Ethics and the Community at UNF

The Ethics Academy is run by UNF faculty with support from UNF students and community leaders. Each day includes activities, academic workshops, lunch and discussion groups. Daily activities in the classroom and around campus introduce participants to campus life while building teamwork.

In academic workshops, students hear from UNF faculty and community leaders about the nature of ethics and how ethical decision-making shapes the workplace. UNF students guide participants through ethical case studies that strengthen critical thinking and collaborative problem solving while encouraging respect for differing values and perspectives.

The academy concludes with a mini Ethics Bowl competition, where student groups discuss the cases they developed during the camp.

Overview

Ethics rarely offers simple answers. The First Coast High School Ethics Bowl at the University of North Florida invites students to engage complex moral questions through research, dialogue and collaboration. Hosted by UNF, this regional competition challenges students to think deeply, listen carefully and reason together about real-world ethical issues.

Why Ethics Bowl?

“In the typical moral problem, the ethically relevant features are tricky to specify and extremely difficult to weigh with respect to one another. Moreover, there is no given short-list of possible actions to be decided upon; instead there looms before the person deciding what to do an open field of infinitely diverse actions, shading into one another in countless, different ways. To be or not to be is hardly ever the moral question, but rather when, where, how, for whom, how much and in what respect to be or not to be. A moral problem calls not for a mechanical response, but rather for a creative act.” — Robert Burch, Are There Moral Experts? (1974)

About the National High School Ethics Bowl

The National High School Ethics Bowl (NHSEB) promotes ethical awareness and collaborative critical thinking in a supportive, competitive environment. Students research and analyze contemporary real-world ethical issues, then present their reasoning and engage thoughtfully with other teams and judges.

Teams are evaluated not on having the “right” answer, but on the quality of their reasoning, their ability to respond to new perspectives and their commitment to respectful dialogue. The Ethics Bowl strengthens skills students carry into college, careers and civic life—and it is also a lot of fun.

Event Timeline

• Early September: Ethics Bowl cases released
• January 10: Registration deadline
• First Saturday in February: First Coast High School Ethics Bowl at UNF
• Early April: National High School Ethics Bowl