Listening to a lecture about ethics and corporate social responsibility is all well and fine, but what does it mean outside the classroom?

Four business students traveled to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in August with the intention of volunteering for a week fixing roofs, re-siding trailers and learning the history and culture of the Oglala Sioux.

"We went to get a feel for what being socially responsible means," University of Illinois first-year MBA student Adam Ratner said. At the end of the week "we couldn't just walk away and that be the end," he said.

As their week on the reservation wrapped up, they decided they wanted to give back by building something sustainable, something that would allow them to partner with groups already active on the reservation. They would tap into the network of business students, business alumni and the corporations around the world as well as draw upon on resources in the business school, medical college and other units at the UI.

"We wanted to work in four different areas: economic development, health care, education and fostering hope," said Michael Hodnett, an MBA and law school student at the UI.

Last fall they established a student group, rounded up more students, and established a 501(c)(3) (charitable) organization, the Kola Foundation (kola means "friend" in Lakota).

"We're 100 percent run by UI MBA students," Hodnett said.

Because the Urbana campus is more than 900 miles from the reservation, it was important to find groups to partner with near or in the reservation. A group of students returned to Pine Ridge in October and met with potential groups.

Ratner said they want to partner with agencies and "create an efficient extension of what they're doing," rather than seeming to dictate what those agencies do.

"We wanted to make sure they understood our motives were entirely altruistic in nature," said Ratner, now the president and chief executive officer of the organization.

Their first project was a goods drive earlier this month that drew 450 people on the reservation. Working with the Latter-day Saints Charities, they distributed clothes, shoes and other wares.

Next up is working with Lakota Funds, which is leading an effort to open a credit union on the reservation.

Kola may work with Lakota Funds to teach business courses to entrepreneurs. And its members may work on exploring options for the reservation's artisans to sell their wares off the reservation.

Because of the recent ethics scandals in the business world (think Enron or Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme) business schools were criticized for not embedding the concept of corporate social responsibility more in their curriculum, said UI associate dean for MBA programs Stig Lanesskog.

Business students take an ethics class and there's the Center for Professional Responsibility in Business and Society, but Lanesskog, who also is a member of the Champaign school board, wanted students to have more hands-on experiences. He wasn't interested in developing "the broccoli model," something that business students would sign up for because it was good for them, or a resume-builder.

"I said it needs to be driven by students," Lanesskog said.

He first traveled out to the Pine Ridge Reservation with a church youth group about three years ago, and thought a trip there might provide some opportunities.

"Their charge was to go to the reservation, get a sense of if an experience like this in a place like this is where students could learn the broader aspects of corporate social responsibility," Lanesskog said.

"They really took it and ran with it," he said.

Because it is a student-led initiative and the UI's MBA program is two years, there will be a constant turnover of students, a challenge current organizers said they are well aware of. They're developing a handbook for incoming members of the group and plan to continue to hold one-week visits to the reservation each August. Those trips will include incoming students and current students.

"That will keep the momentum going," Hodnett said.

In addition to Hodnett and Ratner, Tyler Smith is the chief financial officer and Jon Chan is the chief marketing officer. The group also has a board of directors, on which Lanesskog sits.

More information: http://kolafoundation.org.