The Provost’s Ethics Colloquium promotes cross-disciplinary, cross-college conversations about ethics-related issues. By highlighting existing ethics seminars and activities, encouraging additional events, and providing virtual resources, the Colloquium fosters increased interaction and collaboration among faculty and staff members working with an ethical perspective on virtually any issue facing the community. We know that there are already many activities in this direction happening at CSU; our goal is to support, highlight, and enhance them, and to give our broader Northern Colorado community a window into all that is going on at CSU.  To that end, while themes and topics will be broad-based, the Colloquium will emphasize ethical issues in the professions and disciplines, particularly when such issues have larger social, civic, political, and economic implications.

To pursue these goals, the Colloquium launched a series of events featuring CSU and external speakers. The first event was a conversation on “The End of The University,” by Provost Rick Miranda and University Distinguished Teaching Scholar and Professor Matt Hickey; they described some of the issues that university faculty could/should consider in designing curricula that could equip students to have a values-based approach to their education.  How can our students learn to deal both ethically and effectively with the civic, social, political, and economic implications of our changing world – and how should we provide those learning outcomes?  Subsequent talks in the series have addressed a range of topics, from media ethics and religious ethics to the ethics of how laboratory animals are treated and the intersections between ethics and diversity issues in community-based research and teaching.

A fund has been established to provide funding that will enable the Colloquium to bring a compelling high-profile speaker to campus each year. Many supporters choose to help make possible CSU events that matter to them through a gift to the event. We are asking for your help to ensure that funding will be available to enable the Colloquium to continue sponsoring events that promote meaningful engagement with ethics-related issues.

Thank you for your consideration and for helping us to reach our goal. You may make your gift using this link: Provost’s Ethics Colloquium.

Please suggest ethics-related events for co-sponsorship and/or prospective topics and speakers for future events by contacting matt.hickey@colostate.edu.