By Kathy Hulik
School of Business Administration
Consumers Power has announced a grant of $100,000 to the School of Business Administration toward the creation of a new Corporate Environmental Management Program. The five-year grant from the Consumers Power Foundation, the utility’s philanthropic arm, continues Consumers Power’s long tradition of support for the University, which has totaled more than $1 million since 1968.
The grant will enable the Business School to develop a pilot project to research and sponsor course development in corporate environmental strategy.
Curriculum for the pilot program will be created and administered jointly by the Business School and the School of Natural Resources and Environment. Presently, fewer than 25 of the nation’s 700 management schools have courses dedicated to environmental management issues.
“Knowledge and skills in environmental management are fast becoming critical for general managers,” says Business School Dean B. Joseph White.
“The ability to evaluate and balance environmental and economic objectives today is an essential characteristic of good management. With this grant from the Consumers Power Foundation, we are making a commitment to develop the environmental competence of our business and natural resources and environment students.”
“Consumers Power strongly believes that industry and the environment can coexist in Michigan in such a way that our natural resources and our human resources both profit,” says John W. Clark, president of the Consumers Power Foundation.
The first-year installment of the grant was presented by David P. Hoffman, Consumers Power’s vice president of nuclear operations and a U-M alumnus, following the 1993 Nathan Lecture Series in Corporate Environment Management in late March.
Consumers Power has been among the leaders in the utility industry for developing employee-based environmental enhancement projects at its electric generating plant sites and along its electric and natural gas line rights-of-way.
The utility has received recognition from the U.S. Wildlife Habitat Enhancement Council, the Michigan Audubon Society, the Michigan Wildlife Habitat Foundation and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources for its environmental activities. On March 30, it received a statewide Environmental Award from the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.
Consumers Power Co., the principal subsidiary of CMS Energy Corp., is Michigan’s largest natural gas and electric utility, serving almost six million of the state’s nine million residents in 67 of the 68 Lower Peninsula counties.
