Graduate Program

See Also: Admissions | Courses | Graduate Students | Financial Aid

Building on our traditional strength in medical ethics, our graduate program focuses on “applied ethics” – bioethics, business ethics, and environmental ethics, in particular. There are also opportunities to do work in engineering ethics, agricultural ethics, and philosophy of law.  We believe that a strong foundation in philosophy, especially the history of philosophy, ethical theory and social/political philosophy, is necessary to do good work in any of these applied fields.  We offer that theoretical foundation; we insist on it.

Various fields of applied ethics overlap and are converging.  The key issues in bioethics are now issues of justice and cost containment, and here in the U.S., we are relying on businesses to address these issues.  Environmental ethics is an important component of business ethics.  We will require the active participation of businesses if we are ever going to dig our way out of our environmental mess.  We must stop downplaying the role of environmental factors in health. 

Clinical practica have always been a major strength of our graduate program in medical ethics.  Now we offer practica in three applied areas: business ethics, environmental ethics, and bioethics.  At the master’s degree level, we offer a one-course practicum.  For the doctoral student, our practicum allows students to spend an entire semester in the field studying the ways in which ethical problems present themselves in hospitals, businesses, government agencies, and activist or advocacy groups.  One of them even did part of his doctoral practicum in Uganda.  Our students find these hands-on practical experiences both exciting and transforming.  In these practica, they learn to negotiate the gap between theory and practice.

Students graduating from our program will be well-equipped to pursue  a variety of career paths:  teaching in a philosophy department, teaching in a professional school, or pursuing a career outside of the academy in businesses, hospitals, governmental agencies or non-governmental organizations.