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Experts offer tips on teaching ethics

March 7, 2011

KALAMAZOO--Lessons from the classroom will be the topic when a panel of experts gives its views in mid-March as part of the spring season of the Western Michigan University Center for the Study of Ethics in Society.

Titled "Teaching Ethics: Reports from the Classroom," the presentation begins at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 16, in Room 212 of the Bernhard Center. Alumni of the ethics center's Shirley and Michael K. Bach Workshop on Teaching Ethics will share their experiences using the strategies and frameworks they learned about last summer. Panelists will discuss what worked and what didn't in graduate and undergraduate courses in a range of disciplines at WMU.

The panelists and their topics are:

• Dr. Wayne Fuqua, chair of the Department of Psychology, who will describe the use of case studies and environmental scanning to help graduate students develop a general skill set for the detection and analysis of ethical challenges in their professional life.
  
  
• Dr. Barbara Liggett, associate professor and director of the School of Public Affairs and Administration, will discuss the use of ethics frameworks to explore ethical dilemmas. Questions to be explored include: Do students know the basis of their own decision-making or of an organizations' decision-making? What frameworks are useful in assisting students in how to approach ethical dilemmas?
  
  
• Katie Reno, a graduate student in communication, will discuss the use of case studies and basic definitions of ethics to help undergraduate students develop skills for assessing ethical challenges in their personal lives.
  
  
• Dr. Sandra Borden, professor of communication and co-director of the ethics center, will act as moderator.

Media contact: Mark Schwerin, (269) 387-8400, mark.schwerin@wmich.edu

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