Society and the Professions Program

Welcome

Washington and Lee recognizes a social need for specific and systematic attention to normative ethics, to questions of human value as they relate to business, the environment and the professions. The program is involved in ethics instruction across the curriculum and offers specific courses on normative issues in four areas : business, law, medicine and the environment. The program is also closely associated with the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications program in journalism ethics, with the Shepherd Program for the Interdisciplinary Study of Poverty, with the Global Stewardship Program and with the Environmental Studies Program. The goal of Society and the Professions is to raise for undergraduates the critical questions of social responsibility inherent in their life as citizens and professionals. (For specific courses, refer to the Interdepartmental course listings.)

In addition to sponsoring public lectures and symposia, Society and the Professions creates a close association between undergraduate students and visiting practitioners by holding ethics institutes as part of its courses. For a two-day period, students engage in an intensive schedule of seminars with visiting professionals. The institutes also bring nationally recognized scholars (in each field) to Washington and Lee. These visiting lecturers engage in classroom discussion, and deliver a public lecture. At the end of each academic year the text of these lectures is published and distributed to interested alumni, friends and libraries throughout the United States.

Further information on this program is available from Professor Gregory Cooper, director of the program.

Society and the Professions Resources

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