Advanced Certificate in Health Care Ethics Curriculum

The Certificate program’s curriculum consists of four courses: three discipline-based courses and one capstone course. At least one of the discipline-based courses must be from a humanities discipline, and at least one must be from a social sciences discipline; the third discipline-based course may be from either a humanities or a social sciences discipline. The fourth required course is an interdisciplinary and team-taught capstone course which results in a final mentored paper on a topic related to the student’s interest. Some previous capstone paper topics include:

• "Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT): A Scientific, Philosophical, Theological, and Practical Approach"
• "Customizing Conception: The Ethics of Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis"
• "Is That Allowed?: Stem Cells and Double Effect Reasoning"
• "Social Justice in the Provision of Health Care to the Uninsured"
• "Evaluating the Claim of a Right to Health Care in the American Political Tradition"
• "Ethical Implications Related to Hope and the Therapeutic Misconception in Clinical Trials"

Students will have the opportunity to learn from and interact with accomplished professors and students in the Master's Program in Ethics & Society during the capstone course titled,  Theories and Applications in Contemporary Ethics. The Center also hosts national and international leading scholars in the area of health care ethics who deliver university-wide lectures and meet with faculty and students in the Center’s academic programs.

The program is administered under the auspices of the Center for Ethics Education, and may be completed within a year or at your own pace. The Center was created in 1999 to promote high-quality teaching, research, and service through the intellectual appreciation of moral values and critical thinking regarding ethical practices.