The University is striving to become a top-ranked institution in the field of ethics.
University President John T. Casteen III will announce today the establishment of the University's new Institute for Practical Ethics.
The program is aimed at integrating different perspectives on contemporary public issues and policies.
"By pulling our resources together in the field of ethics we can easily make U.Va. number one in this area," said James Childress, director of the Institute and professor of Religious Studies and Medical Education.
One of the Institute's major plans for the future includes a new course, EVSC 493: Environmental Decisions.
The new class, run by Assoc. Environmental Science Prof. Tom Smith, will examine issues of land and environmental ethics through a variety of standpoints, Childress said.
He said he and the other 10 professors involved in the project will bring their knowledge of their individual fields to the examination of environmental issues.
Ruth Gaare Bernheim, executive director of the Institute, said the class will tackle such issues as the Virginia Wilderness Act of 2000, which designated the "Priest" and "Three Ridges" areas of the George Washington National Park as protected wilderness areas.
Declaring land as wilderness areas prevents logging and other environmental harms, Bernheim said. The class will examine whether the congressional action was the right approach.
Childress said he and the other professors will give their field's perspective on the action.
He said he would examine the controversy from a religious perspective, while other professors would examine it from either a literary or scientific perspective.
He added the class has "the best-student-faculty ratio of any class" because of the high level of faculty involvement in teaching.
The Institute will offer internship opportunities for students in practical ethics, Bernheim said.
Childress said he felt the internships also help strengthen one of the main themes of the Institute: the bridging of theory and practice in ethical matters.
A group of University faculty have been meeting since 1996 to facilitate research on ethics together, he said.
In 1998, the Donchian Foundation gave a grant of $500,000 to fund student internships, courses and lectures on practical ethics, which served as a major force in the creation of the Institute.
The Institute plans to work in conjunction with the University's many other ethics initiatives, including the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics at the Darden School, the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, the Center for Environmental Studies and the Center for Biomedical Ethics in the School of Medicine.
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