Bainbridge Graduate Institute’s MBA Program Ranked #1 in Net Impact’s Student Guide to Graduate Business Programs

November 6, 2006 By 4 Comments

Bainbridge Graduate Institute’s MBA in Sustainable Business program was ranked #1 in Net Impact’s Student Guide to Graduate Business Programs.

Net Impact is an international organization of more than 10,000 business leaders, experts, entrepreneurs and students committed to using business to make a positive impact on our world. Students at each of 89 business schools, including 22 of the top 25 business schools as ranked by the Wall Street Journal, were surveyed on 20 questions.

In addition to its overall number one ranking, Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI) took first place in 12 of the 20 categories.  Duke, Boston College and Case Western scored best on two of the twenty categories.  Harvard, Stanford, Darden, Cornell and seven others had top scores on one factor.  The remaining 80 schools had no first place finishes.

BGI was #1 in preparation for ethical and socially responsible leadership, #1 in environmental sustainability, #1 in corporate social responsibility, #1 in community development and #1 in student helpfulness. BGI was also # 1 in faculty support for Net Impact themes [social and environmental responsibility] in both the curriculum and in extracurricular activities, #1 in administrative support of Net Impact themes in both the curriculum and extracurricular activities, and again # 1 in student support for Net Impact themes in both the curriculum and extracurricular activities.

BGI was in the top ten finishers in 15 of the 20 questions. Duke’s Fuqua School and Simmons School of Management both scored in the top 10 on 14 questions, with Yale School of Management scoring in the top 10 on 13 questions.

“At BGI we thought we were the best; it is very satisfying to have it confirmed so strongly. First place in 12 out of 20 categories; it is almost hard to take in. We are so grateful to the staff, faculty and students who made it happen,” says BGI President and Cofounder, Gifford Pinchot.  “The larger story here is that bringing sustainability into the business curriculum is finally a rapidly growing movement. Big prestigious schools are joining the sustainable business education game. We launched BGI to trigger that transformation. It’s great to see the movement take hold. And it is particularly sweet given that, at least for now, we are still out ahead.”

Image credit: jmd41280 via Flickr under CC license

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  • http://www.presidiomba.org Paul Sheldon

    Yep, BGI is an awesome, world-leading program. What the Net Impact students largely missed in their assessment is BGI’s sister program at Presidio School of Management.

    In part, because the ranking was based on pure frequency of comment, student evaluations tend to be something of a glamorous, popularity contest–they usually rate highly, that which is most comfortable and interesting to students. And because the BGI students seem to have been more proactive about making sure they submitted more online survey responses, the sheer numbers of submissions may have biased the results.

    This is not to distract in any way from the excellence and value of Bainbridge, which deserves all the credit it was given. But if students already knew what was best, they wouldn’t be, well, students.

    Fortunately for students, evaluating the effectiveness of academic programs is not only a popularity contest, but also a rigorous accreditation sequence.

    BGI certainly deserves acknowledgement for it’s outstanding, fully-accredited program, students, faculty and vision.

    So does Presidio.

    Slightly more recent than BGI, Presidio offers a more accessible, urban setting for its monthly gatherings (in or near San Francisco), and a more “mainstream” approach to engaging with business through guest lecturers, project-oriented learning, and a faculty that also uniquely bridges the transition from exploitative to sustainable business.

    Presidio’s visionary Founder, Richard Gray, and Board President Steven Swig, convened a faculty around Natural Capitalism’s co-author, Hunter Lovins, J.D., who teaches or assists in at least six of the college’s 16 courses. Designated by Time Magazine as a Hero for the Planet, Lovins provides a solid grounding in sustainability, and a dramatically successful track record in leading and consulting with successful businesses, organizations, governments and economies.

    The management strand at Presidio is organized around Alexander and Kathia Laszlo (who have also taught at Bainbridge and at the business school of the Institute of Technology in Monterey, Mexico) and former V.P. of Motorola, Robert Dunham, whose previous work with Fernando Flores, Richard Strozzi-Heckler, and George Leonard distinguishes him as a significant resource in the emerging discipline of generative leadership.

    Provost Ron Nahser, a noted marketing guru and graduate of Kellogg, convenes Presidio’s Marketing Strand around his distinguished Pathfinder approach to pragmatic inquiry, including traditional, sustainable, and ecological economics as taught by Berkeley grad, Margaret Winslow, Ph.D.

    Presidio places accounting and numbers at the core of its program, as presented by Paula Thielen, Ph.D., whose solid grounding in accounting practices is delightfully combined with a rare number-cruncher’s affinity for integrating the principles of sustainable management in business. Thielen’s accounting classes are uniquely complemented by such additional resources as John Katovich, former General Counsel to the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange, who, with Lovins (who is also a lawyer) teaches one of the nation’s first courses in sustainability’s relationship to “Capital Markets and the Law.”

    Redefining how business is done, using the principles of sustainable management, will require many more than two institutions. Net Impact would do well to present not just a competitive, hierarchical ranking, but also a more comparative, inclusive circle of founders, all of whom deserve applause for their willingness to forge new models for business education.

    Paul Sheldon
    Senior Consultant
    Natural Capitalism Solutions
    Faculty
    Principles of Sustainable Management
    Presidio School of Management

  • http://www.presidiomba.org Paul Sheldon

    Yep, BGI is an awesome, world-leading program. What the Net Impact students largely missed in their assessment is BGI’s sister program at Presidio School of Management.

    In part, because the ranking was based on pure frequency of comment, student evaluations tend to be something of a glamorous, popularity contest–they usually rate highly, that which is most comfortable and interesting to students. And because the BGI students seem to have been more proactive about making sure they submitted more online survey responses, the sheer numbers of submissions may have biased the results.

    This is not to distract in any way from the excellence and value of Bainbridge, which deserves all the credit it was given. But if students already knew what was best, they wouldn’t be, well, students.

    Fortunately for students, evaluating the effectiveness of academic programs is not only a popularity contest, but also a rigorous accreditation sequence.

    BGI certainly deserves acknowledgement for it’s outstanding, fully-accredited program, students, faculty and vision.

    So does Presidio.

    Slightly more recent than BGI, Presidio offers a more accessible, urban setting for its monthly gatherings (in or near San Francisco), and a more “mainstream” approach to engaging with business through guest lecturers, project-oriented learning, and a faculty that also uniquely bridges the transition from exploitative to sustainable business.

    Presidio’s visionary Founder, Richard Gray, and Board President Steven Swig, convened a faculty around Natural Capitalism’s co-author, Hunter Lovins, J.D., who teaches or assists in at least six of the college’s 16 courses. Designated by Time Magazine as a Hero for the Planet, Lovins provides a solid grounding in sustainability, and a dramatically successful track record in leading and consulting with successful businesses, organizations, governments and economies.

    The management strand at Presidio is organized around Alexander and Kathia Laszlo (who have also taught at Bainbridge and at the business school of the Institute of Technology in Monterey, Mexico) and former V.P. of Motorola, Robert Dunham, whose previous work with Fernando Flores, Richard Strozzi-Heckler, and George Leonard distinguishes him as a significant resource in the emerging discipline of generative leadership.

    Provost Ron Nahser, a noted marketing guru and graduate of Kellogg, convenes Presidio’s Marketing Strand around his distinguished Pathfinder approach to pragmatic inquiry, including traditional, sustainable, and ecological economics as taught by Berkeley grad, Margaret Winslow, Ph.D.

    Presidio places accounting and numbers at the core of its program, as presented by Paula Thielen, Ph.D., whose solid grounding in accounting practices is delightfully combined with a rare number-cruncher’s affinity for integrating the principles of sustainable management in business. Thielen’s accounting classes are uniquely complemented by such additional resources as John Katovich, former General Counsel to the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange, who, with Lovins (who is also a lawyer) teaches one of the nation’s first courses in sustainability’s relationship to “Capital Markets and the Law.”

    Redefining how business is done, using the principles of sustainable management, will require many more than two institutions. Net Impact would do well to present not just a competitive, hierarchical ranking, but also a more comparative, inclusive circle of founders, all of whom deserve applause for their willingness to forge new models for business education.

    Paul Sheldon
    Senior Consultant
    Natural Capitalism Solutions
    Faculty
    Principles of Sustainable Management
    Presidio School of Management

  • http://www.bgiedu.org Steve Albertson

    Totally agree Paul. As a student at Bainbridge, I’m happy that I and my fellow students have a great appreciation for our program, but to me the only “winner” in the Net Impact ranking is, well, every program on the list. Each is training a new generation of business and non-profit leaders that the world sorely needs, and the size of the challenge dictates that every effort is needed, necessary and (currently) not enough. Let’s hope there are 100 more programs on the list in the coming years…

    Steve Albertson
    MBA candidate,
    Bainbridge Graduate Institute

  • http://www.bgiedu.org Steve Albertson

    Totally agree Paul. As a student at Bainbridge, I’m happy that I and my fellow students have a great appreciation for our program, but to me the only “winner” in the Net Impact ranking is, well, every program on the list. Each is training a new generation of business and non-profit leaders that the world sorely needs, and the size of the challenge dictates that every effort is needed, necessary and (currently) not enough. Let’s hope there are 100 more programs on the list in the coming years…

    Steve Albertson
    MBA candidate,
    Bainbridge Graduate Institute