• Sustainable Business Course Information
• Sustainable Enterprise Hatchery

The Sustainable Business program is overseen by Jay Friedlander, the Sharpe-McNally Chair of Green and Socially Responsible Business. It was founded with the generous support of Henry and Peggy Sharpe and Jay McNally '84.

For COA students who want to focus on sustainable business, the curriculum offers a management approach, incorporating a variety of stakeholders in its decision making. The program enables graduates to function in an entrepreneurial manner in environments ranging from start-ups to large corporations.

Our sustainable business curriculum is guided by the following core principles:

• Teaching universal skills that can be applied in all business environments.
  
• Demonstrating theory through relevant case studies that apply theory to actual business problems.
  
• Integrating sustainability throughout the enterprise; in this context, sustainability includes the alignment of enterprises with the "triple bottom line" of profitability, social responsibility, and environmental responsibility.
• Including significant experiential elements, such as student projects, consulting for collaborating companies, internships and venture creation.
• Creating a classroom culture based on a progressive business environment.
  
• Drawing on knowledge from the multiple intellectual disciplines represented by COA faculty.

Business Innovation and Social Change

The most entrepreneurial businesses are interdisciplinary; they communicate between marketing, finance, operations and other departments. College of the Atlantic expands this entrepreneurial spirit by tearing down the walls between traditionally siloed disciplines to spark innovation and to solve problems from multiple perspectives. Students at COA receive only one degree, that of Human Ecology, which studies the relationship between human beings and their physical and social environments through a distinctive interdisciplinary approach. A study of Human Ecology would be incomplete without looking at one of the world’s most ubiquitous activities – business. By connecting the values of Human Ecology with the skills to work within existing societal frameworks, the Sustainable Business Program helps prepare students to succeed financially, and to effectively pursue their dreams of creating social and environmental change.

COA’s Sustainable Business Program focuses on leveraging the power of environmentally and socially focused strategies to bring about positive change in the world, while also gaining competitive advantage. These strategies are being adopted by small innovative companies including Newman’s Own Organics, started by COA graduate Nell Newman, as well as industrial giants such as General Electric. Recent studies by The Economist and A.T. Kearney have shown that companies focused on sustainability and regeneration outperform their peers.* In addition, companies focused on sustainability are fostering significant social change. Zipcar created a multi-billion dollar industry by providing convenient and flexible access to vehicles in urbanized areas without sacrificing access to style or mobility. Zipcar has removed millions of pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere by changing auto transportation from an ownership to a utility model. Grameen Bank, the Microfinance bank founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, pioneered a new industry by making loans to millions of the poorest of the poor, offering them unimagined opportunity to improve their lives.

* The Economist Intelligence Unit, "Doing Good: Business and the sustainability challenge," February 2008. A.T. Kearney, "Green Winners: The performance of sustainability-focused companies during the financial crisis," 2009.