Sustainable Business program

Gain a competitive edge with sustainable business practices.

Sustainability isn’t just good for the planet — it’s smart business. The Sustainable Business Minor at UW-La Crosse equips students with the skills to drive innovation, reduce costs, and create long-term value for organizations. You’ll learn how to integrate environmental, social, and financial strategies into business operations, preparing you to lead in an evolving marketplace.

Undergrad minor

A program within the Management Department

What is sustainable business?

Sustainable business is about creating long-term success by balancing economic, social, and environmental factors — often called the “triple bottom line.” This strategic approach helps businesses drive innovation, reduce risk, and improve resilience while contributing to stronger communities and a healthier environment.

The minor has taught me new ways of understanding business including its interconnectedness with natural and social environments. I’m truly grateful for creating lasting connections with mentors, professors and peers; applying learned knowledge in service projects; and securing a post-graduation career through the program.

Amanda Wciorka

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Sustainable business careers

A Sustainable Business Minor enhances any major, giving graduates a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving job market. Professionals with sustainability expertise are in demand across industries, from finance and marketing to supply chain management and operations. This minor equips you with the skills to integrate sustainability into business strategy, driving efficiency, innovation, and long-term success. While many apply these skills within their primary career field, others pursue dedicated sustainability roles within organizations.

Example positions

Sustainability manager/director – Develops and implements corporate sustainability strategies.
Sustainable supply chain manager – Ensures ethical sourcing, reduces carbon footprint, and optimizes logistics.
Sustainable brand manager – Integrates sustainability into marketing strategies and product positioning.
Impact investment analyst – Identifies and manages investments in socially responsible businesses.
Social entrepreneur – Launches businesses that address environmental and social issues.

What distinguishes the sustainable business minor?

Learn in-demand knowledge

Businesses continue to be interested in finding employees who understand social responsibility or sustainability more broadly. Businesses are increasingly using the United Nations Sustainable Development goals to craft strategies to incorporate sustainable business into their practices. The UN Global Compact includes over 12,000 companies and 3,000 non-business signatories, making it “the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative.”

Make community connections

Many courses in the minor include a connection to local or regional business and industry. Students regularly work on client projects with area business partners, take field trips to businesses to understand their sustainability practices, or hear from a local or regional guest speakers.

Interdisciplinary courses lead to deeper understanding of complex issues

The sustainable business minor offers a wide range of courses such as Anthropology of Food, Social Entrepreneurship and Cultural Resources Management. They are taught in a way that helps students make connections between each other, between ideas, and between them and the community. This structure helps students develop a multi-disciplinary approach to solving complex issues and problems.

Earn general education credit

Many elective course options are offered outside of the College of Business Administration and may count toward general education credit, allowing students to fill core requirements while pursuing the minor.

Apply business solutions to social and environmental challenges

Successful businesses create value by solving real-world challenges. In the Sustainable Business Minor, students learn to develop innovative strategies that align business success with environmental and social responsibility. By integrating sustainability into business operations, they help organizations improve efficiency, reduce risk, and drive long-term growth.

Faculty are engaged in local sustainability efforts

Faculty who teach in the minor are engaged with sustainability initiatives in the greater La Crosse community. This has led to opportunities for students such as visits to sustainability institute conferences, sustainability chats with local businesses and more.

Sample courses

MGT 310 Principles of Sustainable Business This course lays a business foundation on the relationships between social, environmental, and economic systems and their impact on business. Challenges to existing business theory will embrace a sustainability perspective of business that includes an introduction to sustainability frameworks, system thinking, and current trends in and among sustainability issues and business stakeholders. Prerequisite: admission to business. (Cross-listed with MGT/MKT; may only earn credit in one department.) Offered Fall.

MKT 351 Sustainability in Marketing The course addresses environmental, social and economic sustainability issues facing society and modern marketing professionals. Course discussion will include sustainable marketing strategies, consumer attitudes, and consumption. Prerequisite: MKT 309; admission to business. Offered Spring.

ECO 375 Economic Development Analysis of the broad problems and constraints limiting economic development in the "Third World" Alternative approaches to development will be considered. Different cultural, material, and human resources present in individual countries will be assessed. Prerequisite: ECO 110, ECO 120. Offered Occasionally.

MGT 408 The Global Responsibility of Business This course considers the turbulent environment in which organizations function and examines specific dimensions of this environment including the evolution of a framework of global human rights, the impacts of economic and social globalization, the convergence of global approaches to sustainability and the changing ideological and political frameworks affecting business. It will also examine matters of global corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship. Prerequisite: admission to business or chemistry major with business concentration, or physics major with business concentration; senior standing. Offered Fall, Spring.

MGT 422 Social Entrepreneurship This course introduces students to the utilization of business entrepreneurial skills as a means of creatively responding to societal problems. Course discussion will include the drivers of social entrepreneurship, opportunity identification, social venture financing, hybrid legal forms, and social impact measurement. Prerequisite: admission to business; junior standing. Offered Occasionally.

MGT 431 Business, Labor and Human Rights The course examines the impact of globalization, trade regulation and international conventions, agreements and law on human rights, specifically in the context of business and labor rights. Topics include the emergence of post-war human rights structures; the impact of the International Labor Office on Human Rights in the workplace; the establishment of economic, social, and cultural rights in the context of business; the growing conflicts between trade agreements and national policy and emerging partnerships between business organizations and international agencies. Managerial and trade union responses to emerging human rights issues are considered. Prerequisite: admission to business or international business minor with a non business major; senior standing. Offered Occasionally.

MGT 493 Green Operations Management This course is a discussion-based forum focused on historical and contemporary environmental sustainability initiatives, and the relationships amongst these initiatives and global business strategies and tactics. This course is designed to be a survey of leading-edge thinking and knowledge in the field, where contemporary practice and theory intersect. Prerequisite: STAT 145; admission to business. Consent of instructor. Offered Spring.