FAU Partners with Palm Beach County School District for Regional Ethics Bowl
From left to right, Bret Danilowicz, Ph.D., FAU provost and vice president for academic affairs; Steven Bourassa, Ph.D., director of FAU’s School of Public Administration; Naelys Luna, Ph.D., interim dean of FAU’s College for Design and Social Inquiry; Glenda Sheffield, chief academic officer of the School District of Palm Beach County; Peter Cruise, Ph.D. executive director of the LeRoy Collins Public Ethics Academy; and Keith Oswald, deputy superintendent of the School District of Palm Beach County.
Boca Raton, FL – Florida Atlantic University’s LeRoy Collins Public Ethics Academy within the School of Public Administration has partnered with The School District of Palm Beach County to host the annual Palm Beach County Regional High School Ethics Bowl. The event will take place Saturday, Jan. 18 at the Culture and Society Building on FAU’s Boca Raton campus.
The bowl is an educational experience with two fundamental purposes: the development of ethical understanding in connection with complex, ambiguous and difficult cases to resolve; and the fostering of key virtues associated with democratic deliberation, thereby cultivating the virtues central to democratic citizenship.
“The goal of the Ethics Bowl is to increase students’ awareness and sensitivity to ethical issues, to encourage collaborative thinking, and to promote civil discourse,” said Peter Cruise, executive director of the LeRoy Collins Public Ethics Academy.
During the Ethics Bowl competition, teams are presented with the issues which they have the opportunity to study and analyze and are asked questions about the cases, and are then judged on the quality of their analysis of each situation, with the format of the competition allowing for teams to respond to each other, and to respond to questions from the judges.
The partnership will provide students with a quality academic experience and sustainable competition by working with their school-based coaches and FAU faculty members and graduate students as they study ethical theory and develop effective lines of reasoning. FAU faculty members and graduate students will also assist in judging the competition.
The top four schools in the bowl will receive scholarship prizes due to donations from FAU’s LeRoy Collins Public Ethics Academy, the Eric Friedheim Foundation and the Better Business Bureau Serving Southeast Florida and the Caribbean.
“This partnership will provide our students with a tremendous opportunity for a sustainable competition,” said Keith Oswald, deputy superintendent of the School District of Palm Beach County. “School district, community and university faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduate students support participants by providing coaching and insight into ethical theory and effective lines of reasoning, and by serving as judges and moderators for the competition. Our students will flourish through this experience of interacting with scholars in this field.”
For more information on the Ethics Bowl, click here.
About Florida Atlantic University
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University, with an annual economic impact of $6.3 billion, serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students at sites throughout its six-county service region in southeast Florida. FAU’s world-class teaching and research faculty serves students through 10 colleges: the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, the College of Business, the College for Design and Social Inquiry, the College of Education, the College of Engineering and Computer Science, the Graduate College, the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing and the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. FAU is ranked as a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The University is placing special focus on the rapid development of critical areas that form the basis of its strategic plan: Healthy aging, biotech, coastal and marine issues, neuroscience, regenerative medicine, informatics, lifespan and the environment. These areas provide opportunities for faculty and students to build upon FAU’s existing strengths in research and scholarship. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.
About Ethics Bowl
The National High School Ethics Bowl (NHSEB) promotes respectful, supportive, and rigorous discussion of ethics among thousands of high school students nationwide, with the Parr Center for Ethics, located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as home and headquarters of the NHSEB, overseeing Regional Competitions and hosting the National Competition annually, while the Department of Teaching & Learning within the School District of Palm Beach County (SDPBC) serves as the regional organizer for the Southeast Florida area.
