Departmental Brochure

The program in applied ethics offers you an opportunity to learn the history, terminology, and forms of reasoning that underlie the practice of ethical conduct - to raise your awareness of ethical dilemmas that you may confront in your career. The program includes courses, seminars, lectures, and workshops, and you may choose to complete a minor in the field. Courses are offered primarily in business, health care, communications, and environmental ethics. Depending on student interest, any profession or institution may become the focus of a course or seminar. With wide connections in the business and professional community, the faculty are able to bring businesspeople, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals into classroom discussions. Fairfield's favorable location in an area of many corporate headquarters and medical and media centers, and the excellent cooperation that these centers extend to the University greatly enhance the vitality of the program.

Course of Study

If you plan to minor in the program, you should choose a philosophy course that emphasizes ethics, a religious studies course emphasizing moral theology, and a course in applied ethics as you fulfill the Area III core requirements that all Fairfield students meet. Thereafter, you can choose five applied ethics courses, some of which are listed here:

Globalization: A Curriculum

• Global Environmental Policy
• Ethical Dimensions of Global Business Policy
• Global Health Care Policy

Applied and Professional Ethics

• Ethics of Communication
• Environmental Ethics
• Ethics of Health Care
• Ethics of Research and Technology
• Business Ethics
• Ethics of War and Peace
• Ethics in Law and Society
• Ethics in Government
• Ethics in Engineering
• Ethics and Feminist Perspectives
• Ethics and the Community
• Ethics in America: Contemporary Problems
• Ethics in Education

A wide selection of advanced seminars is also available.

The Faculty

The applied ethics program draws its faculty from regular departments and from Fairfield County's rich pool of talented professionals. Those who have taught in the program include:

Research

As a student in applied ethics, you will be encouraged to undertake a research project in your senior year. You may be able to combine this with research in your major field to earn double credit and also to gain ethical insight in the field of your career interest. Many student projects have dealt with ethical problems of local businesses, governments, and health care providers. You will be engaged in field and library research and will sharpen your ability to frame ethical questions and apply the principles you have learned in previous studies. Such a project must be approved by the program director and is developed in consultation with a faculty member.

Life After Fairfield

Any worthwhile employer wants the assurance that the people he or she hires have the ability to do the job and the commitment to do it properly, in accord with good moral standards. 

The applied ethics listing on your résumé tells the employer that you have considered, in a reasoned manner, the ethical dilemmas that can arise in your professional life and that you are prepared to deal with them.

Real-World Education

As you progress through your college years, you will be acquiring the knowledge and skills that prepare you for a postgraduate career even as you ponder the ethical issues that have arisen in society and the professions throughout history. The Applied Ethics Program sharpens your sensitivity toward such issues as they will occur in your future occupation and in your life as a citizen. You will be working with faculty members who have researched, developed, and published case studies of ethical dilemmas in business, health care, politics, and communications. Corporate officers from businesses in the region and professionals from other institutions regularly participate in applied ethics seminars. Some have arranged to bring students as observers or interns to ethics committees and research review board meetings where they work.

Profile

Jennifer Nascimento
Applied Ethics minor

"I'm a nurse, and I'm back at school now for a marketing degree. In my applied ethics class, I've had the chance to work with director Dr. Lisa Newton on a paper about the pharmaceutical industry and its influence on politics and doctors. It's a course that forces you to think about ethics in the everyday decisions you make. My study has made me more thoughtful of decisions and their consequences.

"The strength of this program is its professors, who are able to give real life meaning to theoretical questions. There's lots of discussion in class and not everyone agrees, but the result is that it forces you to look at your own values."

For further information please contact:

Lisa Newton, Ph.D.
Director, Applied Ethics Program
Fairfield University
Fairfield, CT 06824-5195
Telephone: (203) 254-4000 ext. 4128
E-mail: lhnewton@mail.fairfield.edu