Le Moyne College has received a $100,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) that will be used to launch a minor in values and professional ethics. The initiative will enhance the collaboration between philosophy and pre-professional departments to better engage students in questions of personal values, ultimate meaning, vocation and professional ethics.
The grant, through the
NEH’s Humanities Connection program, is for a period of three years and will be used to develop three new courses, as well as support faculty and mentors who will be involved with the minor’s new curriculum. It will engage faculty from all three of the College’s schools – the College of Arts and Sciences, the Madden School of Business and the Purcell School of Professional Studies – representing philosophy, nursing, computer science and marketing, among others.
“This new minor will strengthen the role of humanities at Le Moyne by providing opportunities to use the rigorous modes of thinking found in philosophy in concrete, highly relevant ways,” said Irene Liu, Ph.D., chair of the College’s Philosophy Department and Le Moyne’s project director for the NEH grant. “The challenge we gave ourselves that ultimately resulted in this grant was how best to merge our commitment to liberal arts and professional preparation in a way that is mutually enhancing.”
A total of
199 projects were awarded grants for 2018; fewer than 15 percent of proposals submitted to the NEH receive funding.
Building on the College’s existing Core Curriculum requirements, three new courses will be initially developed.
1. Ethics of Medical Technology will deepen student engagement with ethics in the workplace by considering difficult questions of social ethics and justice raised by new medical technologies.
2. Happiness and the Meaning of Life will help students put their careers and work in perspective by thinking of their lives as wholes and reflecting on what makes for a good life.
3. Digital Stories is a senior capstone in the core to help students to reflect on the impact the digital revolution has had on values, self-understandings, the workplace, culture and society.
The initiative will build on and expand the impact of Le Moyne’s burgeoning Manresa Program, a four-year sequence of co-curricular programming designed to facilitate students’ personal and professional development. The goal is to engage more than 100 students per semester in these courses, and add approximately 25 new philosophy minors.
ABOUT THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov.
“Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this release do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.”