This past June, MIT Sloan School of Management awarded its first certificates of sustainability to two students who successfully completed a new program designed to encourage and recognize MBAs who place special emphasis as part of their studies on finding ways to create a more sustainable world.
Christina Ingersoll, MBA ’10, and Carolina Mondelo Bas, SF’10, wasted little time in obtaining the new MIT Sloan Certificate in Sustainability. The program was first announced in February 2010 in response to student demand and the success of the school’s Sustainability Lab, which launched in 2007.
As part of the new certificate program, students must complete a mix of required and elective courses designed to help them channel MIT’s strengths in process improvement, organizational learning and adaptation, entrepreneurship and commercialization toward more sustainable business solutions. Beginning in spring 2011, the program also will feature a capstone course on sustainability.
According to Modelo Bas, who had been working in sustainable products for a decade, the new sustainability certificate program helped her widen her perspective of sustainability.
“Because I was working with agricultural products, I used to think of sustainability only from that aspect,” she said. “I was thinking in a much more simplistic way. After the certificate I can see many different aspects of the problem. This allows for a more complete solution.”
For Ingersoll, the certificate program gave her exactly the breadth of perspective she hoped an MBA might provide. “A big part of the reason I wanted to go to business school was because I really wanted to learn about all forms of sustainability—not just environmental,” she said. “I wanted to learn about economic sustainability and the social side that goes along with that. I wanted to learn how you can produce a profit in a way that doesn’t make anyone’s life more miserable, and how you can run a business in a manner that improves the quality of life for all involved. I found that MIT is a great place to learn all of that.”
In addition to obtaining the Certificate of Sustainability, participants in MIT Sloan’s new sustainability program gain special access to summer sustainability internships as well as to a special resume book for sustainability. The certificate program is open to all MBA and Sloan-related programs, and MBA students can pursue a track in Sloan in addition to sustainability.
For more information on the MIT Sloan Certificate in Sustainability Program, click here.
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