The interaction of technology with sustainability efforts was the focus of an April 12 conference at the Naveen Jindal School of Management.
“Sustech Flow – from Theory to Practice” was hosted by the Center for Information Technology and Management (CITM) in collaboration with the ASCM UTD Student Forum. Jindal School faculty members Dr. Ramesh Subramoniam, clinical associate professor in the Operations Management Area and director of undergraduate research, and Kannan Srikanth, associate professor of practice in the Information Systems Area, opened the conference.
The Industry Keynote speaker was Billy J. Frank, vice president of sales and marketing of Caterpillar Inc.’s Remanufacturing Division in Dallas.
“Remanufacturing is taking used parts, taking them apart, cleaning them, making them like new and reusing them,” he said. “Caterpillar has been doing this for 50 years. Last year we returned 140 million pounds of remanufactured parts to use.”
Dr. Donald Huisingh, senior advisor of the Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment at the University of Tennessee was the academic keynote speaker. His presentation centered on the progress society has made toward creating a sustainable environment. Dr. Huisingh also did a preconference workshop on April 11 on “How to write, publish high quality papers in top journals” for JSOM research students.
“We need to have sustainable changes that emphasize prevention, make changes in education, and divest the use of fossil fuels.”
The energy panel, moderated by Dr. Inessa Yurchenko, a lecturer in the Sustainable Earth System Sciences Area at The University of Texas at Dallas’ School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, was comprised of Debby Devadason, senior advisory Consultant at Amazon Web Services, Dallas; Damodaran Raghu, founder and managing partner of Kaleidoscope Energy LLC in Houston; Dr. Kaushal Kumar Jha, founder and PI of NoonRay Energy Pvt. Ltd. and CEO of Center for Battery Engineering and Electric Vehicle at IIT Madras, Chennai, India.
“The key (to bringing about changes) is data,” Devadason said. “We are able to get more data and that brings information to the people. The data speaks.”
Members of the University Panel discussed their challenges with AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education) reporting.
The panel was moderated by Dr. Subramoniam. Members were Avery McKitrick, senior sustainability coordinator, UT Dallas; Sunil Cherian, CEO and co-founder, Copperwire System, LLC, Palo Alto, CA; Brandon Morton, director of economic development at Dallas College; Rebecca Jones, coordinator of the Center for Environmental Studies at Austin College in Sherman, TX: and Mashaal Atif Butt, sustainability program manager at the University of Texas Arlington.
Time and staffing issues were the biggest challenge according to all of the panel members.
“Collecting all of the data and information for the report requires a huge time commitment, and staff turnover sometimes means I lose my contact person in a certain department (which slows the process),” McKitrick said.
In addition to the information sessions, representatives of several corporations were on hand to talk with students interested in internships.
The conference also held two competitions with cash prizes for students. First prize in the poster competition went to Ryan Kunz, a JSOM exchange student from OST, Switzerland. And second prize is won by a team of three UTD Students – Prajeethreddy Bhuma, a finance sophomore; Nidhi Gelli, a business a business analytics sophomore; and Tejas Ramanujam, a software engineering sophomore in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science.
SAP executives Geeta Menon and Sethu Sethuraman talked about the Sustainability solutions integrated in SAP. Dr. Habte Woldu, a clinical professor in the Organizations, Strategy and International Management Area at the Jindal School, discussed the projects undertaken by the Sustainable Global Business Initiative.
In the Reflections contest, a speech competition based on information learned at the conference, first place winners were Sara S. Bobby, a supply chain management graduate student; Hudson Sampson, a finance sophomore; Krithika A. Patali, an information technology and management graduate student); Vinal Jain, a business analytics graduate student; and Shashipurna Kurapati, a business analytics graduate student.
Plans are underway to expand the conference next year, according to Srikanth. “We want to open it up to other institutions,” he said, “and particularly to high school students.”
