The Moore School’s 14th annual Dr. Alfred N. and Lynn Manos Page Prize for Sustainability Issues in Business award winners were recently celebrated for their efforts to introduce or substantially upgrade sustainability courses or associated coursework into national and international business school curricula.
The Page Prize will be commemorating its 15th anniversary in 2022. The prize’s namesake and donor, Alfred N. Page, Ph.D., died in March 2022.
“Page was a true visionary for recognizing the role that faculty have in educating business school students for a more sustainable future,” said Kealy Carter, Moore School marketing clinical associate professor. “When he conceptualized the prize 15 years ago, few institutions were incorporating sustainability into their curriculum. Even as sustainability has become a relatively mainstream topic, this award continues to recognize faculty in their efforts and make the award-winning course materials available to all who are interested in adding sustainability content to business curricula.”
The Page Prize is awarded annually for the best submission based on the integration of sustainability into business curricula. Faculty, doctoral students and others submit innovative approaches to teaching sustainability to business students. Previous applications have covered a wide range of disciplines including accounting, entrepreneurship, finance, international business, management, marketing, operations and supply chain management and organizational behavior.
“While many of the courses that the committee reviewed this year incorporated novel
and fascinating perspectives on business sustainability, this year’s award recipients
stood out by coupling their unique approaches with truly impressive and innovative
sets of resources and coursework that should prove valuable to educators seeking to
develop their own sustainability courses,” said Adam Steinbach, Page Prize coordinator and management assistant professor at the Moore School. “We
hope that the 2021 Page Prize winners will inspire others to meaningfully explore
the challenges and practices around business sustainability in their classrooms to
help develop their students into stewards for positive environmental and social change
as they progress through their business careers.”
Grand prize winners
Christopher Craig, Ph.D.
The grand prize winner of the 2021 Page Prize is Christopher Craig, Ph.D., with the Arthur J. Bauernfeind College of Business at Murray State University. His course, Applied Organizational Sustainability, is an interdisciplinary course that incorporates STEM skills and knowledge with a level of depth and rigor that is rare in business courses, according to the Page Prize judges.
Developed with a combination of expertise from geography, climatology and management, this undergraduate course has students engage in a unique combination of activities, ranging from data analytics, applied case-study analysis and society-focused discussion around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The Page Prize committee felt that the quality and range of topics, activities and perspectives integrated into this course offer considerable value to its students and to business school professors hoping to incorporate sustainability in a way that is grounded in STEM knowledge but still inviting to business students.
“Sustainability challenges faced by business leaders and workers increasingly require
the application of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills and knowledge.
Currently missing from many business sustainability curricula is the explicit integration
of STEM, however,” Craig said. “To address this gap, Applied Organizational Sustainability
was designed, developed and implemented at Murray State University and the Arthur
J. Bauernfeind College of Business. The course is interdisciplinary, infusing STEM
and sustainability from a variety of disciplinary perspectives including climatology,
geography and management. Central to Applied Organizational Sustainability are real-life
sustainability challenges, e.g., climate change, environmental injustice, etcetera,
and how students can approach these in an integrative, applied manner. Educators interested
in deploying interdisciplinary STEM and sustainability curriculum can adapt readings,
case studies, stand-alone modules or even the entirety of Applied Organizational Sustainability from the publicly accessible lesson plans posted to the Page Prize database.”
Tim Rogmans, Ph.D.
Covering another vital aspect of sustainability, Tim Rogmans, Ph.D., with the College of Business at Zayed University was also awarded a grand prize for his Corporate Sustainability Management course. The course is structured around the profound challenges created by climate change. The Page Prize committee noted his management course is tremendously well-organized and highly accessible for business school instructors everywhere. They added that three modules contained in this course, with their accompanying readings and exercises, offer a cutting-edge and tremendously flexible resource for instructors, whether they want to add sustainability units into existing classes or to design an entirely new course.
“I am delighted and honored to receive this award, especially at a time when climate
change poses an increasing threat to humanity,” Rogmans said. “By developing people
who will lead successful organizations that reduce their greenhouse gas emissions
toward zero, business educators can make a significant contribution to one of humanity’s
greatest challenges. I hope that the course that I developed for Harvard Business
Publishing will help in making leading-edge sustainability management education accessible
to educators and learners worldwide.”
Honorable mention winners
Olga Hawn, Ph.D.
Olga Hawn, Ph.D., with the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, received an honorable mention for her Integrating Sustainability course. Infused with a strong managerial perspective on business sustainability, this course incorporates an impressive roster of practicing managers on the cutting edge of current events to speak about their companies’ sustainability initiatives and challenges, according to the Page Prize judges.
Further, Hawn’s course is designed largely in an asynchronous format, which many business schools and educators are increasingly relying on with very few effective templates. The committee felt this course’s overall structure and specific exercises will prove to be a valuable resource for instructors developing sustainability courses or modules in an asynchronous format.
“With increased urgency and scrutiny over environmental, social and corporate governance issues in the business world, more and more public and private companies are starting their sustainability journey, which raises a number of questions from ‘Where to begin?’ to ‘How to Integrate Sustainability,’” Hawn said. “More and more of our graduates will be tasked with these questions and thus, it is necessary for us to jump ahead of practice and explore how companies across various industries are integrating sustainability. This short one-credit online course covers a number of issues that arise in integrating sustainability and uses the UN Roadmap for Integrating Sustainability at its core.”
This honorable mention was the third Hawn has received for the Page Prize awards.
Her first two were in 2015 and 2016.
Lee, Tammineed, Delmas, Cockrum, Funk
Jason Lee; Anil Tammineedi; Magali Delmas, Ph.D.; Bill Cockrum; and John Funk, all with the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, also were given an honorable mention for their Impact Investing course.
Much of the investment community is increasingly incorporating social impact into their investment decisions, but very few courses specifically examine this important topic. The committee was impressed with the course’s comprehensive approach to this unique subject matter, especially given its highly engaging and practically relevant assignments, readings and speakers. The course also culminates with a presentation to an investment committee with real-world consequences, which the committee believes could serve as a model for instructors to develop a similarly impactful experience for their students.
“Experiential education is essential to prepare our students to work in the rapidly
developing field of social impact investing,” the co-authors said. “In the UCLA Anderson
Impact Investing Program, we provide students with the technical skills in both venture
capital investing and impact evaluation, as well as the ability to apply these skills
to invest in real impact ventures. Therefore, this allows students to test their skills
in practice. We are delighted be included in the Page Prize database and hope that
other schools will follow the experiential path.”
About the 2021 Page Prize submissions
This year’s pool of submissions included courses being taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels in business schools around the world. The courses covered a range of topics. Compared to previous years, there was an increased emphasis on multi-disciplinary understanding and quantitative analysis of sustainability trade-offs and performance through the development and implementation of sustainability strategies. Several submissions included unique speakers and projects embedded in the business school/local community. This year, there was also an increase in the number of resources that were submitted to guide professors in the integration of sustainability into their courses.
The Page Prize committee evaluated the pool of submissions based on course content, originality and ability to replicate across other universities and programs. While innovative approaches to relevant sustainability issues set some courses apart from others, overall course design, new approaches for conceptualizing sustainability, new sets of reading, thought-provoking questions accompanying the reading and clear descriptions of assignments are valued. Based on these criteria, two Grand Prize winners and two Honorable Mention winners were selected.
The syllabi and course materials for the award-winning courses are maintained in a searchable database for other educators to use in the development of their own sustainability courses. The Page Prize demonstrates the Moore School’s continuing commitment to promoting the development of sustainability curricula and being a leader in business education.
Now entering its 15th year, the Page Prize awards honor the late Alfred N. Page, who died on March 31, 2022. Page and his wife, Lynn Manos Page, established the award at the Moore School in collaboration with Hildy Teegen, international business professor and former dean at the Moore School.
Grand prize winners receive $1,000 and honorable mentions are awarded $250 each. All prize winners receive a framed print of Aegean Sea No. 6, an original diptych by Page’s wife, Lynn Manos Page, certifying the award. Lynn Manos Page, is an accomplished painter who studied in Venice, Italy and in Greece for many years.
Learn more about the Page Prize. The call for submissions for the 2022 Page Prize will open in the fall. The deadline for submissions is Jan. 31, 2023.