Course Descriptions and Select Course Syllabi

PUBS 6210 Ethics in Public Service, Public Service Master's Program
Specifically designed for professional graduate students who work in community-based organizations grappling with urban poverty in the greater Milwaukee area. Examines public service ethical conflicts and obligations that emerge within bureaucratic organizations, especially relating to fundraising and mission drift. Specific attention is paid to normative and deliberative democracy theory and the realization of democratic norms within the nonprofit organizational structure and internal decision-procedures, as well as the realization of these norms in the organization’s relationship with its constituents and other stakeholders. To equip future CBO organizational leaders with the skills to be agents of systems change, we examine historical social reformers like Jane Addams and Grace Lee Boggs and discuss topics like systems and structural change; political agency and empowerment; deliberative equality; poverty, charity and their relationship to capitalism.
Project Centered Course; Democratic Assessment Course: Students design, develop, host, and measure and evaluate the success of a 1-day Professional Ethics Conference for Nonprofit Leaders in the greater Milwaukee area.
PUBS 6210 Ethics in Public Service Syllabus
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POSC 4931 Political Ethics, Department of Political Science
Two overarching branches of political ethics are considered in the course: (1) The course explores the ethics of public policy through attending to questions in contemporary normative democracy theory. Here we examine the ethical and epistemological justifications for democracy, as well as the ethical conflicts that emerge in attempts to defend and realize democratic values (e.g., political autonomy, political equality, transparency, inclusion and accessibility, and public reason). (2) The course explores the ethics of public process by analyzing a number of controversial cases of “guerilla government”, where public officials have acted in ways to undermine their own political agencies or against the orders of elected political officials. These cases situate the question of “following one’s conscience” among a range of competing obligations to other entities, such as one’s professional role and agency, one’s constituents, democratic procedures, and democratic norms, etc.
Project Centered Course; Student-led Learning Course: With my support throughout the semester, students work in small groups to design a deliberative project for an existing public space, or design a deliberative public space itself, that attempts to grapple with a contemporary public problem that all Small Group members come to a consensus around.
POSC 4931 Political Ethics Syllabus.pdf
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PHIL 4336 Applied Ethics for Health Sciences, Department of Philosophy in Partnership with the College of Health Sciences
This course is designed to provide an introduction to issues in professional ethics for upper-level students in the College of Health Sciences. It equips students with an understanding of theoretical concepts in ethics as they apply to professional issues in the Health Sciences through exploring two overarching themes: (1) how to resolve the tension that often arises between the healthcare provider's duty of beneficence and the patient's right to autonomy and (2) the moral basis for informed consent and considerations of how to achieve that moral ideal in various healthcare settings. The first half of the course explores the theoretical underpinnings of these two themes. The second half of the course explores these two themes as they apply to emerge in various topics in biomedical ethics (e.g., genetic counseling, disability ethics, global pharmaceutical research, reproductive tourism, withdrawn of care, end of life and hospice care, and euthanasia). 
Seminar Style: The course is structured as a Topic course in clinical ethics and is formatted as a graduate seminar. Students take responsibility for the presentation of course content, the introduction of cases, and discussion facilitation. 
PHIL 4336 Applied Ethics for Health Sciences Syllabus
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PHIL 1001 Foundations in Philosophy
This foundational course aims to help students critically engage their own experience as it relates to fundamental philosophical questions including: the human condition, values, ethics and social justice. The course takes Wellness as its central unifying subject of inquiry for the semester. Throughout the semester, students will have an opportunity to reflect on how classical and contemporary philosophical figures and frameworks considered in the course inform their conception of Wellness. While exploring this theme together throughout the semester, important philosophical questions emerge: What is the nature of Wellness, and in what sense can it be measured? What philosophical methodologies and modes of inquiry produce knowledge and understanding about Wellness? What values, principles, social norms, and attitudes are necessary for Wellness? What kinds of organizational cultures, social norms, and institutional structures impede, and by contrast prompts, relational practices that are necessary features of producing a world where Wellness is a realistic possibility for humanity. 
Curiosity Component: ​Inquiry-based assignment. Students philosophically analyze a Wellness practice in their own life or piece of media that informs their development of a conception and practice of Wellness. Throughout the semester, students present this analysis to their peers to connect course content and inquiry to lived experiences and questions.  
PHIL 1001 Foundation in Philosophy Syllabus
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