August 30: CME has strong showing in Corporate Knights Survey

For the second year in a row, CME has had a strong showing in the annual Corporate Knight’s ranking of business schools. This year we placed 11th out of 47 undergraduate management programs with a commitment to sustainability, improved our performance in several categories, and increased our overall grade from 56.42 in 2009 to 61.95 in 2010.

The results clearly show that sustainable commerce is now on the agenda at business schools across the country and that the bar continues to rise. We are encouraged to see so many business schools strengthening their commitment to sustainability-focused education and are hopeful that this will translate into higher quality educational offerings for Canadian management students while also enhancing the potential impact of future leaders.

Specific CME accomplishments over the past year include the launch of the CME vision Leaders for a Sustainable World which was overwhelmingly endorsed by faculty and staff at a college-wide retreat. We also introduced a number of CSR/Sustainability courses in our undergraduate and graduate programs. Guelph’s student chapter of Net Impact (just two years old) also had a particularly successful year, being acknowledged as a “silver chapter” in recognition of their activities and achievements. On the research front, CME faculty continue to build expertise in the area of CSR/Sustainability and were invited to speak at numerous academic and practitioner events.  Our faculty have also been successfully attracting research funding for sustainability related projects which will further enhance our reputation, presence and impact in the field.

In terms of external engagement, our faculty and students were involved in a number of community-based projects and events including the Co-operator’s Youth Sustainability Conference. CME also co-hosted an inter-university workshop on sustainability-focused business education this spring. The purpose of this event was to provide a forum for management faculty from across the country to dialogue with their peers about the opportunities to advance sustainability-focused education in the design and delivery of elective and core courses in the curriculum.  A total of 80 participants (including faculty, administrators, industry representatives, and students) gathered from 16 different universities and colleges to discuss the complex global issues that our students will increasingly face in their personal and professional lives.

We are confident that with these accomplishments and other planned events, CME will continue to gain recognition for our sustainability initiatives and for our leadership role in this area. Our most important priority remains our focus on being and developing leaders for a sustainable world, supported by our commitment to transformational learning, research that counts and community engagement. Our goal is to create an engaging environment for faculty and students that nurtures social conscience and environmental sensibility, and encourages all of us to contribute to resolving the most important leadership, management, and economic issues confronting our world today.

We continue to make great progress towards our vision and I am confident that through our shared commitment we will continue to meet the high expectations of our learning community and the world beyond. I would like to congratulate and offer my deepest gratitude to all students, staff and faculty for their dedication and enthusiasm to helping achieve our vision.

Dean Julia Christensen Hughes