Sustainability workshop targets faculty, PhD students

By Scott Kennedy
January 12, 2012

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For Richard Ivey School of Business professor Tima Bansal, sustainability requires collaboration between academics and business. “We need to do this together,” she says. “No one individual can move the system.”

For this reason, Bansal has organized a multidisciplinary business sustainability workshop this semester. Hosted by Ivey, and sponsored by RBC and the Centre for Environment and Sustainability, Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives of Sustainability is comprised of six sessions, each facilitated by a faculty member representing a different academic discipline.

Open to faculty members and PhD students, the workshop begins Thursday, Jan. 19 and runs every other Thursday until the end of the semester. Those interested in participating can contact Bansal at tbansal@ivey.uwo.ca.

Bansal sees this workshop as a worthwhile opportunity to bring together a diverse group of people. “Through the differences in perspectives we are going to be able to address some of the difficult problems that sustainability presents,” she says.

With participants and audience members representing backgrounds from the natural sciences, social sciences and the arts and humanities, Bansal anticipates an atmosphere that will generate new insights, which may potentially lead to grant proposals for unique research projects.

“To bring people together across departments is an important, laudable goal,” Bansal says.

Although sustainability is an issue all people should concern themselves with, Bansal explains the system itself is not working. Sustainability is less about the individual striving for perfection than it is about creating a balance within the system.

“What we have is an imbalance,” Bansal says. “We have too much consumption and not enough renewal. It’s about achieving harmony.”