The Ethics Institute exists to serve the needs of the Dartmouth community as well as the larger academic community, through research and dialogue on emerging ethical issues.

Phillips Award in Ethics Essay Contest To send your paper TODAY, click here! Award presented annually to an undergraduate student for work in applied and professional ethics.  Papers may be in specific areas, such as medical or legal ethics, or in the broader arena of ethics applied to public life. ELIGIBLE PAPERS MUST BE WRITTEN WITHIN THE CALENDAR YEAR (S12-S13) DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: May 24, 2013 $250 Prize!

The Institute for the Study of Applied and Professional Ethics was established in 1982 by a group of faculty who recognized the primacy of ethics in a liberal arts education.  One of the founders, John Hennessey of the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, wrote:

"Morality must be a persistent concern of all professions and all professional schools.  Indeed by definition one of the essential ingredients of a profession is the creation and use of an explicit set of ethics governing individual and collective behavior of the professionals in that field."

Those words, written in 1974, take on even greater significance today.  Considerations of ethics have existed within specific professions and within the curriculum of professional schools from their inception, but in recent years the complexity of this consideration has grown dramatically. Where the term "professional ethics" once signified little more than questions of personal etiquette, it has more recently come to involve pressing new questions of individual and group responsibility. The rapid pace of technological and social change in the fields of medicine, engineering, education, business and law have generated new social choices and responsibilities.

The Dartmouth students pictured above attended a week long internship at the University of Miami School of Law Center for Ethics and Public Service.

Left to right: Professor Anthony V. Alfieri, Megan Bogia, Amanda Young, Kaila Pedersen, Julia Salinger, Kelly Brait, Sara Peterson, Emily Cambern, John Howard, Professor Aine Donovan