| New Season of Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl Launches  The 2025-2026 Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl season has officially begun! More than 200 teams and 150 schools are expected to participate in 14 regions across the U.S. this fall. From those regionals, 36 teams will earn a bid to the national competition which will be held in St. Louis, March 7-8, 2026.Regional Ethics Bowls:
- California (El Cajon, December 6)
- Central States (Indianapolis, November 22)
- Chesapeake (Baltimore, December 6)
- Mid-Atlantic (Gainesville, GA, November 8)
- Northeast (Boston, November 15)
- Northwest (Seattle, November 15)
- Ohio River Valley (Cincinnati, December 6)
- Online (November 8)
- Rocky Mountain (Greeley, CO, November 15)
- Southeast (Jacksonville, FL, November 1)
- Texas (San Antonio, November 15)
- Two-Year (Palatine, Illinois, November 22)
- Upper Midwest (Chicago, November 15)
- Wasatch (Ogden, Utah, November 8)
Regional ethics bowls are powered by volunteers and they need judges and moderators. Learn more about the regional competitions and sign up to judge or moderate. |
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Join or Lead an APPE Affinity GroupWe are seeking chairs or co-chairs for some of our APPE Affinity Groups. Our Affinity Groups include:- Animal & Environmental Ethics
- Bioethics, Health & Medical Ethics
- Business Ethics
- Early Career Scholar/Next Gen
- Education Ethics
- Law, Government & Military Ethics
- Media & Journalism Ethics
- Moral Theory
- Social & Societal Ethics
- TEC (Technology, Engineering, and Computing) Ethics
Affinity Group chairs communicate with members throughout the year, organize a meet-up at the conference, and brainstorm potential non-conference programs. If you're interested in becoming more involved, please email Kristen at kristen@appe-ethics.org.
If you aren't sure if you are a member of an Affinity Group, login to your Member page, then go to My Info. Your current affiliations will be listed under Lists/Committees. You can edit those by clicking the small + button. By joining an Affinity Group you will opt-in to regular emails from chairs. |
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Save the Date: Ethics RoundtablesA new year of Ethics Roundtables has been announced. These free, virtual events are in partnership with Felician University and are open to the public. Zoom information will be coming soon. Save the dates:Fall 2025 Whose Speech, Whose Streets? Navigating the Ethics of Protest in Polarized Times
Wednesday, October 8 | 1:00–2:00 PM ET (Zoom) Bodies That Don’t Belong: Access to Health Care and Marginalized Persons
Wednesday, November 5 | 1:00–2:00 PM ET (Zoom) Spring 2026 What Do We Owe Each Other? Ethics in the Age of Generative Tools
Saturday, March 7 | Hybrid – APPE Annual Meeting & Zoom Eyes Everywhere: The Ethics of Being Watched
Wednesday, April 8 | 1:00–2:00 PM ET (Zoom) |
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APPE Member SpotlightName: Kingsley A. Reeves, Jr.
Title/Institution: Associate Professor of Industrial and Management Engineering, University of South Florida
APPE member since: 2024, Lifetime MemberYou are a relatively new APPE member, what inspired you to join, and at the Lifetime Membership level?
A seminal event happened in spring 2014 in my department regarding an incident that involved a student caught cheating. It inspired a research idea that resulted in a grant funded by the National Science Foundation’s Ethical Responsibility in Research (ER2) Program (formerly known as the Cultivating Cultures of Ethical STEM Program).
The goal of our project was to develop a novel pedagogical approach intended to foster the development of an ethical engineering identity, and I had the honor of working with Drs. Elaine Englehardt and Michael Pritchard on this grant. During the course of this grant I gave my first presentation at an APPE Conference in 2022. This was my introduction to APPE. I distinctly remember feeling apologetic about my lack of expertise and formal training in ethics or philosophy during that first conference. Nevertheless, since that time, my interest in playing a role in the ethical development of the engineers we train in our universities has not waned. In fact, I have every intention of continuing to make the ethical development of engineers a core part of my research as I make a career pivot and look to position myself for promotion to full professor. In alignment with this effort, I was the recipient of an NSF Mid-Career Advancement (MCA) grant in 2023 (that was terminated early in May 2025). In addition to funding the development of some new technical skills that will enable me to engage in learning analytics research, I also used the grant to fund my lifetime membership in APPE. Becoming more involved in APPE and becoming a lifetime member is an investment in myself. It is my hope that it will allow me to serve in an area of interest to me while also enabling me to grow professionally through my interaction of other research conducting interesting research in this area.
You are a member of the newly formed Outreach and Engagement Committee. What do you hope to contribute as a member of that committee and how do you hope that committee's work affects APPE as a whole?
The value we bring as individuals is often found in our uniqueness. I believe I am the only engineer on the committee, and it is my hope that my training as an engineer, in addition to other unique characteristics that comprise who I am, will enable me to bring a unique perspective that compliments the perspectives of other members of the committee in some valuable way. In the short term, I have offered my data analysis skills in service to the committee. The goal of the most recent analysis work is to better understand the opportunities that exist to better serve and grow the APPE community.
Tell us a little about your current role or a recent project at work.
I mentioned that my NSF MCA grant was terminated prematurely. Well, I actually had two grants terminated. The other was a grant funded by the NSF Racial Equity in STEM Education Program. Presently, the collaborative research team is trying to recover our losses and reframe and resubmit the previously proposed research such it is better aligned with current NSF priorities. The plan is to submit this revised proposal to the NSF EDU: Core Program. The work focuses on a novel asset-based approach to forming student teams that produces more equitable outcomes as measured by novel metrics such as psychological safety and an accompanying algorithm and team formation tool for use by faculty. An offshoot of this work is planned for submission to the NSF Research on Innovative Technologies for Enhanced Learning (RITEL) Program and involves leveraging large language models to analyze student team communication to discover potentially damaging team dynamics so that faculty may intervene and coach the team to better outcomes. Such work is aligned with my career pivot to learning analytics research.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out in your field?
Find an area of personal interest and natural gifting that, pragmatically speaking, also affords opportunities for research funding and subsequent publications. And learn how to serve others in some meaningful way with your work so that your work is more fulfilling. And as you serve and invest in others, make sure to invest in yourself as well.
What's the best book/podcast/movie you've enjoyed recently?
I read The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis a month ago and, admittedly, it was not an easy read. The best book I read prior to that was Think Again by Adam Grant, which I also read within the last 18 months. |
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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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Ethics Bowl Case to Consider Inclusion or Erasure? (2025 Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl Regional Competition Case Set) The recent Disney live-action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was no stranger to controversy. One of the most heated debates about the film surrounded the decision not to hire actors with dwarfism and to instead use CGI.
This case, which will be discussed at regionals this fall, outlines why the decision to omit actors with dwarfism led to debates about representation, authenticity to original stories, and even its legality. Read the case (#5) here, then discuss with your friends, family, and colleagues. |
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