College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Mimi Nguyen
Benjie Perez
Cody Jenkins
Fernando Gonzalez
Heidi Ge
Kelly Scoggins
Mark Lim
Sayoko Takeuchi

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The Mission Trails Group formed with the intention of creating greater awareness and appreciation for San Diego’s parks and natural environment. Dozens of protected lands exist in San Diego County, and each provides value to our community and to society at large. Not only to our parks house countless plants and animal life which contribute to our ecosystem, but they aid the healthy well being of those who tour and hike the trails. Our group concentrated its efforts towards the Mission Trails Regional Park, located just a few miles from the San Diego State campus.

Our project began with the idea that if we take time to clean the park and spread awareness of it’s existence, then we will be able to help preserve and protect our natural parks. This way, our generation and many after will continue to have a clean, safe environment to enjoy. Mission Trails Park accepts volunteers every second and third Saturday each month, but much had to be done in order to maintain the park’s beauty and sustainability. After learning about the needs of Mission Trails, we decided this was the perfect chance to not only volunteer our services, but to also recruit the help of others who value nature.

We realized from the start that generating assistance and knowledge of the park would be a continuous, and sometimes tedious, effort. The group created and distributed over 150 fliers across SDSU and neighboring businesses, providing information about the various opportunities to help at Mission Trails. Volunteers can help in the Mission Trails visitor center, participate in park beautification, and contribute to the protection of plant and animal habitats. The fliers also included the park’s website address and contact e-mail, where others can learn more about the importance of preserving our environment.

In addition to passing out fliers, we also created a press release for some of the local community newspapers, describing our project and asking for extra help, and created our own Mission Trails e-mail address, where those interested can inquire specifically about our project and our goals. Finally, our group members created Mission Trails Restoration t-shirts, to be worn the day of our presentation to the class. The goal of the t-shirts is to promote the park and perhaps spark some interest. A large percentage of the students at SDSU are completely unaware of Mission Trails Park. By advertising the park, our team hopes to remind college students that many natural treasures can be found nearby.

For the second half of our mission, we actively participated in the restoration and conservation of the Mission Trails Regional Park. On three separate Saturdays in October and November, we each volunteered our time for four hours a day. Our duties included removing exotic plant life, restoring trail integrity after rainstorms, and installing signs along the path. Although we were unsuccessful in recruiting our own help, we were relieved to find several other college students aiding the park rangers those Saturdays.

Overall, we believe we made a difference by undertaking this project. It should be noted that we do not consider our work to be finished. We wish to continually promote the Mission Trails Park and the importance of preserving our natural environment. This cannot be accomplished in one semester of a business ethics class. It requires the efforts of many, over a considerable period of time.

Meanwhile, we feel our accomplishments were well worth the efforts, as can be seen in our cost/benefit analysis. Obviously, it is difficult to implement a utilitarian ethical framework for this type of project. All of our benefits represent intrinsic value, and carry a monetary value not easy to calculate. The increased awareness of land care carries a value of $5000 due to the annual amount saved by planting trees and preserving our natural resources. We considered the amount the state or federal government spends on reducing air and water pollution per square mile of land. Maintaining a healthy natural environment at Mission Trails saves this sum. Also, a $3000 value was placed on the increased awareness of health care, since this amount could be spent on personal trainers, medicines, weight-loss programs, and gym memberships. If people choose to hike Mission Trails instead, this money is saved. Also saved is the cost of seeing a movie, shopping, or visiting a theme park. Our costs included the price of making the t-shirts, opportunity costs of working the trail, and transportation expense. As a group, we decided it best to concentrate on the environmental ethic of sustainability.

As our population and businesses grow exponentially, it becomes more important than ever to monitor our effects on the environment. We believe the only way to sustain our natural resources is to conserve and create awareness of our actions. If we as SDSU students can spread this awareness and do our part to protect the natural environment, then we will accomplish our goal of providing future generations with a clean and safe world to enjoy.