Strom-Gottfried Receives Ethics Fellowship

Kim Strom-Gottfried, associate professor at the School, was one of eight inaugural recipients of an ethics fellowship awarded by the UNC Institute of Arts and Humanities. The purpose of the ethics fellowship is to bring faculty members from different disciplines together to study how ethics are understood, taught and addressed—philosophically and in practice.

This is the inaugural year of the ethics fellowship. The participants’ areas of study range from social work, philosophy, journalism, nursing, medicine, public health, and other disciplines in the College of Arts and Sciences. Currently, the Fellows are taking part in weekly seminars that, according to Strom-Gottfried “provide an incubator to support the study of ethics from various perspectives. The fellowship gives us the chance to move from a single-disciplinary to an interdisciplinary approach.”

Since its founding in 1987, the Institute for Arts and Humanities has awarded 272 fellowships to UNC faculty and to members of the public. Past fellows have used the support of fellowship programs to update old courses or create new ones, write books and engage in professional reading to keep up with new knowledge in their fields, and conduct research or public service projects that benefit the people of North Carolina. Without the faculty sabbatical system offered by many peer universities, UNC depends on these fellowships to help recruit and maintain top scholars.

The ethics fellowship was newly created this year in response to the growing visibility of ethical issues in UNC coursework, and in state, national and international events. “This is great time to be in the ethics business,” says Strom-Gottfried, citing highly publicized examples of ethical misconduct in business, religion, and government that have seized the attention of the national media in the past year. “A lot of work is being done on this campus about ethics. The Ethics Fellows Program helps to build a critical mass of faculty to consider how to enhance the teaching of ethics and identify ways that North Carolina’s public service mission will benefit from an ‘ethics think tank’ situated at the university”.

Of particular interest to Strom-Gottfried during this fellowship year is the examination of moral courage and the ways that faculty can instill the capacity to act ethically in students and in fellow professionals. “The issue is often not knowing what is ethical,” says Strom-Gottfried “but having the courage and the comfort to enact it. What are the obstacles that get in the way of people doing the right thing? How can those be removed or overcome, even in the face of possible personal discomfort or sacrifice?” Strom-Gottfried’s questions are very much on the mind of students and citizens in North Carolina.

BACK