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Similarly, Doug Cahn, Vice President of Human Rights for
Reebok, wrote that,
“At Reebok, I have been tasked with the primary responsibility
for building a global team of policy analysts, project managers,
technical experts and field monitors to address workplace
conditions in our supply chain. It has become clear to me
that few institutions of higher education have taken on the
task of education and training in these areas... Scholarly and
vocational education at a graduate level can play an important
role in supporting corporations to meet their obligations to
social responsibility. Each of the proposed course offerings....
[reflects] precisely the topics that are timely, much needed and
credible in the business community”.
Additionally, Senior Vice President of Manufacturing,
Sourcing, Distribution, and Logistics at Liz Claiborne, Bob
Zane reported that,
“With much of the manufacturing taking place in
underdeveloped and third world countries, questions and
concerns continue to be raised about conditions encountered
by workers. While a host of agencies, industry associations,
labor organizations and NGOs have demonstrated great
interest in the field, there has been little scholastic or academic
involvement. Given the importance of the subject, and its far
reaching ramifications, we feel that all constituencies would
be well served by the development of an appropriate course
of study, at the post-baccalaureate level. To the extent that
industry leaders and other concerned parties benefit from
enhanced knowledge and balanced perspective, so will the
cause of workers around the world be furthered.”
The project was funded by the US Department of
Agriculture in 2004 and we have made excellent progress
toward these goals.
dEVElopMEnt oF thE coursEs
Toward the first objective, we developed learning goals
for the courses we would create based on 22 in-depth
interviews with corporate executives and leaders of
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved with
global issues of social responsibility and environmental
sustainability. These interviews confirmed the need to
incorporate learning about macro factors (e.g. political,
cultural, economic) that influence the ability to implement
social responsibility programs, as well as to address
the specifics of labor compliance in the workplace and
environmentally sustainable design and production.
As we carried out the interviews with executives and
leaders of NGOs, we realized that it would be better
to create several short, 1-credit courses with focused
topics, rather than the more typical 3-credit courses we
had originally envisioned. There was an obvious need
for working professionals to take the courses, as well
as traditional graduate students who would be joining
the industry upon completion of their education, and
we believed the 1-credit courses would provide greater
flexibility for their enrollment.
We developed course syllabi for ten 1-credit courses
each focused on a particular topic associated with social
responsibility in textile, apparel, and footwear supply chains.
The Office of Educational Innovation and Evaluation at
Kansas State University developed and administered
an online survey of industry experts to review the
importance of the objectives of the courses, and the extent
the objective would be met by planned activities for each
1-credit course. All eight industry experts who participated
agreed that the objectives included in each syllabus were
important and that students would meet the objectives
with the planned course activities.
pEdagogy and InstItutIonal approachEs