Programs & Workshops

The Institute for Business & Professional Ethics has partnered with the Union League Club of Chicago’s Public Affairs Committee (PAC) to host an ongoing lecture and speaking series. Each event focuses on an important business ethics topic followed by a question and answer segment from the audience. The series is held at the Union League Club of Chicago building in the Loop. The first lecture

Other Lectures in the Series:

• "CEO Apologies: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," Wicklander Chair Professor Daryl Koehn, PhD.

• "The Ethics of Bitcoin: Can the Dark Web’s Currency Go Mainstream?," Dr. Lara Tan Bhala 

• "Journalism Ethics in the Era of Fake News.," Flynn McRoberts, Jean Marie Brown, Jim Kirk and Rick Jasculca

• "Artificial Intelligence and Human Resources," Claudia Saran, Erich Dierdoff

Ethics Across the Curricula 2.0 is a renewed and reconfigured faculty workshop devoted to exploring the trending ethics topics that faculty in all disciplines may wish to integrate into course curricula. Each workshop features experts leading discussions and activities and offers a small honorarium to each attendee. Workshops are small, personal sessions, with a limit of 30 attendees.

The first year's workshop was focused on the ethics of automation/artificial intelligence and the many ways this wave of technology is already affecting both our disciplines and the professions our students will enter.

History

Following the objective from DePaul's Vision Twenty12 to "Provide opportunities for all students to learn ethical systems and demonstrate ethical practice," the Institute has created this initiative to help teach ethics at DePaul.

The Ethics Across the Curricula Committee, formed of a cross-section of faculty from the university, have accomplished much since its inception in 2007, including:

• Ethics Audit — The committee has conducted an extensive survey of the current level of ethics education in all academic disciplines.
• Common Language Manual — A sub-committee drafted a common language manual for ethics education, so that faculty could have a common glossary for the discourse on teaching ethics. Download the manual.
• Online Case Studies — Professor Laura Hartman is developing an online case study technology for the classroom that allows users/students to consider multiple perspectives in reaching decisions surrounding ethical dilemmas.
• Faculty Workshops — Perhaps the greatest of the committee's accomplishments has been the five faculty workshops, where 200 faculty members have been trained in ethics and values pedagogy as well as given assistance in developing their own ethics curriculum. These three-day workshops aim to bring ethical instruction and perspective into areas of study which are often otherwise without them.

Each fall, the Institute and co-sponsors DePaul DECA, hosts an event for students to compete in a case competition and attended a business ethics workshop. Teams of two presented solutions to business cases to business professionals. The top team in each level were awarded with a monetary prize.

In 2008, Laura Hartman and Patricia Werhane developed ethics modules for management courses. Faculty have been given a plethora of material, including articles, slides, assignments, suggested teaching methods and learning objectives.

The learning objectives in the modules equip students leaving DePaul with decision models that enable them to reason and critically analyze ethical issues they will face in the workplace. 

If you are outside of DePaul but are interested in the applications of these modules in connection with their undergraduate or MBA programs, please contact the Institute by emailing Laura Hartman, sbrown15@depaul.edu or see: 

L.P. Hartman, P. Werhane, "A Modular Approach to Business Ethics Integration: At the intersection of the Stand-Alone and the Integrated approaches," Journal of Business Ethics, v. 90, no. 3 (2010), pp. 295-300, available from Springer Publishing. 

In the fall of 2012, the Institute hosted its first corporate roundtable, seeking to provide an environment for intimate discussion among leading Chicago business professionals and learn more about what the Institute could provide to the business community. The discussion also developed into a sounding board for the participants to really consider similar issues that arise in their companies.

Since then, the Institute has hosted two more roundtables, with plans for more in the future.

Fall 2015: Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

In attendance:

• Katherine Kirsch, Chief Marketing Officer, SISU Global Health
• Carolyn Yurina, CEO, SISU Global Health
• Therese Fauerbac, CEO, The Northridge Group, Inc.
• Brian LaPelusa, Owner, LaPelusa Home Improvement, Inc.
• Gina Buda, President, Progressive Truck Driving School, Inc