MBS committed to a sustainable future
Oct, 2008
MBS Dean and Director, John Seybolt writes to the school community on the topic of sustainability.
Sustainability is a very challenging issue for corporations and business schools across the globe. Melbourne Business School prides itself on being a globally leading business school, and on the issue of sustainability MBS has invested a great deal of time and effort in developing a strategy to tackle the challenges that face us as a School. Over the past few years we have taken a number of steps to address this issue, but as we move forward we aim to be much more systematic in our approach to sustainability.
Leading global business schools are taking a wide range of approaches to address the issue of sustainability. Some business schools are radically revamping their programs to better incorporate CSR into their curricula, with sustainability being addressed underneath or alongside this related issue.
Schools are increasingly looking to build more efficient and less energy intensive facilities, retrofitting older facilities and in some cases incorporating on-site renewable energy into their buildings. Both the European and the American management education foundations (EFMD and AACSB) have encouraged schools to sign on to Principles for Responsible Management Education, a United Nations backed initiative to promote CSR and sustainability in management education. MBS is in the process of signing up to these Principles, which symbolizes our strong commitment to sustainability.
Specific actions already taken by MBS to tackle sustainability include the following. In our award programs we recently introduced an elective subject entitled "Business and Sustainable Development," which attracted 40 students in term I of this year.
Our students have also for the past two years arranged a full day conference on the theme of sustainability through the student group "Net Impact." In 2007 and 2008 conference participants from our student and alumni community filled the Coles Lecture theatre to hear how businesses are taking action on sustainability in ways that improve environmental quality, and at the same time lead to better business outcomes.
The School's most recently graduated EMBA class were also very actively involved in a number of sustainability initiatives during their residency at the School. These students wrote a short case for the School to move towards using green energy, as well as driving a number of other initiatives around energy and resource usage within the School.
Moving forward we will be introducing more material related to CSR and to sustainability into our core subjects for the MBA, and we hope also to have a new Australian case with an emphasis on sustainability for use in some of our subjects. We have already begun this journey, with students from the Net Impact group assisting in incorporating materials into the core MBA subject, Business Strategy.
We have also appointed Karen Morley to be the School's Executive Director of our new Asia-Pacific Centre for Leadership for Social Impact . The Centre's vision is Leadership for a Better Future, and striving to create a positive, sustainable legacy for future generations. Among the activities of the Centre will be an Executive Education program on sustainable enterprises, to be run in February 2009.
The School has also examined our carbon footprint, and with the assistance of two MBA interns, Alejandro de Bary Orihuela and Jane Bennetts, we examined options for upgrading our existing facilities in a sustainable manner. Jane also assisted with the School's recent Mill project, and changes were made to the design of the Mill to raise the environmental quality to a four green star level. As a result of the suggestions from the internship report we have since February this year sourced 20% of our electricity from green energy.
Going forward MBS is committed to continuing our progress in reducing our environmental impact. In our award and executive education programs we will be making changes to incorporate sustainability into curricula wherever possible. In our facilities we will invest a considerable amount of funds over the next two years on upgrades detailed in the carbon neutral report that will increase energy efficiency and reduce our environmental footprint. As a result of this investment we expect to reduce our energy usage by 5% per year for the next four years, to a level 20% below 2007 levels, and to reduce our GHG emissions by 30% over the same period.
We will achieve these reductions through improvements to our facilities and through taking actions to encourage behavioural changes within the School to reduce our energy usage. Strategies will be developed by a Committee to be headed by Mark Crosby and Karen Morley, with participation from faculty, staff, students and alumni.
We ask for the assistance of all Faculty, Staff, students and alumni as we embark on this journey. Your support is essential in order to make these changes happen,
Yours Sincerely,
John Seybolt
Dean and Director
Melbourne Business School
The MBS full-time MBA program is ranked number one in Australia and 26th world-wide in the Economist Intelligence Unit's Which MBA? 2009 annual rankings report.
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