Our 2015-2020 Scheller College of Business strategic plan helped to set our direction by highlighting business analytics, entrepreneurship, innovation and technology, and sustainability as differentiating areas of the College and how these interconnect to create business value and social impact. Given these areas of emphasis, change and innovation are seamlessly woven into the backdrop of each Scheller student’s experience. In terms of sustainability and societal engagement specifically, the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business and the Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship have helped to facilitate a college-wide culture that heightens awareness of business impact and opportunity on the most pressing environmental and social challenges of the 21st century.

We do this through a) a team of faculty whose research findings advance thinking and practice in corporate sustainability, b) sustainability coursework/cases that offer practical academic frameworks and experiential learning opportunities, c) extra-curricular activities (including our highly engaged Net Impact graduate and undergraduate chapters and MBA and Undergraduate Sustainability Fellows) that help to integrate sustainability into career and personal development experiences, d) staff involvement in sustainability through our Work Green initiative, and e) engagement with our business partners to assist them in the achievement of their corporate sustainability agendas.

While it is this holistic programming package that we believe underpins our rating in the “Culture” category, we are particularly proud of the experiential learning that we offer through a practicum course that teaches the students skills that are applied to actual, real-life corporate social responsibility challenges, a pro-bono consulting course and Board Fellows program to assist non-profits, and finally via our Carbon Reduction Challenge, where students on internships and coops work to identify a carbon-mitigation opportunity, develop recommendations, and highlight other co-benefits for their host companies’ consideration.