Message from the Founding Director

Welcome to the Marymount University Center for Professional Ethics!

The Center for Professional Ethics convenes the thought and executive leadership of the Marymount University learning community through research, education, advocacy, and advisory services for impactful responses to questions of professional ethics, organizational integrity and responsibility, principled leadership, integral ecology, and global social justice.

People lead in everything they do. Ethical leadership requires principled reflection and discussion (thought leadership) and impactful expression through one’s work (executive leadership).

The Center invites the diverse voices of all members of the Marymount community to share their wisdom and experience regarding questions of ethics, particularly as these surface in the University’s major programs, e.g., engineering, the sciences, healthcare, business, artificial intelligence, counseling, art and design, and higher education itself.

This wisdom and experience help inform a discipline of dialogue in the University community to respond systematically to such questions and to promote productive conversations about how we can think differently and act differently in the practical demands of our work, and in the context of a complete way of life.

The Center sponsors the Ethics Fellow Program; supports Marymount’s competitive Ethics Bowl team; convenes the University’s Ethics Week; serves as liaison for the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty; and hosts numerous other colloquia, research projects, speakers and conferences, educational programs, and community collaborations to advance Marymount’s mission and visibility as a destination for such discourse.

By tradition and through enduring commitment to its mission, Marymount emphasizes care for the whole person, including the intellectual and ethical development of each member of the community. In concert with the University’s core curriculum in the liberal arts, its internship service and development requirement, and the work of the Center for Optimal Aging and the Center for the Innovative Work Force, the Center for Professional Ethics seeks to educate through example as well as by precept, and to foster a culture of integrity, justice, and care for our common home and one another.

As the founding director for the Center, I am pleased to host this resource for the service of Marymount University, the Arlington Community, and our world. Please continue to visit the Center’s Web site to learn about our exciting projects and events. I also warmly invite you to visit the Center in Ballston Center 2041, or virtually, to discuss your needs and how the Center can be of service to you.

Lester A. Myers, Ph.D., J.D., CPA, CFF, CGMA
Founding Director, Center for Professional Ethics
lamyers@marymount.edu