Wharton group studies environment

The Wharton School has combined the color green in money and the environment in its newest student organization. "Two Shades of Green," a group proposed and organized entirely by students, will give undergraduates the opportunity to integrate these two key issues in a practical manner. The groups' goal, according to a list of objectives compiled by its leaders, is to "educate the Penn community about how business and the environment can have a common cause." In achieving this goal, the group founders plan to create a newsletter, organize externships and invite speakers to campus. The four-page newsletter, to be distributed to all Wharton undergraduates, will give profiles of personalities and career opportunities in the field of economics and the environment. "We hope to really hit the community at large," said College and Wharton sophomore Jit Sinha, one of the groups' founders. The speakers will focus on environmental business development. By using Wharton professors as a resource base, the organizers hope they will be able to contact potential speakers more easily. And the planned externships will give the group members an opportunity to visit companies and observe their daily activities. This three-pronged agenda will be supplemented in the fall by a symposium which will address how the environment is affecting every business discipline -- finance, accounting, health care management, public policy, marketing, as well as others. "World class business must become green quickly," said Wharton and Engineering sophomore Mike Isenberg, another club organizer. Consumer preferences are changing, he added. Industries must now produce products that are environmentally sound. "For a long, long time, environment and business have had an adversarial relationship," Isenberg said. "Now they go hand in hand." Next year's new Wharton Environmental Policy major illustrates the growing connection between the two. Two Shades of Green hopes to institute brown bag lunches between students and faculty and a student seminar series to address these concerns. In the long term, the organization plans to make Wharton, and ultimately the University, the national center for research and innovation in the dual fields of business and the environment. Organizers have joined the Wharton Undergraduate Student Association, Wharton USA, and hope to eventually be recognized for funding by the Student Activities Council. With these goals, Two Shades of Green seeks to inform the University community about the opportunities inherent in the growing surge of environmental concerns in business, organizers said. "The business of the environment," said Engineering and Wharton sophomore Ken Markus, "is the business of the future."