic, financial and market screens, and consider the impact of policy and regulatory constraints on the business opportunity. A midterm, final project, and six homework assignments are required.
109. Base of the Pyramid: Business Innovation and Social Impact
This course emphasizes action-based learning and integrates concepts of strategy, international business, entrepreneurship, non-profit management, and development to stimulate the leadership skills and competitive imagination needed to design, pilot, and scale Base of the Pyramid enterprises.