Summer Seminar Promotes Ethics Across the Curriculum

The Ethics Across the Curriculum Faculty Summer Seminar was held May 4-8 with sponsorship from the Center for the Study of Ethics.

“This conference benefits the UVU faculty because it allows us to get together with colleagues from across campus and discuss an interdisciplinary topic with renown visiting scholars.” said David Keller, the Director of the Center for the Study of Ethics.
This years theme, chosen by the Ethics Across the Curriculum Faculty Advisory Committee (EACFAC), questioned the ethics and public policy implications of free-market economics.

Visiting scholars included Korkut Erturk, a professor of economics at the University of Utah, and Mark Sagoff, a Senior Research Scholar for the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland.
The first two days of the seminar Erturk lectured regarding the history of free market economics and the rise of orthodoxy, as well as the positive critique by heterodox economists.

The last two days of the conference, Sagoff lectured on cost/benefit analysis and regulatory review as well as global environmental problems, energy use and responsibilities to future generations versus poor people in developing countries today.

“The main difference of opinion amongst the faculty was whether free-market economics should be left alone to operate according to the laws of supply and demand, or whether the government must intervene in market operations to avoid turbulence and chaos which causes human suffering,” Keller said.
The faculty will be able to take what they learned and integrate those insights in with their teaching and research. They are encouraged to participate in the annual “Conference by the Faculty” held in January at which faculty present research papers which incorporate what they learned in the summer seminar.

As opposed to the summer seminar, which is reserved exclusively for faculty, this conference is open to the public.
Faculty members are also able to submit formalized papers for publication in a yearly distribution, which is available in both the library and in the Ethics Center office.