Undergraduate Fellowship Program

The Center for Ethics in Public Life is an interdisciplinary center dedicated to the encouragement of teaching, research and creative projects, and public discourse that promote understanding of the ethical dimensions of our lives, and especially, the lives we live in common.

The Center for Ethics in Public Life is initiating an Undergraduate Fellows Program and invites applications from UM undergraduates for the 2009-10 academic year.

The goal of the Fellows Program is to provide undergraduates with the opportunity and support to develop, explore, and pursue ethics-related issues of personal and academic interest to them.

We expect to fund six to eight fellowships for the 2009-10 academic year. Each Fellow will receive a stipend of $4000 for the year. Fellows will devote at least five hours each week to the individual projects proposed in their application to the program. In addition, Fellows will attend an orientation session in September, attend twice monthly Fellows’ meetings, and actively participate in Center activities and events. The Fellows meetings will include visiting speakers, opportunities for Fellows to report on the progress of their projects, and active participation in the planning and facilitation of Center events.

Projects

Each Fellow will define and carry out an individual project related to ethics in public life. These projects can take many forms. Some examples include:

A individual research project
A significant role in a faculty research project
A creative project that explores the ethical dimensions of public life
The organization of events or activities for the campus, such as an ethics film series, an ethics bowl team (http://ethics.iit.edu/eb/index.html), a symposium on environmental ethics or business ethics or bioethics, etc.
An examination of some dimension of ethics arising in campus life (e.g., academic integrity, substance abuse, residence life, copyright violation), perhaps in cooperation with a unit of the University that is concerned with that issue.

The Center will provide funding for projects that require it for facilitation or completion.

The proposed project may not be one for which the applicant will receive academic credit.

Eligibility

University of Michigan undergraduates who are currently enrolled at the Ann Arbor campus, who will be full time and in residence for the entire academic year in 2009-10.