UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business has announced significant changes to its undergraduate program ahead of the fall 2022 semester.

The school has introduced a new summer minor that will focus on sustainable business practices and plans to open a new innovation hub, known as the Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Hub. Notably, the school will also abolish the maximum mean GPA in undergraduate classes, effective Aug. 24.

“The intention behind the cap’s removal is to reduce the degree to which students feel themselves to be in competition with their classmates,” said Emma Hayes Daftary, assistant dean at the Haas School of Business, in an email.

Daftary noted the grade cap was first adopted in 2011 and was implemented across all Haas MBA and undergraduate programs. The purpose behind the maximum GPA mean was to regularize academic standards within and across programs, according to the Haas website.

This policy set the maximum mean GPA at 3.45 for core classes, 3.50 for electives with 18 or more students and 3.65 for electives with fewer than 18 students.

However, Daftary explained that Haas faculty voted in May 2022 to abolish this cap for undergraduates in response to the realization that it did not lower average grades in the undergraduate program.

2022 also saw the introduction of the summer minor in sustainable business and policy, according to Jeremy Magruder, chair of the agricultural and resource economics department.

“The minor was started to respond to student interest in understanding core principles behind and navigating the business of sustainability,” Magruder said in an email. “Some (courses in the minor) emphasize regulatory environments or sustainable investment models. Others are more geared on theory and data analysis methods … as far as I know both are unique to the program.”

The minor is being offered in partnership with campus’s Rausser College of Natural Resources. To complete the minor, students must successfully complete five of six eligible courses over one or more summers, according to the minor website.

According to Magruder, the minor will teach sustainable business models and how they impact consumer demand, business outcomes and environmental change.

Haas will further foster business education through the Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Hub, according to Saikat Chaudhuri, faculty director of the hub.

Chaudhuri added that he believes the hub will be “transformative for Haas” and will create a space for entrepreneurs to collaborate, access mentorship and unite campus expertise in business and technology.

“We hope to make entrepreneurship accessible to everyone, regardless of if they are already working on a venture, need to know where to go on campus to move forward, or are simply interested to learn more,” Chaudhuri said in an email.