Engaging Ethics

Throughout its history, Salem College has been committed to educating women in ways that make them ethical human beings.  That commitment lives in our Honor Code and in the Engaging Ethics program.

Engaging Ethics is both a commitment and a program.  Our commitment is to ensure all students understand how to reason about ethical questions and choose ethical actions.  We help you get there through a series of courses, built into the academic core and arrayed through the majors, that link principles of ethical behavior with problems that challenge our world. Since ethical inquiry is embedded within the Salem Impact program, the honor code, and an array of student life and leadership opportunities, every Salem College student takes part in the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills about thinking about and living with integrity.

Engaging ethics begins in your first-year seminar, where together with your faculty member, you will examine key ethics principles, or touchstones, and discuss how to use them to make sense of the dilemmas of everyday life by following a process called READ: recognize, evaluate, analyze, and decide.  The process and the touchstones will appear in future classes.  You will use them, also, outside of the classroom and in your activities in the community.

Together with Salem’s faculty, staff, and other students, through Engaging Ethics you will join the long legacy of Salem students who are both academically informed and dedicated to living ethically in the world.

• Some of the most difficult ethical issues today are linked to the resources, policies, and the health of women. 
• Salem’s health leadership focus and Engaging Ethics link together to help you analyze those issues, face their complexity, and respond in ways that make the world better for you and for women worldwide.