At Pepperdine University, the Graziadio School of Business and Management offers a course that takes the idea of environmental ethics very literally. The course takes students out of mere classroom talk about environmental conservation and brings them to physically work on environmental conservation.

Led by former Patagonia CEO Michael Crooke and Professor Tetsuya O’Hara, twenty students traveled to the future Patagonia National Park in Chile to get their hands dirty, preparing the park for its future opening. The mornings were spent doing physical labor, with afternoons devoted to lectures and the task of creating environmentally sustainable business plans.

The course is a requirement for students seeking Graziadio’s Socially, Environmentally, and Ethically Responsible Business Practice certificate, an initiative begun by the school in 2010.

By offering courses that devote intensely focused time on sustainability, can future grads be encouraged to think seriously about incorporating sustainable tactics into their own business endeavors?