Impact Courses You Won’t Want to Miss in Winter 2027
BUSINESS
FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS
LBLE – Living Business Leadership Experience (BA 655)
Professor: Mike Barger | Credits: 3
Winter 2027
FOR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
LBLE – Living Business Leadership Experience (BA 455)
Professor: Mike Barger | Credits: 3
Winter 2027
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Living Business Leadership Experience (LBLE) is a 3.0 credit-hour Ross elective course where graduate and upper-level undergraduate students from across the University collaborate to shape, implement, and lead high-impact business initiatives alongside company founders and senior leaders. Whether you’re interested in learning business by doing business, working in a cross-functional team, or navigating complex and ambiguous business environments, this course will give you the chance to develop your leadership skills and dive headfirst into the challenges of business. One of our sponsors, Lacuum, is building a business to help remove contaminants from lakes and ponds through the deployment of autonomous vehicles and AI.
Learn How to Join. To learn more about upcoming Winter 2026 enrollment, email [email protected]
FOR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Charting Your Path: Leadership, Purpose, and Impact (MO 330)
Professor: Kevin Thompson
Credits: 3 | Winter 2027
Charting Your Path is a self-leadership course for students adrift in a sea of expectations who are exceptional at fulfilling goals set by others but find themselves too busy to reflect on whether they are the right thing to do. The goal of the course is to help you authentically lead yourself and others — everyday, in ways large and small. To achieve this goal, Charting Your Path explores personalized pursuits of purpose, mental fitness, and significance in service of an impactful career.
The course includes a one-week wilderness expedition in Utah’s Canyonlands with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) which runs at the conclusion of winter term before summer internships. Charting Your Path has 12 classroom sessions of 90 minutes each utilizing and applying rigorous, science-based frameworks and experiential formats.
FOR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Leading Across Differences (MO 350)
Professor: Aparna Joshi
Credits: 3 | Winter 2027
This course focuses on one of the most pressing and urgent challenges facing leaders: increasing innovation, productivity, well-being and excellence through inclusion and equity. Given the dynamic environments that most organizations encounter, this course will also unpack how leaders can navigate diverse stakeholders who might have varied reactions – both positive and negative – to their efforts to bring about inclusive and equitable change in and around organizations.
SUSTAINABILITY
FOR UNDERGRADUATE & MM STUDENTS
Social and Environmental Responsibility and Marketing (MKT 470)
Professor: Burcu Tasoluk
Credits: 3 | Winter 2027
This course will cover interactions between society and marketing and marketing’s role and responsibility (in both environmental and social issues) in society. We will take a triple bottom line (People, Planet, Profit) perspective when evaluating these interactions. As such, the impact of social and environmental concerns on marketing actions, consumer behavior and company performance will be discussed in detail. Diverse perspectives from business ethics, strategy, economics, psychology, and sociology will help students adopt different lenses while analyzing a complex array of contemporary marketing issues. Please note that MKT 470 is approved as an elective for the Erb Undergraduate Fellows program curriculum. Ross students who are Erb Fellows can get this course counted towards the 12 credits coursework requirement.
FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS
Sustainable Operations and Supply Chain Management (TO 560)
Professor: Ravi Anupindi
Credits: 2.25 | Winter 2027(A)
Firms today face increasing pressure from activists, investors, and customers, to reduce the environmental impacts of their operations and supply chains as well as uphold basic human rights and labor standards for the people who produce the materials/ components/ products. How is responsibility (for ensuring sustainability) apportioned across the extended value chain that includes the end consumers? This course examines how to design and manage environmentally and socially responsible operations and supply chains.
FOR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Climate Change (EAS 480.001)
Professor: Mo Ombadi
Credits: 3 | Winter 2027
All sectors of society are affected by climate change: science, policy, business, economics, public health, energy, ecosystems, environmental engineering, journalism, religion, etc. This course explores the intersections of these communities and exposes students the factual and contextual elements that will allow effective participation in the adaptation to climate change.
SOCIAL WORK
FOR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Theories and Practices for Community Action and Social Change (SW 350)
Professor: Adisa Chaney
Credits: 3 | Winter 2027
This foundations course for the Community Action and Social Change Minor is designed to prepare students to be informed and active participants in the process of community building and social change. The course uses a multidisciplinary framework to develop competencies that will help students envision what community action and social change look like, identify and implement steps towards social change, build on positive sources of power, indigenous knowledge and experiences of individuals, groups, and communities who are engaged in social change efforts.
FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS
Engaging Social Justice, Diversity, and Oppression in Social Work (SW 505)
Professor: Daicia Price
Credits: 3 | Winter 2027
The course focuses heavily on engaging diversity and differences in social work practice and advancing human rights and social and economic justice, through understanding power and oppression across micro, meso, and macro levels. We will explore the knowledge base that underlies skills needed to work towards justice. These include types and sources of power, multiple social locations, social constructions, social processes, social identities, conflicts, and how all these interact.
FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS
Measuring What Matters: Impact Evaluation and Storytelling for Social Change (SIL 505)
Professor: Ramona Perry
Credits: 3 | Winter 2027
This course equips emerging social impact leaders with the knowledge and practical skills needed to measure, analyze, and communicate impact across nonprofit, public, social enterprise, and private sector contexts. Students will examine how different sectors define and operationalize impact, drawing on research literature, theories of change, and established evaluation frameworks. The course introduces methodologies for assessing impact at program, organizational, and systems levels, including cost analyses and tools that balance mission and financial sustainability.
Still haven’t found what you’re looking for? Check out the UM Impact Roadmap Courses Page for a listing of hundreds of current impact and sustainability courses!