UIC’s B Impact Clinic: Students Dive into Real-World Sustainability with Local Businesses

Last month, eight companies and seventy students kicked off UIC's first B Impact Clinic. Over the course of this fall semester, UIC students will work directly with business leaders across various industries to create stakeholder maps and learn about driving sustainable results for stakeholders and bottom lines. A Certified B Corporation is a for-profit company that has been certified by B Lab, a nonprofit organization, for meeting rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

At the kick-off event, B Impact Clinic partners shared insights related to the intricacies of the coffee supply chain, the product innovation happening right here in our backyard, how a brewery can make values-aligned decisions every day, how companies are designing buildings for sustainability, how global logistics impacts local communities, the decisions a brewery can make to support stakeholders, the connection between preventing corrosion and advancing UN SDGs.

Through the B Impact Clinic, an experiential learning initiative housed in Professor Shahnaz Ibrahim’s Business and the External Environment course (MGMT 350), twelve teams of undergraduate business students get real-world experience working with eight companies to understand how their business impacts their stakeholders and how they can improve that impact.

This initiative is made possible by the partnership between Professor Shahnaz Ibrahim in the College of Business, B Local Illinois, UIC Innovation, and our B Corp company partners: Metric Coffee, Bluedog Design, Lakefront Brewery, Vector Global Logistics, Merry Go Rounds, Catalyst Partners, Global Brand and Export Development, and ICE Dragon Corrosion.

To learn more about how UIC Innovation can support sustainability-focused corporate partnerships in your classes, labs, or other programs, please contact Avi Mayerhoff at avim@uic.edu.