Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
| Established | 1986 |
|---|---|
| Director | Kirk O. Hanson |
Administrative staff | 14 |
| Location | Santa Clara, California, U.S. |
| Website | www.scu.edu/ethics |
 | |
The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University promotes research and dialogue in seven major focus areas: Bioethics, Business Ethics, Campus Ethics, Character Education, Internet Ethics, Government Ethics, and Nonprofit Ethics. The Center develops practical decision-making tools, including an app, Making an Ethical Decision, and several MOOCs on ethics. It also offers public talks, workshops, and training, as well as sponsoring activities on the SCU campus for students, faculty, and staff. The Center was created by an endowment from Apple Inc. co-founder Mike Markkula and his wife Linda Markkula.
Focus Areas
Bioethics
Through partnerships with area hospitals and hospices, the Center works in the area of clinical ethics, especially in developing policies on issues such as organ donation after cardiac death and artificial nutrition and hydration. The hospitals also provide the sites for a Health Care Ethics Internship for undergraduates. The Center’s bioethics research has focused on “Medical Decision Making for Unbefriended and Unrepresented Patients,” “Culturally Competent Care,” and “Pandemic Ethics. “ Center Bioethics Director Margaret R. McLean was a consultant to the Santa Clara County Department of Public Health on pandemic ethics. She served as an advisor to the California Senate Select Committee on Genetics and is currently a consultant to the California Department of Public Health.
Business Ethics
The Center’s Business and Organizational Ethics Partnership brings together business executives and business ethics scholars from Santa Clara University and other Bay Area institutions. The partnership is a forum to learn how to create an ethical organizational culture. It has sponsored research on issues such as “Encouraging Internal Whistleblowing” and “Corporate Moral Responsibility and the Ethics of Product Usage.” The Center also offers programs for boards on directors on assessing the ethical culture of their organizations. The Center’s Executive Director Kirk O. Hanson received a Liftetime Achievement Award from the Aspen Institute’s Center for Business Education.
Campus Ethics
More than 50 members of the Santa Clara University faculty are scholars of the Ethics Center with expertise in a variety of fields from literature to engineering. The Center offers both faculty and student Hackworth Grants for research on applied ethics and Hackworth Fellowships for students interested in creating programming on ethics for their peers. The Campus Ethics Program also organizes weekly presentations on ethics in many applied fields, including technology, diversity, immigration, law, and other topics. [1]
Character Education
The Center’s Character-Based Literacy Program,[2] which weaves ethics into the curriculum, is used by the offices of education in the majority of California’s 50 counties, in addition to many individual schools and districts throughout the country. The program provides detailed lesson plans, literature recommendations, and concrete activities that address ethical questions within the parameters of the Common Core for middle and high school language arts, high school US History, World History, Biology, and Earth Science. The Center provides a similar program in the language arts for Catholic schools.
Government Ethics
An online "Introduction to Government Ethics" outlines the Center’s main focuses in government ethics, including conflicts of interest, gifts and bribes, cronyism, lobbying, transparency, and the personal lives of public officials.[3] Ethics cases are available on each of these issues. The Center’s Ethics Roundtable for Locally Elected Officials convenes mayors, councilpeople, county supervisors, and members of special districts quarterly to discuss how these issues play out in their work. Director of Government Ethics Hana Callaghan is a former corporate litigator, congressional aide, and associate executive director of the Santa Clara County Bar Association.
Internet Ethics
With a special focus on privacy, the Center's Internet Ethics Program offers presentations on such topics as ethics in video games, search engines, big data, and privacy by design. Its teaching module Your Privacy Online, is intended for use in college classrooms. Internet Ethics Program Director Irina Raicu is an attorney and a Certified Information Privacy Professional (U.S.).
Leadership Ethics
Ethics Center staff work with businesses, nonprofits, governments, and other organizations to analyze real-world issues in leadership ethics and to develop programs and tools to address them. Leadership Ethics Director Ann Skeet was CEO of American Leadership Forum Silicon Valley, and vice president of marketing for the San Jose Mercury News.
Online Resources
The Center’s website offers more than 3,000 pages of material on ethics, including a section on ethical decision making, which features the Center’s “Framework for Ethical Decision Making” and the article, “What is Ethics?” Collections of articles are available on each of the Center’s focus areas plus Technology Ethics, Immigration and Ethics, Environmental Ethics, and Media Ethics. The Center’s site was named one of six useful ethics resources in the Wall Street Journal. It is also reviewed in the Librarian’s Internet Index and the Scout Report.
References
- ↑ http://www.scu.edu/ethics/about/campus-programs.html Accessed on March 29, 2010.
- ↑ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9403EED61F31F930A15755C0A9609C8B63 Accessed on March 29, 2010.
- ↑ http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/government_ethics/ Accessed on March 29, 2010.