Adelaide Park Gomer: “ Living Laboratory for Social Responsibility” As Ithaca College launched its capital campaign for construction of new buildings to house the business school and the administration, I suggested I would help to secure funding if one of the buildings was built “green.” The business school was designated as the sustainable model, and my mother, Dorothy Park, granted the lead gift, which ultimately amounted to over half of the eventual cost of the building. Our rationale was to put Ithaca College at the forefront of sustainability education, and our purpose was twofold: 1. To be the first LEED platinum-certified business school in the world, serving
People, plant, and prosperity
as a model for other institutions of higher learning. Since the designation of the Park Center for Business and Sustainable Enterprise as LEED platinum, the Peggy Ryan Williams Center has been recognized as LEED platinum, and the Athletics and Events (A&E) Center is aspiring to be LEED certified. 2. To encourage the business curriculum to reflect the building that houses it and
make the building a living learning laboratory. As a philanthropist engaged in environmental work, I am acutely aware of the decimation
Sustainability in Management Education: Research, Resonance, and Results of our planet. It is my belief that the only effective way to reverse this destructive path is to engage the corporate community in developing sustainable business practices. As a former teacher, I believe we can accomplish this by educating young business students about socially responsible business practices. Therefore, I believe that Ithaca College students should learn how to seek business success and still protect the earth and the health of the people, wildlife, soil, plants, and oceans on it. To help foster these ideals, students should learn to embrace and practice socially responsible investing in a space created specifically for that use — the Center for Trading and Analysis of Financial Instruments. There, students should learn that the bottom line signifies more than money, and that an investment portfolio should include the three interlocking principles of sustainability: planet, people, and profit. The green building at Ithaca College named after my mother and father will be a beacon for other business schools. Housing the intended curriculum, the Park Center for Business and Sustainable Enterprise will provide a model for business schools everywhere. n
Everyone benefits from working in the Park Center, a living laboratory of sustainability.
Aimee Dars Ellis interviewed for teaching positions when Ithaca College was building the Park Center for Business and Sustainable Enterprise. “It was certainly a selling point for me,” she said. The building and the school’s focus on sustainability helped persuade her to join the School of Business faculty. Ellis developed her commitment to sustainability through her research. While teaching a business ethics class at Arizona State University, she became one of the first in her field of organizational behavior to research employees’ reactions to corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs that required their participation. She studied employee attitudes to volunteer programs, blood drives, and recycling and found that their involvement in these activities plays a significant role in the success of any business. “Employees care deeply about participating in CSR programs, and those programs provide significant benefit to organizations, even if they don’t necessarily affect the bottom line,” Ellis said. She presented the results in a paper to the Academy of Management and was named
a finalist for the prestigious Newman Award, bestowed upon the top three papers based on a dissertation. As an assistant professor of management at the School of Business, Ellis has developed Business Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship, an undergraduate elective. She incorporates her research interests into the curriculum, so her students can learn core marketing concepts and ideology from a fresh perspective. Through their courses and projects, guided by faculty members like Ellis, students develop a superior understanding of environmentally sound and socially responsible business practices. Everyone at the School of Business benefits from working in the Park Center for Business and Sustainable Enterprise, a living laboratory of sustainability. With passionate teachers in an enriched environment, IC shows students how to consider business through this prism of social responsibility. n Visit www.ithaca.edu/business/ connections/sustainability_ management.php to read more.
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