OAKLAND, Calif. — Business professor John Stayton remembers when eyes would start rolling at the idea of a "green MBA."

These days, business schools across the country are incorporating the environmental and social costs of doing business into their curricula and a few, like the program Stayton directs at the Dominican University of California, aim for an all-green program.

The goal? How to succeed in business without really frying the planet.

"Essentially we've got to change the way we're doing everything and making everything," said Stayton.

The program Stayton directs was launched at Santa Rosa's New College of California North Bay in 2000 as an MA in the humanities department and transferred to Dominican last spring.

The move to balance economy and ecology is showing up all over, said Rich Leimsider, director of the Center for Business Education at The Aspen Institute, a leadership think tank whose biennial "Beyond Grey Pinstripes" report discusses how MBA programs are adding social and environmental issues to their courses.

"It matters what the senior executives of companies do, say and think," said Leimsider. "If you can change business education to include an appreciation for the social and environmental context, you wind up with leaders who are really good at creating value all around."

Almost all business schools have "at least a beachhead" of environmental and social awareness, said Leimsider, and some are doing much more.

The Stanford Graduate School of Business, ranked No. 1 in the 2005 Aspen report, introduced a joint degree program for MBA students in environment and resources in April. Another initiative teams the business and engineering schools for a course in using concepts from both disciplines to solve problems. This year, one project involved developing a safe, cheap and easy-to-power LED light for people who don't have electricity, an alternative to dangerous and relatively expensive kerosene lamps.

About half of the classes in Dominican's green MBA cover the fundamentals like marketing and accounting. But there's an added component, i.e., a student learning managerial and environmental accounting would study how to generate and interpret financial data but might also look at the Global Reporting Initiative (www.globalreporting.org), which sets out a framework organizations can use to measure and report economic, environmental and social impacts.

"I think it's more challenging," said Dominican student Miya Kitahara, who for her final-year project is working with GreenHeart Global, a sustainable design firm, to develop recyclable clothes hangers. "You can't just look at one determinant for your decision. You can't just look at price; you have to consider so many other factors."

Even program director Stayton is surprised at how much things have changed over the past decade.

"Green business went from an oxymoron to a mainstream concept," he said.