Student engagement
BI has a strong focus on the student environment in the strategy period 2025-2030, in collaboration with our student union BISO.
BI has a strong focus on the student environment in the strategy period 2025-2030, in collaboration with our student union BISO.
BISO – Dare to be more than a student
BI students operate a large student organisation (BISO) on all four Norwegian campuses, in Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger and the largest campus in Oslo. Their key focus is to ensure a social and inclusive student life for all full-time students as well as an arena for personal development. Having a vibrant and diverse student organization is important for student’s individual well-being and development as well as for creating social connections “for life”.
BI believes a thriving student organization is important and funds BISO through annual budget allocations. BISO management self-manage these funds. BI also provides campus areas for free to BISO, for student offices and social meeting arena/cafés/pub. BI management has one seat on the BISO Board, to support the students. BISO has some external funding through sponsorships and collaborations with the business community, giving the students the opportunity to fund extra activities and obtaining valuable business experience.
BISO – students pushing for sustainability
In 2018, the BI student organisation wrote a “call to action” letter to BI management, calling for curriculum changes on sustainability and other initiatives, to address societal challenges.
BISO management has continued this development. BISO launched “BISO Impact” in Oslo in 2019 and appointed a role as “Head of Academics and Sustainability” in their local management team, to ensure overall focus on sustainability into both student teaching and own operations. BISO collaborates closely with BI to propel sustainability development and student engagement actions.
In late 2020, BISO campus Trondheim established the student body “BISO Bærekraft”, focusing on student actions for sustainability, such as beach clean-ups and fundraising, as well as evening lectures from “green businesses”. The goal is to expand BISO student sustainability engagement to all campuses and integrate into all student activities.
Strategy 2030 states that BI plans to develop an even more diverse and inclusive student environment. Important focal areas are to
- Foster well-being and belonging through classroom activities and extracurricular activities, in close collaboration with the student union.
- Embrace diversity and inclusion by empowering students with the knowledge and skills to respect and appreciate different perspectives, cultures ad backgrounds.
- Develop a global perspective through international learning experiences on campus and through student mobility.
These ambitious students aim to be “game changers” on sustainability. This includes impacting curriculum transformations through the academic student representative system. It includes participating strongly in the societal debate on sustainability. It also includes greening BISO student operations through implementing BISO Environmental Compliance Certificates for BISO units, drawing on BI’s Eco-Lighthouse certification experts.
The large annual student conference “Inspire” has been transformed and joined forces with BIs own “GoExplorer Day” into a joint BI/BISO Impact “Inspire to Impact” conference - to address sustainability jointly towards both students, business and society. The first conference was held in 2020 and the second (covid-digital) in 2021.
Being green is no longer just a cost of doing business; it is a catalyst for innovation, new market opportunity, and wealth creation. Together with BI, we have tried to integrate this mindset into the student organisation, by creating an arena that engages, inspires and enables young business leaders to develop the necessary skills to create a sustainable future. BISO Impact’s long-term goal is that students from BI will be sought after in the job market, because recruiters know that sustainability issues are a top priority both academically and in social arenas such as the student organisation.
Sarah Noe Brogaard
Founder & Leader of BISO Impact (2019-20)
Since 2016, BI has offered international student competition (BIIC) and used them to address real-life sustainability challenges and opportunities for business and society, in collaboration with corporations and organisations. These supporting companies ensures real-life learning through developing business-relevant cases together with BI faculty, being part of the jury assessing student contributions and hosting various corporate visits and student events. In addition, they sponsor the BIIC event, covering travel, accommodation and event costs. This ensures global inclusion and equal opportunities, where all qualified student teams can participate, regardless of funding levels in various countries around the world.
In 2021, BI also hosted a global case competition for United Nations; “EAT” – a truly global and virtual case competition to transform the broken global food systems.
The aim was to generate game changing solutions for the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021 supporting UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) #2: No Hunger plus SDG #9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure & SDG# 17 Partnerships for the Goals.
85 international teams participated, 15 remained in the semi-final and three in the final. The winning team, Team Inbbictus from Porto Business School (Portugal), will pitch their ideas to “Action Tracks” experts at the UN Food Systems Summit 2021.
"It has been a great experience for all of us! We made our best efforts to meet the expectations on the challenge (the cause is dear to all of us and should be a global worry) and focused our attentions in trying to solve the issue in a practical and realistic way, so it may be helpful to decision makers. Thank you to the organization and to all of those who motivated us to go beyond - without you the win would not have been possible."- Team Inbbictus
This is a global student driven survey, driven by dedicated faculty at St. Gallen University, Switzerland. It measures how business schools create positive societal impact, rated by their own students. BI and BISO gets insight in student perceptions of the school's impact, as well as opportunity to collaborate with other responsible business schools and their engaged students. BI scores at "level 3 "(out of 5), similar to most leading European business schools, while schools in the developing world are leading the way.
BI is, as of 2024, the only Norwegian business school participating in the PIR Rating. Being inspired by others helps BI and our students to develop more initiatives, to drive positive changes in learning outcomes, in student environment and in more sustainable campus operations going forward.
– This is an important contribution to the work in the student union, so we can create the best possible inclusive student society at BI. We are very glad that a business like Reitan Retail see the value of this, says BISO President, Marie Haga Eriksen.
Read more (in Norwegian):
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