Business Sustainability Curricula at the Darden School Receives a Page Awards Grand Prize

The University of Virginia Darden School of Business is one of two grand prize winners for the 2011 Dr. Alfred N. and Lynn Manos Page Prize for Sustainability Issues in Business Curricula, sponsored by the University of South Carolina Moore School of Business. Darden won the award for its Innovation for Sustainability concentration learning objectives and syllabi for qualifying elective courses. This award is a first for Darden.

The Page Prize competition is designed to encourage and support business school efforts to increase sustainability coursework in their curricula across three areas: the natural environment, good governance and ethics, and the value exchange between firms and their counterparts in governments and civil society.

“Our faculty and staff have made great strides in advancing knowledge in sustainability and driving attention to the ways that an entire enterprise can operate sustainably,” said Erika Herz, manager of sustainability programs and managing director of the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS) at the Darden School.

“This is a wonderful acknowledgement of the hard work so many people have put forth for so long,” said Dean Robert Bruner. “Darden’s sustainability-focused research and teaching has brought a great distinction to the Darden community.”

Past grand prize winners have included Harvard University, Cornell University and the University of Michigan. Darden has received a cash award of $1,000 and a framed print of Aegean Sea #6, a painting by Lynn Manos Page.

The award acknowledged the following faculty for their sustainability–related contributions to Darden’s students through their courses.

• Professor Yiorgos Allayannis, for his contributions to the Darden Capital Management student club’s Rotunda Fund
• Professor Alan Beckenstein, for his contributions in the “Business-Government Relations” course
• Professors Dick Brownlee and Mark White (McIntire School of Commerce), for their contributions in the “Business & Sustainability” course
• Professor Greg Fairchild, for his contributions in the “Business Ethics Through Literature” and “Entrepreneur as Change Agent” courses
• Professors Ed Freeman and Sankaran “Venkat” Venkataraman, for their contributions in the “Workshop on Creative Capitalism” course
• Professor Alec Horniman, for his contributions in the “Leadership and Diversity Through Literature” course
• Professor Bob Landel, for his contributions in the “Systems Design and Business Dynamics” course
• Professor Andrea Larson, for her contributions in the “Sustainable Innovation and Entrepreneurship” course
• Professor Mary Ann Leeper, for her contributions in the “Social Responsibility and Entrepreneurship” course
• Professor Jeanne Liedtka, for her contributions in the “Corporate Innovation and Design Experience” course
• Professor Gal Raz, for his contributions in the “Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Israel” course
• Professor Andy Wicks, for his contributions in the “Leadership, Values and Ethics” course

Course materials are posted on both the Page Prize website, and on the Aspen Institute’s website repository of sustainability teaching materials.