 | APPE Extends Partnership with the Prindle Institute–and Looks Ahead We’re excited to share that APPE has renewed its partnership with the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University for another three years. The Prindle Institute has been APPE’s home since 2017, and we’re thrilled to continue building on this relationship.
However, due to university-wide budget reductions, DePauw’s annual financial support for APPE has been reduced. While APPE’s finances remain strong, we’re launching a fundraising effort to help close this gap and ensure our continued growth. If you believe in APPE’s mission and impact, we invite you to make a gift today. |
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 | The terms for APPE's Board of Directors run July 1 - June 30.
Thank you to the following board members whose terms recently ended:- Andrew Cohen
- Lee Anne Peck
- Dena Plemmons
The following members were elected or re-elected in the spring and have begun their new four-year terms:- Cara Biasucci
- Mark Doorley
- Deborah Mower (re-elected)
- Ann Thebaut
The new APPE Board leadership is:- Chair: Dennis Cooley
- Chair Elect: Jonathan Beever
- Treasurer: Deborah Mower
- Secretary: Mohammad Hosseini
If you are interested in serving on the board, a call for nominees will be issued in November with elections to be held in April 2026. |
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You are invited to attend the Ethics Bowl Summer Workshop on July 25–26. This free, online event is a valuable opportunity for the Ethics Bowl community to come together, share ideas, and build connections. The workshop is designed to be welcoming and useful to both newcomers and long-time participants—whether you’re a coach, organizer, moderator, judge, or student competitor. Sessions will cover a range of topics relevant to all aspects of the Ethics Bowl, including rule updates, judging guidance, best practices for coaching, and resources for hosting regional competitions. It’s also a great forum for sharing questions, challenges, and success stories from across the country. Registration is required to receive Zoom access.
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 | | Individuals and groups from universities and colleges are encouraged to join us for the 2nd Annual Undergraduate Leadership Conference (September 5-7, 2025), organized by APPE's Business Ethics Affinity Group. At this FREE event, undergraduate student leaders will be equipped with the basic tools in ethical decision making that will serve as a foundation for a productive year of student leadership on their campuses. They will also network with other student leaders from colleges and universities across the country. This conference is presented by APPE, The Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University, the Notre Dame Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership and the Poe Business Ethics Center at the Warrington College of Business, University of Florida. All events take place at The Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. Most events will take place on Saturday, September 6, with optional activities taking place on Friday, September 5 and Sunday, September 7 for those who want to extend their stay. At this point, we are seeking information from interested individuals and institutions about how many students to expect, and for which portions of the conference. Please fill out this form as soon as possible, and an official registration form will be provided in August. Space is limited. |
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APPE Member SpotlightName: Dennis Cooley
Title/Institution: Professor and Chair, School of Humanities; Director, Northern Plains Ethics Institute at NDSU
APPE member since: 2006You are starting your term as Chair of the APPE Board of Directors. What do you hope to accomplish in that role?
APPE and its community of colleague scholars and practitioners mean a lot to me. My main goals are to grow APPE’s membership and our new endowment to help ensure APPE’s sustainability for the next 30 years. And to do this without losing APPE’s nurturing and caring culture. I want other to have the same opportunity to grow their careers and relationships that I had. You have coined the phrase "You make us so APPE." Tell us what that means to you.
As anyone who has been around me knows, I love puns--although most of the ones I make are really cringeworthy. This is one of them, but it captures that APPE is an organization that makes people feel included and that they and their work are valued and nurtured. Moreover, it is a privilege to go to presentations at which everyone is learning and helping presenters improve their work and ways to distribute it. None of this is possible without our amazing members. They are what makes us APPE and a home away from home, as one of our long-term members put it. You were a longtime Conference Co-Chair--what makes the APPE Conference unique and why should people submit proposals and/or attend?
APPE has always been dedicated to being a nurturing marketplace of ideas. Hearing about what our folks are working on is exciting for us. We learn from it, and in turn, offer questions, comments, and advice on how to improve the work. I don’t know how many times I’ve presented, and then those in the audience gave me additional sources, shown weaknesses and how to fix them, and otherwise benefitted from APPE’s membership and programming. Outside of APPE, you run an Ethics Center. What role does the Northern Plains Ethics Institute play on campus and in the community?
The Northern Plains Ethics Institute’s--or NPEI’s--mission is to inspire democratic participation in social and ethical issues affecting the Northern Plains and beyond. We do this by creating conversations guided by the questions of what kind of society do we want to live in and how do we get there? More precisely, the NPEI does not offer solutions, but places for our campus and community to learn and talk about these issues, which hopefully, better equip them to make their own pragmatic decisions. What are you working on professionally, or personally, that excites you right now?
There are three big projects. In no particular order are being a good APPE chair--I hope--finishing off my book combining Aldo Leopold’s land ethic with pragmatism to create a practical moral code, and writing about AI’s ethical impact. The book is a culmination of my work over more years than I want to remember. Finally, the work on AI and ethics is exciting because there is so much new ground to break-- but that becomes rather frightening when I start realizing that we should have done a whole lot of work on the ethical issues before we let this technology get as far as it has. As a tool used rightly, it is wonderful, but its misuse can be disastrous. I just hope that we as humans can make it work for us rather than the other way around. |
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Newsy and Noteworthy
Ethics in the News Jobs & Events
Have you seen our job and event emails? Limited free access to post jobs and events of interest in the weekly email (as well as in the Info Hub) is a benefit of membership. If you're a member and would like to submit something for consideration, just login to the Member portal, go to Job & Event Postings and click "add." Non-members can access the jobs and events by creating a login but must pay a fee to list positions and events. Reach out to contact@appe-ethics.org for more info.
We Want to Hear From You! To be featured as a member spotlight or if you have news to share, including books published, send us an email at membernews@appe-ethics.org. |
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In Memoriam The APPE office recently learned about the passing of two APPE members, and we wanted to pass on the tributes shared about them by their departments. Dr. Dennis F. Thompson was an APPE Lifetime Member and Founding Member, and the founding director of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. According to his colleagues, "Dennis passed away on March 30, 2025 leaving behind a legacy that has shaped generations of scholars, public servants, and students committed to pursuing ethical reflection in public life." Read more about Dennis here.
Dr. Stephanie Solomon Cargill was active in the APPE RISE community and had recently joined the Alden March Bioethics Institute as Associate Professor after spending 14 years in the Department of Health Care Ethics at Saint Louis University. According to an email from her colleagues at Saint Louis University, Stephanie had been diagnosed with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer in the Fall of 2024 and she passed away peacefully with her family on May 9. You can read more about Stephanie on the American Society for Bioethics + Humanities In Memoriam page. |
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Ethics Bowl Case to Consider A School For All Seasons (2025 APPE Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl® National Competition Case Set) One of this year's national cases encouraged students to build their own school "to promote human flourishing without worrying about regulatory repercussions." Here's how it began: "Here’s your chance to design a campus for the common good. Start by imagining a small private college in the United States with a long history and large endowment. Let’s call it The Lyceum. Faculty pursue their own research and scholarship, but their tenure and continued employment depend on good teaching. The school’s primary mission is to challenge every student to become a visionary leader in their chosen field.
The school’s focus on human flourishing for the common good expresses Aristotle’s ethical and political ideal. However, the polarization of American politics makes it difficult to determine how to operationalize the ideal."
It concludes: "How would you redesign The Lyceum so that it excludes no voice, challenges each student to think beyond their comfort zone, and contributes to a collaborative society?" Read the full case here (#1), then discuss it with your family members, colleagues, and friends. |
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