Accounting Information Systems
How I Went About Integrating Sustainability Issues into My Class
Accountants, by nature, are huge consumers of paper and natural resources.
The first step I integrated into my course on Day 1 was to both email students and announce in the first
class that sustainability is an important issue to accounting majors, and I wanted each student to think
about sustainability issues in both their personal and soon to be professional lives in accounting. We
then, the next class meeting, discussed in some detail how to integrate sustainability issues (paper
usage; desktop and laptop usage; electronic devices usage; etc.) into their normal, everyday working
and social lives. I then explained to the students how I had taken steps in the course to minimize
‘footprint’ of my course on the environment:
-the use of Blackboard for all course-related postings, emails, memos, course documents, etc.
-the requirement for all students to use Blackboard to post Group Project work, drafts, reports, projects,
etc.-no paperwork accepted policy for my class for all group work; and all grading would also be done of
all Group Project work electronically on Blackboard including returning working files, etc. to students
and student groups. I developed and posted on Blackboard detailed instructions for how each student
and student group was to file their Group Project and related files on Blackboard to enforce this no
paperwork accepted policy;
Later in the course, during a course segment related to Cloud Computing, I included in this segment a
discussion (and the students were tested on it on Exam 2) of the sustainability impacts of Cloud
Computing in the accounting profession. I showed students how some firms are addressing their
environmental impact and carbon footprint in their Annual Reports as an example of the importance of
this subject to the accounting profession, and impressed on them that the subject of sustainability was
not a fad in accounting, and in fact they would be facing this as an issue for the rest of their accounting
careers.
In general, I believe I made an impression on the 80 students taking ACTG 321 about the importance of
sustainability in accounting, now and in their futures.