2026 PRME Education Award

Rachel Brooks, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland

Judith Walls, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland

The Base Camp advances responsible management education through its development of an embedded understanding of sustainability using place-based pedagogy that shifts business students' worldviews and competencies for responsible leadership.

Through critical, transformative, and student-centered learning, the Base Camp addresses a persistent gap in business education: sustainability is often taught through a weak paradigm that implies manageable trade-offs and win-wins, rather than confronting the interdependence of economy, society, and nature.

In the Base Camp, students consider how a mountain town in Switzerland addresses sustainable ski and mountain biking infrastructure (SDGs 9 and 12), changing climate and forest landscapes (SDGs 13 and 15), water use (SDGs 12 and 14), communities affected by tourism and housing costs (SDGs 8 and 10), farmers engaging in regenerative agriculture (SDGs 12 and 15), and how stakeholders from the town, industry, and beyond collaborate (SDG 17).

Through these experiences, students develop the values and competencies needed to lead progress on complex societal challenges.

Conventional classroom approaches transmit sustainability knowledge yet struggle to cultivate perspective shifts that promote responsible action. The Base Camp addresses this by treating place as a pedagogical actor: immersion both in nature and lived local realities spark “disorienting dilemmas”, prompting students to examine assumptions embedded in neoclassical economic paradigms and human exceptionalism. This enables them to reframe management as stewardship within social-ecological systems.

Aligned with the European Union’s GreenComp (2022), the Base Camp embodies sustainability values, complexity, interconnectedness, envisioning sustainability futures, and action. Students (1) build connection to place and peers (hike/land-art), (2) engage deeply with diverse stakeholders through exchange, site visits, and interviews, (3) undertake an overnight nature immersion involving shelter-building, shared meals cooked over fire, and reflection, and (4) prototype a 2060 vision for the town. Students later test their proposals with local stakeholders, enabling iteration and increasing practical relevance.

The Base Camp offers an example of how to leverage a transformative, experiential approach to integrating sustainability and responsibility into the educational journey of business students.