In Episode 3 of SAF Ready the Podcast, Sam is joined by professor Jennifer Lynes Murray, co-director of the recently unveiled Sustainability and Financial Management program. Jennifer explores the distinctive advantages of this groundbreaking initiative, emphasizing its crucial role in addressing the current shortage of financial professionals who can link people, profits, and the planet into the bottom line.
In Episode 3 of SAF Ready the Podcast, Sam is joined by professor Jennifer Lynes Murray, co-director of the recently unveiled Sustainability and Financial Management program. Jennifer explores the distinctive advantages of this groundbreaking initiative, emphasizing its crucial role in addressing the current shortage of financial professionals who can link people, profits, and the planet into the bottom line.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to SAF Ready the Podcast here at the University of Waterloo. On this podcast, we'll have a variety of guests, students, faculty and staff to let you all in on what the School of Accounting and Finance has to offer. I'm Sam, and I'll be your host. We want to ensure that you're hearing everything that you want to know about the School of Accounting Finance. So after listening to this episode, feel free to DM us on a variety of social chains as well as send us an email at saf@uwaterloo.ca with any more questions, topics, or people that you want to hear from. Tune in soon for our next episode on Buzzsprout, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Honestly, any platform that offers a podcast, we're most likely there. Today we have Dr. Jennifer Lynes Murray thanks so much for joining us today. Hi. And she's here to talk about our latest addition to the School of Accounting Finance, the Sustainability and Financial Management program. All right. So we're just going to dive right in here. So how long have you been a part of the university and kind of like what's your like role now? Yeah, so I've been here since 2004, so I'm coming up to almost 20 years. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's exciting. And when I first started, I was hired for to be part of the Environment Business program. So I was the first official hire of that program, which started way back then and now I'm co-director of the Sustainability and Financial Management Program. And prior to that I spent six years as director of the Environment and Business Program. That's so cool. That's amazing. So, yeah, I guess like the kind of the main question really is what Sustainability and Financial Management? For me, Sustainability and Financial Management is the future of accounting. Oh yeah, so management. So students do a lot of the same things that you would do in an accounting degree, in fact like 50% of their courses are AFM courses, accounting courses, 25% are what we call integrated courses. So they sort of integrate sustainability and financial management together. And then the remaining 25% are environment courses. And if you you do get a few electives, not many, but a couple of electives at the end. That's fun. So the benefits of being a joint program between the Faculty of Environment and the School of Accounting and Finance is that you get the best of, you know, resources of both those faculties. And we've both been doing this for a long time. Like I said, we've been doing environment and business for like two decades now. Oh wow. So that integrated approach is something that really sets us apart. We're the only program of its kind in Canada that offers this combined degree. And the other good side is that the course content meets the requirements for the CPAO. So the Chartered Professional Accounting of Ontario. And so that means that you can work. There's two pathways you can work towards your CPA or CFA. I mean, we have three different specializations, so there's lots of ways to fine tune and there's lots of different things you can do with your degree. Yeah, absolutely. And for students who are not 100% sure what those two mean, it just means that when you graduate, you can work towards those two designations so that when you graduate, if you want to be a professional accountant, you get have to get work to those designations. But these programs are really nice because they kind of not, I want to say like directly impact that way through it because you have to do a certain amount of like working hours as well as like studying hours. And these programs are great because they take some of that time away. So you would be taking a lot less years off of trying to get that designation. So if you weren't sure about what those mean, that's kind of that spiel right there. So yeah, if you want to go to a little more detail, what are the specialties that they can work towards? So there's one on a corporate sustainability, and the other one is more like financial management and governance. And then we have a third one that we're going to be starting to offer soon on Indigenous entrepreneurship, which is really exciting. Oh cool. Yeah, that's awesome. So they get to like, do they pick those in like one of the that kind of like that decision process that's going to happen. You know, so our our first cohort of students is they're selecting like literally right, right now. Oh yeah? A couple of weeks. So that would be the end of their second year. So the first two years are the same no matter what specialization you're doing. And then third and fourth years, that's where you choose your specialization and your courses become more tailored to that as well. That's really nice, because and then they get like that more like that introductory, especially because like, I know that like myself at 18 I was like, I have no idea for sure what's going to be my future. So it's kind of nice that you get like that introductory and then get a chance to at a university level to explore what you want to do, which is nice. And then you get to really tailor education and you know, it's not like too broad because I feel like you want to find that happy medium when it's not like to generalized. So you're not learning everything you want to learn. And it feels like high school and you're like, Why am I taking this course? I don't need to take this course. So it's nice to have that expansion when you get to those last those later years, which is super, super cool. And just if I could add a point on to that because we've just this is our second cohort that just finishing their first year. So it's a new program and we're still learning how to frame things, I guess, for the students because in our minds we're clear on the pathway, but we have to make sure that we're making that clear as well to to the students that are in the program. And one comment that they had was related to you like, I feel like I'm taking environment a lot of environment courses, like when am I going to be taking accounting courses? But it's sort of designed that way to give you the sustainability as a foundation. And then in, you know, second, third, fourth year, you really get into the accounting and you're taking a lot of the same courses that you would if you're taking an accounting degree plus all the other ones. Absolutely. Yeah. So you get that like best of both worlds, which is nice because you get to like, you have that like kind of that extra, I want to say like edge kind of when you're getting into that, especially now with like so many industries wanting to put that green foot forward and like people are paying a lot more attention now to companies like understanding of their sustainability and their aspects of their business practices. It really kind of gives you that leg up because you kind of have like the understanding of two different people who have just been like environment or business, and I can have that mash-up both, which is super fun. So that actually leads right now to the next question was, yeah. Can you briefly describe the industry changing and how SFM is at the forefront of new business? Well, just like couple of weeks ago, the ISSB, which is the International Sustainability Standards Board, officially issued their inaugural standards. If I want to get technical here, it's the IFRS S-1 and S-2. Okay, So these are new sustainability standards that are going to come into play, and everybody's kind of been waiting to see what are these standards going to look like. So this is these are new standards that accountants and financial management will need to be able to translate into action and metrics. Oh cool. So that's really exciting. And that's exactly what our program is designed to do and to help organizations with. So that's the future is is here. Like I've been doing this for a long time in terms of combining sustainability and business together, but now I feel like everything is coming to a head. It's not just like in previous decades we've seen sort of waves of sustainability come and go, but here I think it's it's here to stay. We know the issues are real and we need to do something about it. And a huge missing piece has been the financial component. So the I read something that was there was an article in The Economist that there is like on average to ESG funds that are launched every day, really. So it's just growing and growing and growing. There's like over $50 trillion invested in ESG funds and that just, you know, keeps keeps on growing. That's crazy. Yeah, I know. We had one of the students come on the episode, like a few weeks ago, and she was talking about how like for auditing, she does like, like she did like an auditing contest, like a competition. And they were talking about ESG using like, they're like the ideas and like, that's what, like put them over the edge was the winning of like for just like, simply, like fashion, like if you want to go shopping and want to see an ESG rating, like it's becoming so popular and I think it's so important to like now that it's like in business practices because like, I feel like everyone wants to be sustainable, but not everyone's like, I got to like, start doing it. And then like, actually, like, do it. So when it's like being put right in our faces and like, we can actually, like, do it ourselves. Now I feel like that's just going to like, push it over the edge and make it a lot more effective. Yes, and that's definitely where we need to go. But the issue is that we don't have enough people out there that know how to do this. Exactly. And when it comes to metrics and measuring and generally refining that ESG. So that's environmental and social governance. Corporate governance is lacking like transparency. And that's on the marketing side as well as the numbers side. So both of those need to be in place and people need to be able to trust companies and actually see what they're doing. So if they're in if they want to, you know, invest in a, you know, a green company, like, yeah, what is it exactly that's sustainable that your organization. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No hundred percent So yeah you just kind of moves through now we're just kind of diving back into the, like the program itself. So would you say that there's like opportunity to work towards like different areas of accounting in finance or like when you hear the title like sustainability financial management, I think it's like a perception that the students are like, it's just finance, but is there like room to play and kind of like where you can go with those specializations and things like that? Yeah, definitely. And as I mentioned before, we have these three specializations. So those are areas that you can specialize in, but as for what you do afterwards, it doesn't mean that ties you into being an accountant or a financial manager. I think there are going to be a lot of opportunities in terms of consulting for strategy related to ESG, you know, sustainability roles in organizations. So if you find like while you're doing your degree, you know, I don't know if I actually want to be, you know, what we call a bean counter, a green bean counter. But I want to do something else. There's I think this degree will really give you like that edge and that range. And no matter what you do in life, like having some financial background and an accounting like even for your everyday life. So it's never going to be a bad thing. No, I remember like learning what? Like just like the basics of what an accountable spreadsheet was. I guess this is just going to make budgeting my life so much easier, even just like in my university. Yeah. So good day to day accounting, investing. Yeah. Saving money. I know everyone's hearing about like, your money's not money if it's just sitting in a bank account and so all stuff. But yeah, but yeah, so as some of you may or may not know SFM is a newly recent program, we just were talking about how our first cohort is in entering their third year. The second year, our very first sort of pilot cohort is going into their third year. Yeah. Slash their second work term. Okay. Yeah. So it is often can leave students wondering where they can go after graduation. So what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. So they can, they can go many different directions and you know, some of the specializations like in corporate sustainability, can lead to, you know, corporate like eventually see CSO, yeah. Like a Corporate Sustainability Officer or you could, as I mentioned, do a consulting, strategy consulting in corporate accounting and finance so you could work in capital markets. And so or maybe nothing to do with finance and management. Maybe you want to start your own company and all of this is is going to help you. And if you decide you want to do that. The University of Waterloo also has a lot of resources available to help you with startups and so forth. Yeah. What's a velocity? Velocity. Yeah. And we also have green hose, which is specific to social enterprise. Oh really? Yeah, I didn’t know about that. That's cool. I go here. I should know that it's based out of United College, okay. It's across Laurel Creek there. Yeah. Yeah. So they. They've had some great startups come through there as well. Amazing. Yeah. when you're focusing on the environment specifically alone, it can be like we want to take the business out of it because we want to feel like we're just like fully focused on the environment. But the reality is, is if we're going to make a move, I think in real life, like everything unfortunately comes back down to the dollar. So you got to really like it's nice that it's something that blends the two of them and actually like puts the reality of what the real world is experiencing versus just what we want the world to be. Yeah. And that we often talk in, you know, some of the foundational courses for sustainability. We've got these three, it's like that three legged stool or three pillars where you have social, environment, and financial. So the financial component is really important to sustainability from a number of different angles. So yeah, yeah, we really need to keep that balance. Yeah. Of, of looking at the three of them. So if we just look at them as separate courses, that's not really going to see like we're not going to be able to see how they can expand. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Is there anything else that you kind of wanted to talk about? And I was going to kind of go in a little bit about the co-op jobs or do you have kind of more background information or is there anything else you want to talk on? Well, so so far, the the first cohort, they they completed their first co-op term this past winter. yeah. Because they're heading into it's like 2B you start, no, yeah, 2B be there on campus now And so they all got jobs. Wow. Yeah. So that was great in a variety of some in consulting, some like with the big four, some with small sort of boutique accounting firms and some specifically doing stuff related to ESG. And I think like students have to keep in mind just in general, like in general, no matter what program you're in, your first co-op job might not be exactly what you think you're going to get. It's it's just an initial experience. And then, and I'm not saying that the students weren't able to get the jobs that they wanted, but it's some it sort of evolves as you go up through, you know, your difference for different co-op terms. You have you become more specialized. So the first one might be a little bit more general and then some of your upper year ones. But yeah, all the students seemed super happy with their co-op experiences and I guess if I had to say anything else about the program, generally like I've been here before in the sense of I've started, I've been part of programs that have started from the ground up. Yeah, in back in the early 2000s when we were starting the Environment and Business program, we had a lot of interest in the program from the students. What we found harder was trying to get employers on board like to hire co-op students because they might have been used to the more typical. Yeah, business or a lot of the jobs where like they'd actually hire management science or engineering students. So this part of the students, when they were doing their interviews, was actually trying to convince the employer that they knew more and they were better suited for the job than an engineer. Yeah, but now it's kind of the opposite. What I'm finding with this program is that there is there's going to be no problem in finding a job after you graduate from this program. Oh yeah? Because especially with these new standards, the consulting companies, financial companies, accounting, insurance, they're all looking for people with this expertise. So that is not going to be an issue there. Just basically when we talk to them like this is amazing, when are they going to finish? Usually they're like, we're ready to hire who has, who needs a contract? Yeah. So it's just a matter of getting, you know, getting the word out there. And with any new program, you know, there's always thing, you know, there's a little wrinkles here and there, but it's like the first two cohort cohorts that we've had so far have been amazing. A lot of them, it's kind of reignited my love for teaching. They're just so enthusiastic and, and they're pioneers, right? They're going to be the future leaders. So yeah, my, my tagline, which I haven't this is, this is like even here, you've heard it here first because I haven't launched it. A big launch drop. Well the yeah, my, in my head, the tagline for SFM is like the future of accounting and financial management starts here. Yeah! Very like to that point, I love it. Ten out of ten. Yeah. No I, because it's nice too. Like it's, it's kind of, I think that a lot of like when you think about like the general university being like, there's like a thousand kids. I'm a number no one cares. I think that's really cool that SFM still kind of like a smaller cohorts. They really get to know each other and get to know their profs like I have. I had a bunch of students on. I was we did a Q&A session and they were talking about how they like after class, they'll just go and talk up to the professors and like they're like on like a, like, you know, talking terms. They like, they're able to, like, bring up to their concerns not just about that class, but like general life in general classes as well, which I think is like not a rarity in university, but it can feel like one like you feel like you're very like one of the many. Whereas like I feel like what I've been gathering from SFM is that you're not like, you're all like kind of like a family in a sense. Like you were just saying, like, you know, all of them, you love them. They're like, enthusiastic. Like, I feel like I wouldn't be connected to like a larger, like the director of a massive faculty, you know, like, I feel like you get that like one on one connection with, like, your faculty and staff, which is really cool. Yeah. No, I think that's. It's great. We're still small. you know, each cohort, we're aiming for like 40 or 50 students, so that's a really good size. Like, I get to know all of them. I teach the firsts, their first foundational course in SFM Introduction to Sustainable Finance. And yeah, I just by the end of the term, we were, you know, we had a little pizza get togethers and I think we're trying to next week we're trying to organize like a table tennis ice cream social before the end of the summer. Fun! So try to get you more use of those table tennis tables I guess, that are in front of like the quad, in the quad. Yeah, because you can go into the library and and borrow the paddles. But I don't know if a lot of people know that, so I know I feel like to have to bring my own. No, I know that it's the faculty. As faculty. We sometimes do that at lunch time. Just a quick 15 minute. Oh yeah. It's been fun. I mean, you get to see the competitive people that, you know, you wouldn't go with the ones that do bring their own paddles, like, fun. I know. Like my uncle, he wears like that. Whether it goes or sorry, his forehand, them, we're like, that's intense. Yeah. Yeah. He's like ready to go? No, that's super fun. Yeah, No, I love that. Really great. Very big side note, but I think that SFM is super awesome because my personal favourite buildings on campus are the enviro buildings. They are so pretty and so nice. I love going in like that. Like the the outdoor quad space, like the the one where it’s like the I can't remember what it's called but it's in the it's like enviro 2. It's like that nice little study space. So the courtyard. Yeah, the courtyard in the environment one, we have a courtyard which has a beautiful green wall, living wall in front of it and just a really great place to study and we have events there. And then environment three is it was one of the first LEED platinum certified buildings in Ontario Universities. Oh cool. When it was built and it is really an amazing place to work in. My office is in there and you just it's so bright and sunny and there's another living wall, it's like, to be honest, got a little bit damaged during COVID just from lack of lack of love that hopefully, yeah, we're we're bringing it back on track. Here we go. But yeah, it's it's a great place to have classes and things like that. Yeah, I know being in the environment, but I guess, you know, a huge plus with SFM because it's nice to set also that break up of space because I know that they AFM program is in one building so it's nice to have it will be a separation there too. Yeah. And we found like the students, SFM students have really been encouraging them to hang out there. There's lots of study spaces and I see them like gathering little groups, which is great so that they're I want them to feel we want them to feel like they've got two homes. Yeah, Yeah. And I think that's also nice because I think that's also I think another point I was going to bring up is that like the students don't feel disconnected from AFM. I find that like mostly as SFM students, like we have our own space, but we also are like fully integrated into the AFM, like cohort because, I mean, that's where like the 400 plus kids are going for the majority of those classes. So it's nice that they still feel really connected, but also feel like they have their own space to be within their program too, which is really cool. Yeah. And there's a little like quiet undertow of competitiveness, I think between the two, the two, the SFM is and the battling it out in a good way. In a good way, yeah. Competitiveness is not bad. No, As long as it's not taking people down. No. That's all we care about. All in good fun. yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. And if you guys want to tune in next week, we're going to have Ethan on here, who is a current SFM student. So you're going to get both perspectives. So that'll be really, really cool. Ethan's awesome. See, she knows Ethan too, we’ve got all the connections. But yeah, thank you again so much for coming and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.