Delaware Interdisciplinary Ethics Program

Progress to Date

  • Created a graduate & undergraduate course in Bioethics – taught Fall 03 and Summer 04.
  • Hired Mark Greene, a specialist in Bioethics into the Department of Philosophy. He holds a Veterinary Degree from the University of Bristol (U.K.) and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Stanford University. He held a Post Doctoral Fellowship at the Phoebe Berman Bioethics Institute at John’s Hopkins and is now full time and on regular tenure track in Fall 04.
  • Attracted Arthur Caplan was the first speaker in the development of a speaker series as the UD Faculty Forum speaker on Bioethics, September 17th 2003 in the Perkins Center.
  • Held first faculty/staff training sessions June 30th
  • Conducted an ethics workshop at DBI with David Silver (Philosophy/UD) and Rahul Kumar (Philosophy/Penn) as speakers. There were approximately 25 faculty, graduate students, students, and members of the public in attendance from UD, Del Tech, DSU and other institutions.
  • Held a second faculty/staff training session at the General Education Workshop at UD, June 2004. Alex London (Carnegie Mellon) and Thomas Powers (UVA) showed faculty how to incorporate instructional units on ethics into a wide variety of curricular materials.
  • Designed an Interdisciplinary Ethics Conference focusing on Human Health Food and The Environment. This Conference is jointly sponsored by UD and the American Philosophical Association and is scheduled for October 22-24, 2004.
  • Started compiling an ethics database with over fifty people across Delaware – along with their specialization and/or competence and interest in ethics.
  • Hired a full-time Graduate Student Assistant – Ruth Norman – to be fully involved in the ethics program.
  • Launched a “Great Debate” series. Our first debate was on the legalization of drugs. Doug Husack (Rutgers) and Peter de Marneffe (Arizona State) put on the debate September 8, 2004. Other debates on current ethical issues will kick off each semester as we move forward with the program.
  • Initiated first student essay competition on the topics of the great debates. Cash prizes will be awarded for the three best essays submitted by Delaware College students.