That’s where Huron University’s Animal Ethics and Sustainability Leadership (AESL) program comes in. Western University’s Huron University College may be one of Canada’s oldest universities, founded in 1863, but this year the London, Ontario, institution is offering up a very new degree. The AESL program is said to be the first of its kind in the world, aiming to arm students with a fundamental understanding of crucial issues relating to animal welfare and the environment, as well as giving them practical leadership skills to be able to put that understanding into action.  

“It is for economic, ethical and environmental reasons that there’s such a significant need for this program,” says Kendra Coulter, the program’s coordinator and a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. It’s a degree she says she “dreamed of” when she was a student. The professor of management and organizational studies is a globally recognized expert in animal protection and the author of the recently published book Defending Animals: Finding Hope on the Front Lines of Animal Protection. “I think the primary purpose of my life is to improve and save animals’ lives,” she says.  

Coulter developed the AESL program to offer a unique mix of knowledge and skills that she says will turn out graduates able to take on roles in animal welfare in the private, public and non-profit sectors. “The goal is for graduates to be effective in a range of different roles with an ability to really hit the ground running in organizations and companies of different kinds.”  

Required classes for the program include Animal Welfare and Sustainability Leadership, Nature and Technology, Animals in Law and Policy, and Animal Ethics. Electives include management and organizational studies, social sciences and arts. “It’s a distinct combination of social science, arts and business education,” Coulter explains.  

It’s also a launch pad for budding plant-based entrepreneurs, those students interested in creating their own ventures in the plant-based economy – say, in the fashion and beauty sectors.  

Huron’s AESL degree has come along at a crucial time, with billions of animals being exploited by the meat and dairy industry every year. Labels like Tyson Foods’s “climate-smart” beef – which is now at the centre of a lawsuit over misleading marketing claims in the United States – make it all the more confusing for consumers. “Business is very much a cause of key animal and environmental damage,” Coulter says. “At the same time, businesses can be drivers of solutions, and that’s what this degree is intended to do.”  

The program welcomed its first round of students this fall. Animal rights advocate Cogie Cogan, founder of the Western Environmental Business club, is part of the program’s first cohort. “It perfectly merges my passion for animal protection with the law and business skills needed to make a difference for animals,” Cogan says. Upon graduation, the honours student hopes to either work for a plant-based food start-up or start their own business in this sector. “I believe AESL [is equipping] me with the skills and knowledge to make a meaningful impact for animals in various ways.” 

For her part, Coulter says it’s an honour to see “what these extraordinary young leaders are going to be able to accomplish for our shared planet, and the creation of a more humane and sustainable future.”  

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“I was applying for a lot of jobs and not getting anywhere,” says Skelton, a sociology undergraduate with a work internship in Washington, D.C., and teaching experience in Asia.

She decided to return to school for a graduate degree, spotting an intriguing program at the University of Calgary. A 16-month Master of Science in Sustainable Energy Development, offered jointly by Haskayne School of Business, Schulich School of Engineering and the university’s faculties of Law and Environmental Design, hit the right notes with its interdisciplinary approach to sustainable energy.

Across Canada, business schools and other faculties are joining forces to deliver new academic experiences that incorporate cross-disciplinary perspectives, hands-on projects, real-world applications and an emphasis on sustainability.

“We have huge problems in the world, and we have to get busy and all work together,” says Irene Herremans, a professor at Haskayne and Calgary’s Faculty of Environmental Design, with the Sustainable Energy Development program. “Twenty years ago, we didn’t talk much about sustainability,” she says. “Now when the students come in, they don’t know the ‘ins and outs,’ but they know we need to do something.”

The master’s program recruits from business, engineering, environmental studies and the humanities, enabling students from diverse disciplines to work on a required capstone project.
In 2017, one team worked with African non-profit groups to install a solar power system in a village in Burkina Faso, enabling local women to expand their shea butter cooperative.

The team-based, real-world focus “made me look at challenges differently,” says Lucas Barr, a geotechnical engineering consultant who joined the program at 37 for a career pivot.

After graduation, he joined Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, an industry group working to make petroleum extraction from bitumen cleaner. As senior technical advisor for tailings, Barr works to promote innovation and research on oil sands cleanup.

Like Barr, Skelton used her master’s degree to head in a new direction.

From her 2017 thesis project, she founded a Calgary-based social enterprise to promote crowdfunding of sustainable projects. Through Budfunding, Skelton organizes a biannual “sustainability expo” for environmentally conscious vendors and promotes “conscious consumerism” education initiatives.

She says the interdisciplinary master’s program, with out-of-classroom experiential learning on sustainability and Indigenous issues, taught her to see problems differently. “Creativity is what solves problems,” she says. “If you are just coming at something from one perspective it can be a lot harder.”

Stirring sustainability into food management at Guelph

A horizon-expanding experience is also what Jordan Legeard, a commerce undergrad at the University of Guelph’s Lang School of Business and Economics, gained from a one-semester, multidisciplinary course in restaurant operations management.

Hotel and food majors in Lang’s School of Hospitality, Food and Tourism Management work with nutrition students in the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences to run a LEAF-certified “green” on-campus restaurant, with real customers at lunchtime.

Six years ago, the course made sustainability an explicit focus, including banning plastic straws, switching to cloth napkins and auditing the waste of complimentary water and bread. Students learn to measure the nutritional impact of food and analyze the life cycle of restaurant food, including the carbon footprint.

Third-year commerce student Adriana Ovalle says working with nutrition students taught her a valuable lesson for a planned career in hotel management. “You are going to end up working with people who come from totally different disciplines,” she says. “The course opened my mind to things [nutrition students] know compared to what I know.”

The experience also heightened her interest in sustainability.

That raised awareness is essential for a changing job market, says Statia Elliot, interim associate dean of external relations at the Lang School and former director of the hospitality school.

“Restaurants today are looking for big changes and hiring sustainability coordinators,” she says. “Our graduates have the knowledge and understanding to move the needle forward [on sustainable practices].”

Mixing specialities at McMaster

Elsewhere, sustainability is gaining traction through new, multidisciplinary course offerings.

In 2014, McMaster introduced an Interdisciplinary Minor in Sustainability, for which students could choose among 58 courses. It now includes 73 eligible courses, representing the fourth-largest minor by enrolment at the Hamilton university. This year, 39 students graduated with the minor, up from three in 2015, not counting those who took the minor without officially adding it to their transcripts.

No one faculty dominates the enrolment profile, ensuring students from different disciplines work together on real-life projects.

“Sustainability is a complex problem, and we need interdisciplinary learning to tackle complex problems and sustainable solutions,” says Kate Whalen, senior manager of academic sustainability programs at McMaster. “Our mission is to inspire in all students a desire for continued learning through experiential education related to sustainability.”

Some in-class projects take on lives of their own after students complete the minor.

Last fall, Sabrina Dasouki and a diverse team of students in the minor looked for ideas to promote positive behavioural change on the environment. Knowing that only 10% of plastic waste is recycled in Canada, her team developed a kit of reusable eating tools made of bamboo to replace throwaway plastic utensils.

Once classes wrapped up, Dasouki turned the kit concept into a start-up. In November 2019, the 23-year-old made her first sale of the Essential Utensils kit, to the McMaster University Campus Store.

She says the learning experience of the sustainability minor was unlike conventional discipline-based programs. In the minor, student teams with diverse academic backgrounds worked through their differences to solve a problem.

Dasouki would like to see an interdisciplinary component to all undergraduate programs. “It is the closest thing that will get you to real life.”

Jennifer Lewington is an intrepid reporter and writes regularly on many topics, including business school news.

A version of this story appeared in the Winter Issue of Corporate Knights.

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UI GreenMetric, an annual effort launched in 2010 by the University of Indonesia, ranks universities across a range of categories, including energy use, climate policy, waste reduction, water use, promotion of low-carbon transportation, and sustainability related courses and research.

“We hope that the rankings will be useful to university leaders in their efforts to put in place eco-friendly policies and manage behavioral change among the academic community at their respective institutions,” according to the ranking website.

University College Cork, Ireland, claimed second spot while Northeastern University in Boston came in third.

Half of the Top 10 universities are based in the United States, including the University of Connecticut (5th), the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (8th) and the University of California, Davis (9th).

The University of Sherbrooke, Quebec, which ranked sixth, was the only Canadian institution to crack the Top 10, followed by Toronto’s York University (13th) and the University of Ottawa (25th).

The University of Nottingham has consistently ranked first or second since the UI GreenMetric ranking was launched.

Its campus boasts a comprehensive network of bicycle lanes, a super-efficient combined heat and power plant, and technology that automatically switches its 10,000 campus computers into low-power mode when not in use.

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