My name is Jason Aadmodt. Okay and what do you do for Spears? Sure. I'm an assistant professor in practice and my focus is on sustainability and corporate and social responsibilities. There's so many ways that you can get involved with sustainability through Spears. One, of course, in the courses, right? But then occasionally, we have this really cool program called Net Impact. You don't have to be a member to participate, and you're welcome to join and become a member, but it helps you create relationships with others around questions of sustainability.

We're not just all basically geeked out. We go and have fun. At the end of January here this year I'm doing an orientation on long distance backpacking and then in February we're going to go over to Devil's density Park in Arkansas as a group and that impact the whole thing and we're going hiking. We do like yoga by the lake and we also have professional networking situations. This year is going to be one where some professionals come in and talk about jobs in the sustainability space. Okay and are graduate students able to come to those as well? Yes. Grad, undergrad are completely ecumenical. You can be business or engineering or agriculture or whatever.

There's an undergraduate certificate in sustainability and there's also a graduate certificate in a sustainability. Okay so do you mind touching on the graduate certificate a little bit more? Yeah, the graduate certificate is really neat because it's a standalone opportunity. You don't need to be a degree seeking so it's, by my memory, is 12 credit hours in total. There are two required courses. You take two electives. The required courses are sustainability and corporate and social responsibility then the electives really are what you want. We'll probably approve as long as they're relevant. But they're in the management space.

Okay and what are some of the top electives? Oh well um probably the creation of ethical business spaces looks like a very good elective. That can be particularly useful in this space, because there's so many jobs right now in sustainability where folks really need to have practical opportunities, practical knowledge, and know how to develop and grow this growing business segment

One of the really other great electives to pick up relates to non-profit organization. Increasingly non-profits are an important part of the space, either working in them or with them. There's a number of specific electives relating to non-profit organizations and how to either help to build them or help to interact with them.

I think the really interesting thing, one of the really interesting features about the graduate certificate is, if you're not entirely certain that you want to do an MBA, but you want to kind of test it out, this is a great way to test it out and then all those credits combine towards your MBA if you decide you want to do it.