At the end of the second 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 the third and final year of activities. On behalf of the many faculty involved in the fifteen funded grants over the last two years, we continue to 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 has continued to serve as the project home. As the fiscal agent, the ECTL’s office associate senior, Cathy Moody, 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. Both 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, several departments at the university provided additional support for the project in connection with the campus visit of Per Pinstrup-Andersen. For more information about the ECTL, visit its website, www.uwyo.edu/ctl.

Advisory Council

We continue to receive assistance from our university-wide advisory council. The only change has been from the College of Business. The Bill Daniels Distinguished Professor of Business Ethics is now Dick McGinity, who has been a very important contributor to the project in the second year. The advisory council consists of the following members:

•      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

•      Richard (Dick) McGinity, Bill Daniels Distinguished Professor of Business Ethics

Outside Evaluator

Robert (Bob) Young continues to act as our outside evaluator. He participated in the review panel deliberations, attended all project meetings and special events, and met with the co-directors to provide advice and guidance. Click here for his 2008 report. Bob will continue to be our evaluator next year. The outside evaluator is compensated through Kaiser Ethics Project funds.

Selection of Projects

Prior to the 2007 fall semester, Ed and Jane revised the call for proposals based on input from the first year cohort of faculty participants. A brochure describing the call was distributed to all University of Wyoming faculty in September, and additional announcements were sent by e-mail. Proposals were due on Oct. 17. We received eleven proposals. Advisory council members met on Oct. 22 to discuss and select the winning proposals. In contrast to the first year of the project, we received more proposals than we could fund. The seven projects selected for funding are listed below. Five of the seven colleges at the university are represented in this list. Three are in the College of Health Sciences. Each project received $3,000 for travel, purchase of materials, and support.

Virginia (Ginny) Conley
School of Nursing, College of Health Sciences
Team member:  Penelope Caldwell
Project Title: Revise NURS 3150, “Professional Roles: Carer/Helper, Counselor and Advocate”

Michelle Jarman, Assistant Professor
Disability Studies/WIND Program, College of Health Sciences
Team members:  Terri Longhurst, Janet Perkins Corbett, Kendall Corbett, Donna Obermiller
Project Title: Designing an Ethics Component in the Disability Studies Minor

Tricia Giovacco Johnson, Assistant Professor
Department of Elementary & Early Childhood Education, College of Education
Team member:  Michelle Buchanan
Project title: Reframe EDEC 1020, “Introduction to Early Childhood Education”

Carol J.H. Kobulnicky, Assistant Professor
School of Pharmacy, College of Health Sciences
Team members:  Kem Krueger, Janelle Krueger, Michelle Hilaire
Project title: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Teaching Ethics across the Pharmacy Curriculum

Kari Morgan, Assistant Professor
Department of Family & Consumer Sciences, College of Agriculture
Project Title: Develop Case Studies Involving Ethical Issues in Rural Settings for Use in Several FCS Courses

Mark Peterson, Assistant Professor
Department of Management and Marketing, College of Business
Project title: Develop Ethics, Worldview Content, and a Case Study for MKT 4540, “International  Marketing”

Mary P. Sheridan-Rabideau, Assistant Professor
Department of English, College of Arts and Sciences
Project title: Ethics, Writing, and Meaning Making in English 1010

Click here for a summary of the second year's projects. 

Project Meetings

Co-directors Ed and Jane hosted three meetings for all project participants, the first on November 16 to launch the projects, the second on February 1 that included participants from the first-year cohort, and the third 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 16.  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

The meeting agenda followed the structure developed for the first year. Ed Sherline gave a brief introduction on the teaching of ethics that was designed to allay any anxiety that faculty had about their lack of expertise. The participants then met in small groups to discuss the central ethical issues in their disciplines and continued the discussion in the whole group. At the end of the session, each project group summarized their goals and plans for the year.

February 1. Several participants from the second-year cohort report that his was their favorite meeting of the year. Several members of the first-year cohort attended this meeting and summarized their projects. Their experience, honest reflections, and enthusiasm for the project helped to allay the anxiety of second-year participants and also inspired several to develop more ambitious projects. The cross-disciplinary nature of the discussion was especially productive, with much trading of resources and ideas.

May 23.  As occurred at the end of the first year, the timing of this meeting was such that not all project participants were able to attend. Those who could not attend provided written summaries of their year’s work. Ed opened the meeting with an oral and written self-assessment of a course he taught in spring 2008, PHIL 2300, “Ethics in Practice: Life, Death, Liberty, and Justice.” In his analysis, he provided a chapter by chapter review of the many teaching challenges he encountered and also indicated some of the changes he plans to make for spring 2009. The meeting participants found his report to be a model for reflective teaching. They also expressed interest in the text Ed used for this course, Anthony Weston’s A 21^st Century Ethical Toolbox. Ed provided copies of the table of contents as a handout.

The faculty participants then gave progress reports. As with the first-year cohort, the participants discovered that they were in very different stages with their projects. Those who had developed and taught ethics components in their classes were able to provide considerable assistance to those who were still in the beginning stages. As always, the requirement to publicly present progress reports elevated the quality of discussion.  

February 19–21 Campus Visit, Per Pinstrup-Andersen

As part of her project, Mariah Tanner Ehmke from the first-year cohort successfully secured the commitment of Per Pinstrup-Andersen to give a public lecture and visit with student groups in the spring of 2008. Pinstrup-Andersen is the H.E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition, and Public Policy and 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. During his time on campus, he met with numerous student and faculty groups, guest lectured in two classes, and delivered a plenary talk as the 2007-2008 Kaiser Ethics Speaker. The title of his talk, attended by about 150 people, was “”Ethics, Economics, and Public Policy: Can They Sit at the Same Dinner Table?”  We were pleased to provide a DVD of this talk and copies of the poster to the Kaiser Foundation members. On the ECTL website, we have posted information about his talk and a link to his Powerpoint presentation. 

In addition to funding from the Curt Kaiser Foundation, Pinstrup-Andersen’s visit was co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, the office of Academic Affairs, the Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning, the College of Agriculture, the Social Justice Research Center, and the Haub School for Environmental and Natural Resources (with support from the RDC Foundation). His visit is a good example of the powerful effects of collaborating across disciplines.
 

Highlights of First- and Second-Year Projects

• Pam Langer, an advisory council member and participant in the first cohort of 2006-2007, continued to attend all meetings in 2007-2008 and updated us on the progress of her project. In the May meeting, she presented the results of the major case-study assignment she created for one of her upper division molecular biology courses. This case study, which involved an issue in genetic counseling, required students to engage in outside research, understand the perspectives of multiple community and family perspectives, and make recommendations. This kind of class assignment, which is substantially different from course exams and research papers, requires active involvement from students. Pam reported that her students were highly engaged by the case study. Pam has also created a website that features ethics content in the biological sciences.
   

• Faculty in pharmacy have embarked on an ambitious plan that will take several years to complete. They hope to infuse ethics teaching across all levels and disciplines in the PharmD program. One of the major outcomes of this first year was the development of an ethical decision making instrument that promises to be of interest to a wide range of health professionals. This July in Chicago, they gave a poster presentation entitled “Developing an Ethical Decision Making Instrument” at the Joint Annual Meetings of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy and Association of Faculties of Pharmacy of Canada. Kem Krueger also hosted roundtable discussions at this same meeting on “Measuring Ethical/Critical Decision Making.” After the May 23 meeting of the Kaiser Ethics Project, Kem sent this note:

I want to thank you and Ed for hosting yesterday’s meeting.  I thought the discussions were the most stimulating and fruitful to date.  I cannot tell you how much I appreciate participating in the Kaiser Ethics project.  This group has been a tremendous support for me.  As you know I teach the Pharmacy Ethics course, but was not formally trained in Philosophy or Ethics.  The literature and book support that you have provided over the past two years has enabled me to expand my knowledge of ethics and ethics education.  The collegial support (no pun intended) from the group has given me ideas to incorporate into my course as well as the courage to approach my class in new and exciting ways.  I always say it takes about three years of teaching a class before you get it the way you want it.  I am so happy that I’ve had you all to fall back on during two of those first three years. 

• Michelle Jarman and her collaborators are integrating ethics components in four core courses of the new Disability Studies Minor. They presented their project at a Disability Studies in Education conference and New York City and at the Pacific Rim Conference on Disabilities. As a result of these presentations, Michelle was asked to contribute to a special journal issue on Disability Studies and Ethics. She has spent the summer writing this article.
   
• Mary Sheridan-Rabideau’s project involves adding ethics content to the first-year writing course, ENGL 1010, which is required of all students. Her goal is to help students become self-directed citizens who understand their textual responsibilities to other sources (i.e., being responsible readers) and their personal responsibilities to participate in issues that they care about. Because many of the people who teach ENGL 1010 are first-year graduate students who have never taught before, Mary’s project also involves training new teachers how to understand the ethical responsibilities of teaching.
   
• Kari Morgan is interviewing family service professionals in rural settings in order to develop case studies about ethical issues. Most of the published case studies only feature urban issues. To conduct these interviews, Kari needed to seek approval from the university’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). Kari’s application to the IRB, entitled “The Ethical Dilemmas Facing Rural Family and Community Service Professionals,” is a model proposal that is now available for other project participants.
   

• As a result of the November and February meetings, Tricia Johnson has altered her original proposal to include a field trip to a model early childhood care center in Boulder, Colorado. Students will then work with teachers in Laramie care centers to develop an understanding of ethical issues in early childhood education. The changes in Tricia’s course represent a significant new direction in teaching and learning.
   

• Mark Peterson traveled to Syria and Kuwait to gather data about worldviews in Muslim countries in order to prepare his students for the international understanding they need to have about ethics systems that are far different from their own. As a result of these visits, he has been invited to return to Kuwait University next year to teach a 1-hour ethics course to their MBA students.
   
• Ginny Conley has changed her position at the university and is no longer teaching the nursing course for which she proposed developing some case studies. However, this summer, her collaborator Penelope Caldwell confirmed that she is teaching the course and is very pleased to be able to continue with the Kaiser Ethics project. She is revising the course so that a full third of the semester—five weeks—will be devoted to ethics content.

Looking Ahead to Year Three, 2008-2009

Plans for the final year of the project include the following:

• The call for proposals has been revised and will be distributed campus-wide in early September, 2008. Unsuccessful applicants from 2007 will be encouraged to reapply. We plan to approve seven new proposals. Grant participants from this first and second years will continue to act as mentors in the third year.
   
• Dick McGinity was an especially helpful advisor in the second year, meeting several times with Ed and Jane to discuss the future of this project. Based on these conversations, we have developed plans to meet with several clusters of faculty and administrators to discuss their interest and commitment to ethics education that takes the form of the Kaiser Ethics Project.
   
• We will develop an evaluation instrument that we will distribute to all project participants near the end of spring semester 2009. This will provide us with some summary data that we will include in the final report.
   
• As a result of two years of work, we have several documents that will be revised and posted on the website, including pharmacy’s instrument for measuring ethical decision making,  Kari’s IRB proposal, and Ed’s “Goals in Teaching Ethics.”
   
• As part of the university-wide 2008 fall forum on learning and assessment entitled “Critical Skills,” a panel of Kaiser Ethics Project participants will present the results of their work to a campus-wide audience. The forum takes place on Oct. 20 – 22. Other events during the forum include plenary talks, workshops, discussions, and panels.
   

• We have started preliminary planning for a spring colloquium to feature the 2008-2009 Kaiser Ethics Speaker. This colloquium will be devoted to the topics of ethics education and will feature a number of the participants in this three-year project. Although the third-year cohort will not have finished their projects, this event will be the culmination of the Kaiser Ethics Project. As with the Pinstrup-Andersen visit, this colloquium will have a wide range of co-sponsors.