Queen's School of Business - Queen's School of Business Centre for Responsible Leadership - Earn A Certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility (CCSR)

Corporate Social Responsibility is a truly multidisciplinary topic whereby businesses are increasingly integrating Corporate Social Responsibility strategies into every functional domain. While the Bachelor of Commerce Program offers many courses that address a variety of Corporate Social Responsibility issues, the purpose of the Certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility program is to offer students an experience-based, integrative exposure to this emerging and dynamic field of business practice. Students who complete the requirements for the Certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility will have developed the ability to recognize the strategic dilemmas and opportunities for all aspects of the firm in implementing Corporate Social Responsibility strategies. These students will also bring to their firms leading edge thinking in Corporate Social Responsibility – a domain of business practice that the Conference Board of Canada has called the business issue of the 21st century.

Objectives
The CCSR program has been designed to meet three objectives:

Provide an experiential, integrative, substantive, and high quality experience surrounding issues of Corporate Social Responsibility for Commerce students who choose this accreditation option;
Allow students to achieve a Certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility without requiring participating students to change their curriculum plan towards the completion of their Commerce degree;
To provide participating students with a truly unique curriculum experience not offered in any other Commerce program in Canada.

Program Structure and Requirements
In addition to receiving a Bachelor of Commerce degree, students have the option of earning a Certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility by completing the following four requirements:

Fully participate in three “CSR Weekends” over the four years the student is in the Commerce program.

Each year, a weekend will be designated as “CSR Weekend”. A unique curriculum will be presented for each level in the Commerce Program. The curriculum during this weekend will involve a mix of lectures, case studies, simulation exercises, guest speakers, debates, and other creative activities. Some activities (such as special guest speakers) may be shared by all years. The spirit behind the curriculum for the “CSR Weekend” is to provide a conceptual “umbrella” that allows students to integrate CSR related material they may have been exposed to throughout their regular curriculum, and provide added CSR insight they can apply in the future.

Pass an evaluative component after each of the three “CSR Weekends”.

For each “CSR Weekend” that the student participates in, he/she will be required to complete an evaluative component. The evaluative component may be in the form of a written test, case study or any other format that is consistent with the curriculum the student was exposed to in that year. The evaluative component is designed to evaluate the student’s ability to integrate a CSR approach towards common business issues consistent with that student’s level in the Commerce program. The student will be graded on a pass/fail basis.

Actively participate in approved outreach activities in each year the student is in the Commerce program (total of 60 hours).

A student must complete a minimum of 10 hours of approved outreach activity in the first year of the program, 10 hours in one other year of the program, and 20 hours in each of the remaining two years of the program for a total of 60 hours (minimum). Queen’s School of Business will partner with specific not-for-profit organizations. Part of this partnership will involve opportunities for students to volunteer their time in working on designated projects for the not-for-profit organization.

Students must complete 2.0 credits from an approved list of “CSR/Ethics” courses.

As part of the student's selection of electives during the four years in the Commerce Program, the student must complete 2.0 credits from an approved list of Ethics/CSR courses. Of those, 1.0 credit must be from courses offered by Queen's School of Business, and the remaining 1.0 credit can be obtained through Arts & Science courses offered by the University.