On Wednesday, July 10, 100 high school students will be participating in the third annual Boeing Scholars Academy Ethics Bowl, as part of the IIT Boeing Scholars Academy summer program. During the afternoon, teams of students will discuss a series of two cases directly related to this summer’s theme, “Challenging Borders, Reshaping Our World.” The ethics cases studies were developed based on ideas from a brainstorming session held with Boeing Scholars Academy students on June 26, and center around the issues of legal limits on over-the-counter medications and how issues of environmental sustainability play out in in one high school’s cafeteria.

In an ethics bowl competition, a moderator poses questions to teams of students based on cases they have read and discussed. A panel of judges then evaluates the answers based on the following criteria; intelligibility, focus on ethically relevant considerations, avoidance of ethical irrelevance and deliberative thoughtfulness. The Ethics Bowl competition was first started by Robert Ladenson at IIT in 1993 and has grown in popularity ever since, now encompassing the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl, in which more than 132 teams of undergraduate students around the United States compete.

The Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions has been working closely with Boeing Scholars Academy program staff to organize the Academy Ethics Bowl. A number of distinguished judges have volunteered to participate, including ethics and compliance officers from a number of major Chicago-area companies, IIT faculty and students from IIT’s Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl team. We look forward to an exciting and thought-provoking afternoon, and invite everyone to come and watch the fun! The competition will be held in the E1 building from 2:30–3:40 pm, and signs will be posted directing participants and visitors. For more information, please email Kelly Laas at laas@iit.edu.