Document Type
COBE Sustainability Report
Publication Date
8-1-2017
Abstract
In publishing our third sustainability report for the College of Business and Economics (COBE hereafter) at Boise State University, we are once again attempting to transparently report on the economic, social and environmental impacts that we have on our key stakeholders, and to role model this leading corporate and organizational practice to inspire our business and academic peers to follow suit. This year, we combined our efforts with the College of Health Sciences (COHS) to assist in developing their initial sustainability report as well. To fully align with our mission, we put learning at the heart of this effort: 14 student sustainability reporters from both COBE and COHS researched, collected the data and wrote this report, and 30 students from the Beta Alpha Psi Honors Society and the graduate accounting class 505: Perspectives in Auditing conducted the report’s review.
Organizing Frameworks
To create this report, we leveraged the leading sustainability reporting frameworks from the corporate and business school realms respectively, namely the Global Reporting Initiative (G4), the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (UNPRME) and the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) STARS guidelines. Because there isn’t currently a set of comprehensive materiality standards for sustainability reporting for the college level, we have used the measures from each framework most relevant to our college, rather than the entirety of each framework, to create a report that addresses the material aspects to our various stakeholders.
Top Area of Excellence
COBE, with support from the Responsible Business Initiative (RBI), has crafted an Inclusive Excellence Strategy for the internal and external diversity and inclusion efforts of the college. This strategy includes a number of actionable items related to previous recommendations from the 2015 COBE Sustainability Report (details on pg. 16).
Top Areas for Improvement
•Continue to increase responsible business integration in the graduate and undergraduate curriculum
• Begin to measure retention for diverse and underrepresented students
A brief note on this report
Last year’s COBE sustainability report was incorrectly labeled the 2016 report. In order to better reflect the concentration of the reported data the current report is correctly entitled as the, “COBE 2016 Sustainability Report.” Revisions have been made to the previous two COBE Sustainability Reports (hereafter referred to as the 2014 and 2015 reports) to reflect this change. This decision was made to represent our data more clearly and transparently, to better align with reporting standards, and to present our data in a consistent time-frame in previous, current, and future reports.
Next Steps
We’ve shared our findings, both positive and negative, in line with leading business and education practices. We are also committed to continuous improvement. We will produce our next report in spring 2018 to benchmark our economic, social and environmental impacts year on year, to fill in as many of the measurement gaps as we can, and to keep us focused on improving our overall performance. We aspire to be a sustainable source of business and economics education long into the future, and to inspire our business and academic peers to account for their own impacts.
Recommended Citation
College of Business and Economics at Boise State University, "2016 College of Business and Economics Sustainability Report" (2017). Sustainability Reports. 3.
https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/sustainability_reports/3