Summary
We currently pursue our mission in three primary ways. First, we maintain web-based support for research, teaching, and learning. Second, we engage the University of Nebraska-Lincoln community through workshops and student organizations. Finally, we build lasting alliances with other UNL offices and centers to support their efforts to meet goals that align with ours.
Resources and Programming
Website
Our website offers the faculty, staff, and students at the university as well as those with internet access a wide range of support. Researchers can find ethics related funding opportunities, guides for connecting their research to funding, and links to university offices that oversee research projects to check for compliance and validity. The website also provides information about each of our university based programs to make it easy for those interested to participate. Finally, we maintain a database of print and multimedia general and discipline specific ethics related material.
Workshops
We host a monthly Brown Bag Luncheon that features discussions of ethics lead by members from the university community. Topics range from ethics within the academy (e.g. research on human subjects, plagiarism, and teaching) to ethical issues go beyond the academy’s halls (e.g. business ethics, the crisis in Syria, and criminal justice). We archive fliers from past discussions on our website and successfully reach out to every department and office on campus.
Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl
We coach the university’s Ethics Bowl team, which enlists undergraduates to meet colleges nationwide in head-to-head competitive discussions of ethically relevant, current issues. In its five-year tenure, our Huskers have twice won bids to compete in the national tournament. These competitions are fierce as they pit some of the brightest minds across the nation against each other in a civil discourse over matters of professional and personal ethics as well as morally charged policies. You can read more about the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Ethics Bowl Team on our website.
Consulting and Partnerships
We consult on ethics programming and ethical issues with faculty, staff, and students. We partner with university community members and offices to help them meet goals that align with the pursuit of our mission, values, and vision. For instance, our staff has guest lectured on research ethics at the Nebraska Summer Research Institute and for UCARE students at the university. We partner with the Office of Graduate Studies to organize Academic Integrity Week and add ethics related content to their online writing workshops. Our staff has also guest lectured and served on panels for ethics related events in the Lincoln, NE area.
Overview
To give a gift in support of the Kutak Ethics Center: