Marketing and sustainability major discontinued

By Natalie Wheeler, Staff Writer -- wheelern12@up.edu

John Schouten and Diane Martin, business professors and husband-and-wife duo, wrote the book on marketing and sustainability, literally.

Their textbook, "Sustainable Marketing," was part of the impetus to create a namesake major last year. However, the year-old marketing and sustainability major will be discontinued because Martin and Schouten are leaving UP for full-time tenured faculty positions at the University of Aalto in Finland.

"I have great respect for John and Diane," Robin Anderson, dean of the business school, said. "They are great experts in the field, but without them we just don't have the capacity to continue the program."

Instead, a marketing and management major will replace the marketing and sustainability major.

"Sustainable marketing is John and Diane's area of expertise," Anderson said. "Having them here was a major qualifier for the major."

Despite dropping the major, the Pamplin School of Business will keep the sustainable marketing class because the syllabus and textbook were already drafted by Schouten and Martin. The business school is currently looking for an adjunct faculty member to teach the course.

According to Lisa Reed, associate dean of the business school, this sustainable marketing class was the sole sustainability-based requirement of the major. The rest of the courses remained focused on marketing.

Anderson said that although the class will remain available, it would be difficult to maintain the major without Schouten and Martin. He said next year's accreditation process puts extra pressure on the school to have experts who specialize in the degrees offered.

"We just have to have everything in order," Anderson said. "We can hire someone to teach a class, that's quite different. If we offer a major in the field, we have to show that we have faculty who are experts."

Both Schouten and Martin were unhappy with the decision to discontinue the major. Schouten said the major was important because it allowed graduating seniors to have a unique edge in the job search and because of the increased need for sustainable business practices.

"Sustainability should be at the heart of everything that we do," Schouten said. "I definitely think this is a step backward."

Junior Kyler Matosich, a marketing and sustainability major, was taken aback by the collapse of the major, but for different reasons.

"The major has changed now three years in a row," Matosich said. "It's concerning because you don't know what you're going to end up with when you graduate."

According to Reed, the school will not abandon sustainability in the classroom. A sustainability minor combines business and environmental science classes is currently in the works.

In hopes of finding a steady niché, the business school has also put together a task force to determine what specializations the school wants to offer.

"We do not want to withdraw from sustainability completely," Reed said. "We just want to proceed in a very intentional, responsible way."