$1.25 million ethics grant awarded to College of Business

Ethics education in the College of Business received a boost Jan. 19, accepting a $1.25 million grant from the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative to further the study of business ethics.   

The grant was awarded to eight universities throughout the Rocky Mountain region in an effort to strengthen the area's ethics education programs. The Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative is a partnership with eight universities found throughout Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, which aims to strengthen ethics education in business schools. The hope is that future young business leaders will come out of these schools with a more ethics-based business education. The ideas behind the initiative are founded on the principles of Bill Daniels, a native Colorado businessman who felt strongly about honesty and integrity.

"There is criticism out there that business schools have focused on teaching how to maximize wealth but have not done enough to integrate ethics into their curriculum to help students in dealing with ethical dilemmas," said Venkat Reddy, dean of the College of Business. "Our intention through the grant is to provide the tools necessary for students to make ethical decisions by engaging both faculty and business leaders in this process."

Currently, the School of Business offers several courses on business ethics. Ethics courses are taught in various areas of the university, from the College of Nursing to the College of Education, so that at some point in their educational careers, UCCS students are bound to run into a course that teaches ethics.

"The College of Business has a history of teaching ethics largely through integration of ethical issues throughout the curriculum," said Reddy. "We offer a class in Business Law, which explicitly addresses ethics issues." 

"The College also includes teaching ethics in two senior level capstone classes dealing with government and societal concerns in business and with business policy."

All eight of the universities involved in the Daniels Initiative will be collaborating and creating new programs aimed at instilling a serious sense of ethics in students.   

"All of our programs, graduate and undergraduate, will be impacted by this initiative," said Reddy. "We are particularly delighted about working alongside some of the best educational institutions in the west and sharing best practices that will help all of the universities in the consortium strengthen their ethical education."

"We want our students and community to understand that our motivation to strengthen the ethical foundations in our students is not only because it is the right thing to do but to carry the message that ‘good ethics is good for business,'" Reddy added.