Teaching

REEL Course Description

On July 28, 2022 the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) declared that living in a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a human right (UN GA 2022). Similarly, founded on the basic principles of protect, respect, and remedy, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights set standards for states and corporations, whether domestic or international, for maintaining and promoting human rights (UN OHCHR 2021).

Taken together, these declarations and standards imply that businesses complying with them must account for the excess environmental risk and hazard produced by their operations as well as their potential contribution to environmental violence. While many tend to juxtapose these goals as antithetical to one another, given the historical outsized effect of business in producing environmental hazards, in fact enterprise is the key mode for regeneration.

In this course, which will center on skills-training and state-of-the-art learning on regenerative enterprise development, students will apply sustainable business praxis through service learning with partnering international organizations. Students—who are our future enterprise, policy, law, science and engineering leaders—will co-create regenerative livelihoods through collaborative planning with their partners and the communities most impacted by environmental hazards and other social ills degrading livelihood options.

Working hand-in-hand with partners digitally all semester and in-person during Spring Break, students will experience firsthand the power of enterprise to regenerate a sustainable future for people suffering these intersecting challenges the most, while learning critical skills that are increasingly in demand (e.g., ESG consulting is the fastest growing area in consultancy today), preparing them to craft and employ enterprise as a ‘noble vocation’ towards integral human development and flourishing.