Using the Zero-Waste Circular Economy Module in Global Social Entrepreneurship

Sunny Jeong, Wittenberg University

Course Description

The world has changed in fundamental ways over the last few years – as the challenges have become more complex and intractable. An increasingly popular solution to global social problems lies in the field of social entrepreneurship, in which business and nonprofit (or NGO) leaders design, grow, and lead mission-driven enterprises. Social entrepreneurship is undergoing rapid developments and changes in the world. Parallel with the creation and development of innovative social sector initiatives are changes in the strategies and financing of these organizations, such as the proliferation of new approaches to social venture capital. Traditional private sector philanthropy—individual, foundational, and corporate—continues to be strong, but many social sector organizations are adopting new formulae for their delivery of goods and services and for the management of their "business."

With the traditional lines between for-profit enterprise, nonprofit enterprise, and government beginning to blur, it is critical that students understand the opportunities and challenges presented by the new "blended" aspect of global economy. This introductory course will explore this emerging, highly interdisciplinary field of social entrepreneurship through a combination of instructor lecture, class discussion, student inquiry, case analysis, social venture business plan and global competition participation.

This course is a mix of reading, case discussion, group and individual projects, social entrepreneur interviews and social venture business plan. There are three major components to the course: 1) reading and critically debating chapters and articles prized within the global leadership and social entrepreneur community; 2) completing and presenting the portfolio project; 3) creating a social venture model of your own passion and skills

As global engagement and each social venture creation will have unique requirements, students are expected to be self-directed and supplement classroom learning with the appropriate level of research that is required for their specific projects. Since this course aims at increasing both global public service learning and leadership performance, each student will be expected to become fully engaged in assignments and exercises designed to accelerate competence and confidence

Explore the Zero-Waste Circular Economy Module »

Relationship of the Zero-Waste Circular Economy Module to Your Course

I implemented the module of circular economy for 3rd and 4th week of early semester. I prepared my students before this module started to go over the purpose, relevance to the global social issue of this course, requirements and assignments and grading rubrics. Students had one more week to finish their reflections and idea creations toward their business plan of social venture after. It took total 4 weeks to prepare, deliver and wrap up this module.

Integrating the Module into Your Course

I teach global social entrepreneurship, which is an undergraduate class for lower levels. I have a lot of freshmen and sophomores in my class the size of 35 in one section and 29 in the other section. So at the beginning, we talk about the definitions of global social entrepreneurship, then right after we talk about how we can frame the issues or challenging problems of society as an opportunity of business. The second and third week, I applied this module, especially the common exercise concept of circular economy versus linear economy, but this is a very wicked sort of problem, very challenging, right? Not one discipline can solve this problem which fits perfectly into global social entrepreneurship. Because, the global social entrepreneurship concept and also the entrepreneur examples that I use are all from very different disciplines. So it's not only in business field, we're just using the business disciplines as tools. So, they got the idea and they're very comfortable with me bringing the environmental challenge as the main topic we discuss. And then I taught them the framework of how we can frame the problems. So there is McKinsey consulting groups, the concept of mutually exclusive, collectively comprehensive. So we cover every possible angles of issues and then every exhausting way of solutions. So out of it, students can think about and do the research on why this is happening and what causes the issues and what's the question that we need to ask ourselves? How do we solve this problem? And who have been solving it and how have they solved it or not solved it? So why is this the case? We do have that discussion during a class session. And then I used chocolate, out of three examples that was given the year before. I gave students a choice. But chocolate was extremely difficult because there are a lot of studies about extraction and also, in terms of supply chain, or the cycle of the product production, there's a lot of content, research, and documentations. In terms of consumption, retail, and other segments of the work, the students struggled because they couldn't figure out questions on chocolate as a product. But then when I adopted cellphones as the example, the students loved it. I didn't ask them to complete it as homework. I allocated time in class sessions for them to figure it out. So, your team is in charge of production, your team is in charge of extraction, your team is doing recycle. And all groups are busy finding documentation and even diagrams and statistics and data. And then all of them had drawn, the diagram that they wanted to present it. So it worked out amazingly better this time than last time with chocolate. And then students wanted more of it. So I gave them a whiteboard to take home and and bring back next session. I teach twice a week and each session is 75 minutes. We could not finish in one session, so the students took it home and finish the whole diagram. Then we did a gallery tour after. Each team presented their board and that data and diagrams and drawing and whatever they put and explained those first. And then we have whole groups using post-its and moving around the entire classroom and posting questions and answers of what I gave them. Prompts like, "What is implications of equity issues here? What is social environmental economic equity?" So they answered some of those and then we wrapped up. It worked out great. And then for my course specific exercise, I asked students to go and be more innovative and creative. You already researched what solutions are out there, who has tried to fix this problem? There are many websites and companies information and documentations you can go through, but find that angle that you can either do better or you can solve a totally different way. I don't care too much about the finance angle. So, I gave them a question like, "What are the parameters of business planning?" Essentially, how the business plan should work but then students need to choose what business ideas can solve this wicked sustainability problem. And then they came up with the business idea, but the idea competitions and content development is throughout the semester. So even though I introduced this common exercise at very beginning of class, the course specific exercise is done by the end of semester.

What Worked Well

It worked great that this problem is not just from one angle, one disciplinary problem, and it fits very well to the nature of global social entrepreneurship. So that worked really well.

Challenges and How They Were Addressed

The main challenge is really that I have more than I can spare. So, initially, two years ago, I designed it as maybe one week. I can make it concise. But one week didn't work out. It requires at least two weeks. This time I knew for sure it needs two weeks, maybe more. So, I became a lot more flexible and tried to move around my other module. If it goes beyond what I scheduled, I'm comfortable, I'm okay with it. I can make that happen by moving this textbook, this question into here and there. So that was a little bit challenging because depending on the students' interests and how many students that I have, how conversation go, then I see if I wanted to make it shorter or make it longer, if I want to do more of it or less of it. Even for the questions that was provided for us about the waste audit. I mean students loved doing it, but then when you bring in the waste audit research, how we can carry more conversations out of the questions that were given? There's a lot to talk about. (One) class, students wanted to have more conversations about it and even the ways the audit outcomes were different from section to section. So, some students are seeing a lot more need for cans, for example, aluminum cans, but the other class talked a lot about papers and documentation. So, knowing that and adjusting yourself and your schedule to what works the best for each class.

Student Response to the Module and Activities

So that question made me also wonder, what do we really try to achieve? I mean, last year, before I adopted these modules and worked on it, and we talked about conversations of feedback and an evaluation piece that we are trying to achieve here. If our objectives are only to the point of students become aware of, and students become knowledgeable of new ideas and concepts. I think we have done a great job and students did that and they understood and now they say, oh, I never heard of this term. This is a really interesting way of understanding these equations. Our survey really shows that we did a good job on it. But if our intention is in any way to make a changes of students' attitude or make a change in the practical angle of how students can actually use that as a daily practices of making, or even improvements this problem, how much are we there to solve the problem? I know it's beyond what BASICS' (the project's) intention or what this project was about. And I know we did a great job for providing the concepts and understanding and evaluating a level of equity conversations out of the sustainable issue. So with that portion, I'm happy. My course is designed in a way that provides students with tools. So, this is a very difficult problem. It is, but then what can you do with it? So how will you fix it? That's really the goal of my course. So you feel at the end of semester, empowered enough that you also feel that you understand enough that you have this power and also tools that you can use it for making some changes. This module is wonderfully well developed. But do we really change students' attitude? Do we really change students' behavior? Are they really thinking now if I see these issues I want to even make small changes? I'll pick up the can, I'll do more recycling. I'll be more mindful of my use of and waste of water. I'll be more mindful for organic waste that I'm making in food consumption and takeout. So, there's a ton of individual level behaviors and extreme changes of attitude. In that piece, I'm not sure if I have done a good job.