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In July 2024, Sarah was invited to be a speaker in an online webinar hosted by the Illinois Green Alliance. Below are the event details:

Join Illinois Green for an examination of how Illinois universities are advancing cutting edge research on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) in the built environment. This panel of leading Illinois professors and researchers will explore how interdisciplinary sustainability research is driving positive change across the building industry. Research topics include sustainability practices in business management and the ways in which data-informed decisions are reducing human health risks and energy consumption in the built environment. Each expert will provide an overview of their research—starting with recent successes impacting the industry and finishing with an exclusive preview of what’s still in the pipeline. Each speaker’s research can stand alone as a testament to the ingenuity that comes from Illinois schools, but together they will provide a unique, comprehensive, and insightful analysis of what the future of ESG might look like. The panel will finish with a Q&A session. Don’t miss the opportunity to explore how the building industry will be changed by innovative ESG practices.

Conference: AIB 2024

In July 2024, Sarah attended the Academy of International Business conference in Seoul, South Korea. She was invited to be a facilitator for the AIB Reviewing Workshop. She also presented a paper titled “Trash to Trousers” co-authored by Dr. Elizabeth Napier.

Conference: IFW 2024

In June 2024, Sarah attended the Insects to Feed the World conference in Singapore.

Conference: Circularity 24

In May 2024, Sarah volunteered at and attended Circularity 24 in Chicago, IL, USA. She met up with colleagues and made new connections at this valuable industry conference.

Interview: Loyola Phoenix student newspaper

In April 2024, Sarah was interviewed on the upcoming cicada emergence. Read the full story here.

In May 2024, she foraged Brood XIII cicadas with colleague Dr. Ray Dybzinski at the Loyola University Retreat & Ecology Center (LUREC) in Woodstock, IL. She has many bags of them in her freezer and continues to experiment with different recipes to highlight their unique flavor and texture profiles. These particular delicacies are only available every 17 years!

Volunteer: Loyola Waste Audit 2024

In April 2024, Sarah volunteered to sort trash, recycling, and composting samples from across the Loyola campus. This process helps Loyola better understand waste, recycling, and organics on campus and develop communications and strategies to reduce overall waste generation and divert more materials from the landfill as part of the Zero Waste Plan. This waste audit was conducted in collaboration with the Zero Waste team at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC).

Panelist: Waste Week 2024

In February 2024, Sarah participated in Loyola’s Waste Week, which occurs every February. She was invited by the Student Environmental Alliance to participate on a faculty panel for Waste Week about bridging disciplines in waste. The next day, Sarah took students on a field trip to tour Lakeshore Recycling Systems.

Field trips

In October 2023, Sarah took students on field trips to Plant Chicago and Lakeshore Recycling Systems. These off-campus experiences enable students to learn about real-world organizations trying to implement sustainability and circularity for the city of Chicago.

Conference: AOM 2023

In August 2023, Sarah attended the Academy of Management conference in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. She presented her paper titled “Stakeholder Governance: Interdisciplinary Review, Theoretical Synthesis, and Future Research”. She also got to reunite with many colleagues.

Participant: Cob workshop

In May 2023, Sarah and colleague Dr. Brian Ohsowski participated in a week-long workshop in Jonesboro, Tennessee on how to build a cob house. Cob is a natural building material made from a mixture of clay, sand, water, and straw.

They experimented with adding varying percentages of biochar to cob mixtures to gauge a threshold of how much could be added while maintaining the material’s integrity. Adding biochar could enable structures built with cob to sequester carbon.

They have plans to build an outdoor cob oven together on Brian’s property in Michigan!

Interview: Abrams Sustainable Business Challenge

The Abrams Sustainable Business Challenge is an immersive learning experience that helps Loyola students envision, plan, and launch green businesses. Top teams win up to $20,000 to help them get their business concepts off the ground. The registration deadline is February 6, and the final pitch competition takes place in April. However, several spring semester courses are already helping students get started on their sustainable business concepts.

Professors Sarah Ku, April Lane Schuster, and Ugur Uygur teach classes in the Quinlan School of Business and the School of Environmental Sustainability that work in conjunction with the challenge. We interviewed the instructors to learn how these courses incorporate the challenge's goals [read more…]

Invited Presenter: Chicago Conservation Corps

In October 2022, Sarah was invited to present on circular economies for a program through the Chicago Academy of Sciences Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum called Chicago Conservation Corps. This 8-week program offers each cohort opportunities to focus on different parts of sustainability. A recording of this presentation can be found on Sarah’s YouTube account and her slides can be found here.

Interview: School of Environmental Sustainability

Dr. Sarah Ku, newly-appointed assistant professor of sustainable business management at Loyola, joined the SES community this fall to serve as a bridge between the fields of environmental science and business. Her dissertation research entitled Stakeholder Governance: Empirical and Theoretical Developments was recently accepted into [read more…]

Recognition: Responsible Research in Business and Management

Two of Sarah’s research publications were accepted into the Honor Roll of Responsible Research in Business and Management:

• Dissertation research: “Stakeholder Governance: Empirical and Theoretical Developments”

• AIB Insights article: “MNE Opportunities to Lead Global Sustainable Development through Food Waste Recycling“

Interview: Loyola Phoenix student newspaper

In September 2022, Sarah was interviewed for the Loyola Phoenix, the award-winning student newspaper of Loyola University Chicago. The story, titled “A Fashion Revolution: Loyola Students Fight Fast Fashion“, describes various campus perspectives on sustainable fashion.

Conference: AIB 2022

Sarah presented research titled “Developing Grounded Theory from Case Studies of Organizational Food Waste“ at the Academy of International Business 2022 Annual Meeting held in Miami, Florida, USA in July 2022.

She served as track chair for a competitive session titled “MNE and Stakeholder Responses to Environmental Crises” under the track of Sustainability in International Business.

Sarah was also invited to serve as an interviewer in the “AIB Presidents Townhall: The Future of AIB" to ask some important questions to its leaders. This type of public and transparent session is valuable for stimulating awareness and foundational shifts in the priorities, mission, and accountability of any organization. Critical reflection, while sometimes uncomfortable, is necessary to stay relevant and innovative in a modern world.

She remains actively involved in the Sustainability and Women in AIB (WAIB) shared interest groups.

Publication: MNE Opportunities to Lead Global Sustainable Development through Food Waste Recycling

In March 2022, Sarah published an article in AIB Insights, the Academy of International Business official publication that provides an outlet for short, interesting, topical, current, and thought-provoking articles.

Food waste is a global problem. When discarded into landfills through traditional municipal solid waste disposal, food waste is costly, contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, and highlights disparities of food insecurity. Government and retail campaigns overwhelmingly target consumers as responsible actors for tackling food waste through prevention, reduction, and recovery activities. Multinational enterprises (MNEs), however, play significant roles in contributing to global food waste and therefore must also face responsibility for contributing to sustainable solutions. The organizational management of food waste through recycling strategies confronts multiple United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) with economic, environmental, and social implications. [read more...]

Ku, S. (2022). MNE Opportunities to Lead Global Sustainable Development through Food Waste Recycling. AIB Insights. https://doi.org/10.46697/001c.32991.

Invited Panelist: Academic Career in Sustainability: A Workshop for PhDs and ECRs

The Academy of International Business Sustainability Shared Interest Group hosted a workshop in March 2022 for PhD candidates and early career researchers. Sarah, Marc Oberhauser, Marina Schmitz, and Haitao Yu shared their experiences, challenges, and insights on their career paths and had open discussions with participants to answer their questions. This session was co-moderated by Shasha Zhao and John Dilyard, who are also the co-chairs of the Academy of International Business Sustainability Shared Interest Group.

Invited Presenter: Georgia Institute of Technology

Sarah was invited back to speak to Professor David Ku’s Cutting-Edge Technologies undergraduate class at Georgia Institute of Technology in January 2022. She presented opportunities to include and incorporate bugs and biomimicry into business for sustainable solutions.

Continuing Education Credit: Compost Manufacturing Safety Training

Sarah completed a Compost Manufacturing Safety Training workshop hosted by the US Composting Council in December 2021.

Invited Panelist: Ask Me Anything

Sarah and two professors from the Robinson College of Business, Songqi Liu and Likoebe Maruping, shared their experiences about pursuing a PhD in business in an Ask Me Anything session hosted by Georgia State University’s Honors Experience in Business. Attendees had the opportunity to ask a current graduate student and RCB faculty all about the PhD process and what someone can do with a PhD in business. This session occurred in-person and virtually in November 2021.

Service: Communications Officer for AIB Sustainability SIG

Sarah became a Communications Officer of the Academy of International Business (AIB) Sustainability Shared Interest Group (SIG) in October 2021. The AIB Sustainability SIG is a network of scholars dedicated to exchanging knowledge across the wide range of academic subfields related to international business, creating greater connectivity around issues of sustainability, and informing current IB theories, practices, and policies.

• Co-Chairs: Shasha Zhao | John Dilyard

• Communications Officers: Sarah Ku | Hinrich Voss | Maria Ilieva

• Engagement Officers: Sandra Seno-Alday | Marina Schmitz | Haitao Yu

• Finance & Administration Officers: Marc Oberhauser | Christian Keen | Ines Villafana

• Events & Webinar Officers: Glen Muschert | Martin Heinberg

Conference: GCSHE 2021

Sarah led a Networking and Discussion Group about “Collaborations for Campus Composting” at the Global Conference on Sustainability in Higher Education hosted by The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education held virtually in October 2021.

Invited Presenter: University of Toledo

Sarah was invited to speak during Dr. Elizabeth Napier’s Global Environment of Business undergraduate classes at University of Toledo in October 2021. She presented strategic, circular opportunities for organizations to manage and leverage their own food waste as a resource.

Conference: AIB 2021

Sarah presented research titled “Theoretical Development of Stakeholder Governance Through Waste Management“ at the Academy of International Business 2021 Annual Meeting held virtually in June 2021.

She also served as session chair for an interactive session titled “Different Views on Behaving Socially Responsibly” under the track of Sustainability in International Business.

She remains actively involved in the Sustainability and Women in AIB (WAIB) shared interest groups.

Invited Presenter: Science for Georgia

Science for Georgia invited Sarah to give a talk about Sustainable Business Practices for their Atlanta Science Tavern series. In this session, Sarah discussed specific, feasible actions that every business (and individual) can do to help advance economic, environmental, and social efforts towards a more sustainable future. Science for Georgia works to build a bridge between scientists and the public to advocate for the responsible use of science in public policy. This webinar took place in May 2021.

Sarah was invited by Capgemini’s CARES Sustainability Council for the second time to share sustainability ideas to employees. Previously, she presented to a select group of employees who were specifically interested in sustainability topics. This time, the webinar was open to all Capgemini employees. In this presentation, titled "Bugs IRL: There’s No Debugging These Bugs", Sarah shared different applications of bugs to help shift perceptions of them from pests that should be exterminated to valuable resources that have many important uses.

Capgemini is a global leader in consulting, technology services and digital transformation that has over 270,000 employees in over 50 countries.

This webinar took place in April 2021 during Earth Day week.

Invited Author: Drawdown Georgia

Vehicles account for 43% of Georgia’s CO2 emissions. Transporting people and products makes sense, but much of what we transport is trash. Sanitation work remains an important essential business, but not all of our garbage belongs in a landfill.

Food waste comprises 12% of municipal solid waste in Georgia, which translates to 800,000 tons per year. While a map of composting facilities in Georgia shows alternatives to landfills, it also shows that there is nothing close to the most populated area, Atlanta, which is responsible for half of the state’s food waste.

In the United States, food is most commonly wasted at the consumption stage (rather than the production, processing, distribution, and retail stages), which means that [read more…]

Service: Waste Audit

Sarah volunteered in a back-of-house food waste audit of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in March 2021. We measured waste from 4 restaurants to evaluate various types and quantities of waste. This audit was conducted by the City of Atlanta, led by Natasha Dyer, as a part of the #NRDCFoodMatters Regional Initiative. Results from the audit will help the city determine where improvements can be made on prevention and rescue of wasted food and how much compostable material is in the waste stream.

Invited Presenter: Georgia Institute of Technology

Sarah was invited to present to Professor David Ku’s Cutting-Edge Technologies undergraduate class at Georgia Institute of Technology in February 2021. She presented opportunities to include and incorporate bugs and biomimicry into business for sustainable solutions.

Invited Moderator: GSU CIBER

Sarah moderated a webinar in January 2021 to explore perspectives from early career international business faculty members.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, many junior faculty scholars struggle to adjust to new roles, keep up with research expectations, engage students online, maintain service requirements, juggle personal lives, and maintain mental health. Three early-career faculty discuss challenges, advice, expectations, tips, and opportunities based on their unique experiences. They offer tips for managing time for research, teaching, service, and personal lives; share best practices; expectations vs. reality; and what they wish they had known before commencing their academic careers. Whether you are a doctoral student, a seasoned scholar, or anything in between, join us to gain new insights, receive helpful reminders, and stay bonded as a community.

Conference: IFW 2020

Sarah presented preliminary research titled “Bugs in Schools: Universities Using Insects to Valorize Food Waste” at the 3rd International Insects to Feed the World Conference in November 2020.

Invited Panelist: AIB Sustainability SIG

The first official Academy of International Business Sustainability Shared Interest Group event took place at the AIB-Canada and iBEGIN Conference in November 2020.

Jeremy Clegg, AIB President, introduced this session in which co-chairs John Dilyard and Shasha Zhao first discussed the structure and goals of this special interest group. Sarah, along with Axele Giroud and Oded Shenkar, then discussed sustainability issues that have emerged from the pandemic and what that means for research, teaching, and policy.

Invited Presenter: GSU CIBER

Sarah and her colleagues, Dr. Elizabeth Napier and John Riesenberger, prepared a webinar to share tips and tools on enhancing student engagement and learning through a Student Goal-Centered Syllabus©. They demonstrate how instructors can become more compassionate and effective educators. As we begin to rethink how we connect with our students, there is an opportunity to build greater rapport by understanding their career goals, their need to develop both hard and soft skills, and by placing greater focus on relevant course content.

This webinar was hosted by the Center for International Business Education & Research at Georgia State University in October 2020.

Conference: AIB-SE 2020

Sarah attended the Academy of International Business – US Southeast Chapter Annual Meeting online in October 2020. She participated in the Doctoral Consortium led by John McIntyre and Kelly Hewett.

Sarah was session chair for an interactive session for undergraduate and graduate research.

For the third year in a row, Sarah was nominated for the Best Student Reviewer Award.

Invited Presenter: Capgemini

Sarah was invited to present to Capgemini’s CARES ERG (Sustainability group; CSC) to educate employees about how they can be more sustainable in their daily lives through composting. Capgemini is a global leader in consulting, technology services and digital transformation that has over 270,000 employees in over 50 countries.

This webinar took place in August 2020 and the slides are available here.

Service: GSU RCB PhD Fellows Board

Welcome to the Georgia State University Robinson College of Business PhD Program! The Georgia State University Robinson College of Business PhD Fellows is established for the expressed purpose of fostering a sense of community within the RCB PhD Program and facilitating as well as maintaining valuable relationships both with peers and faculty within the J. Mack Robinson College of Business as well as the wider community of Georgia State University. Please reach out to us anytime!

2020-2021 Board Members
Jung Min (Jeremy) Lee, President
Rongen (Sophia) Zhang, Vice President
Sarah Ku, Secretary
Will Olivera, Treasurer

Conference: Summer AMA 2020

Sarah presented a poster with Dr. Elizabeth Napier at the virtual American Marketing Association Summer Academic Conference in August 2020. This poster, titled “One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Trousers: Food Waste for Sustainable Fashion”, outlines the preliminary framework for a project investigating opportunities for sustainable fashion by using food waste as feedstock. Food waste, such as orange peels, coffee grounds, potato skins, sour milk, and grape skins, can be turned into fiber for textiles. The possibilities are endless when we rotate our perspectives to view waste as a resource.

Conference: AIB 2020

For the second year in a row, Sarah won Best Reviewer Award as identified by the Program Committee to earn special recognition by consistently delivering exemplary feedback at the Academy of International Business 2020 Annual Meeting held virtually in July 2020. She also served as a panel speaker and presented two papers during this conference.

Sarah is a founding member of The Circular Economy in an IB Context thematic group in the Sustainability and International Business Shared Interest Group within the Academy of International Business.

Her panel session, titled “The Role of International Marketing in Encouraging Responsible Production and Consumption”, was chaired by John Dilyard. Along with Rudolf Sinkovics, Gauri Joshi, and Constantinos Leonidou, Sarah discussed how firms can stimulate and lead responsible behaviors for more sustainable business practices.

Interview: Global Atlanta

Locust Plague Prompts GSU PhD Student to Consider Alternative Food Source

Sarah Ku, a doctoral student at Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business, has had an interest in insects since her childhood and currently considers them as a source of nutrition for a world that is scheduled to have 9 billion people to feed.

She is following the crisis and told Global Atlanta that in the past the spread of local swarms were geographically limited. “However, due to changes in climate, their boundaries are becoming less defined,” she added.

“The current devastation is exacerbated by the global pandemic. Millions of people in these regions already experience severe food insecurity and will suffer the greatest during this turbulent time.”

While locust swarms have not landed on U.S. soil, the arrival of aggressive hornets from Japanhave been reported on the West Coast, recalling the invasion of “killer bees” from Mexico in the 1970s. Ms. Ku calls the “murder hornets,” aesthetically intimidating, but not commonly aggressive toward humans.

The “murder hornets” are thought to have come to the U.S. via [read more…]

Publication: The Great Lockdown Recession and International Business

In May 2020, Sarah collaborated with colleagues from her department on a timely article that discusses globalization amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

The global health pandemic and the ensuing global recession has caused unprecedented uncertainty, risks, and devastation to individuals, families, societies, and organizations. In this context, a central question arises: what are the prospects for globalization? This article addresses five pressing questions that [read more...].

Ku, S., Cavusgil, S. T., Ozkan, K. S., Pinho, C. R. D. A., Pinho, M. L. C. D. A., Poliakova, E., ... & Sharma, S. (2020). The Great Lockdown Recession and International Business. Rutgers Business Review, 5(1), 113-135.

Service: Change to Humanity

In April 2020, Sarah began volunteering with Change to Humanity, a local non-profit organization that recovers food from Whole Foods and distributes it to low-income and refugee neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia. The coronavirus pandemic is particularly devastating to these communities. These food donations would end up in a landfill without the assistance of these kinds of organizations.

Conference: ICSD 2020

Sarah was invited to serve on the Scientific Committee for the International Conference on Sustainable Development that will be held online September 21-22, 2020.

On a team with John Dilyard and Sintia Molina, Sarah reviewed and evaluated abstracts for the topic “Food Production, Waste Management, and the Circular Economy.” This session examines how the circular economy, food production, and waste management can meet to provide solutions to the environmental issues posed by food production and waste.

Research: Black Soldier Fly Larvae

Black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) larvae (BSFL) are natural, voracious consumers of food waste and can rapidly turn this resource into nutrient-rich fertilizer. Additionally, the larvae themselves are great for animal feed and can also be converted into biofuels for energy.

Sarah’s research interests involve strategic opportunities of waste management and her dissertation involves decision-making surrounding university campus dining hall food waste. Landfills remain the traditional default destination for food waste despite becoming increasingly costly and dangerous to environments and communities. Sustainable waste solutions, such as BSFL processing/composting, represent feasible, economic alternatives that are currently underutilized. Therefore, Sarah uses the context of food waste to highlight inconsistencies between business theory and practice.

Sarah visited Dr. David Hu’s Biolocomotion Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, USA in January 2020. His student, Olga Shishkov, shared their research on tracking and measuring the movement patterns of BSFL.

Invited Speaker: Emory University

Sarah was invited to present to Emory University Doctor of Nursing Practice students about the intersection of food, business, and medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, USA in November 2019. Specifically, she focused on social determinants of health and how food insecurity impacts consumers and patients.

She also discussed the role of insects as nutritious and sustainable food sources. Upon sharing homemade cookies made from cricket flour with the class, she was pleased to encounter enthusiastic, curious, and adventurous nursing students who weren’t afraid to try edible insects.

Conference: AIB-SE 2019

Sarah presented research in a competitive session and also chaired an interactive session at the Academy of International Business – US Southeast Chapter Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas, USA in October 2019.

For the second year in a row, Sarah was nominated for the Best Student Reviewer Award.

Interview: Global Atlanta

GSU PhD Candidate Seeks to Ally Insects With Humans to Cure the Earth’s Ills

Sarah Ku, a PhD candidate at Georgia State’s Robinson College of Business, has her own vision of how to deal with the earth’s environmental challenges.

Be they how to feed 8.5 billion people by 2030, or how to clean the pollution coagulating in the oceans or the mountainous ranges of landfills circling the world’s great cities.

She told Global Atlanta that her interest in [read more…]

Doctoral Consortium: PDMA 2019

Sarah attended the PDMA-UIUC Doctoral Consortium at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) sponsored by the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) in August 2019.

Here, she had opportunities to develop her research through faculty presentations, one-on-one mentoring, tours of the University of Illinois Research Park, and an introduction to 3D printing in the Illinois MakerLab.

Conference: CIMaR 2019

Sarah presented research titled “Bug Business: International Case Studies of Organic Waste Management Using Insects” at the Consortium for International Marketing Research in Ankara, Turkey in June 2019. She discussed various sustainable business opportunities that insects can provide, including food for humans, feed for animals, and waste management solutions.

Service: GSU RCB PhD Fellows Board

In spring 2019, Sarah was elected by her peers to be Vice President of the Georgia State University Robinson College of Business PhD Fellows. In spring 2020, she was re-elected to remain on the board as Secretary.

Through this organization, she shares experiences, guidance, advice, and tips with her colleagues about research, the PhD program, and maintaining work/life balance. She also helps organize professional and social events as well as provide resources for PhD students across all departments in the college of business.

Conference: IFW 2018

Sarah attended the Insects to Feed the World conference in Wuhan, China in May 2018. She has eaten crickets, mealworms, buffalo worms, silkworm pupae, locusts, bamboo worms, scorpions, grasshoppers, and ants, with hopes to try many more. So far, her favorite insects are fried bamboo worms, which taste like crispy butter, and fried scorpions, which taste like french fries!