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› Examining Ethics
› Alum Joins New Ethics Program
Examining Ethics By Mary A. Benanti '84
New minor helps prepare students for the real world.
Listening to news reports on National Public Radio as he drove to campus one morning, Tim Cleveland was struck by the seemingly endless string of scandals and ethics questions looming over the country's landscape.

"Enron, Martha Stewart, stem cell research, the war in Iraq, terrorism, torture" were the issues that preoccupied Cleveland's mind. It seemed to him ever more likely that young people graduating from NMSU would face such issues and even greater ones once they joined the working world.

The Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the battle over Terri Schiavo and the latest journalism scandals involving media once considered unquestionably trustworthy - CBS and Newsweek - seem to prove the need to help young people learn to think critically about issues involving ethics.

Cleveland, who is head of the Philosophy Department, reflected on these issues as he arrived at his office on the third floor of Breland Hall. Was there an ethics course at New Mexico State University that could universally reach students across disciplines? If not, Cleveland told himself, "We should have one."

Philosophy professors Hal Thorsrud and Danny Scoccia were of like mind. Scoccia had been teaching ethics at the university through the Philosophy Department for a good many years. At the same time, Cleveland already had been working with biology professor Elba Serrano. He had developed an ethics philosophy seminar for presentation to her biology classes.

It was inevitable the ideas should mesh and become the beginning of an interdisciplinary ethics minor in the Philosophy Department. Scoccia wrote the proposal for the new program.

Cleveland is emphatic about correcting any misperceptions of the ethics courses.

"We don't preach ethics. We don't have an agenda. Our goal is to make people reflect about ethical issues that could occur in their lives before they encounter them."

This is extremely important these days, he says.

"In many cases, students are naïve about what they will run into in the world and what it will take to resolve some of those issues," he says.

Many of today's events confuse students or leave them with the wrong conclusions, he says.

Look at Enron and other cases. Some people get away with these things. Even when they are uncovered, society doesn't always treat them the same. Sometimes, he says, it seems the message is sent that it's OK if you're not caught.

All of this suggests to Cleveland not only a "shortage of ethical training in our society, but also the need for serious ethical reflection."

He points to the 2004 presidential campaign and the debates that occurred over what is good in life and what is right and wrong. The point here, Cleveland says, is not whether one side or the other got it right. The point is the stream of debates was a reflection of this country's confusion over the issues.

Students must develop skills they can call upon when real-life demands confront them. Those skills could mean the difference between reacting to a situation appropriately or remaining uncertain and insecure in a dilemma. Soldiers in Iraq, for instance, have to be able to react and think quickly about what they are doing. With some training in critical thinking, they might be able to more quickly analyze an issue and make the right decision.

"Ultimately, whether a person does the right thing or not does not depend on us," Cleveland points out. "It still will depend on them. But we hope we will have raised their consciousness, their awareness."

Why in the Philosophy Department?

Because, he says, philosophers have been contemplating these things for 2,500 years. If philosophy is going to be relevant today, this is where it must be headed.

"We must appeal to philosophy's tools of reasoned reflection and rational critique."

We must help students develop "a well-reasoned ethical understanding of the practical ethical issues that they will encounter in life."

As such the ethics program has to reach across the university spectrum, from business majors to scientists to writers.

With the help of Arts and Sciences Dean Waded Cruzado-Salas, Professor William Frey was invited to NMSU to discuss initiatives in ethics implemented at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez. Meetings helped bring together the different people on campus who had interests in the ethical concerns in their fields. This created an interdisciplinary atmosphere from the start.

Classes in the minor will cover ethical theory and the history of ethics, applied and practical ethics, and ethics in business, engineering, biomedicine, journalism and the environment.

Cleveland, along with Jean-Paul Vessel, biologist Serrano and physicists Boris Keifer and Jacob Urquidi, are resubmitting a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation for curriculum development in ethics and nanoscience. Though they weren't funded last year, Cleveland says he believes the NSF will approve the grant this year.

"This eventually could help fund an Ethics Center at NMSU," he says.

For more information: (505) 646-4616 or www.nmsu.edu/~philos/
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