Check out our new home!
www.civil.engineering.utoronto.ca/studentlife/promise.htm
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
A Future Generation of Surfers?
Continuing the conversation on the environment and the human spirit be it in the form of sports, scenery, or passing on the things we want to leave for our children's children.
Check out this short video: http://vimeo.com/9060213
A discussion on global development and how those who play in the surf are conscious of the fragility of their playground.
Check out this short video: http://vimeo.com/9060213
A discussion on global development and how those who play in the surf are conscious of the fragility of their playground.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Ideas from Monday's Event
Hey everyone,
Here are all the incredible ideas that were generated on Monday night. Thanks to everyone who contributed!! Please feel free to add more by commenting on this post
Session #1: Why is the Promise needed?
What is your impression of the Promise
o It is essential to take responsibility for our actions now
o A way of staying collectively socially responsible
o Makes us evaluate our own beliefs and begin to think about these issues therefore it benefits us as a people by giving us a broader perspective, and a purpose
o A concrete reminder of an engineer’s responsibility
o Get people in the right mindset, there’s more to life than money
o Declare our ideals
o Engineers must take a leading role
Why are we taking these actions?
o For the general well-being of our own and everyone else’s future generations.
o Makes us more conscious of waste in the final stages of our design
o Reminds us of what’s important
o Makes us think long term
o Helps protect our natural resources (animals, water, air quality)
o Adds value to the environment in the decision making process
o It’s an alternative while we experience a lack of policy governing such things (carbon tax)
Who will benefit from the implementation of such an oath?
o We have an obligation to those less fortunate
o needed for our children and all who come after them
What are your favourite/most powerful clauses?
o Article II
Name some places in the world you want your grandchildren to experience and places you believe are in danger of severe changes/destruction in the next 10years, 25 years, 50 years
How will future generations be affected by these types of changes?
Session #2: How can the values of the Promise be upheld in society?
What some examples of the abuse of rights of future generations?
o Disposable everything
o Unnecessary use of natural resources, fossil fuels
o Thinking in terms of initial capital vs. future impacts
How can we change current practices to reflect the values of the Promise?
o Make sustainable engineering mainstream
o Rethink the concept of waste
o Integrated design
What can you do personally to implement the Promise in your life at school, work and at home?
What challenges do you think you will come across implementing the principles of this Promise and how can you overcome them?
Session #3: How can we apply the Promise HERE and NOW?
What activities can we do at school as a group?
o Reach out to other disciplines (economics/policy)
o Create a website (WE NEED HELP WITH THIS!) have both intro and breadth for layman and depth for the technically proficient
o Influence facilities and services on campus
o Promote engineering environmental aspects to high school students
o The Promise can be used to promote the school/department in terms of admissions
o Educate student body in making responsible decisions
o Get professors on board
o Reach out to other student groups who have a similar vision, as a medium for publicity and ideas
o Reach out to other universities
What type of future events do you want to see?
o Projects for each year
o Show success stories – have industry speakers/case studies presented, include these on website (video or summary)
o Rick Mercer
o TED talks
o Promotion of the Promise with “Hot Yam” in the atrium
o Design competition in 1st and 4th year, make topics related to sustainability on campus
o Learning skills
o Fundraiser for non-profit
o Inter-university competitions
o Develop questions to ask OPG and government etc.
o Promote competition e.g. best poster design or best way to engage students, artistic
o End of oil party – exercise bikes to light, funeral for oil
How can we raise funds to ensure this is a sustainable initiative?
o Bake sales
o Money that we save the university (e.g. achieving a certain percentage of energy savings through our actions)
o Business case for sustainability
Here are all the incredible ideas that were generated on Monday night. Thanks to everyone who contributed!! Please feel free to add more by commenting on this post
Session #1: Why is the Promise needed?
What is your impression of the Promise
o It is essential to take responsibility for our actions now
o A way of staying collectively socially responsible
o Makes us evaluate our own beliefs and begin to think about these issues therefore it benefits us as a people by giving us a broader perspective, and a purpose
o A concrete reminder of an engineer’s responsibility
o Get people in the right mindset, there’s more to life than money
o Declare our ideals
o Engineers must take a leading role
Why are we taking these actions?
o For the general well-being of our own and everyone else’s future generations.
o Makes us more conscious of waste in the final stages of our design
o Reminds us of what’s important
o Makes us think long term
o Helps protect our natural resources (animals, water, air quality)
o Adds value to the environment in the decision making process
o It’s an alternative while we experience a lack of policy governing such things (carbon tax)
Who will benefit from the implementation of such an oath?
o We have an obligation to those less fortunate
o needed for our children and all who come after them
What are your favourite/most powerful clauses?
o Article II
Name some places in the world you want your grandchildren to experience and places you believe are in danger of severe changes/destruction in the next 10years, 25 years, 50 years
How will future generations be affected by these types of changes?
Session #2: How can the values of the Promise be upheld in society?
What some examples of the abuse of rights of future generations?
o Disposable everything
o Unnecessary use of natural resources, fossil fuels
o Thinking in terms of initial capital vs. future impacts
How can we change current practices to reflect the values of the Promise?
o Make sustainable engineering mainstream
o Rethink the concept of waste
o Integrated design
What can you do personally to implement the Promise in your life at school, work and at home?
What challenges do you think you will come across implementing the principles of this Promise and how can you overcome them?
Session #3: How can we apply the Promise HERE and NOW?
What activities can we do at school as a group?
o Reach out to other disciplines (economics/policy)
o Create a website (WE NEED HELP WITH THIS!) have both intro and breadth for layman and depth for the technically proficient
o Influence facilities and services on campus
o Promote engineering environmental aspects to high school students
o The Promise can be used to promote the school/department in terms of admissions
o Educate student body in making responsible decisions
o Get professors on board
o Reach out to other student groups who have a similar vision, as a medium for publicity and ideas
o Reach out to other universities
What type of future events do you want to see?
o Projects for each year
o Show success stories – have industry speakers/case studies presented, include these on website (video or summary)
o Rick Mercer
o TED talks
o Promotion of the Promise with “Hot Yam” in the atrium
o Design competition in 1st and 4th year, make topics related to sustainability on campus
o Learning skills
o Fundraiser for non-profit
o Inter-university competitions
o Develop questions to ask OPG and government etc.
o Promote competition e.g. best poster design or best way to engage students, artistic
o End of oil party – exercise bikes to light, funeral for oil
How can we raise funds to ensure this is a sustainable initiative?
o Bake sales
o Money that we save the university (e.g. achieving a certain percentage of energy savings through our actions)
o Business case for sustainability
Friday, November 6, 2009
Oath for MBAs
Hey Everyone,
Check out this article from the Economist describing a similar oath gathering momentum in the MBA world!
You may snigger. Yet with around half of this year’s graduating class taking the pledge, Max Anderson, an MBA student himself, saw it as a triumph for a campaign that he launched only last month. He had hoped to get 100 of his classmates to sign up at best. The economic crisis seems to have been behind the rush. Students want to distance themselves from earlier generations of MBAs, whose wonky moral compasses were seen to have contributed to the turmoil, especially on Wall Street, the biggest employer of Harvard MBAs in recent years.
The popularity of the oath might also reflect a broader change, with huge implications not just for business education but for management as a whole, says Rakesh Khurana, a professor at Harvard Business School. Mr Khurana and a colleague, Nitin Nohria, have been among the few faculty members to encourage Mr Anderson’s campaign. "Students are saying they want business education to operate in a different way and that they want higher expectations from faculty," he says. "Just telling them to maximise shareholder value does not satisfy them any more. They want to get away from the cartoon image of business that they are taught in the classroom, to get useful practical advice on how to lead a firm in the 21st century."
The student oath is part of a larger effort to turn management from a trade into a profession—a crusade that Messrs Khurana and Nohria proposed in a much-discussed article last October in the Harvard Business Review. When the business school was founded in 1908, the goal was to create something along the lines of Harvard’s medical and law schools. But the mission was soon abandoned, not least because there was no agreement about how managers should behave.
One of the two main criticisms of the oath and of the whole idea of turning management into a profession, particularly in business-school faculties, is that it is either unnecessary or actively harmful. Crimes such as embezzlement are punishable by law. Shareholders who feel that managers have not acted in their best interests can sue them. Meanwhile, by promising to "safeguard the interests" of colleagues, customers, and society, are the future captains of industry simply short-changing their shareholders?
Defenders of the oath reply that the goal of maximising shareholder value has become a justification for short-termism and, in particular, rapid personal enrichment. They are concerned about managers doing things that drive up the share price quickly at the expense of a firm’s lasting health. Management gurus such as Jim "Good to Great" Collins argue that shareholders are likely to earn better returns in the long run if firms are led by managers with integrity and a desire to play a constructive role in society.
The second complaint is that the oath’s fine words are toothless. There are few clear-cut injunctions along the lines of the Hippocratic oath for doctors, which commands physicians: "First, do no harm." It is hard to define, let alone measure, managing "in good faith" or acting "in an ethical manner". But the oath-taking MBAs’ pledges to avoid corruption, to represent the performance and risks of their firm accurately, to educate themselves continuously and to allow their peers to hold them to account are all meaningful and can be monitored, says Mr Khurana.
The campaign for an MBA oath dates back to 2004, when Ángel Cabrera, president of Thunderbird, a business school in Arizona, suggested that his students write one. It soon became an official part of the school’s MBA programme. The oath, Mr Cabrera says, has been "a phenomenal change-management tool". Students constantly use it to question things they are taught, he says, citing those who took a faculty member to task for breezily asserting that paying bribes is a normal part of doing business in India.
But it is what happens when the student enters the real world that counts. Mr Cabrera says he has anecdotal evidence of graduates who have challenged unethical behaviour successfully in their new jobs. He is also working with Messrs Khurana and Nohria, the Aspen Institute, a think-tank, and the World Economic Forum, among others, to try to work out a way to add teeth to the oath. They have discussed ideas such as trying to keep managers apprised of the latest thinking in their field, developing a professional licence for them and setting up an organisation to punish unprofessional behaviour.
Even these cheerleaders admit there are differences between practising management and, say, medicine. They concede that no self-regulating professional body for managers could possibly monopolise entry to the profession, given the long list of entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates who have created oodles of shareholder value without any formal training. Hardly any entrepreneurs have MBAs, Mr Khurana admits. But he believes a professional licence could still be a useful qualification even if it was not a requirement for all managers.
As for punishing unprofessional behaviour, Mr Khurana is inspired by the internet rather than by a closed council of grandees. From open-source software to eBay and Wikipedia, new systems of self-regulation are emerging based on openness, constant feedback and the wisdom of crowds. These could be adapted, he thinks, to provide effective scrutiny of managers.
Don Tapscott, co-author of "Wikinomics" and "The Naked Corporation", says that in today’s increasingly "transparent world, where every stakeholder has radar, accountability becomes a requirement for trust. In fact, for those who embrace it as a value, it is a powerful force for business success." In addition, the financial crisis and the recession will doubtless spark more scrutiny of managers. So embracing a more sympathetic agenda may not be so naïve after all.
Check out this article from the Economist describing a similar oath gathering momentum in the MBA world!
A Hippocratic oath for managers
Forswearing greed
Jun 4th 2009 BOSTON From The Economist print edition
MBA students lead a campaign to turn management into a formal profession
Forswearing greed
Jun 4th 2009 BOSTON From The Economist print edition
MBA students lead a campaign to turn management into a formal profession
THEY did not actually say that "greed is not good", but the oath taken on June 3rd by more than 400 students graduating from Harvard Business School amounted to much the same thing. At an unofficial ceremony the day before they received their MBAs, the students promised they would, among other things, "serve the greater good", "act with the utmost integrity" and guard against "decisions and behaviour that advance my own narrow ambitions, but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves."
You may snigger. Yet with around half of this year’s graduating class taking the pledge, Max Anderson, an MBA student himself, saw it as a triumph for a campaign that he launched only last month. He had hoped to get 100 of his classmates to sign up at best. The economic crisis seems to have been behind the rush. Students want to distance themselves from earlier generations of MBAs, whose wonky moral compasses were seen to have contributed to the turmoil, especially on Wall Street, the biggest employer of Harvard MBAs in recent years.
It may seem ridiculous that students who have spent over $100,000 on two years of study in an effort to get very rich are now so keen to rebrand themselves as virtuous. Such naivety, if that is what it is, will not survive long beyond the university’s walls. But the students may just be putting their marketing lessons into practice. They are entering the worst job market for graduating MBAs in decades. Many see non-profit and government jobs as their best bet. So embracing the "values agenda" could prove useful.
The popularity of the oath might also reflect a broader change, with huge implications not just for business education but for management as a whole, says Rakesh Khurana, a professor at Harvard Business School. Mr Khurana and a colleague, Nitin Nohria, have been among the few faculty members to encourage Mr Anderson’s campaign. "Students are saying they want business education to operate in a different way and that they want higher expectations from faculty," he says. "Just telling them to maximise shareholder value does not satisfy them any more. They want to get away from the cartoon image of business that they are taught in the classroom, to get useful practical advice on how to lead a firm in the 21st century."
The student oath is part of a larger effort to turn management from a trade into a profession—a crusade that Messrs Khurana and Nohria proposed in a much-discussed article last October in the Harvard Business Review. When the business school was founded in 1908, the goal was to create something along the lines of Harvard’s medical and law schools. But the mission was soon abandoned, not least because there was no agreement about how managers should behave.
A set of shared values is one of the defining features of a profession. Lawyers and doctors have their own codes, but business-school professors tend to embrace Milton Friedman’s claim that the only responsibility of business is to maximise profits. They have told their students that as managers their sole mission should be increasing shareholder value.
One of the two main criticisms of the oath and of the whole idea of turning management into a profession, particularly in business-school faculties, is that it is either unnecessary or actively harmful. Crimes such as embezzlement are punishable by law. Shareholders who feel that managers have not acted in their best interests can sue them. Meanwhile, by promising to "safeguard the interests" of colleagues, customers, and society, are the future captains of industry simply short-changing their shareholders?
Defenders of the oath reply that the goal of maximising shareholder value has become a justification for short-termism and, in particular, rapid personal enrichment. They are concerned about managers doing things that drive up the share price quickly at the expense of a firm’s lasting health. Management gurus such as Jim "Good to Great" Collins argue that shareholders are likely to earn better returns in the long run if firms are led by managers with integrity and a desire to play a constructive role in society.
The second complaint is that the oath’s fine words are toothless. There are few clear-cut injunctions along the lines of the Hippocratic oath for doctors, which commands physicians: "First, do no harm." It is hard to define, let alone measure, managing "in good faith" or acting "in an ethical manner". But the oath-taking MBAs’ pledges to avoid corruption, to represent the performance and risks of their firm accurately, to educate themselves continuously and to allow their peers to hold them to account are all meaningful and can be monitored, says Mr Khurana.
The campaign for an MBA oath dates back to 2004, when Ángel Cabrera, president of Thunderbird, a business school in Arizona, suggested that his students write one. It soon became an official part of the school’s MBA programme. The oath, Mr Cabrera says, has been "a phenomenal change-management tool". Students constantly use it to question things they are taught, he says, citing those who took a faculty member to task for breezily asserting that paying bribes is a normal part of doing business in India.
But it is what happens when the student enters the real world that counts. Mr Cabrera says he has anecdotal evidence of graduates who have challenged unethical behaviour successfully in their new jobs. He is also working with Messrs Khurana and Nohria, the Aspen Institute, a think-tank, and the World Economic Forum, among others, to try to work out a way to add teeth to the oath. They have discussed ideas such as trying to keep managers apprised of the latest thinking in their field, developing a professional licence for them and setting up an organisation to punish unprofessional behaviour.
Even these cheerleaders admit there are differences between practising management and, say, medicine. They concede that no self-regulating professional body for managers could possibly monopolise entry to the profession, given the long list of entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates who have created oodles of shareholder value without any formal training. Hardly any entrepreneurs have MBAs, Mr Khurana admits. But he believes a professional licence could still be a useful qualification even if it was not a requirement for all managers.
As for punishing unprofessional behaviour, Mr Khurana is inspired by the internet rather than by a closed council of grandees. From open-source software to eBay and Wikipedia, new systems of self-regulation are emerging based on openness, constant feedback and the wisdom of crowds. These could be adapted, he thinks, to provide effective scrutiny of managers.
Don Tapscott, co-author of "Wikinomics" and "The Naked Corporation", says that in today’s increasingly "transparent world, where every stakeholder has radar, accountability becomes a requirement for trust. In fact, for those who embrace it as a value, it is a powerful force for business success." In addition, the financial crisis and the recession will doubtless spark more scrutiny of managers. So embracing a more sympathetic agenda may not be so naïve after all.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Localicious
You've probably heard of summerlicious and winterlicious here in Toronto, but Localicious is on right NOW!!
Enjoy local and sustainable food dishes at restaurants around Toronto and do your part to create global change for generations to come. Partial proceeds from every Localicious dish served will be generously donated to WWF-Canada's conservation work.
http://community.wwf.ca/localicious/Restaurants.cfm?loc=Toronto&start=1
Bon Appetite!
Enjoy local and sustainable food dishes at restaurants around Toronto and do your part to create global change for generations to come. Partial proceeds from every Localicious dish served will be generously donated to WWF-Canada's conservation work.
http://community.wwf.ca/localicious/Restaurants.cfm?loc=Toronto&start=1
Bon Appetite!
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Hello everyone,
I thought I would get the "posting" going by showing you a very interesting quote Prof. Pressnail sent me a while ago. Feel free to post any comments about it!!
We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present,
and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering.
Working for the earth is not a way to get rich; it is a way to be rich.
-Paul Hawken, Commencement Address,
University of Portland, 3 May 2009
I thought I would get the "posting" going by showing you a very interesting quote Prof. Pressnail sent me a while ago. Feel free to post any comments about it!!
We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present,
and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering.
Working for the earth is not a way to get rich; it is a way to be rich.
-Paul Hawken, Commencement Address,
University of Portland, 3 May 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Welcome to the Promise to Future Generations Website!
Now that you have signed the Promise we want to establish a community, accessible to everyone, where we can discuss the important issues that the Promise commitment raises.
First, for those of you who were unable to attend the signing ceremony on June 19, 2009, please visit GB105 to pick up your framed Promise and sign the Register.
We would also like to take this opportunity to invite you to join the blog. We hope that this will become a forum for discussion where people can voice their opinions, ideas, seek advice, post interesting articles, pictures or videos that may be of interest to the group. As the Promise raises a number of issues, we see this website hosting a wide array of topics. If you find something interesting, chances are your Promise peers will find it interesting too, so post away!!
Ek and Marianne
First, for those of you who were unable to attend the signing ceremony on June 19, 2009, please visit GB105 to pick up your framed Promise and sign the Register.
We would also like to take this opportunity to invite you to join the blog. We hope that this will become a forum for discussion where people can voice their opinions, ideas, seek advice, post interesting articles, pictures or videos that may be of interest to the group. As the Promise raises a number of issues, we see this website hosting a wide array of topics. If you find something interesting, chances are your Promise peers will find it interesting too, so post away!!
Ek and Marianne
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
