CESB Teaching

CESB Teaching Awards

One of the many goals for the Center for Ethical & Sustainable Business (CESB) is to raise awareness of ethical, environmental, and social sustainable concerns during the other 51 weeks of the year. Likewise, the Center promotes embedding such content in ALL courses across the business curriculum. One of the ways we support this goal is by recognizing faculty who have successfully done this in their courses.

In 2022, we established the CESB Teaching Awards and started recognizing and rewarding faculty who embed ethics and sustainability into their courses.

2023 CESB Teaching Awards Recipients

In our second annual teaching award competition we asked the LFCoB faculty to show us how they embed ethics and sustainability into their courses. Many faculty rose to the challenge (even more so than in 2022), and after much deliberation by a panel of faculty and students, our awardees for 2023 have been selected are listed in alphabetical order.

Anoshua Chaudhuri strives to make macroeconomics more relevant to her students by giving students a project to connect Econ 101 to the real world, where they are tasked with find an article showing a market or government failure or an unintended consequence of a well-intentioned policy that leads to inefficient, unethical, unjust, inequitable or unsustainable outcome. The students must then brainstorm on a public policy mechanism to correct this situation.
Bo Ferns provides two touchpoints for integrating business ethics and social responsibility into her Integrated Seminar in Hospitality Management (HTM 590). During the start of the term as student teams generate business concepts and determine how CSR can be addressed in them. Later, after learning about the social cost of business production, students ideate on solutions for their team project and also discuss the ethical nature of entrepreneurial leadership.
Theresa Hammond dedicated three of her Cost Accounting (ACCT 305) classes to issues around ethics (in particular delving into for-profit colleges and the impacts they have on their students), and diversity, equity and inclusion, such as examining the lack of minority representation in accounting. Speaking of inclusion, she opened one session up to the broader community during Business Ethics Week, where she interviewed the Director, CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion I CEO Action for Racial Equity at PwC.
To help students develop their ethical decision-making skills in her Leadership and Influence Skills course (MGMT648), Chenwei Li has created two interactive activities. The first is the ethical dilemma team assignment, which challenges students to write up their own ethical dilemmas and work collaboratively to develop solutions that balance universal values and human drives. The second is the Theronas documentary discussion, which examines the dangers of bad leadership and explores the ways in which followers can respond to these situations.
John Logan peppered his class in Workers in the Global Economy (LABR/SOC555) by investigating how labor activists “salt” companies, making comparisons to the civil rights movement. Student also interviewed essential workers, determining whether they received hazard pay or were otherwise fairly compensated for keeping things running during the pandemic. For extra credit students had the opportunity to listen to renown student labor activist Jaz Brisack, whom he both brought to UC Berkeley and also interviewed during a Business Ethics Week event.
Communication for Business Analytics (DS660GW) is the capstone class for Decision Sciences, where students integrate material learned in their other courses to analyze unstructured, real-world problems. As one of the four stated learning objectives of the class is recognizing ethical and sustainability-related issues in quantitative analysis, Theresa Roeder includes both a case study on ethics and a final project on sustainability in the class, and a wide-ranging list of prior projects was provided to inspire students in her Spring 2023 class.
While Gulnur Tumbat embeds ethics thorough her Consumer Behavior course (MKTG633) through required forum posting, she has most notably has structured the course so that the week of Business Ethics Week corresponds to when students are to read the chapter entitled “Buying Using Disposing.” She has also supplemented the text with recent articles on consumers’ repairing of electronics and on the pervasiveness of plastics.

2022 CESB Teaching Awards

In our inaugural teaching award competition we asked the LFCoB faculty to show us how they embedded ethics and sustainability into courses not already obviously centered on such topics. Many faculty rose to the challenge, and here are the award recepients listed in alphabetical order.

2022 CESB Teaching Awards Recipients

Daniel Ciomek, Lecturer Faculty, Information Systems

After covering how to optimize businesses with business process management and optimization in his Information Systems for Management (ISYS 363) course, Daniel Ciomek features the Ethics of Eating presentation from the Educated Choices Program, which is followed by a discussion covering the current industrial food production in light of ethical aspects for human health, the animals, and the environment, and introduces potential solutions such as plant-based alternatives. He reports that its non-dogmatic approach usually leads to a great discussion.

Matt Fisher, Lecturer Faculty, Marketing/Management

Dr. Fisher embeds relevant content in four of the 15 weeks of his Brand Management (MKTG 675) course that span a wide range of concerns. He illustrates the role marketers may play in reinforcing or rejecting harmful norms, such how children’s toys and colors relate to gender stereotypes and cosmetics companies can position products to highlight “natural beauty” instead of fixing a deficiency related to unrealistic standards. He makes use of his self-authored Shinola case study to show how branding can focus on the workers and the community to differentiate that brand, and have positive financial impact as well. He ends the class with a seminar on brand activism.

Antoaneta Petkova, Professor of Management

Professor Antoaneta Petkova mentions “According to many students, BUS 690 Business Policy and Strategy is ‘the opposite’ of BUS 682 Business and Society in that it… [just].. focuses on profit maximization.” To combat this perception, she employs multiple approaches, the most involved of which is that her students engage in a term-long team project analyzing a local organization with a substantive social and/or environmental purpose, culminating final presentations and discussions of each teams’ ethics and sustainability recommendations.

Joanne Sopt, Assistant Professor of Accounting

In her Introduction to Financial Accounting (ACCT 100) courses, Professor Joanne Sopt makes use of forum-based assignments to have students learn about the ethical dangers of having only a single story available in accounting, and then delves into the lack of diversity in accounting. Throughout the term she revisits a Nike case study that highlights fraud and ethics issues. Professor Sopt states, “My goal with these discussion posts and group project is for the class to reflect on some of the ethical considerations around accounting.”

Lihua Wang, Professor of International Business

Professor Lihua Wang teaches Global Strategic Management (IBUS 690) and focuses on ethics and worker’s rights in the global supply chain, including having her students write up and discuss a case related to workers' rights and child labor. This case was self-authored along with fellow IBUS faculty Yim-Yu Wong, Ph.D. and Gerardo Ungson, Ph.D.