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Sample Proposal: Ethics

College of Communication

Please direct all questions about the flag proposal process to the Center for the Skills & Experience Flags.

CLD 321 Seminar in Communication

Ethical Reasoning as Course Content: Courses that carry the Ethics Flag teach students to think ethically. Please describe course readings, assignments, and/or activities that require students to engage in ethical reasoning.

Students will read articles on behavioral ethics that expose them to concepts such as moral myopia, moral muteness, moral imagination, and decision-making biases and heuristics (e.g., articles by Minette Drumwright and Robert Prentice). Students will study and practice how to give voice to their values using Mary Gentile’s Giving Voice to Values curriculum. Students will read Bad Leadership in which Barbara Kellerman categorizes the various types of bad leadership (e.g., corrupt, evil, incompetent, callous) and illustrates that each type involves ethical problems. The readings will be supplemented by a variety of Ethics Unwrapped videos and some films. Guest speakers will also address issues of ethics and leadership. For the first case write-up, students will analyze a case that presents a leader with an ethical dilemma using behavioral ethics frameworks and concepts. They also will be asked to formulate the most persuasive arguments that the leader can make to give voice to her values and create an action plan for the leader to do so. The final case write-up and the team project will involve addressing the ethical dimensions of leadership and communication problems. As another example, a part of the Reflected Best Self Paper will prompt students to identify and reflect on the values that they live by, what they can do to strengthen them, and the ethical issues to which they perceive themselves to be most vulnerable.

Ethics as an Explicit Component of the Course: The Ethics Flag indicates that students will learn practical ethics, so the connection between ethical content and real-life choices should be made concrete. Please describe how this course gives students the opportunity to apply ethical reasoning to issues relevant to their adult and professional lives.

A central focus of the course will involve integrating ethics into an understanding and application of effective leadership and communication skills. Using behavioral ethics concepts and frameworks, students will analyze cases that present ethical dilemmas that leaders have faced. In their analyses, students will examine decision-making biases and heuristics, social and organizational pressures, and situational factors that can lead to poor ethical decisions. They will learn strategies for counteracting these factors and living in sync with their values. Students will study exemplars of good and bad leadership examining factors related to both ethics and effectiveness. They will hear guest speakers talk about what they have learned from the ethical issues that they have faced. For example, Sherron Watkins, the Enron whistleblower, has agreed to speak to the class about her experience at Enron. Students will watch some excerpts of films that portray leaders facing ethical dilemmas. For example, I plan to use excerpts from the documentary film series, “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1985,” and from the movie, “Gandhi.”

Graded Content Based on Ethical Reasoning: To satisfy the requirements of the Ethics Flag, at least one-third of the course grade must be based on work in practical ethics. Please describe the course grading scheme, indicating how one-third of the course is based on ethical reasoning.

At least 40% of the graded content of the course will focus on ethics. The first case write-up (15% of course grade) will focus completely on applying behavioral ethics concepts and frameworks to an ethical dilemma that a leader faces. At least one-third (6.67% of course grade) of the team project will focus on addressing ethical dimensions of leadership and communication issues. Likewise, at least one-third (8.33% of course grade) of the final case write-up will involve addressing ethical dimensions of leadership and communication problems. At least, one-sixth (3.33% of course grade) of the Reflected Best Self Paper will address values and ethics. At least one third (6.67% of course grade) of class discussions will focus on ethics. If one considers, the leadership dimension of the course as well, the entire graded content of the course will pertain to ethics and leadership because communication issues will be examined in the context of leadership and ethics.