Quality Enhancement Plan
Ethical Decision Making: Student Education within the Professional and Pre-Professional Majors
Commission on Colleges
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools
Submitted: February 2007
Table of Contents
I. Executive Summary …………………………………………………………… 4
II. Introduction: Selection and Development of the QEP Topic…………. 5
1. Descriptive Title of the Plan ……………………………………………… 5
2. The Importance of the QEP to the University’s Mission ……………… 6
3. Institutional Planning, Evaluation and Selection of the QEP ………… 7
4. The Selection and Development of the QEP ………………………….. 8
5. Definition of Student Learning …………………………………………... 11
6. Summary of Student Learning Outcome Goals ………………………..11
III. Literature Review and Best Practices…………………………………….. 12
IV. Actions to be Implemented: QEP Goals ………………………………… 15
1. Summary of Actions to be Implemented ………………………………. 15
2. The QEP Goals …………………………………………………………... 16
a. Goal 1 ……………………………………………………………….. 16
b. Goal 2……………………………………………………………….. 17
c. Goal 3………………………………………………………………… 17
V. Timeline for Implementation ………………………………………………... 18
VI. Organizational Structure ……………………………………………………. 22
VII. Budget …………………………………………………………………………. 22
VIII. Assessment Plan ……………………………………………………………... 25
IX. Conclusion and Ancillary Projects ……………………………………….. 28
X. Appendices ……………………………………………………………………. 30
Appendix A: Documents from the “Practice” QEP ……………………….. 31
Appendix B: QEP Proposal Selection Committee Membership List …… 34
Appendix C: Sample Documents Relevant to Selection of QEP ………. 35
Appendix D: Various Board and Organization Minutes and
the Selection of the QEP ………………………………………….… 40
Appendix E: Professional and Pre-Professional Undergraduate Majors
Involved in the QEP and the QEP Steering Committee Membership List …………………………………………………………………….. 45
Appendix F: Sample Ethics Curriculum Reviews ……………………….. 46
Appendix G: Library Holdings Related to Ethics and Ethics Education .. 56
Appendix H: QEP Steering Committee Minutes …………………………. 58
Appendix I: Summer Ethics Education Faculty Development
Workshops ……………………………………………………………. 71
Appendix J: QEP Timeline………………………………………………….. 73
Appendix K: Resume of Dr. William Morris Tillman, Jr. …………………. 77
Appendix L: QEP Five-Year Projected Budget …………………………... 80
Appendix M: Review of the Defining Issues Test ……………………….. 81
Appendix N: QEP Assessment Timeline………………………………..... 84
XI. Selected Bibliography ………………………………………………………. 90
I. Executive Summary
Quality Enhancement Plan, Executive Summary
“Ethical Decision Making: Student Education within the Professional
and Pre-Professional Majors”
QEP Director: Dr. Bill Tillman, T.B. Maston Professor of Christian Ethics ()
Description and Focus of the Plan
While ethical decision making is an implicit part of much of the university’s curricular focus as a private, Christian university, we recognize that ethics should be more explicitly integrated into our undergraduate professional and pre-professional programs. The QEP engages every aspect of our campus community, including the training and collaboration of faculty members in the development of ethics curricula across the campus, the allocation of budgets for new courses and related activities, and the reinforcement and application of ethical decision-making education through student life activities.
Rationale for the Plan
As a faith-based institution of higher learning, ethical and moral education is central to our university mission; therefore, focusing our QEP in enhancing and expanding such training in our curriculum and campus activities is appropriate. Further, given the recent, well-publicized failures of some of our society’s leaders to make appropriate ethical decisions, our QEP is timely, even critical, for the education of the next generation of our nation’s leaders. Consequently, we are developing or enhancing ethical decision-making content in all of our undergraduate professional and pre-professional programs. The proposal also calls for the university to develop a minor in ethical studies, available to all majors. The minor would be offered by the Logsdon School of Theology.
Goals of the Plan
To develop or strengthen ethical decision-making education in the undergraduate professional and pre-professional programs, the university will focus on accomplishing three goals, each with specific initiatives for achieving the goal.
Goal I: Students will deepen their knowledge and understanding of the discipline of ethical studies.
Goal II: Students will develop and utilize skills in ethical decision making.
Goal III: Students’ capacity for self-examination will be heightened through learning environments that encourage critical thinking and self-assessment in matters of morality and social integrity.
Goal IV: Students will internalize a commitment to life-long ethical leadership in their careers and communities.
Execution of the Plan
The QEP will be initiated in the spring of 2008 by planning the development of an ethics minor within the religion program. Between 2008 through 2011, individual schools and colleges will each, in turn, review its curriculum and determine the extent of ethics education within the current curriculum. The faculties of each school or college will attend summer workshops for faculty development and collaboration relating to developing and enhancing ethics education within the curriculum. Faculties will determine appropriate student outcome goals, and initiate and implement curricula changes designed to enhance ethics education for their students. They will develop and initiate appropriate assessment tools and processes to determine the success of students in meeting student outcome goals. In support of the ethical education curriculum, the university will create an organizational structure to ensure both support for and evaluation of the QEP. An Ethics Education Council will be created and will have the primary responsibility to oversee the execution and assessment of the QEP.
II. Introduction: Selection and Development of the QEP Topic
While ethical decision making is an implicit part of much of the Hardin-Simmons University’s curricular focus as a private, Christian university, we recognize that ethics should be more explicitly integrated into our undergraduate professional and pre-professional programs. The QEP will engage every aspect of our campus community, including the training and collaboration of faculty members in the development of ethics curricula across the campus, the allocation of budgets for course development and related activities, and the reinforcement and application of ethical decision-making education through student life activities.
1. Descriptive Title of the Plan
“Ethical Decision Making: Student Education within the Professional and Pre-Professional Majors”
2. The Importance of the QEP to the University Mission
Given the commonplace nature of corporate scandals, it is imperative that corporations and organizations must embrace ethics as a primary element of their core philosophies and values. Higher education owns a critical responsibility to inculcate the skills of sound ethical decision making in tomorrow’s leaders. Current scandals evidence the cost of not preparing future business executives and other professionals. The Journal of Business Ethics estimated in March 2005, “[L]osses from [recent] financial frauds total approximately $200 billion dollars. On Enron alone those losses are more than two times the aggregate losses when the stock market crashed in 1920.”[1]
A recent survey conducted by the Chronicle of Higher Education further emphasizes the need for value-centered education. According to the survey, 81% of the public believe “help[ing] students develop good values and ethical positions” is one of the ‘important’ or ‘very important’ roles for colleges to perform.[2] In addition, George Kuh found in a study of values development at general liberal arts colleges and various types of large public universities that “[T]he institutions with the most distinctive impact on character were the evangelical Protestant schools.”[3]
From the time of Aristotle, ethics education has been an integral and essential part to the whole of education enterprise. In the 1960s and 70s, however, moral education became marginalized from the curricula of colleges and universities because of a number of factors including “the fragmentation of knowledge and the disciplines, the increased elevation of scientific or other forms of knowledge, and the growing importance placed upon a researcher or teacher being objective or value free.”[4] Today, responding to the complexities of a postmodern world, the pendulum appears to be moving back toward a more integrated model as our culture exhibits an increased interest in teaching ethics and doing so from a normative perspective rather than a merely descriptive one.
As a faith-based institution of higher learning, Hardin-Simmons University endeavors to provide an education in which ethical decision making establishes the foundation on which students build their education. This goal is further illustrated in the mission statement of the university: “The mission of Hardin-Simmons University is to be a community dedicated to providing excellence in education enlightened by Christian faith and values.”[5] Ethical decision making is at the very core of the university mission. However, the QEP selection process led the faculty and administration to recognize that ethics education needs to be even more explicit as a part of the curriculum in the professional and pre-professional programs as it might be. Therefore, through Hardin-Simmons University’s QEP, “Ethical Decision Making: Student Education within the Professional and Pre-Professional Majors,” the university strives to become more intentional about implementing the value focus of its mission statement through an explicit emphasis on ethics education.
William E. Brock in the “Chairman’s Preface” of An American Imperative: Higher Expectations for Higher Education stated the following:
We must not forget that no nation can remain great without developing truly well-educated people. No nation can remain good without transmitting the fundamental values of a civil society to each new generation. No nation can remain strong unless it puts young people at the forefront of its concerns.[6]
Given the evidence of serious failures of ethical behavior in our culture and society and the general public’s conviction that higher education should address values, a Christian university focus on Christian ethics is essential. Dr. T. B. Maston, renowned Baptist ethicist, defined Christian ethics as “critical reflection on the moral decisions and actions of individual Christians and of the Christian community.”[7] Consequently, the aim of Hardin-Simmons University’s QEP is to foster the ability of students to engage in critical reflection, moral decisions and moral actions consistent with Christian faith and values.
3. Institutional Planning, Evaluation and Selection of the QEP
While the university considered numerous QEP topics, the ideas and issues related to the need for ethics education have been topics of concern and consideration for several years. In his 2001 Presidential Inauguration Address, Dr. Craig Turner articulated among his goals for the university a belief that the institution had an ethical responsibility to be actively engaged in enhancing the communities around the campus. Toward that end, several neighborhood programs are presently in operation and an increased awareness of the importance of integrating ethical and social concerns into the college experience has been growing within the campus community for six years.
During the 2002 University Board of Trustees Retreat, Dr. William Ellis, then Vice President for Academic Affairs, brought a suggestion that the university should consider at a future date creating an ethics center, given the importance of the discipline and the university’s unusual position of having three terminally degreed ethicists on its faculty. The trustees responded with support and encouragement for the idea. Additionally, the work and presence of the three ethicists on the Logsdon School of Theology faculty provided grist for conversations across the university faculty and with the university’s administration regarding the potential impact of Christian ethics education throughout the university and beyond.
Further, the Logsdon School of Theology has an endowed professorship, the T. B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics, which is funded from gifts to the university honoring T. B. Maston, the renowned Baptist ethicist. Dr. Bill Tillman, who holds the professorship, has provided a reference point for the development of Christian Ethics courses for graduate and undergraduate level degree plans, some of which are directed beyond theology students. Through Dr. Tillman’s efforts, the Logsdon School of Theology presents the T. B. Maston Christian Ethics Lectures each academic year, with nationally and internationally known scholars and ethicists presenting lectures to students, faculty, and the community. Because of these emphases and resources, Dr. Tillman and his colleagues were engaging the university administration and faculty in dialogues regarding the need to increase and enhance ethics awareness and education on the campus.
Therefore, while the university considered numerous possible topics for the QEP, the development of a plan focusing on ethics education developed as the natural outgrowth of university resources, interests, and educational concerns.
4. The Selection and Development of the QEP
In the spring of 2003, the Administrative Council of Hardin-Simmons University began the process of exploring an acceptable Quality Enhancement Plan for the university. Each of the Vice Presidents was asked by the President to consider strategies to involve faculty and/or staff in his area in such an exploration. Dr. William Ellis, then Vice President for Academic Affairs, began conducting a series of workshops and small group sessions on the requirements of the Quality Enhancement Plan. These sessions were first held with the university deans and key staff personnel. Dr. Ellis asked the deans to discuss with their faculties possible topics for the QEP. The faculties of the schools were asked specifically to evaluate proposed topics in light of needs and concerns delineated by their annual assessment plans and their Five-year Program Reviews. Ideas surfacing from each of the Vice President's areas were collected and ultimately distributed to all of the various university entities for discussion.
During the 2003-2004 academic year, President Craig Turner and Dr. Ellis led the university through the process of developing a "practice" Quality Enhancement Plan. The administration selected a "Practice" QEP Committee composed of individuals from every area of the university. Following a review of the proposed topics stemming from the discussion described above, the committee settled on the subject of “Enhancing Student Learning through Increased Retention.” The committee spent the entire academic year developing a “practice” Quality Enhancement Plan. The various members of the committee were able to provide information to the administration and later to the QEP Steering Committee regarding struggles, successes, and concerns discovered in the trial process. The information gained through the process proved helpful in evaluating the feasibility and viability of the topics which had been proposed, thus far, for the QEP (see Appendix A: “Documents from the ‘Practice’ QEP”).
The primary task of the 2004-2005 academic year with regard to the QEP was to settle upon a topic which would be embraced by every element of the university's constituency. Topics initially proposed for consideration for the QEP included: enhancing ethics education; expanding technology resources and technology education across the curriculum; developing remedial education programs; enhancing students’ first year experience; improving faculty teaching through various faculty hiring, faculty development, and student engagement projects; enhancing fitness education and a commitment to life-long fitness; and redesigning university curricula in accordance to theories on student learning styles.