Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Anderson. Within the past year, some of the nation’s largest corporations have collapsed, taking thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in pension and retirement funds with them and further eroding already weakened state economies.

This crisis of confidence in American business was the major topic of discussion at the annual meeting of governors in Idaho last month. One fact that surfaced was that business schools aren’t teaching ethics in their MBA programs.

A new graduate institute on Bainbridge Island may have a solution. The Bainbridge Island Graduate Institute (BGI) is planning to launch two MBA programs, with local courses and distance learning. In the planned distance learning MBA, every course is biased toward ethics in business and a harmonious relationship with the environment. Each course will provide entrepreneurial training in sustainable business innovation. Academic advisors from several leading graduate business schools in Washington and British Columbia are helping BGI faculty transform the traditional business school curriculum into an exercise in how to integrate ethics into the way organizations are managed.

BGI co-founders include Gifford Pinchot III, his wife Elizabeth and C. Sherman Severin PhD. Pinchot’s grandfather was Teddy Roosevelt’s choice to be the first head of the US Forest Service and has a Washington State national forest named after him. Together, the trio has a unique background in business consulting and creating strategic alliances for sustainable technologies development. Their clients include Fortune 100 corporations and nonprofit businesses and NGO’s.

The Pinchot’s are conservationists, authors and organizational development specialists who coined the term “intrapreneuring,” which means changing a corporate environment and improving the bottom line by creating a structure of innovative team dynamics. Their 1985 best-seller, Intrapreneuring: Why You Don’t Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur, introduced the concept that employees who pursue new ideas can actually benefit their employer.

Severin was Chairman of Marylhurst University Graduate Department of Management before founding BGI with the Pinchots.

Gifford Pinchot III, explains, “BGI teaches supply chain management issues such as cutting costs and controlling inventory through closer relations with suppliers. But in our course you will also study ways to get your company’s suppliers to implement ethical business practices that protect workers’ rights and the environment.”

First quarter faculty include evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris, and Amory Lovins, author of Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution and Soft Energy Paths: Toward a Durable Peace, and co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI).

BGI’s distance learning program in sustainable and ethical business education will start with a residential intensive held on Cortes Island, B.C. There will be four eight-day intensive sessions each year (two at the Bainbridge Island campus and two in B.C.). Students are required to complete a successful action learning project as part of the program – either through mentoring an NGO in sustainable community development, launching their own sustainable business startup or leading a corporate sustainable innovation – with guidance from faculty who have successfully facilitated hundreds of successful start-ups.

For more information, contact BGI at (206) 855-9559 or info@BGIedu.org.