By:Adam Cohen Issue: Conscious Capitalism Section: Advisory Board
Director, Curriculum Emphasis on Social Responsibility, Leeds School of Business
Dr. Donna Sockell
Leeds School of Business 345L Koelbel 419 UCB University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309
p: 303-492-3937 E: [email protected] w: http://leeds.colorado.edu
Dr. Donna Sockell, an accomplished scholar, came to the Leeds School of Business in 2005 to focus on her love of teaching in the classroom. She is the Founder and Director of the Curriculum Emphasis on Social Responsibility (CESR) at the Leeds School of Business, a program (launched in 2006) that is exceptional in undergraduate business education. Facilitated in large part by the Leeds’ family gift, CESR is responsible for the infusion of discussions of values and social responsibility at all levels of the required undergraduate curriculum in business, including the design and teaching of two dedicated classes at the freshman and junior levels. Donna’s program currently oversees the offering of over 10,000 credit hours at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Hallmarks of Donna’s efforts are creative electives that involve experiential learning through exposure to executives and real world problems. Donna also has collaborated in the development of a sustainability portfolio for graduate students at Leeds.
In addition to being responsible for CESR’s curriculum efforts, Donna directs CESR in projects outside the classroom. Through CESR, Donna conceived of Leeds’ Professional Mentorship Program, which pairs juniors in 2-year mentoring relationships with professionals in their field of interest. CESR spearheads this effort and collaborates with a school-wide group of programs to offer the Professional Mentorship Program. CESR is also collaborating with ICOSA to host a conference on Conscious Capitalism, where students from all major Colorado universities can learn from business people who make money by operating businesses that help solve society’s problems. Finally, Donna remains active as a senior instructor at the school and is the recipient of the 2009 Frascona Award for outstanding teacher of the year.
Prior to joining the University of Colorado, Donna spent several years at Rutgers University where she was a Full Professor and Director of Credit Programs for the Labor Education Department. During her tenure at Rutgers, her major programmatic accomplishment was the development of a 5-year masters program which entailed the design of the program through the process of gaining university approval. In the early 1980s, Donna served as an award-winning Associate and Assistant Professor at Columbia University and State University of New York at Binghamton. While at Columbia University, Donna was a facilitator of cases on organizational change for middle and upper-level executives and developed a program for IBM offered through the Graduate School of Business at Columbia.
Donna earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University and acquired her Master’s Degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations also from Cornell University. Donna obtained her Bachelor of Arts in 1977 with a major in Economics from Union College in New York. Donna holds a “Type D” Principal Licensure from the Boulder Valley School Leadership Academy from the University of Colorado at Denver.
Donna has authored or co-authored more than 25 articles in scholarly venues. From 1985-1992 she served as an Editor for Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations. From 1991-1993, she was elected and served as member of the Executive Board for the Industrial Relations Research Association. She has taught extensively and presented regularly to management and labor groups on topics ranging from discipline issues, legal developments and organizational change. She also actively presented numerous papers and served as discussant at meetings of organizations including: Southern Economic Association, the Academy of Management, Industrial Relations Research Association, Western Economics Association, the American Sociological Association, and the Law and Economics Association. Active in consulting, Donna designed and taught ethics courses for organizations such as the NY Commodities Exchange, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Future Industries Institute, among others. For fun, she co-authored Julia’s Journey, a fantasy designed for children, which has been used in several classes in New York and Colorado.