Environment: The Greening of a University Program

Clarkson University’s interdisciplinary engineering and management program is breaking new ground by preparing tomorrow’s business and technical leaders to incorporate environmental considerations into decision-making.

Launched more than 50 years ago, Clarkson University’s interdisciplinary engineering and management (iE&M) program has served as a model for subsequent programs developed by other universities.

The pioneering program remains true to its original goal: to create technological leaders and innovators who possess skills necessary to bring a broad business and technical perspective to complex business and industrial management. But it has also evolved over the years to keep apace with changes in technology and the emerging global marketplace.

Today, Clarkson’s iE&M is breaking new ground once again. This time by preparing tomorrow’s business and technical leaders to incorporate environmental considerations into decision-making.

“Today, corporate stakeholders include more than share holders, management, or employees,” says Amy K. Zander, new director of the iE&M program. “They include sustainability and the future. Decisions made need to be based on a bottom line that considers economic as well as environmental costs and benefits. Corporations understand they need to become better citizens and sustainability needs to be incorporated into business and management, rather than relegated to its own separate field.”

Zander and her team are reshaping parts of the curricula to consider business operations, product development, manufacturing and marketing in light of social responsibility and corporate citizenship. In special projects and in some course work students will be required to consider environmental consequences in business and technological decisions. For example, given the recent increase in prices of fuel oil and natural gas, students are working on a project with an alum to examine the current technical, economical and environmental feasibility of using waste wood products as an energy source in small commercial heat applications.

Zander is an expert in the areas of physical and chemical separations in environmental systems, especially drinking water and wastewater treatment technologies. Zander is currently chairing the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Advancing Desalination Technology.

Prior to taking on this new role, Zander served as associate dean of Clarkson's Wallace H. Coulter School of Engineering. While at times in the past engineers have directed the iE&M program (when it was housed in the School of Engineering), this is the first time an engineer will be running the program from within the School of Business.

The new set-up, says Zander, is strategic. “The administrative structure will better reflect and strengthen the cross-disciplinary nature of the program. It will also place greater emphasis on technical innovation, which is key to success in today’s global economy.”

So what’s it like to be an engineer in a business school?

“It’s not as strange as one might think,” says Zander. “Engineering accreditors have long been asking engineering educators to incorporate realistic constraints into the teaching of engineering design. We have years of practice considering economic, environmental, social, ethical, manufacturability and sustainability constraints and/or opportunities in our practice. In the School of Engineering the emphasis is preparing excellent engineers. In iE&M the goal is to prepare excellent engineering managers.”

©Copyright 2008 by AlternativeApproaches.com