Aligning sustainability curriculum and operations to enhance student learning

Heather Hachigian was awarded an Internal Grant for Research for a research project exploring commitments to integrating sustainability in Business schools to improve student learning.

Business schools are increasingly signing on to global commitments to integrate sustainability into their teaching, research and operations. At the same time, scholars are paying increasing attention to the gap between these commitments and action and the reputational impacts the commitment-action gap has on schools. Scholars have paid significantly less attention to the impacts of the commitment-action gap on student learning. Implicit messages can conflict with formal sustainability curriculum when sustainability is not integrated into school operations to the same degree as the formal curriculum. This research explores opportunities to align sustainability teaching with a business school’s operations to enhance student learning in the context of sustainability-focused BBA programs.