Center for Instructional Innovation - Western Washington University's Teaching and Learning Center
2004-05 Featured Instructors
Brian Burton, an Associate Professor in the Department of Management, teaches a course entitled Ethics in Business Decisions. Dr. Burton developed a decision-making framework for students to use to discuss cases featuring ethical dilemmas. During the course of the quarter, students are encouraged to apply this framework to identify key issues and to decide how to choose between alternative resolutions of the ethical dilemmas presented in the cases.
Janice Lapsansky, a Lecturer in the Biology Department, embeds a laboratory assignment on bioethics in her introductory biology course. This assignment, which comes at the end of the course, enables students to use the small-group lab relationships they have built over the course of the quarter to argue both sides of bioethical dilemmas. This approach makes the course more meaningful to students, as they see how biology can be applied to issues that arise in their everyday lives.
Jeff Newcomer, an Associate Professor in the Engineering Technology Department, collaborated with two colleagues, Kathy Kitto and Barbara Sylvester, to create an upper-division course in the engineering technology curriculum that combines writing with case studies featuring ethical dilemmas. Dr. Newcomer has enriched his students’ engineering technology educations by featuring ethics-focused case studies in several of his lower-division technical courses. In this way, ethics has been embedded throughout the engineering technology curriculum.
Teaching Ethics Across the Curriculum
College students--more than ever before--will encounter complex ethical issues in their personal and professional lives. There's a growing body of research to support the idea that students who study ethical reasoning will be better prepared to recognize and resolve these ethical dilemmas when they encounter them outside of the classroom.
This year's Innovative Teaching Showcase features three instructors who integrate the study of ethics into their courses at Western Washington University. These instructors' approaches are uniquely tied to the specific issues inherent in their disciplines and to what they believe their students need to make ethical decisions.
To learn more about this year's Showcase theme, Teaching Ethics across the Curriculum, read the following:
- An excerpt from Robert P. Lawry's speech from the opening of the Center for the Study of Ethics at Utah Valley State College in Orem. Dr. Lawry, the Director of the Center for Professional Ethics at Case Western Reserve University, describes why higher education should make teaching ethics a part of the mission of the university.
- "Ethics in the Classroom" by Phil Montague, Department of Philosophy, Western Washington University. Dr. Montague describes how teaching ethics can help students develop the tools to enable them to uncover "truths."
To navigate this year's Showcase, select the links to the 2004-05 Showcase on the left navigation bar or in the text above, or choose the text-based version. Please note that those who choose the text-based version will not be able to view the graphics and video clips.
