PRME Partner Interviews: Caroline Aggestam Pontoppidan & Lavinia-Cristina Iosif-Lazar

Caroline Aggestam Pontoppidan
Associate Professor, Department of Accounting, PRME Academic Lead, Copenhagen Business School

Lavinia-Cristina Iosif-Lazar
Green Trans­ition Of­ficer, Re­spons­ible Edu­ca­tion, Cli­mate and Biod­iversity, PRME Project Lead, Copenhagen Business School

Interview

1. How does your school work with Responsible Management Education (RME)?
   Responsible Management Education can be seen in multiple ways across CBS. RME is integrated into research, education, practice and campus at various levels. From the many student organizations focused on sustainability and RME topics to staff members developing sustainability and green travel guides, from creating sustainability focused teaching materials to faculty engaged in green research and externally funded projects, from the many sustainability focused courses to voluntary initiatives like the CBS Permaculture garden and the development of an institution wide Sustainability Plan.
   
   Having been a member of the PRME initiative since 2008, RME has organically grown within CBS. However, societal and environmental challenges are constantly developing, and so must our approach in ensuring sustainable and responsible management capabilities and competencies in both our students and staff. We need to keep learning, re-learning, un-learning from our colleagues from around the world, both within and across disciplines.
2. What initiatives or practices have been particularly effective?
   One of the effective practices is that of measuring and monitoring the outcomes of our activities. By looking at how much or how little, we are doing in one domain, we can assess how and if our approach should change. Even if we are referring to green course content, CO2 emissions or green research, seeing the trends helps us raise questions and look more strategically at our initiatives and their outcomes. Two of the impactful initiatives have also been the Carbon Literacy workshops and the Permahaven  - permaculture garden. These two very tangible projects have impacts that go beyond their immediate outcomes as extra-curricular activities.
3. What advice would you give to other schools seeking to strengthen their work with RME?
   Share, communicate, reach out! There are more people out there (inside the organization) doing research, teaching, getting involved in sustainability and responsible management education than we think. Having the support and backing of senior managers makes things easier to implement but finding the support and having the “crowd” in each faculty member, student, employee is what gets things done and what creates the network and increases the impact.