USA Lab Class Honored with "Ideas Worth Teaching" Award

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MIT Sloan's "USA Lab: Bridging the American Divides" course has won a 2019 Ideas Worth Teaching Award from the Aspen Institute's Business & Society Program.

Through the 2019 Ideas Worth Teaching Award, the Aspen Institute is recognizing 10 exceptional courses and the faculty who teach them. This award honors faculty who are redefining business education – providing learning experiences that equip managers of tomorrow with the context, skills, and decision-making capabilities needed to lead in an increasingly complex business environment – and world.

USA Lab is an innovative Action Learning class at MIT Sloan that was developed by the  Good Companies, Good Jobs Initiative of the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER)  in partnership with the MIT Mens et Manus America Initiative and MIT Sloan Action Learning. The course is designed to broaden and deepen students' understanding of America's economic, cultural, and social challenges. Throughout the semester-long course, students grapple with the historical and modern-day complexities of the U.S.'s challenges through readings, interviews, and discussion. During Sloan Intensive Period (SIP) and spring break, student teams work on-site with local community groups in various parts of the country -- including economic development organizations, community finance institutions, and community foundations -- on projects that address problems relevant to particular regions.

Launched in 2018, USA Lab was developed and is taught by Barbara Dyer, Executive Director of the Good Companies, Good Jobs Initiative and a Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan; Thomas Kochan, the George M. Bunker Professor of Management at MIT Sloan; MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer Leigh Hafrey; and MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer Christine Kelly. In the Spring 2020 class, Caesar L. McDowell, Professor of the Practice of Community Development in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, will join the USA Lab teaching team.

This year’s announcement of the Ideas Worth Teaching Awards comes at a time when capitalism is being questioned by wider society and business is coming to terms with its immense agency to impact societal health and well-being. Through everyday decisions, business leaders have the power to collectively re-imagine and construct a future that produces better outcomes for all. That future depends on a new set of frameworks, on a new understanding of the purpose of business.

“Since the 1980s, the prevailing ideas in management education have bolstered a version of capitalism that externalizes costs and discounts the future,” said Judy Samuelson, Executive Director of the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program. “The teachers and scholars we celebrate here are challenging conventional thinking and testing new approaches to issues that divide us: deep distrust in institutions, fractured public debates, and crises like climate and economic inequality. Our ten 2019 Ideas Worth Teaching Award-winning courses offer a strong signal about the future of management education.”

"We are honored to have USA Lab recognized by this award from the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program,"  Barbara Dyer said. "We deeply value the groundbreaking work that the Business & Society Program does to make business a more principled actor across the globe."

Read more about USA Lab and all of the 2019 Ideas Worth Teaching Award winners.