Green MBA Courses

Group Dynamics and Leadership (2 credits)
Competency Area: Collaboration and Group Dynamics
The course introduces students to elements of group dynamics and a conceptual model that matches leadership styles to stages of group development. Students work in teams throughout the course and use course concepts to analyze their in-class as well as professional experiences. Skills emphasized are group leadership and membership skills, group observation and feedback, facilitation, conflict management, and managing diversity in groups.

Principles of Sustainability in Complex Systems (2 credits)
Competency Area: Natural Systems
This course will cover foundational scientific principles that govern all sustainable systems to give students the capacity to evaluate any action or policy regarding sustainability in a variety of complex systems-biological, ecological, environmental, organizational, social, political, or economic. Natural systems—biological, ecological, meteorological, and geological—at various spatial and temporal scales will be used to demonstrate the workings of these principles. We will also examine social systems at various scales in light of these principles.

Diversity in the Global Workforce (1 credit)
Competency Area: Collaboration and Group Dynamics
This course will examine the impact of globalization on workforce diversity. Successfully working with diverse populations and understanding the dynamics of differences in organizations requires skills, personal assessment and reflection and a spirit of open-mindedness and acceptance. This course intends to help students develop competencies and improve skills in managing and working effectively in a global work force diagnosing and leading individuals and groups to acknowledge and capitalize on the creativity and richness of diversity.

Fall I

Economics I - Neo-Classical (2 credits)
Competency Area: Finance and Economics
This course provides students with a historical background and application of micro- economic principles as currently practiced with specific focus on how the market drives the efficient allocation and distribution of scarce or limited resources. The class prepares students for comparing and contrasting neo-classical and ecological economic models.

Self as Leader (1 credit)
Competency Area: Leadership and Self Development
This seminar focuses on developing effective leadership skills and behaviors. Through readings, dialogue groups, reflective writing, and assessment instruments, students will gain awareness and understanding of their current level of leadership competencies. They will develop an action plan to apply their learning experience to their career and professional goals.

Managerial Accounting (3 credits)
Competency: Finance and Economics
Managers in organizations need a variety of financial and other sources of information for design, decision-making, implementing, and assessing the success of their operations. This course expands upon the standard notions of a single bottom line to include alternative measures, assessment, and information that provide a broader contextual understanding to managerial controls and success.

Earth Systems Science (3 credits)
Competency Area: Natural Systems
This course employs a systems approach to understanding the earth’s physical and biological environment by examining the critical components and processes of the earth’s systems. Understanding the interaction of these elements and their natural variability in space and time is critical for assessing rates, modes, and consequences of environmental change. Emphasis will be placed on humans and human systems (business/organizations/communities) as agents of change.

Spring I

Economics II - Ecological Economics (2 credits)
Competency Area: Finance and Economics
This course continues from the fall semester by expanding our understanding of economic principles beyond the efficient allocation of resources according to market driven forces. Ecological economics addresses the complexity inherent in the process of determining how we decide, utilize, and prioritize resources in a way that does not jeopardize the future well-being of the natural and human systems. Growth, development, and commerce take on new meaning when examined through the lens of sustainable economic models.

Ethics and Social Responsibility (1 credit)
Competency: Leadership and Self Development
This course explores the roles and responsibilities of managers as ethical thought leaders as they attempt to guide contemporary organizations through complexity and change. Organizational decision-makers must develop more sophisticated working knowledge of models of ethics and social responsibility. In this way, they can better support the creation and sustainability of fair and just organizations that profit a wide array of stakeholders in local, regional, and global contexts.

Managerial Finance (3 credits)
Competency: Finance and Economics
This course provides students with a solid understanding of basic finance concepts including business organization and taxes, the global financial environment and time value techniques and applications. The course will then turn its focus to financial analysis and planning, capital budgeting, capital leveraging, and structures. Students will have the opportunity to assess short and long-term impact of financial decision-making by comparing and contrasting traditional and sustainable models.

Perspective on Organizational Theory and Behavior (3 credits)
Competency Area: Systems and Strategic Thinking
This course presents multiple perspectives of organizational systems and the influence these various theories have on our understanding of human behavior, leadership, organizational effectiveness and sustainability. The interdisciplinary models and theories used in the course will provide a framework to broaden our knowledge and skills in understanding the complexities of organizational life. Among the key perspectives we will consider are how structure, human systems, power, influence and, culture all shape the nature of the organization.

Summer II

Organizational Research and Evaluation (2 credits)
Competency: Management and Decision Making
This course provides students with knowledge and skills in the use of quantitative and qualitative research methods and analysis. Understanding these methods is essential for assessment, planning, project development, decision-making, and evaluation. This course will help students formulate a better insight and application into how we come “to know”, question, reflect, and analyze important data that may serve to improve our organizations, communities and the lives of those around us.

Sustainable Human Ecology (2 credits)
Competency: Natural Systems
This course integrates key concepts from ecological and organizational thinking to examine the interdependence of human and natural systems. The primary focus is on how we apply these concepts to understand and create sustainable models and professional practice that support organizational, community and natural environments.

Fall II

Knowledge Management (1 credit)
Competency: Management and Decision Making
This course will focus on creating and sustaining a “communities of practice” approach to identifying, capturing, retrieving, sharing, and evaluating organizational knowledge assets and their application in local, regional, and global contexts. Using a seminar format students engage in reading and dialogue groups, case study analysis and application of knowledge management thinking to their own organization.

Change Models and Applications (3 credits)
Competency Area: Purposeful Systemic Change
For organizations to thrive in today’s complex environments, leaders and managers increasingly need knowledge on how to engage organizational members in systemic change directed toward the fulfillment of clear and meaningful objectives that are understood and supported by a critical mass of people within the organization. Models for leading and facilitating planned short and long-term change efforts at the group and organization level will be introduced, as well as ways of responding to unplanned change. The application of change theory and models will be addressed through a variety of means, including role-play, simulation, case studies, class discussion, and through the use of online technology. Change strategies and methods will be evaluated for application and fit with the intended change outcomes, organization needs, and organization culture.

Marketing (3 credits)
Competency: Systems and Strategic Thinking
This course is designed to provide an in-depth introduction to the key concepts, tools, and applications of modern marketing analysis within a wide variety of organizations, both corporate and not-for-profit. The course combines both theoretical and practical elements and is intended to help students understand the critical nature of the marketing function, the distinctions in a “green marketing” perspective.

Practicum Project: Developing Organizational Strategy (2 credits)
Competency: Purposeful Systemic Change
The Practicum fall and spring semesters serves as an integrating and capstone experience for students. Second year students will strategize and design their Practicum project work in the fall semester and continue with the project application in the spring semester. Students will work with the guidance of a faculty advisor and a small group of peer consultants from their cohort.

Spring II

Entrepreneurship: Creativity and Innovation (1 credit)
Competency: Leadership and Self Development
Among the course objectives are to learn more about your own ability as an entrepreneurial leader and how to more effectively employ the benefits and minimize the pitfalls that entrepreneurial leadership provides. In this seminar we will examine the unique aspects of risk taking, creativity, stages of organizational development, leadership behaviors, social entrepreneurship, and role that culture plays with entrepreneurial organizations.

Developing Human Resources (3 credits)
Competency Area: Management and Decision Making
Human beings and the organizations they work in depend on one another. Effective managers know how to foster workplace culture, practices, and relationships that support learning, satisfaction, and strong performance among employees, who in turn commit their energy to the organization’s success. This course engages students in examining their beliefs and values about the mutual responsibilities of organizations and employees, and provides an overview of principles of effective human resource practice for managers. We then focus on specific aspects of that practice, including hiring, orientation, performance development, and dealing with unsatisfactory performance. We will discuss other human resource issues of interest to students.

Operations Management (3 credits)
Competency: Management and Decision Making
This course covers the concepts, processes, and managerial skills that are needed to transform human, physical, and technical resources into the sustainable production of goods and services The focus is on decisions that convert broad policy directives into specific actions within the organization and that guide the monitoring and evaluating of these activities. Major techniques of classical, contemporary, and Green quantitative analysis are applied to a variety of managerial decision problems. Emphasis is placed on developing formal analytical skills, especially in structured problem solving, and on recognizing the strengths, limitations, and usefulness of these management science approaches.

Practicum (2 credits)
Continuation of Fall Practicum