Deliber8: An Ethical Training Program for Leaders

Monday, October 7, 2024
Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics (Greencastle, Indiana)

On Monday, October 7, the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) hosted a one-day ethics training program, called Deliber8, at The Prindle Institute for Ethics in Greencastle, Indiana. Presented in partnership with The Center for Practical Ethics at the University of Mississippi and hosted by The Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University, this APPE workshop was an interactive experience led by scholars from those institutes with extensive experience providing such workshops.

Designed for business, nonprofit, and government leaders, it focused on ethical reasoning and deliberation in order to:

(1) Help leaders make tough ethical decisions

(2) Provide them with tools for talking through ethical disagreements, and

(3) Promote a culture of ethical responsibility within their businesses and organizations.

With plenty of time for networking, discussion, and hands-on guidance from ethics experts, participants gained a robust set of tools and information to better navigate ethical disagreements and challenges within their organizations and professional life.

Participants were invited to bring codes of conduct or statements of values from their own organizations to better learn how to understand, apply, and even improve them. This one-day program provided conceptual tools for moral reasoning (such as the 8 Key Questions approach developed by James Madison University) and activities such as case analysis and code of conduct review.

Schedule
9 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.  |  Check-In and Networking
9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. |  Morning Session
11:30 – 12:30 p.m. |  Lunch
12:30 – 2:30 p.m.  |  Afternoon Session
2:45 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.  |  Ethics Bowl Demonstration

About the Session Leaders
Dr. Deborah S. Mower is the Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Hume Bryant Associate Professor of Ethics and an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Mississippi. She specializes in moral psychology, applied ethics and public policy, and moral education and assessment with a special interest in moral sensitivity, conviction, and civility. She coordinates the Dialogue Initiative at the University of Mississippi, and is the Chair for General Education Ethical Reasoning and Ethical Responsibility.  She is also the Director of The Center for Practical Ethics, founded in 2022, which focuses on ethics education and civil discourse trainings, ethics education outreach, and policy development and consultations. She regularly serves as a judge for the APPE IEB National competition and headed the development of Ethical U, a summer camp for middle and high school students in Mississippi teaching ethics, leadership, and civil discourse skills through ethics bowl. She is the recent past President of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum (SEAC), a current Board Member for Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (PLATO), a Research Member of the National Institute for Civil Discourse (NICD), as well as a member of the Board of Directors for the Association for Practical and
Professional Ethics (APPE).

Mr. Ethan Davis is the Assistant Director of The Center for Practical Ethics and an Assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Mississippi who specializes in ethics and political philosophy. As a former member of an Ethics Bowl team as a university student, the Assistant Coach of a team during his graduate studies, and a regular judge at the APPE IEB National competition, he has extensive experience in evaluating and training individuals to analyze ethical cases and how to develop shared reasons. He formerly worked in Washington, DC at a nonprofit organization and now heads multiple initiatives at the University of Mississippi such as Compass, Common Ground, and Ethics Works, and designed the Ethical Leadership curriculum for pre-college students at the Lott Leadership Institute.

Dr. Jeffrey (Jeff) Dunn is an associate professor of philosophy at DePauw as well as the Phyllis W. Nicholas Director of the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics, housed at DePauw. His research and teaching is in the area of epistemology, philosophy of science, and ethics. From 2016-2022 he was the secretary-treasurer of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. He chaired the philosophy department from 2019-20 and 2021 22. While at DePauw Dunn has been involved in a number of community engagement projects. He organizes and is a frequent judge for High School Ethics Bowl; has designed a philosophy for children program, which brings ethics and philosophy into local schools; and designs and delivers ethical reasoning workshops for professionals and students. For the 2024-25 academic year, he has been awarded an NEH Humanities Connection Grant titled: "Business Meets Humanities: A Liberal Arts Curriculum".