Professional Education

The promotion of teaching, research, and discourse about ethics in the professions is one of the priorities of the Center for Ethics in Public Life. In almost all of the University’s professional schools, students encounter professional ethics in the formal and informal curricula, in programs and centers within schools, and in clinical settings.

The professional schools and colleges in the medical/health areas lead the way in professional ethics. In Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy, ethics occupies a prominent role in the curriculum and in clinical training. Codes of ethics in these fields are well developed and are taken very seriously by professional associations, to which many graduates belong. Student engagement in patient-based clinical training, usually on campus and directed by faculty, makes these programs particularly effective in exposing students not only to the formal structures of professional ethics, but to professional ethics as it is put into practice. The School of Social Work has thoroughly integrated professional ethics into its curriculum, with each course syllabus calling attention to the relationship of the course to social work ethics and values.

Other courses on the Ann Arbor campus addressing professional ethics include:

There is at present relatively little activity concerning professional ethics that crosses the boundaries of the professional schools (or of the professions, for that matter). They differ in the extent to which a code of ethics plays a central role in the profession. In the health professions, social work, and law, codes of ethics are very important, and this is reflected in the attention paid to ethics in the curriculum. In others, such as business and public policy, codes of ethics have much less impact. These variations across the professions provide opportunities for cross-school inquiry and discourse that are possible only at a university like Michigan. The Center welcomes proposals from faculty and students that would advance teaching and research related to ethics in the professions.