Santa Clara University

Two of the Center's blogs were among the top 50 ethics blogs, a list compiled by the Guide to Online Schools.

The Technological Citizen, by one of last year's Hackworth Fellows, Courtney Meehan, was named not only one of the best blogs on ethics and technology but one of the top five ethics blogs in all categories.

Her Honor, a blog about local government ethics by Center Senior Fellow in Government Ethics Judy Nadler, made the list of best blogs on political ethics. 

A stint working at the Aarti Home orphanage in India inspires recent SCU graduate Sarah Bradley to reflect on the role of gender in Indian culture. 

"There's a very different gender dynamic in India, which, from a Western perspective, seems incredibly paradoxical," she reports. "The oppression of women is evident in India while at the same time, I've never witnessed so much respect for women.

"The mere existence of Aarti Home and the Vijay Foundation Trust illustrates that women are disadvantaged-families would rather have male children. Most of the orphans dumped on the home's doorstep are baby girls and there are millions of female babies aborted and killed after birth every year. This occurs because men are much more valued by families who see them as a net gain--the boy will become a man, gain a wife and often a dowry, and contribute to family income. Though contributing through work at home and receiving an education to then pass on to siblings, women will ultimately detract from family wealth due to the culturally necessary dowry and by leaving the family to join that of her husband."

Bradley went to India with help from a Hackworth grant from the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.  Funded by a gift from Michael and Joan Hackworth, Hackworth grants support student and faculty research on issues in applied ethics.

Andrew and Beverly Honzel of Lake Oswego Oregon are long-times supporters of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.  The Honzel Family Foundation has supported many programs in bioethics, including research on personalized medicine, medical decision making for patients in the care of public conservators, and culturally competent care. 

In addition, the Honzels funded the John Courtney Murray SJ University Professorship in Social Ethics.  They are pictured here with Kirk O. Hanson, Center executive director, who holds that professorship.

The Ethics Center mourns the passing of Barbara Caulfield, a member of the Center's Advisory Board.  Caulfield was a partner at the law firm Kaye Scholer, and an expert in complex intellectual property litigation for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.  Formerly, she was a United States District Judge in the Northern District of California.  Caulfield served on the Center Advisory Board's Program Committee.

Michael Hackworth, chairman of the Board of Directors and company co-founder of Cirrus Logic, and his wife, Joan, received the "Spirit of Silicon Valley Lifetime Achievement Award"  from the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

Michael Hackworth, a longtime member and now chair of the Center's Advisory Board, and Joan Hackworth received the honor based on "impeccable ethics, business excellence and community engagement."

Two Center programs are named for the Hackworths, whose contributions support applied ethics research and peer-to-peer programs for undergraduates.  They are pictured here with Hackworth Fellow Meghan Skarzynski, an SCU senior who is planning a variety of activities about business ethics for her classmates in the Business School.

Jack Penner, a sophomore Public Health major at SCU, has been awarded the Denise and John York/49ers Foundation Fellowship in Sports Ethics at the Ethics Center. 

As a fellow, Penner is working on the Center's upcoming conference, "Thinking Ethically About MRSA," a program on the virulent, antibiotic-resistant skin disease that has become a problem in sports because it is spread by skin-to-skin and skin-to-equipment contact.  The event, Oct. 14, is also supported by Denise and John York and the 49ers Foundation.

Penner is on the SCU Student Athletic Advisory Committee and is a member of the men's water polo team.

From University of Notre Dame, Fr. Mark Poorman, CSC joins the Center as a visiting scholar this fall.  Poorman, an associate professor of theology at Notre Dame,  served as the university's vice president for student affairs for more than 10 years.

Another person on my dorm floor has put up a poster on her door that I find extremely offensive.  What should I do?  My professor shoots down everyone who has a different idea than he does.  Is this fair?  My roommate hardly ever eats and she's so thin I'm worried about her.

These and other typical ethical dilemmas for undergraduates will be the topic of the PBS program Forum today, featuring Center Executive Director Kirk O. Hanson. 

The Center has been developing a set of scenarios that illustrate the kinds of moral quandaries students often confront.  Center students workers and staff collected ethical dilemmas from undergraduates across the country and synthesized them into 30 cases. 

Some of these have already appeared on the Center Web site:

My Poster; My Identity
My Homework or Our Homework?
What Will Sex Mean?

The entire set is being developed as a possible book or Web site.

A yearlong project to develop a Code of Ethics and Values for Santa Clara University's Associated Student Government came to fruition in June with the formal adoption of the code by the ASG.  The effort was led by Hackworth Fellow Daniel Solomon, also the chief justice of the judicial branch of student government in 2009-2010.  Hackworth Fellows work with the Ethics Center to develop peer-to-peer programs on ethics for students.

Center Executive Director Kirk O. Hanson joined Rutgers' Donald McCabe and NPR's Neal Conan on "Talk of the Nation" yesterday for a discussion of cheating on college campuses.  McCabe, who has been studying student cheating since the '80s, found in his most recent survey that more than two-thirds of students admit to cheating on tests, homework, or assignments.  Hanson talked about the longterm effects on a person's character of cutting corners by cheating in school