Participation Requested: Making Ethics a Priority at Michigan State University

November 18, 2021

On October 14, many of you answered the clarion call to action in developing a new Ethics Institute at MSU through your attendance at our first university-wide Ethics Symposium. As deans Greene, Gupta, and Long recently wrote in a “Faculty Voice” piece in MSUToday, the Ethics Symposium brought together over 200 faculty and staff from many units to discuss ethical issues faced by MSU and the world.

The Ethics Symposium was an excellent start, but it marks only the beginning. We know that these initial exchanges and inquiries represent only a small portion of the work being done across MSU that embodies ethical perspectives in teaching, research, professionalism, and community outreach. Furthermore, the work toward an Ethics Institute must be grounded in the university’s history, our current strengths, and the aspirations of our strategic plan.

To continue our work toward establishing an Ethics Institute, we are assembling an inventory of the ways in which we all currently engage in ethics-related work at MSU – whether it be curricular, research, performance, outreach, administrative, or something else. The inventory will provide an excellent start toward consolidating a repository of the work happening at the university and, in turn, help guide our future work. The inventory survey includes an area for you to indicate your interest in working to help build the highest level of ethics at MSU; this will truly be a university-wide, collaborative effort. I will report back to the community through our website, and in future emails, the ways in which your responses provide the context of our present and the opportunities for our shared future.

Please take a few minutes to fill out the ethics inventory survey by December 9, 2021.

We will keep you updated as we produce an action plan for moving forward together.

Thank you for your engagement around this initiative.

My best,

Teresa K. Woodruff, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
MSU Foundation Professor