Central blog for all Marlboro College Graduate School program blogs
The Chronicle covered this blog post by Nergiz Kern, who writes on teaching in Second Life. This post is about increased possibilities the new Second Life viewer might have for education. This bodes well for our class Teaching and Learning in Virtual Worlds taught by Jane Wilde, who also studies education in 3D environs. Link to post | Link to Chronicle.com story on post with info on open source alternatives to Second Life
Nergiz also had this video of the new viewer.
SRI – How Much is Enough?
by Ralph Meima, Director, Marlboro College MBA in Managing for Sustainability
Feb.10, 2010
As part of our continuing series of speakers invited to inspire and inform our MBA students and the local public, we hosted a panel discussion recently entitled “Beyond SRI: The Future of Socially Responsible Investing.” Several pioneers in the field shared their assessments of how far the SRI movement has come since its infancy, where it is today, and what we can expect in the future. It was a richly informative event, and stimulated lively discussion with the audience, which included members of the general public. A daunting, inevitable question stalked the room, however: So what?
Estimates have been made that investment funds using some sort of social or sustainability screen now account for 10% or more of the total amount invested in professionally managed funds in the U.S. (dominated by state-run funds and mutual funds). According to estimates by the Social Investment Forum (SIF) – the SRI trade association – and Celent Consulting, the US SRI funds total could reach $3 trillion in the next year.
Since their early beginnings, SRI funds have served the purpose of helping individuals and organizations to invest their money in ways that align with their values, hence the long history of funds that do not invest in weapons manufacturers and tobacco and alcoholic drink producers, for instance, or in countries such as apartheid-era South Africa that institutionalize human rights abuses. This is presumably an accurate description of the motivations of most SRI investors today, and is justified by the principle that, in a free society, people should be able to choose to “put their money where their mouths are.” A less obvious assumption accompanying this is that some people – typically a minority – are willing to accept some of their return on investment as non-monetary, psychic or ethical value, whereas most investors maximize their monetary returns on invested funds and do not limit their portfolios to securities that pass social or sustainability screens. The currently small fraction of total invested funds accounted for by SRI would seem to bear this out.
The rate of growth of SRI’s share bears watching, however. As our December 11th panelists noted, the proportion of SRI when they got involved as far back as the early 1980s was tiny, and has grown faster than the overall pool of invested funds. What is driving this growth?
Research into the returns of SRI funds in relation to non-SRI funds and broad capital market benchmarks has been pursued since the early 1990s, and produced a wide variety of findings. In this short article there is no space to enumerate authoritative studies, but it can be argued that prior to the acceleration of the present economic crisis in mid-2007, the debate was inconclusive, and many of the better-known SRI funds performed only as well as, but sometimes worse than, non-SRI funds and market benchmarks. However, a consistent theme has also been that SRI funds are less volatile than the alternatives, and while they do not grow explosively during bull markets, they do not plummet uncontrollably during downturns, and therefore offer investors – even those not motivated purely by value-alignment – safe havens for their investments, i.e., a low positive beta coefficient.
The current capital markets crisis offers an historic opportunity to test this hypothesis. Indeed, last month, SIF reported that a review of 160 socially responsible mutual funds from 22 of their members found that the vast majority of the funds – 65% – outperformed their benchmarks during 2009, most by significant margins. A chief benchmark used was the S&P 500. SIF reported that these SRI funds outperformed benchmarks across nearly all asset classes, including balanced, large cap, small cap and global funds, as well as bonds. This data set is enormously intriguing. For instance, SIF found that large cap funds were especially strong, with almost three-quarters besting the S&P 500, and by an average of 6%. A majority of large cap SRI funds even exceeded benchmark returns over the preceding three-year and ten-year periods.
Whether such research is evidence of lower volatility or better long-term returns (essentially the “green-is-more-profitable” argument), it bodes well for continued growth in the share of invested funds that flows to SRI. Lower volatility and higher returns are the holy grails of investment portfolio strategies, and aligning economic with other “triple bottom line” achievements is of course highly desirable. The fact that individual investors and fund managers are directing increasing flows of funds to investments that screen according to environmental, social and governance (ESG or sustainability) performance, proxy voting guidelines, executive compensation, and more is a very positive sign of the times. Our December panelists have much to be proud of.
Yet some in the audience were not satisfied with this. They raised questions about the magnitude and pace of climate change, about human health, and about the relative inaccessibility of capital for development of local economies. Their questions put SRI into the larger context of the changes our society needs in order to pursue truly sustainable development. The panelists received these questions graciously; it was clearly not the first time they had heard them, and they are personally engaged in facilitating broader, faster change, anyway. In the questions and discussion were the matter of “how fast is fast enough?” and the sense of a limited time window within which advanced industrial society must implement changes of adequate extent.
I thought it might be useful to attempt some sort of quantitative context-setting, to answer the “how fast” and “how much” questions, i.e., to see if a bar can be set that helps SRI advocates, policy makers, and private investors see their efforts in relation to global necessity.
First, for context, $3 trillion (see above) is less than a quarter of US GDP ($14.2 trillion in 2009). But comparing an asset to a time-limited flow (i.e., mixing balance sheet and income statement accounts) can be misleading. What are the total financial assets of the USA? According to the document Z1: Flow of Funds of the United States, published each quarter by the Federal Reserve Board, total US financial assets were worth $141 trillion at the end of 2008. Although the Dow Jones Industrial Average has grown nearly 50% in value since then, other assets have declined. If we assume that the $141 trillion figure is still more or less current, it can provide some perspective: SRI represents about 2% of this. SRI thus currently accounts for about 10% of total invested funds in the US, and 2% of total US financial assets.
At what proportion might SRI considerations dominate investment decisions, thus serving as a proxy indicator of sustainable development (perhaps a leading indicator of actual sustainable ESG impacts on people, communities, and the biosphere)? Twenty-five percent? Fifty percent? And, given historical rates of growth, how long will it take to get there?
Here is a perhaps foolishly simple derivation, meant to serve merely as a starting point for discussion, not as a “scientific fact.” To solve it requires a number of simplifying assumptions and approximations, for which I apologize.
If we assume that SRI was 1% of invested funds in 1980 (whether it knew it or not!), and reached 10% in 2010 (a moving target), then what was the growth rate of the percentage? The answer is a 7.7% annual growth rate, compounded monthly. At this same rate, how many more years will it take to reach 50% of total invested funds, starting now? The answer is 21 years. A generation. Do we have that long, in terms of global limits to climate damage, natural resource scarcity, human population, biodiversity destruction, and other sustainability threats? Yes, the arrow of change seems to be pointing in the right direction, but can we assume that SRI’s share will continue to grow at a constant rate? If not, should new public policy encourage faster growth? And even if growth stays around 7.7%, is half of invested funds a meaningful threshold, or should a greater share – say, 80% – be the target?
There is no doubt that SRI is making profound contributions to the movement of industrial civilization away from one based on exploitive, profit-maximizing, human-and-nature-externalizing economics. How will its future significance develop? Should we be relieved or anxious about its prospects, based on its track record so far? What levers should governments and civil society employ to influence its future course? Has the time come for more active public policy to incentivize SRI? Perhaps of greatest interest to our own MBA students, what is the potential for SRI funds to continue growing their businesses in response to existing and future market demand, and the the face of present and future competition?
There is no shortage of material for further exploration of SRI’s potential!
Photo by "macwagen" on flickr creative commons
I’m working as a technology integrator in two local k-8 public schools now. It is an amazing experience. The teachers and kids are wonderful, and mostly struggling with massive changes that are very hard to appreciate until you go into the classroom for a few hours and experience it. I spend 2-4 hours in one of two schools each week. I am charged with helping teachers integrate technology into their classroom, not work with students.
The students are ready and chomping at the bit. They get it. They understand editing in a Web browser, social networks, the cloud, links, and multimedia production. The teachers are understandably more cautious and have the most habits and systems to change. They have to teach HOW to write, spell, compute, be media literate, safe and constructively critical of others. Teaching is still by far a people to people activity in this environment.
We must recognize that bringing in “The Web” to the classroom is a very big job, and a job mostly dependent on people, not technology.
My thoughts so far
1. We need LMSes even for environments with no online teaching: I am seeing a basic need emerge, in grades as low as the first grade, for a Learning Management System of some kind. The trick is always the cost of who will implement! The hours to implement remain even with something free like Google Apps for K-12. But I can see from my work that the use of Wikis, Blogs, and the Young Writers Project (Drupal CMS), all pulls towards the LMS idea. The Young Writers Project is emerging in my thinking as an LMS. It might serve well as one, or in conjunction with one like Google Apps for K-12. Moodle is also coming into VT K-12 and perhaps could be an LMS for schools, or server as an LMS ONLY for online teaching.
Either way, this seems true:
The key is training teachers to “admin” their digital class space like their physical class space!
2. Tools of the trade: Integration means every kid needs access to a computer/cellphone/PDA/gameboy, with a solid and fast browser. Currently, kids can’t usually bring in their own laptops, cell phones, or gameboys because the schools have not figured out how to let them use them safely. So, we buy a laptop with taxpayer money for a kid who’s got a laptop at home! And so than, not all kids can have a laptop. We also make kids surrender their tools (cell phone, PDAs, g) at the door to school, instead of letting them in, but under learning conditions.For example, personal laptops turned off until a lesson calls for computers. Laptops are stored at the teacher’s desk. When a lessons starts that uses a Web browser, everyone gets their laptop, or a school laptop. The students sit in a way that the teacher can see all their screen at once. They do the lesson, then turn off their laptops and put them away. Or, all cellphones are left off in a box at the door. The teacher then gets to a time when they want to use them. Kids take them out and turn them on. They then practice texting spelling words while they sit in a circle so the teacher can see all their screens. Then they are turned off and put away. Same with educational software on g, etc.
3. It’s a people problem – as usual: Technology being present is only the beginning. Integration takes person-hours, support, and change management, whether the tools are free or not.
4. The change is big! The K-12 classroom feels like it is adjusting to computers and the Web/Cloud like it must have been when books first were mass printed! We need time to integrate them into every fabric of the classroom.
In short, the key is people helping other people through a massive transition to a Web-cloud-browser world. The tools are there, but the crew is still forming.
Ron Nahser to Address Marlboro MBA Students on What is the “Good Life” in a Finite World? U.S. and China in an Age of Ecological Crisis.
Continuing our outstanding 2009-2010 MBA Featured Speakers series, Ron Nahser will talk with our students on Friday, February 26 at 5:30 p.m. You are welcome to join in at 5:30 p.m. here at the Graduate School.
The question posed is not a trivial “marketing” one. What if, to take a prominent example, 1.3 billion Chinese citizens decide that the American consumer lifestyle is the “good life” and their Communist Party government decides it is the way to keep their economy growing annually at 8-10% to keep everyone happy, and for the leaders to keep their power? We will then need the resources of at least 4 more planets, which points out just how unsustainable is the American lifestyle. Come and hear how two very different cultures are approaching this vital question of the economy’s purpose of serving our needs.
Ron is the Managing Director for CORPORANTES, Inc., an outgrowth of The Nahser Agency/Advertising. Dr. Nahser is currently a Senior Wicklander Fellow at DePaul University’s Institute for Business and Professional Ethics, and Provost Emeritus of Presidio School of Management, San Francisco. He lectures and consults with business and academic audiences in the US and internationally on business values, vision, marketing strategy, branding, social responsibility and integrative sustainable management.
The author of Learning to Read the Signs: Reclaiming Pragmatism in Business and Journeys to Oxford: Nine Pragmatic Inquiries into the Practice of Values in Business and Education, he has developed a strategic business problem-solving model known as PathFinder Pragmatic Inquiry® which has been used by more than 100 organizations and thousands of participants including 3M, Levi-Strauss & CO., The Quaker Oats Company, Time Inc., Harris Bank, Kellogg School of Management, Stanford GSB, Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business, DePaul University Kellstadt GSB, Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society, Presidio School of Management, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and many others.
We hope you will be able to join us, and we look forward to welcoming you.
Recent Marlboro MBA Grad Honored at Women of Innovation Awards Dinner
Nicole Hade was recently honored at the sixth annual Women of Innovation Awards Dinner in Connecticut. The awards program, sponsored by the Connecticut Technology Council, recognizes women in the workforce who are innovators, role models and leaders in the technology, science and engineering fields.
Nicole is a pioneer in sustainability initiatives at Hamilton Sundstrand, where she is a Manager in Engineering Effectiveness and Strategy. In addition to her strategic
engineering responsibilities, Nicole co-leads the Sustainability Initiative Team, which she founded three years ago. The team engages employees in sustainable practices. And , if all that weren’t enough, she spearheads the Sustainability Fair, which is held annually at Hamilton Sundstrand.
Looking at just this quick summary, we know they made the right choice, and our heartiest congratulations to you, Nicole. We’re very proud that you are a member of our community.
MBA Welcomes New Faculty
One of the genuine strengths of the Marlboro MBA is our outstanding faculty. We’re delighted to introduce you to our newest members and the courses they will be teaching. We’re sure you’ll agree that their credentials make them great new additions to the program.
Cecilia McMillen, “People and Teams,” has been working as an organizational consultant in the United States and Latin America for over twenty years, specializing in organizational development and change management. She combines her independent practice with management education, and has taught MBA courses and executive seminars in business schools in the United States and Latin America. She is fluent in English and Spanish, and uses both languages in teaching and consulting. An important ingredient in her work is cultural awareness: understanding and making explicit the culturally-based assumptions that underlie organizational issues in different societies.
Richard Witty, “Co-Instructor: Finance I: Managerial Accounting for Sustainable Business,” is a C.P.A. In addition to conventional CPA services, Richard’
s work emphasizes strategic planning, controllership and social and internal audit services. Richard currently leads the development of the LOCUS product disclosure project, to identify the geographic center of gravity, and variance of product/service value addition. Richard’s prior experience includes managing all financial functions as the controller of New England Natural Bakers, which manufactures organic and non-organic cereal products; being the controller/business manager for the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association; serving as assistant controller for Hampshire College; and working for large and small accounting firms as an audit manager and general staff accountant.
Jeff Rosen, “Co-Instructor: Finance I: Managerial Accounting for Sustainable Business,” serves as the Director of Finance for the Solidago Foundation and its affiliated foundations. He oversees all of the financial systems for these progressive foundations, as well as managing the MRI and PRI portfolios. His past experience includes pioneering the development of project or policy scale evaluation methodologies for sustainability; working in the private sector as a serial entrepreneur; developing and selling several food sector businesses; and serving as a chief financial officer for several restaurant chains and food manufacturers. In the not for profit sector he has worked for numerous sustainability focused organizations including the New Alchemy Institute, The Cape Cod Center for Sustainability, Sustainable Maine and most recently worked as a founding member to launch PVGROWS, a local food movement hub located in Western Massachusetts.
Pat Davidson, “Climate Change,” is currently a Senior Staff Attorney at the Public Health Advocacy Institute based at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, where she researches and publishes in the areas of climate change, tobacco control and the obesity epidemic. Pat also teaches and co-directs a Public Health Legal Clinic for upper level law students at Northeastern and has taught a variety of courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels at other institutions. Pat focuses on the development and implementation of law as a tool to create, monitor and shape public policy, particularly in response to systemic challenges.
January Intensive: Hello and Farewell
Like the turning of the year, our January class weekend found us both welcoming our new class of MBA students with great anticipation and wishing a warm farewell to our graduates whose time with us has passed now far too quickly.
Kicking off the weekend, twenty new students became members of our community and the MBA program. After getting all the basics in our orientation sessions, our new Grad Schoolers finished off their introduction with a Reach Your Personal Summit outdoor activity at Wantastiquet Mountain State Forest, just across the river from the Grad School.
On Friday evening, new students and veterans gathered for the gala MBA Annual Dinner. They were joined by faculty and business leaders who are friends of the MBA program. The standing room only crowd heard John Abrams speak on “Sharing Ownership of the Future,” a particularly appropriate topic for the evening. Other highlights of the event included the six students who just completed the MBA program being personally recognized, and the welcoming of four new MBA faculty, and Sean Conley as the new Associate Dean of the Graduate School.
Come for a Visit
We’d be delighted to have you spend some time with us. However, you won’t find the typical “open house.” We would much rather personalize each visit to be sure folks such as yourself get the time to see and try what you would like rather than being pushed along on some “one size fits all” schedule. That being the case, we like visitors to come – and become – part of a class weekend.
Our March “intensive” should be a great time to plan your visit, when the traveling should be a bit less “iffy” than February in Vermont. This is the time to come and find out what the Marlboro MBA in Managing for Sustainability is all about.
You’re welcome to be our guest anytime from mid-day Friday, March 26 through noon, Sunday, March 28. This will give you a great opportunity to
If you’d like to arrange a visit, or if you just have some questions, feel free to contact Joe Heslin, our Director of Graduate Admissions, at 888-258-5665 x209 or email him at jheslin@marlboro.edu.
We look forward to your being with us.
Recent MBA grad Nicole Hade was recently honored at the sixth annual Women of Innovation awards dinner in Connecticut. The awards program, sponsored by the Connecticut Technology Council, recognizes women in the workforce who are innovators, role models and leaders in the technology, science and engineering fields.
Nicole is a pioneer in sustainability initiatives at Hamilton Sundstrand, where she is a Manager in Engineering Effectiveness and Strategy. In addition to her strategic engineering responsibilities, Nicole co-leads the Sustainability Initiative Team, which she founded three years ago, engaging employees in sustainable practices. She also spearheads the Sustainability Fair, which is held annually at Hamilton Sundstrand.
MBA program director Ralph Meima will be a panelist on the subject of Preparing Transformative Leaders: Professional Degrees with a Green Streak at the New England Higher Education Sustainability Summit 2010 in Worcester, Mass. on Friday, April 23.
Scheduled to join Ralph on the panel are Patricia Palmiotto from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and Robert Pollin from the Political Economy Research Institute at UMASS.
I agree with most of eSchool News’ wrap up of the top ed tech stories of 2009.
the mobile learners are here
I do think that Google Docs and Gmail’s increased usage in K-20 education was a huge story in 2009, as was the iPhone and what it showed us can be done with mobile learning.
In 2010 I’m watching the following subjects:
This is a very different kind of “Ed Tech,” in the sense that it’s the technology of pure science beginning to study more about how our brains really learn, and when and what they can learn. This will cascade down to instructional design as well in the coming years.
NYT Article, “Brain Power“
Snip: “…For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready. But recent research has turned that assumption on its head — that, and a host of other conventional wisdom..”
I think I was in high school or early college when I first heard of Babbage’s, a computer store that has now been acquired by Barnes & Noble and are now more likely known as GameStop. Perhaps it’s strange that the name has stuck with me for all these years – like an arrow shot from a great distance – to find its mark today as I read an article about the Difference Engine #2.
Charles Babbage, a 19th Century Mathematician, once found a number of errors in a hand-written astronomical chart that got him thinking of how calculations might be better performed by a machine (of course his quote indicated that the power for the machine would be provided by steam, but that’s beside the point). He wrote up the plans for the Difference Engine (#1) which was a Victorian-era calculator but after completing the design, he then moved on to a different machine, the Analytic Engine – amazingly similar to early computers. He later went back to the Difference Engine and revised the original plans (thus the “#2″ above) with 3x fewer parts.
Although he never had the funding to complete his invention, there are now 2 Difference Engines in existence, both built over the past 17 years. With their completion, Babbage can turn his posthumous frown upside down as they work both beautifully and effectively. Most of us use computers every day and it has always seemed like a vehicle for looking forward – at “What’s next.” Although it’s hard to see while looking at the DE2, the computer that I’m typing on right now can trace its roots back to Babbage. My question is, if he had plans for a computer about 100 years before the equivalent computer was finally created, and knowing how quickly technology has moved since computers have come on to the scene, where might we be now had he built the DE2 in the 1840’s?
It is an ironic twist of fate that some of the hardest people to teach how to teach are the ones with the most knowledge to share! This is well illustrated by the below article.
Learning From Online
December 7, 2009
Snip: “Most of the professors who teach at the university level have had no experience with pedagogy or instruction in general,” says Janet Buckenmeyer, chair of the instructional technology master’s program at Calumet. “They’re content experts, not teaching experts.”
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