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 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 a Master of Arts in the humanities department and transferred to Dominican last spring. It's one of a handful of such degrees; others include MBAs offered at the Presidio School of Management in San Francisco and the Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Washington state.

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 which reports on how Master of Business Administration programs are adding social and environmental issues to their courses in its biennial "Beyond Grey Pinstripes" report.

"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 school for a course in which students use 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.