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Faculty Attend Business Ethics Teaching Workshop at Georgetown University

By June 22, 2017 March 15th, 2022 No Comments

Together with business ethics professors from the United States and the UK, faculty members of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS) – Dr. John Branya, Dr. Rose Catacutan and Dr. Virginia Gichuru – Dean School of Tourism and Hospitality (STH), participated in an 3-day intensive workshop on teaching business and professional ethics organized by the Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics at McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University in Washington DC.

The workshop, held from June 1-3, 2017, running under the theme; Teaching business ethics through experiential learning: The Georgetown Approach, included lectures on how to integrate philosophy, moral psychology and experiential learning techniques in business ethics classes.

The workshop opened with a lecture from Prof. John Hasnas – Executive Director of the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics (GISME). His lecture, titled The Principles Approach, described how business ethics can be taught utilizing true normative principles derived from the nature of the activity of doing business in a market. Three features characterized this approach: it does not require the introduction of abstract concepts of moral philosophy; overcomes the problem of ethical relativism; and prevents the course from degenerating into an exploration of people’s beliefs about what is right and wrong.

The workshop also featured a series of lectures on teaching strategies employed by Georgetown business faculty, to make business ethics courses relevant to the real world and to make students become personally invested in their learning. After each lecture, participants were given the opportunity to ask questions and learn more about the various experiential learning techniques explored, and to exchange ideas about their own teaching experiences

Attendance of selected participants in this year’s teaching workshop was partially funded by the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics. Applicants were vetted and selected after sending their CV and a short cover letter to the director of GISME.