At the end of the first year of the Kaiser Ethics Project, we are pleased to provide this annual report in which we summarize the year’s progress and list some of the developing plans for next year’s activities. We judge this first year of the three-year project to be highly successful, and we look forward to continuing into the second year. On behalf of this year’s grant recipients, we thank you for your support of a project that is substantially advancing the teaching and learning of ethics across the disciplines at the University of Wyoming

The Project Home and Matching Contributions

The Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning serves as the project home. As the fiscal agent, the ECTL’s office associate senior works closely with the UW Foundation to disperse the funds. In addition to these funds, the ECTL provides substantial monetary and staff support for publicity, event planning and hosting, communications with project faculty and advisory council members, and assistance to all of the projects. All of the project directors’ time on this project is compensated through the university, not through the Kaiser Ethics Project funds.  This year, as noted below, the ECTL also provided funding for one additional project for a total of eight course developments.  For more information about the ECTL, visit its website, www.uwyo.edu/ctl.

Advisory Council

In August 2006, we secured commitments from the following faculty, who represent the seven colleges at UW, to serve as advisory council members for the project:

•      David Whitman, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering

•      Mona Schatz, Professor and Director of Social Work, College of Health Sciences

•      Heather Duncan, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, College of Education

•      Pam Langer, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology, College of Agriculture

•      John Burman, Professor of Law and Director of Legal Services Program, College of Law

•      Jeff Lockwood, Professor of Natural Sciences and Humanities, College of Arts and Sciences

•      John Fraedrich, Bill Daniels Distinguished Professor of Business Ethics

This list includes faculty at all career levels, and several have earned distinguished honors for teaching and research at UW. Whitman, Burman, and Lockwood have received the Ellbogen Award for Teaching, Langer received the 2007 UW alumni Outstanding Faculty Award, and Lockwood received the 2007 George Duke Humphrey Distinguished Faculty Award.

Outside Evaluator

An important feature of our project is the inclusion of an outside evaluator who attends all project meetings, meets with the co-directors to provide advice and guidance, and provides annual reports. We are very pleased that Robert (Bob) Young accepted our invitation to be the outside evaluator, and he has provided excellent guidance throughout the year. Bob, a European historian by training, is the former director of the Wyoming Humanities Council and has twenty-five years of experience with managing and evaluating grants projects. Click here for his 2007. The outside evaluator is compensated through Kaiser Ethics Project funds.

Visit from Stephen Macedo

To help launch the Kaiser Ethics project, we invited Stephen J. Macedo from Princeton University for a campus visit in early September to deliver a public lecture, visit classes, and meet with the advisory council. At Princeton, Macedo is the Director of the University Center for Human Values, and Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics. He is principal co-author of Democracy at Risk: Public Policy and the Renewal of American Citizenship (2005). His books include Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (2000) and Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism (1990).

His public lecture, delivered on September 8, was entitled "US Immigration Policy and Social Justice.” Even though this event occurred from 4:00 – 5:15 on a Friday afternoon, the room holding more than 100 people was full, and many stayed after for the reception and informal discussions. Macedo visited two classes, one in the Law School on immigration law and one in political science. Advisory council members were hosts at dinners and lunches during his visit. For the Kaiser Ethics project, the most important event was a two-hour meeting of the advisory council, Bob Young, and Macedo where we discussed issues in the teaching of ethics and revised the call for proposals to be sent to all UW faculty as an invitation to join the project.

Selection of Projects

Prior to the advisory council meeting with Macedo, a draft of the call for proposals had been written and revised with input from several faculty and staff members. After Macedo’s visit, a final revision was made and the call for proposals was distributed to all UW faculty in mid-September. Proposals were due on Oct. 11, and eight were submitted by that date. Advisory council members met on Oct. 17 to discuss and select the winning proposals. Our plans included the selection of up to seven proposals. With advisory council approval, we decided to include all eight proposals, with additional funding for the eighth proposal to be provided from the ECTL.

Prior to advertising the call for proposals, we determined, with Macedo and Young’s advice, that advisory council members would be eligible for submitting proposals, with the plan that any members to do so would absent themselves from the council discussion of their proposals. We are pleased that the proposals of advisory council members Pam Langer and Mona Schatz are included in the first year’s cohort.

We are including brief descriptions of the eight projects in a separate document appended to this report. Several of the projects include significant collaboration with peers in the form of team teaching or development of course materials. Each project has $3,000 of funding available for their use. Expenditures so far have included travel to conferences, purchase of materials and technology, and summer salary for course development.

Project Meetings

Co-directors Ed and Jane hosted two plenary meetings for all project participants, the first on November 3 to launch the projects and the second on May 23 for progress reports. These 6-hour meetings were held in the ECTL meeting room, Coe Library 307, and each included a working lunch.

November 3 meeting. Prior to this first meeting, all participants were sent the following packet of readings:

• Chapter two from Bok and Callahan’s Ethics Teaching in Higher Education

• Being Good by Simon Blackburn
• Excerpt from Shelly Kagan’s Normative Ethics
• Excerpt from The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory by Gerald Dworkin entitled “Theory, Practice, and Moral Reasoning”
• Table of contents from Principles of Biomedical Ethics by Beauchamp and Childress

During the meeting, which was well attended by participants in all of the projects, Ed Sherline created discussion questions for the group to respond to Bok and Callahan’s chapter, first in small groups and then in a plenary session of the whole group. During these discussions, many of the challenges and opportunities related to teaching ethics in college classes were identified.  After this opening discussion, project groups had about 15 minutes each to summarize their plans for the year and to identify their questions. At the end of this first meeting, participants expressed confidence with their plans, and they also expressed their appreciation for the project support structures that include funding, reading materials, and access to project staff.

May 23 meeting.  The timing of this meeting was such that not all project participants were able to attend because of travel commitments following the end of spring semester. Those who could not attend provided written summaries of their year’s work. We provided one additional reading to complete the packet of materials for this first year: a selection from Elizabeth Anderson’s Value in Ethics and Economics. The bulk of the meeting involved progress reports from each group that resulted in a lively discussion of challenges and successes. Ed has written a summary of this meeting’s discussion that we are appending as a separate document with this report. We plan to revise this summary for publication on the Kaiser Ethics Project website, and it will also become a primary document for the second year cohort.

Some Early Highlights of Projects

Most of the groups are not teaching their revised courses until this upcoming academic year of 2007-08. They have spent this last year gathering materials, attending national meetings, and revising syllabi in preparation for teaching ethics content in a variety of courses. However, there are some notable highlights for this past year.

• The social work group expanded in size to include faculty from nursing and pharmacy to form an interdisciplinary ethics group in the health sciences. Their goal also expanded to include the writing and publication of a series of case studies that will be available to a broad audience of health professionals.
• The accounting group revised the syllabus of the accounting capstone entitled “Ethics and Professionalism” and taught a revised course in spring 2007. Much to the surprise and gratification of the instructors of this course, one of their accounting students was one of three commencement speakers at the 2007 College of Business graduation ceremonies, and this student emphasized the importance of ethics in the business world. Her speech is featured on the College of Business website. Here are some excerpts from that website:
• "Ethics seem to be less and less important these days. After learning about many corporate scandals while attending the College of Business, it seems that corruption is the norm," she said. "But it's not and it shouldn't be. No matter your future career, make ethics important to you. You now have an outstanding education and have the potential to do great things, make sure they are ethical things."
• "As we begin this new step in our lives we are provided a great opportunity to decide right now to have integrity," she told her classmates. "You will meet many in the world who choose not to act with integrity, but you will also find many who do. Be one of those who do act ethically, even if no one is watching."
• The women’s studies conducted a pilot project in which four volunteer interns read An Invitation to Feminist Ethics by Hilde Lindemann and reflected on the moral and ethical dilemmas they faced in their required workplace internships at such places as SAFE, the drug court, the Wyoming Women’s Foundation, and Planned Parenthood. As a result of this pilot project, the Women’s Studies program will now require all interns to read Lindemann’s book and to meet regularly as an intern group to discuss direct applications of feminist ethics to internship situations.

Looking Ahead to Year Two, 2007-2008

Plans for the second year of this three-year project including the following:

• John Fraedrich is leaving the university, so we will issue an invitation to the new Bill Daniels Distinguished Professor of Ethics in Business to join the advisory council. The College of Business is in the process of finalizing their hiring for this position. We will also seek replacements for other advisory council members who can no longer serve.
• As part of her project, Mariah Tanner Emke has successfully secured the commitment of Per Pinstrup-Andersen to give a public lecture and visit with student groups in the spring of 2008. He is the J. Thomas Clark Professor of Entrepreneurship at Cornell University. In 2001, Pinstrup-Andersen received the  World Prize Laureate for his contributions to agricultural research, food policy and ethical practice for the issue of world hunger.  He will be the 2007-2008 Kaiser Ethics Speaker, and his visit will receive co-sponsorship from several offices on campus, including Academic Affairs and the Department of Agriculture and Applied Economics.
• Based on advice from this year’s grant awardees, the call for proposals will be slightly modified and sent out in fall 2007. We anticipate funding seven new proposals. Grant participants from this first year will be invited to act as mentors for the 2007-08 awardees.
• Based on the advice of the first cohort, we will sponsor several meetings next year (more than two) that will include the first and second round of participants.
• We will collect data on all new or revised courses being taught as a result of the first year’s round of grant projects.
• We will host one or two campus-wide events to feature the work of the Kaiser Ethics Project participants.
• Click here for a summary of the first year's projects.