The Kennedy Institute of Ethics is proud to announce the launch of the Ethics in Action program is a collaboration between the Ethics Institute at Kent Place School, an independent high school for girls in Summit, NJ, and the Kennedy Institute of Ethics’s EthicsLab.
The program’s goal is to engage select high school students in a process that develops innovative approaches and solutions to complex, real-world issues using critical ethical decision-making skills and methods of problem-framing and problem-solving from the world of design.
Selected high schools will send teams of students and teachers first to Kent Place School, for a four-day summer immersion internship, and later to Georgetown, for a two-day intensive session in the KIE’s EthicsLab. These students will learn, work and become Design Fellows, ready to engage in solutions to actual challenges faced in their respective school communities around the issue of food.
“In addition to learning about ethics and design thinking from scholars,” explains the program brochure, “student/faculty teams will engage with renowned leaders of the food industry, such as farmers, chefs, government leaders and corporate CEOs.”
“Designers make progress on complex issues using a variety of creative methods,” says EthicsLab founding team member Kelly Heuer. “Bringing design to ethics is what Georgetown’s EthicsLab is all about.”
“Introducing high school students to the ways of tackling complicated moral issues we have developed here in the Lab is very exciting,” says KIE director Maggie Little. “We are so pleased to be working with Kent Place to develop this innovative new program.”