With the concluding remarks in my last blog post about sustainability not only being for the tree-hugger environmentalists, I want to bring to light a forum that is also in sync with the same message. The Graduate Student Sustainability Forum, being held Friday, February 11, by the Tippie School of Management, is presenting business students with the opportunity to learn how companies and business education can, and needs, to become sustainable.
Using the tagline “Beyond Reduce, Reuse, & Recycle,” one of the event organizers, Jeremie Yoder, whom I talked with this week regarding the event, says that an outdated version of sustainability was the idea of “good for the sake of good” which was not a “business savvy” decision. The more relevant version of sustainability, that is also savvy, invovles costs saving measures for the company and increase in business and profit as a whole. The forum will highlight how sustainability and business have driven innovation in the sector and how it has paired with “unlikely stakeholders” to add momentum in fusing the two subjects together.
Although the forum is only being advertised to graduate students in Tippie School of Management, all students, including undergraduate and those in other colleges, are encouraged and invited to attend. The goal, as Jeremie described, is to “internalize the values associated with sustainability even if we work a more traditional job.”
Sustainability is now part of the mainstream culture and as the job sector continues to adapt to this, it will be fundamental as a future employee to integrate it into personal and business lifestyle.
So, if you’re free tomorrow from 8:30am – 2:00pm, check out the forum at the IMU. For more information: http://sustainability.uiowa.edu/ui-graduate-student-sustainability-forum/