Taught to Transform: Sustainability Education at U-M
Sustainability connects classrooms and community in Ann Arbor
—By Emily Diaz
Alex Nguyen, a senior at the University of Michigan, steps into Vertex Coffee for a study session. The air is filled with the aroma of freshly roasted beans and the sight of compostable cups. She could have gone to any café on campus, but she chose one she knows prioritizes sustainability. Despite this decision, she still wonders, deep down, what does sustainability really mean?
That question sits at the center of Michigan’s approach to the topic. Students arrive on campus with various ideas of sustainability, so U-M’s challenge is teaching it as a practice rather than a trend. The university offers academic programs for MSc and PhD degrees through the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), a joint initiative between SEAS and the Ross School of Business called the Erb Institute, and over 800 undergraduate sustainability courses. These opportunities teach future leaders not just about environmental responsibility, but the financial and social dimensions of sustainable business, too. Whether students are assessing carbon footprints or examining responsible supply chains, they are prompted to consider how their area of study relates to global sustainability issues.
Sustainability has grown from a specialized subject to a central element of U-M’s campus culture, through initiatives like the Ross School’s +Impact Studio and SEAS’s graduate work in renewable energy and water equity, which exemplify how sustainability is now integrated across a wide range of academic fields. This aligns with the triple bottom line, which Business.com defines as a business concept that expands accounting beyond profit to include social and environmental impact.
This description is only the beginning, though. At Michigan, the challenge lies in applying sustainability to generate measurable action. For students, classrooms and local businesses have become testing grounds for doing just that.
Sustainability in the classroom
Sustainability, in practice, has evolved from being about environmental compliance to regenerative business models. As Morningstar puts it, “Durability and sustainability…are natural partners.” U-M has served as an incubator for this innovation, connecting academic learning to Ann Arbor. At the +Impact Studio, for example, students design tools like air purifiers and digital wellness platforms that give them experience in building solutions that are utilized outside of the classroom.
Charlene Zietsma, the Max McGraw Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at SEAS and at the Ross School of Business, explains that “Ann Arbor is unique because of the significant influence of the University of Michigan and the social ecosystem that surrounds it. Entrepreneurs and organizations that are innovating with sustainable business models are likely to find helpful technologies, supportive coaches, and like-minded investors, customers, suppliers, and employees.”
Zietsma explained that students are taught that regenerative companies such as Patagonia and Allbirds are the most sustainable. This is “where the business gives more to the environment and society than it extracts.” In other words, sustainability is not just about balancing profit and ethics, but about reimagining what progress looks like. Students see that companies that manage risks and act responsibly tend to outperform others, and carrying those practices into their careers helps them build sustainability into important decisions.
Kendall Koenen, a U-M alumna and current Sustainability Analyst at Wells Fargo, agrees that education plays a key role in shaping how people approach sustainability. “Michigan helped me understand that one of the largest challenges of sustainability work is how to educate and communicate about it,” she said. “Specifically, finding common ground across different perspectives.” In the Impakter article titled “Sustainable Service: Why Generative AI Is a Key Component of a Responsible Business Model,” Hannah Fischer-Lauder corroborates this by writing, “Efficiency is at the heart of sustainability. The more you do with fewer resources, the better your impact.” When companies lower emissions or cut waste, they are also saving money–strengthening both their environmental and financial performance.
Lessons beyond campus
In the corporate world, the principles of sustainability take on new forms. “Sustainability looks different at every company and even within different teams,” Koenen explained. “At Wells Fargo, I work on the Enterprise Sustainability team, where we focus on communicating with internal and external stakeholders about sustainability trends, acting as in-house experts, and shaping the bank’s overall sustainability narrative.” This work is especially important at a company such as Wells Fargo, which is still working to regain public trust after past consumer protection violations. Ensuring that sustainability claims are accurate and communication with the public is transparent is essential for rebuilding credibility.
In his book The Sustainable Business Blueprint, Zabihollah Rezaee echoes this sentiment, encouraging businesses to balance profit with social and environmental responsibilities. Instead of solely focusing on shareholders, he urges companies to consider the needs of the community through a shift from “shareholder primacy to stakeholder primacy to protect the interests of a broader set of stakeholders” (p. 67). This demonstrates the philosophical core of sustainability teaching: business is accountable to all stakeholders, not just investors.
For Koenen, the key to progress lies in reframing sustainability as risk management. “There’s a real cost to inaction. A well-positioned company understands future risks–scarcity of natural resources, more frequent flooding, supply chain disruptions from wildfires and so on.” As Morningstar points out, “A company’s approach to sustainability demonstrates how it anticipates and addresses these long-term risks,” highlighting the same logic as Koenen applies in her work.
James Burnham, who oversees the Ann Arbor Green Business Challenge, an organization supporting sustainable business in Ann Arbor, said the program was born out of the city’s goal to connect sustainability with community identity. “The idea was that we needed a way for businesses to engage with the movement of A2ZERO, to receive recognition for doing so, while simultaneously helping Ann Arbor residents understand which businesses are aligning to our community’s closely held values of environmental and community stewardship,” Burnham said.
In practice, businesses participating in the challenge go through a voluntary certification process by completing a sustainability compliance checklist. Those that meet program standards earn a two-year certification, making their efforts visible to those who want to support businesses contributing to Ann Arbor’s goal to be carbon neutral by 2030. These companies then can receive guidance, resources, branding support, and opportunities to connect with other local (and sustainable) organizations.
This move toward greater accountability marks a new phase in sustainability, emphasizing the importance of demonstrating real progress. For students, observing how local businesses prioritize transparency reinforces the idea that sustainability requires ongoing improvement to maintain integrity.
The Ann Arbor Green Business challenge puts those ideals into action. Burnham said verifying progress is part of the process. “Measuring and verifying the impact of the GBC on businesses is fairly straightforward,” he explained. “We can compare the number of criteria completed as a participant to the number of criteria that were already completed before a business chose to participate.” These programs provide opportunities for students to see the tangible effects of change within the broader community.
Teaching the trade-offs
Burnham’s experience with the Ann Arbor Green Business Challenge reflects the same lesson Michigan teaches its students: progress, however authentic, often means making tough choices. While it is important for students to have ambitious goals, the limits of money and time still matter.
As Zietsma explains, “I teach entrepreneurship for sustainability, so my students do business plans including financial projections for their sustainable business ideas. The trade-offs often become very obvious.” Those trade-offs involve balancing immediate expenses with future advantages or determining how to assess outcomes when traditional metrics may not fully reflect social or environmental contributions. For example, a student trying to start a sustainable clothing brand must weigh the higher price of ethical materials against the risk that customers won’t be willing to pay more. U-M trains students to move beyond idealism and confront the measurable challenges that shape sustainable business decisions.
Koenen encounters these decisions daily. “It’s essential to talk about sustainability, environmental or social, in terms of risk,” she said. “There’s a real cost to inaction.” This insight underscores what students are taught: the strength of any sustainability effort is tied to its financial feasibility. Michigan’s programs prepare students to recognize these trade-offs and articulate them effectively–a crucial ability that is shaping the future of leadership in every sector.
This is fundamental to the understanding of sustainable business, because, as Morningstar points out, “Sustainable companies can still have controversies.” Conversations with professionals like Koenen show how sustainability plays out at imperfect companies and courses such as those taught by Zietsma demonstrate that sustainable ideas require compromise between ethics and profitability. Sustainability is about continuous improvement, not perfection, and Michigan ensures that students know this.
Redefining the sustainable leader
Out of these difficulties emerges Michigan’s deeper purpose when it comes to sustainability. U-M’s sustainability education aims to produce leaders who understand how to responsibly navigate the complexities of sustainable business. “Sustainable transitions require supportive business ecosystems so that entire value chains can change together with a minimum of friction,” Zietsma said. “Michiganders have this rust-belt state underdog mentality that helps them work together–I think that is going to be a critical contributor to sustainable business success in Michigan over the next decade or two.” Her viewpoint underscores that meaningful sustainability isn’t the work of isolated individuals but rather the collective effort of businesses, communities, and universities learning and evolving together.
Companies must sustain themselves socially, too. Impakter says that “Sustainability also applies to people. Teams that feel burned out or undervalued won’t stay.” This principle stretches beyond academia. Companies that ignore employee well-being risk reputational loss, which is a reminder that sustainability must include the human element. Forbes reinforces this sentiment, saying “The most sustainable thing leaders can do right now is take care of their employees.”
Koenen, who has seen the field evolve, believes sustainability is rooted in curiosity and adaptability. “Find what aspect of sustainability truly excites you,” she advised. “Many roles aren’t labeled ‘sustainability’ anymore…Don’t just label yourself as ‘interested in sustainability.’ Figure out what that actually means to you.”
Sustainability in Practice
Back at Vertex Coffee, Nguyen realizes that sustainability isn’t just about drinking from a compostable coffee cup, but the systems behind it, like fair labor and regenerative design. Sustainability at U-M doesn’t have a single definition that can be memorized. It’s a lived experience–one that asks students to act intentionally and carry lessons beyond the classroom.
Her realization reflects the very heart of Michigan’s mission: empowering students to turn learning into leadership and understanding into meaningful action. As sustainability becomes increasingly central to business and society, the principles instilled at Michigan extend outward, fostering change in industries and communities well beyond Ann Arbor.
For Nguyen, that lesson began with a small coffee cup that represents something much bigger: the idea that real change starts with awareness and grows with the choices we make every day.
Feature photo by Paula Prekopova on Unsplash.