Thanks to a generous gift from the Richard D. Donchian Foundation, the Institute for Practical Ethics (IPE) announces another round of fellowships to enable UVA faculty across the University to:

1. Develop new courses or enhance existing courses devoted to ethics, OR
2. Integrate ethical analysis and reasoning into existing or new courses that address other topics. (In the past topics have included genetics, history, education, and many others.)

Since 2010, the IPE has awarded forty-one of these fellowships, listed on our Teaching Fellows website. It expects to award five fellowships in 2024.

Names of Fellowships:

• The John T. Casteen III Faculty Fellowship in Ethics
• The Richard D. Donchian Faculty Fellowship in Ethics

Eligibility:

Any full-time faculty member from any UVA school or department and of any academic rank who will be teaching at UVA for the next three years.

Stipend:

$8,000 to the recipient

Expectations:

Fellowship holders will spend four weeks in the summer of 2024 preparing their course. 

• Fellowship holders will be expected to meet a few times over the summer and academic year with other faculty fellows and IPE affiliated faculty to discuss preparation of their course, including topics, readings, cases, and teaching methods. (Remote options available for meetings; no residency in summer is required.)
• Fellowship holders will be expected to teach their courses at least twice over the three years following their fellowships.
• The completed course description will be posted on the IPE website.

Application Materials:

• Abbreviated curriculum vitae (no longer than three pages)
• Proposal:
  • Title of course
  • A brief description of the proposed new or existing course on ethics and plans for its development or enhancement, or, if the course is on another topic, a brief description of that course along with plans for integrating ethical analysis and reasoning into it.
• Letter from department chair or dean indicating that the applicant, if selected, will be able to teach the proposed course at least twice over the next six semesters.
• Summaries of teaching evaluations from the last two years.

These application materials should be combined into a single pdf file and submitted electronically to [email protected]

Selection committee: Willis Jenkins (Religious Studies), Rebecca Stangl (Philosophy)

Application deadline: April 26th 2024

Announcement of fellowship recipients: By May 15th 2024

For additional information: Write Rebecca Stangl

Development and Goals of the Program of Faculty Fellowships in Ethics

The Richard D. Donchian Foundation has supported several projects at the Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life (IPE), including student ethics internships, interprofessional values seminars, special courses and programs on ethics (e.g., aesthetics and ethics; environmental ethics). This program—faculty fellowships in ethics—represents a commitment that the IPE has had from its founding in 2000 to expand and strengthen the teaching of ethics at UVA, particularly through the integration of ethical analysis and reasoning into courses on a variety of subjects in such areas as history, sociology, politics, technology, and the like. The goal is to expose more students to ethical analysis and reasoning, often in courses focused on other subject matter, and to enable them to become more capable at asking ethical questions in contexts where ethical issues are often neglected or ignored.