The new course, titled Sustainability Reporting and SASB Standards, allows students to learn Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) principles through case studies, data sets, guest speakers, and other resources. The students will be prepared to take the Fundamentals of Sustainability Accounting (FSA) Level 1 certification exam at the end of the course.

“Sustainability disclosures are the future of reporting information,” said Barbara Porco, Ph.D., clinical professor and associate dean of graduate studies at the Gabelli School of Business, who is an instructor for the course. “We’re preparing students for the future.”

Sustainability accounting refers to how a company’s social and environmental impacts are measured, analyzed, and reported. Porco said that interest in sustainability reporting increased exponentially after Larry Fink, the founder, chairman, and CEO of BlackRock, wrote in his annual letter to shareholders in 2018 that companies should state their purpose and how their work contributes to society.

The Ability to Drive Value

The course, created in collaboration with the Value Reporting Foundation, highlights the connection between financial sustainability reporting and a business’s ability to drive value.

SASB standards are considered to be at the forefront of sustainability reporting. Through the course, students learn how sustainability issues can impact a company’s value and how to integrate data on environmental, social, and governance issues into reports, corporate strategy, and investment analysis.

“There is a huge demand for skill sets in the [ESG] area, and I believe our students are going to be uniquely qualified when they get to the marketplace because they have been so deeply engaged with these standards,” said Timothy Hedley, Ph.D., one of the instructors of the course and an Executive in Residence at Fordham University.

‘A New Dialect’

The standards have their roots in the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, which was founded in 2011 by Jean Rogers, an engineer and former Loeb Fellow at Harvard University, as a way to help businesses and investors develop a common language about the financial impacts of sustainability. The organization merged with the International Integrated Reporting Council to create the Value Reporting Foundation in summer 2021, but its standards still remain. SASB standards aim to help businesses “identify, manage, and communicate financially-material sustainability information to their investors.”

Porco said that sustainable reporting is essential to the future of business.

“I’m in a position where I’m able to give the students not only what they want, but what they need,” she said. “This is the language of business, but it’s a new dialect. And everybody’s got to learn how to speak it and understand it or you’re going to be behind.”

The course–which was first offered last semester–features five graduate students that help lead a class of 15 undergraduate students, according to Porco. She said that she intentionally kept the class size small to help facilitate learning. While the course is listed under accounting, Porco stressed that it’s not a traditional accounting course.

“The course is in sustainability disclosures and SASB standards—there are students in this course who are not accounting majors,” she said.

A Prestigious Certification

The students will also have the opportunity to walk away with a globally recognized certification, although sitting for the certification exam is not required to pass the course.

“They will also be positioned to take the FSA Level 1 exam and Fordham will be sponsoring them to do so. That is a globally recognized certification—there’s only 3,000 people in the world that have FSA Level 1 certification,” she said. “I would think that probably within the next five years that’s going to go into the hundreds of thousands.”

She said that she would love for at least half of the students enrolled to pursue the extra certification.

This curriculum is the latest addition to the Gabelli School’s impressive range of academic offerings on sustainability, including a sustainability reporting track for accounting majors, a sustainability accounting minor, and embedded sustainability content throughout the school’s core courses.

In addition to providing these skills to Fordham students, in February 2022, the Gabelli School launched three new open enrollment programs in ESG literacy for professionals outside of Fordham: an ESG Bootcamp, as well as FSA Level 1 and Level 2 training. All offerings are eligible for Continuing Professional Education credits.

“It’s part of our mission. We not only educate our students holistically, but students need to understand organizations holistically, cura negotium,” she said, using a Latin phrase meaning to “care for the whole of business” which is related to Fordham’s value of cura personalis, or “care for the whole person.”

“[This is knowledge they need] to be the future responsible business leaders.”

Leading Toward a Finer Future, a four-day intensive master class that runs from Jan. 18 to Jan. 21, aims to prepare graduate and undergraduate students for leadership in the sustainable business field. The new course is led by sustainable development pioneer L. Hunter Lovins, president and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions.

Lovins has served as a consultant in economic development, sustainable agriculture, and policies related to climate, energy, water, and security for over 40 years. A co-author of more than a dozen books in the field of sustainable business, she has advised senior-level professionals, companies, and state and local agencies about regenerative practices that help to maximize profits—without exploiting or depleting resources.

Among the biggest challenges facing businesses and investors around the world are climate change, food injustice, environmental damages, global inequality, poverty, and international migration. Throughout her career, Lovins has emphasized that reactive leadership is not merely a proposition: It is indispensable.

“Solving today’s challenges will require leaders who are equipped to design and foster innovative, lasting, and transformational change within their organizations,” wrote Lovins in a blog post on the Huffington Post.

Having advised companies, agencies, and organizations such as the United Nations, the Department of Energy, the Royal Dutch Shell, Walmart, Unilever, and Patagonia, Lovins will share how she helps clients make sustainability an integral part of their business strategies. She will also provide pointers on how to overcome crises and shocks to the system.

Michael Pirson, Ph.D., associate professor and a scholar of humanistic management at the Gabelli School who helped to launch an undergraduate sustainable-business concentration at Fordham, said while sustainable or “green” business isn’t a new phenomenon, today’s leaders aren’t offering many solutions in the field that create long-term impact.

“Companies have the technology to solve these problems, but they often lack the leadership,” he said.

“They have done what organizations typically do, such as lobbying. Many companies in the coal and oil industries have also kept or removed regulations, but that isn’t an answer to the challenges. The problems are so big and the solutions are so few at this point.”

He said Lovins’ class will take a different approach by training aspiring leaders how to implement innovative management practices.

“It’s a great opportunity for Fordham students to hear from someone of this caliber,” he said.

Through the partnership, students in a new academic course and a complementary practicum—both focused on sustainability and funded by BMW—will work in teams to enhance features of BMW’s new fleet of electric vehicles, the i3 and i8 series. The students will then have the opportunity to share their ideas with BMW representatives.

“Students have a natural understanding about products [like BMW-i]. We don’t need to explain to them what an electric vehicle is and why it’s needed—they all get it,” said Tadhg O’Connor, BMW-i area manager for the Eastern region, during a visit to the Rose Hill campus.

“They’ve grown up consuming these products and they’re used to thinking about how to integrate them into our cities. Their intuition is very valuable to us.”

Carey Weiss, sustainability initiatives coordinator and the instructor for the Social Innovation Practicum, said that the students’ inherent awareness of sustainability is apparent even in these early weeks of the practicum, which is open to both undergraduate and graduate students on all Fordham campuses.

Regarding urban mobility, “Our younger students have brought up the fact that they may never own their own car and have instead talked about ideas like group shares of cars—entirely different models for ownership,” Weiss said.

“These are issues that other generations might not see, but to these 20-year-olds they’re front and center.”

The fact that this generation of college students is immersed in an increasingly urban and sustainably minded society makes partnering with a university ideal, O’Connor said. Fordham is an especially good partner in these efforts, he added—in addition to being designated an AshokaU Changemaker Campus, Fordham has an established a history of operating sustainably, such as prioritizing energy efficiency and powering the Ram Van fleet with bio diesel fuel.

In addition to the practicum, the partnership with BMW underwrites a new academic course, Sustainable Business Foundations, which provides students with a panoptic view of the efforts to make businesses and communities beneficial for “planet, people, and profit” alike.

“The course gives students a perspective on the current challenges related to sustainability, things like urban mobility, infrastructure, food, and public policy,” said course instructor Michael Pirson, PhD, an associate professor of management systems.

“It also helps them gain a keener awareness of the environment—natural as well as social and political—which they’ll need to respond to in whatever career they choose.”

For their midterm projects, students in the class will work in teams to identify a real-life problem for either BMW or the city of New Rochelle, New York, and design a sustainable solution. So far, students have floated ideas about making charging stations for electric vehicles more common and developing smartphone technology that allows drivers to remotely check how much further they can travel before needing a charge.

“We’re trying to change the way we educate not only through academic rigor, but also through applications—providing real-life challenges that we need to figure out and that the students can work on,” Pirson said.

But having a bulky contraption attached to her hip was cumbersome for an athlete like Logan. So, she did what any innovator would do: she made her own solution.

Logan, a rising junior at the Gabelli School of Business, is the founder of Pumpstash, LLC, a company that creates spandex shorts for women and girls with Type 1 diabetes who use an insulin pump and a continuous glucose monitor.

The shorts are fitted with pockets that keep the pump securely in place so that athletic apparel or skirts and dresses can be worn unimpeded.

The idea came to Logan while playing for her high school lacrosse team. During games and practice, her insulin pump would frequently get loose and bounce around.

“There were some options keep it attached, such as fanny packs or arm or thigh pouches—but nothing that would either stay in place or that me as a 16-year-old girl would be caught dead in,” said Logan, a business administration major with a minor in sustainable business. “I started to take it off during practice and games, but that wasn’t good for my numbers.”

Inspired by a pair of running pants that had a pocket to store keys, Logan wondered whether she could combine the sturdiness of her spandex lacrosse shorts with the convenience of a pocket.

She and her mom produced some sketches and took their design to a seamstress, who created the prototype. The Pumpstash shorts were born.

Logan is raising money through a Kickstarter campaign to fund the manufacturing process and get Pumpstash shorts onto the market.

“The Foundry has been a huge help and support system,” she said. “It’s a great community, because everyone has their own thing and their own expertise, so we’re not competing against one another. Everyone wants everyone else to succeed.”

The shorts are 79 percent polyester and 21 percent spandex and are made with antibacterial and wicking properties. A pocket in the back—which is made from a stronger material, 80 percent nylon and 20 percent spandex—keeps the pump secure, while a pocket in the front provides storage for ordinary objects such as keys or a cell phone. Ten percent of the profits from each pair sold is donated to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

It is important to continue funding research toward an eventual cure, Logan said. In the meantime, there are steps that can be taken to improve the quality of life for diabetics.

“Depending on how you look at it, I’m lucky or unlucky because I’ve never known life without it. It’s basically second nature to me,” she said. “But it can be really frustrating, especially if you’re in a situation that’s not a daily routine.”

Having that insider’s view of living with diabetes is at the heart of Pumpstash, Logan said, and is what drives her business model.

“It was important to me that this project be in the hands of someone dealing with [diabetes], rather than a bigger company. A big company isn’t necessarily thinking of little inconveniences that aren’t medically problematic but which could be fixed to make day-to-day life easier.”

In rural areas of Mexico, up to 91 percent of the population cannot access a bank account, making it difficult—if not impossible—for many Mexican families to save.

On the other hand, up to 52 percent of the rural population owns a cell phone.

So, asks Alfredo Cuecuecha, Ph.D., why not use cell phones to bring banks to rural communities?

Cuecuecha, president of El Colegio de Tlaxcala in Mexico and a former professor of economics at IberoAmerican University in Puebla, presented his research on “branchless banking” at a July 2 seminar sponsored by Fordham’s Center for International Policy Studies (CIPS).

His talk, “Remittances and Financial Innovation in Mexico,” presented the reality of remittances, the money sent from migrant workers in the United States back to their families in Mexico. As the primary source of income for many families, remittances inevitably have an impact on Mexican communities.

“Mexico receives the third largest amount of remittances in the world, only after India and China. In 2007, it reached a historical peak of $26 billion,” Cuecuecha said. “And it’s reasonable to believe that remittances can generate positive effects.”

Often, Cuecuecha said, individuals living in less developed economies cannot verify their income, because, for instance, they do not keep formal financial records. Without verifiable income, many families cannot establish credit.

Remittances, however, provide a potential solution.

“Remittances now arrive via wire transfers,” Cuecuecha said. “They [come via]well-established and highly regulated businesses that are forced by law to generate receipts for the users of the system. And in some cases, businesses dedicated to remittance reception are associated with banks. Consequently, income verification is easier for households with remittances.”

Moreover, Cuecuecha added, with increased income from remittances, families can spend more on education, housing, health, and micro-enterprises—all of which help chip away at poverty.

But remittances are far from being the solution for all ills in less developed economies, he said.

“In order to finance large investments, [for instance, opening a business,]you need lump sums. In Mexico, remittance reception is no more than 3,000 pesos, or $214, per month. So if ever a household wants to make a large investment, they’ll have to save.”

In a country where more than two-thirds of municipalities do not have a bank, saving securely is a challenge. That’s where branchless banking comes into play.

Banks have begun to tap into the resources of cell phone technology to make transactions. Through mobile banking—or M-banking—deposits, withdrawals, payments, transfers, and other transactions can be performed through SMS, the text messaging system that cell phones use.

Many countries are already using this technology, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

“If technology can reduce the costs of operation for banks, then some banks will be able to locate in rural areas,” Cuecuecha said. “[Rural] people will be able to have access to the financial system for savings, investments, credits, and insurance services.”

Over the next few years, Cuecuecha will conduct a study in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala, where only 37 percent of urban municipalities have access to a bank and rural municipalities don’t have any at all.

He and his team will hold a “financial intervention” for certain households, providing cell phones and education on the M-banking system, as well as workshops in financial planning, consumer protection rights, and planning for small businesses. The families’ financial outcomes will be compared with those of households that did not use M-banking.

In a sense, he said, revamping the financial system would bring this population from living in the year 1369—the year before modern banking was invented—up to 2012.

“Banking is not only about having a bank account—it’s also learning how to use it,” Cuecuecha said. “But the new technology is actually very easy to use, if you know how to turn on a cell phone.”