The Western Michigan University Center for the Study of Ethics in Society creates interdisciplinary opportunities for the University and Community to engage in public reflection about ethical issues.
Thank you for participating in Giving Day!
You can still support ethics programs, including our Ethics Bowl Broncos, our book clubs and special events like our A Life Well Lived - Kalamazoo collaboration. Donate here.
It's our 40th anniversary!
To celebrate, we collaborated with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI at WMU) and the Kalamazoo Lyceum on a special series of events on the theme of A Life Well Lived. The series attracted nearly 400 attendees between October 2024 and March 2025.
Award-winning filmmaker Sky Bergman delivered an honorary talk as a Visiting Scholar on March 15.
Bergman’s film, Lives Well Lived, served as inspiration for the Kalamazoo event series. The film is currently airing on PBS and has won eight awards since being released in 2017. Hear her interview on WMUK's Let's Hear It.
As part of the series finale, guests had the opportunity to explore two artistic exhibits that were created as part of the A Life Well Lived-Kalamazoo series.
A Photovoice exhibit curated by award-winning photographer Jeri Love featured the work of workshop participants from WMU's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI@WMU). Listen to our podcast episode about the exhibit. There were also screenings of videos produced by WMU undergraduate students under the supervision of Associate Professor of Communication Dr. Lusike Mukhongo on the theme of the series.
The WMU undergraduate students are: Ashlyn Eddins, Caroline French, Andrea Lule, Aidan Ralko and Kaitlin Swinehart.
The OLLI@WMU PhotoVoice artists are: Jim Bennink, Deb Dunstone, Lynne Hall, Shannon Huneryager, Kris Locke, Joan Robertson, Deborah Russell and Luana VanDam.
The event was sponsored by the Kalamazoo Community Foundation.
The series collected about 120 pounds of food and personal care items for Essential Needs.
More Spring 2025 events
We've wrapped up our regular lecture series. If you missed an event, visit our You Tube channel to catch up, or listen to our podcast, Life Is Better With Ethics.
Check back for our book clubs in Fall 2025!
News
Check out the Ethics Center's professional development module on workplace ethics available through WMUx. The module provides concrete, practical tools for making good ethical choices in organizations.
Ethics Center Advisory Board member Jil Larson, associate professor of English, delivered two talks about AI and human relationships as part of the common read on Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun for the West Shore Community College's Humankind series in March.
Ethics Center Director Sandra Borden, Advisory Board member Kathy Purnell, WMU Ethics Bowl coach Elek Metro-Roland and Philosophy alumni McGwire Hidden, Adam Waggoner and Kaleb TerBush judged rounds at the 2025 Michigan High School Ethics Bowl competition in Ann Arbor on Feb. 1-2. Michigan's champs, the Greenhills Blue team from host Greenhills School, won its Divisional playoff and qualified for Nationals.
Ethics Center Affiliate Ashley Atkins has been selected for the prestigious Bellagio Residency Program in Lake Como, Italy, to work on a monograph exploring grief.
The Ethics Center awarded six Shirley Bach Awards for the top student papers at the 2024 Midwestern Medical Humanities Conference. The award winners are: medical students Arturo Balaguer Townsend, Northwestern University, and Rosemarie Buryinski, Pennsylvania State College of Medicine; Ph.D. students Kathleen Lowenstein, Michigan State University, and Mallory Wietrzykowski, Saint Louis University; and undergraduates Bridgette Reeb, Allegheny College, and Nicole Wood, Eastern Michigan University. Congratulations!
A memorial fund has been set up for the Ethics Center's former associate director and co-founder, Dr. Shirley Bach.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT STATEMENT
We would like to recognize that Western Michigan University is located on lands historically occupied by Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodewadmi nations. Please take a moment to acknowledge and honor this ancestral land of the Three Fires Confederacy, the sacred lands of all indigenous peoples, and their continued presence.