Penn State’s Smeal College of Business has just announced that they will offer a concentration in Sustainability and Social Innovation for MBA students. Students pursuing the sustainability concentration will take courses from Smeal and Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. The courses for the sustainability concentration include Renewable and Sustainable Energy Systems, Ethical Dimensions of Renewable Energy and Sustainability Systems, Technologies for Sustainability Systems, Creating Value Through Social Entrepreneurship, and Sustainable Business Strategies.
Although the sustainability concentration is new to Smeal, MBA students at Smeal have already been learning about sustainability. Currently, Smeal’s MBA program offers courses in sustainability, including Sustainability Business Strategies and Social Entrepreneurship and Social Value Creation. Smeal’s Applied Professional Experience Program (APEX), the MBA capstone in which students take on real world challenges, often features sustainability-related topics.
Penn State also has a chapter of Net Impact, an organization that educates students about business principles supporting sustainable growth and corporate responsibility. Smeal’s chapter of Net Impact earned gold status recently, placing the school in Net Impact’s 2013 Business as UNusual guide to MBA programs that give students the opportunity to explore environmental and social issues in a business context. Smeal is also working on a series of actions to integrate sustainability into the regular business curriculum, facilitate sustainable behavior in students, and promote research in social and environmental issues.
Smeal students focus mainly on the fundamental concepts of business during their first year at the school, but concentrations allow students to explore their interests in more depth while at Smeal. Smeal already offers concentrations in Supply Chain Management, Marketing, Strategic Leadership, Finance, and Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
