OAKLAND Calif.
Business professor John Stayton remembers when eyes would start rolling at the idea of a “green MBA.”
These days, business schools across the country are incorporating the environmental and social costs of doing business into their curricula, and a few, like the program Stayton directs at Dominican University of California, aim for an all-green program.
The goal? How to succeed in business without really frying the planet.
“Essentially we’ve got to change the way we’re doing everything and making everything,” said Stayton.
The program Stayton directs was launched at Santa Rosa’s New College of California North Bay in 2000 as a Master of Arts in the humanities department and transferred to Dominican last spring. It’s one of a handful of such degrees; others include MBAs offered at the Presidio School of Management in San Francisco and the Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Washington state.
The move to balance economy and ecology is showing up all over, said Rich Leimsider, director of the Center for Business Education at The Aspen Institute, a leadership think tank which reports on how Master of Business Administration programs are adding social and environmental issues to their courses in its biennial “Beyond Grey Pinstripes” report.
