The Sustainability Field Study Course at the CU Denver Business School led by professor Graham Russell that concluded this past Spring gave students the real world experience they crave. Students who took the course work individually or in small teams to conduct a semester-long sustainability project in a local company, government agency or non-profit.
These projects address a clearly identified need and lead to a well-defined product or deliverable that can be achieved within the duration of a single semester.
Mike Cerbo is one of these students. He worked to initiate sustainability in a small engineering company.
Mike Cerbo has worked as a professional engineer for Galloway & Company, a 100-person civil engineering company in Colorado. More and more engineering firms are being required by their clients to build sustainability into their planning and design work and Mike realized in 2015 that, if Galloway was to market itself as a provider of sustainable engineering services, it would probably be necessary to develop an internal sustainability initiative and create a sustainability-focused culture inside the company itself. With the blessing of one of Galloway’s founders and co-owners, Mike decided to make use of his MBA course to develop a plan for bringing a sustainability initiative to Galloway and to implement the first action steps.
Assisted by three co-students in a class project in the fall semester 2015, Mike developed a plan to create a green team at Galloway. In early 2016 this plan was presented to a session of the Business School’s Managing for Sustainability Advisory Council in which Mike received a number of helpful suggestions for fine tuning his ideas. He then embarked on an independent study course for the spring 2016 semester with the objectives of setting up the Galloway green team and taking the first steps in developing a broad-based sustainability initiative for the company.
During the semester, Mike made considerable progress with his plan, discovering in the process, however, that getting sustainability rolling in small companies is not an easy process. In the first place, Galloway is a professional service company which means that some of the low hanging sustainability fruit options available to manufacturing and other companies with significant hard assets are not very compelling (e.g. energy efficiency, recycling and waste reduction, vehicle fleet efficiency improvements). Secondly, like most smaller professional service firms, Galloway’s top priority is always to be there for its clients. During early 2016 the company experienced a significant increase in workload, which meant that Mike’s ambitious plan simply had to be slowed down so that his colleagues and the company’s senior leadership could concentrate on delivering on its client commitments.
For more information on the course: MGMT 6824 – Sustainable Business/Corporate Social Responsibility Field Study please contact graham.russell@ucdenver.edu.
