The Graduate School will hold its inaugural ethics workshop for first-year students on January 16, 2012, from 9 am – 2 p.m. at the Hilton Garden Inn, Saint Mary’s College.
Registration Form (Graduate School)
Registration Form (Law, Business, Architecture)
In announcing the workshop, Gregory E. Sterling, Dean of the Graduate School, said, "In a society plagued by ethical misconduct, including misconduct in the academy, the University of Notre Dame is committed to producing graduate students who are not only experts in their field, but who also embody the highest standards of ethical behavior.
“We want our students to have a distinctive education in ethics. The stakes are too high — for our students and for the world — to rely on students absorbing the essential elements of ethical conduct themselves or through a patchwork of reading or faculty pointers. We want our students to be sensitive to ethical decisions and have the capacity to address them at a sophisticated level.”
The workshop will be conducted in two parts. In the morning, students will work in small groups to discuss two case studies. The first is more general and raises larger issues related to fields of research and confidentiality. The second is more specific and illustrates some of the issues that arise in research, such as fairness in the evaluation of the work of others.
First-year students from the Colleges of Architecture, Business and Law will join in midway through the workshop for a catered lunch. Afterwards, Alasdair MacIntyre, the Rev. John A. O’Brien Senior Research Professor of Philosophy (emeritus) at the University of Notre Dame, will deliver a keynote address, Everyday Ethics, Ethics of Crisis. MacIntyre is one of the foremost authorities on ethics in the world. His After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory is widely considered to be one of the most influential books on moral decision-making of our era.
This year’s workshop was generously funded by the President’s Office at the University of Notre Dame.
Beginning with students who matriculated in a doctoral program in the Fall of 2011, all Ph.D. candidates in the Graduate School are required to attend a three-hour ethics workshop before the completion of their degree. The requirement was established by the Graduate Council in May 2010 in response to a faculty committee charged with formulating recommendations for integrating ethics training into the graduate studies curriculum.
For further information or questions on the workshop, please contact Melissa Wilde