As we return to campus after winter break, it’s time for a new round of firsts. First day of classes, first homework assignments, first attempts at summer job searches… and the first (and possibly last) snowfall of the season, which was met with enough salt to melt an iceberg.

There’s one new venture that I’m particularly excited about: CSI. Not the TV show (we all know there’s a writers’ strike), but the Corporate Sustainability Initiative, a collaborative effort between the Nicholas School, the Fuqua School of Business, and the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. CSI is founded on the principle that economic growth and environmental sustainability are not mutually exclusive. The Institute will seek to develop innovative, value-creating solutions to environmental problems by engaging the corporate, policy, and environmental sectors.

Over twenty professors from the Nicholas School, Fuqua, the Law School, and the Sanford Institute of Public Policy will be involved, along with 20 student fellows from both business and environmental backgrounds, so CSI promises to be a real interdisciplinary project. There will be speakers, workshops, research, and consulting projects. I am one of the student fellows, and I’ll be co-leading the consulting team to provide strategic advice to companies seeking to improve their environmental and financial performance. I couldn’t be more excited.

For joint degree students like me, CSI represents in institutional form what we’re creating in practice, trekking back and forth along Circuit Drive between the environmental and business schools. For single degree (for lack of a better phrase) MBA or MEM students, CSI might even be more exciting, because it will provide an entirely new perspective – a window into the business world through an environmental lens, and vice versa. In either case, there is great potential for effecting change.