MEMBER BENEFITS
Overview
As a member of the RISE Forum, your company will receive the following 鈥淢ember Benefits鈥� on an annual basis:
- Attendance (2 representatives) at the semiannual (fall and spring) RISE Forum meetings
- A sustainable engineering study performed by graduate student teams
- A faculty consultation session (four-hour) at your facility
Annual Leadership Symposium
Presentations and break-out sessions address members鈥� most critical sustainability issues and members receive process-based tools and methodologies that can be implemented within their respective organizations. The symposium highlights 鈥渘ext practices鈥� for the sustainable enterprise as well as the latest research on topics of mutual interest. The symposium also provides members opportunities for cross-sector benchmarking and peer-to-peer networking.
Consulting Projects
Each year, members will be assigned a team of MSSE graduate students and a faculty mentor to complete a company-defined sustainability consulting project. These projects provide our students an invaluable opportunity to work on a real-world, company-defined problem statement, while our members receive an empirically-based report detailing the true life cycle impacts/benefits associated with various technological or operational solutions.
Our faculty and students possess expertise in areas such as:
- Carbon Footprint Studies
- Life Cycle and Material/Energy Assessments
- Sustainable Supply Chain
- Stakeholder Reporting
- Metrics and Energy/Water Conservation
These consulting projects not only solve critical issues, they provide members opportunities to deepen their knowledge base by working directly with faculty and students.
Annual Case Study Symposium
Consulting teams present findings and recommendations to members, providing opportunities for cross-sector knowledge transfer and information exchange. Research studies conducted by MSSE faculty and students (outside of the scope of RISE) also are presented.
This symposium provides members the opportunity to network with and recruit graduate students for summer internships and full time employment. Faculty also propose a series of applied sustainable engineering projects and members select one or two projects (by majority vote) to be funded through a portion of membership fees. The findings from these thesis-level projects have broad benefits for all members and are presented at the subsequent Case Study Symposium.
Executive and Employee Education
Members (and their employees) receive free access to our online suite of six interactive learning modules that provide a comprehensive overview of the Sustainable Engineering discipline. Based upon member feedback, additional online modules will be made available (drawn from the MSSE curriculum) that address critical problems of organizational sustainability.
Members also have the opportunity to work directly with MSSE faculty to create a fully customized e-learning program for their employees and fellow executives. These customized programs incorporate materials from MSSE鈥檚 core and technical courses as well as company-specific sustainability strategies. RISE members receive a discounted rate to develop these customized executive and employee education programs.