APPE Partnerships & Collaborations
![]() The National Ethics Project (NEP) was initiated through a collaboration between the Association of Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University in 2015. Click here to visit the NEP website. With endorsement from APPE and Harvard, then APPE Board member, Deni Elliott, and the E.J. Safra Center leadership team, including Director Danielle Allen and Research Director Jess Miner, engaged in talks about how to assess ethics education in U.S. higher education. This would be the first attempt in 35 years to do a systematic study of the field. Leadership for the NEP quickly expanded to include then executive director of APPE, Stuart Yoak, and the leadership team of the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University, Director Rob Reich and Research Director Anne Newman. Sissela Bok and Dennis Thompson, who had been involved in the 1980 Hastings Center reports on the teaching of ethics in higher education and founding members of APPE, were closely engaged as advisers on the new project. With initial funding from the Spencer Foundation, the NEP created a mixed-methods, multi-institutional approach for analyzing ethics education on particular campuses, which included examining ethics both in the curriculum and in campus life from institutional, faculty, and student perspectives. NEP researchers continue to refine methods and collaborate with institutions and scholars to create useful tools to assess and improve ethics education in higher education. In 2019, the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University became the NEP's host institution. NEP collaboration continues with Prindle and APPE, with Andrew Cullison, the Director of the Prindle Institute, serving on the NEP leadership team and Lisa M Lee, incoming APPE Board Chair, serving as the NEP-APPE liaison. |