The Joan Hanson Endowed Fund for Faculty Development and Teaching in Ethics aims to support research or teaching in ethics, broadly construed. In addition to funding projects that fall within the domain of traditional philosophical ethics, it also will fund projects that deal with particular, timely ethical issues: for example, regarding climate change, racial justice, immigration or any of the other myriad pressing ethical issues in our world today. Faculty in any discipline may apply for Joan Hanson Endowed Fund grants. Funds may also be requested to support work that deploys methodologies that favor an historical, sociological, creative or artistic approach to grappling with ethical issues.

The Joan Hanson Fund grants can be used to support a wide range of projects, large or small. Funds may be requested for stipend support, expense reimbursement, or a course release. Examples of projects that might be funded by a Joan Hanson Faculty Development Grant:

  1. An interdisciplinary reading group (involving only faculty or faculty and students) on some topic related to ethics.
  2. Funding a workshop that brings in an outside expert (or experts) on some ethical issue to help “train” faculty who want to incorporate work on that issue in their classes.
  3. Putting together a term-long “pro-seminar” with outside speakers on some theme related to ethics.
  4. Course release(s) to support undertaking of a new, substantial research project related to ethics.
  5. Course release(s) to enable a faculty member to pursue training needed for a new direction in their teaching or research that will significantly incorporate ethics (for example, to take a course in ethics in the area of a research/teaching area, such as political ethics, environmental ethics, etc.) 
  6. Developing connected modules on some issue of ethical significance among different faculty (for example, having faculty in philosophy and biology develop modules on CRISPR that are complimentary)

Requests for small grants (up to $4,000) should be submitted to Professor Daniel Groll, Director of EthIC.