Mission Statement

The Wally and Louise Bishop Center for Ethical Leadership promotes the study and practice of good leadership through interdisciplinary research, teaching and experiential learning across USF St. Petersburg’s curriculum. The Center develops and offers academic courses, workshops, and programs to help our students and other program participants understand the challenges, opportunities, and rewards associated with ethical leadership.

Good leadership is defined as being both effective and ethical. Accordingly, good leadership accomplishes intended, adaptive change and is grounded in and bound by principles of practical and professional ethics. Challenges often occur when one or the other element, effectiveness or morality, is missing or when these elements seem to be in conflict. The Bishop Center is dedicated to the premise that, although such challenges are ever present, the study and practice of ethical leadership can be encouraged through interdisciplinary research, teaching and experiential learning.

 

Study Abroad, Summer 2009: Leadership Ethics in Greece, Italy & England

Now accepting applications - Deadline for priority consideration December 12, 2008

For more information and to apply please refer to the Study Abroad Program

Course SLS 4274, Ethics and Power in Leadership - Summer '09
Summer 2007 Photo Gallery

The challenges to ethical leadership and possible answers to these challenges are not new. But your conclusions just might be! Study and learn practical leadership ethics in the places where many of the great minds wrote and taught the knowledge and wisdom that still guides our thinking and behavior of today.

Debate the proper aims of leadership, justice, and the nature of the life worth living at the site of the Academy in Athens where Plato taught Aristotle. Discuss the tradition of Natural Law morality – a tradition evident in contemporary issues such as abortion, embryonic stem cell research, birth control - at Roccasecca Castle, the birth site of Saint Thomas Aquinas south of Rome. Consider Niccolo Machiavelli’s practical as well as moral claims regarding power and self-interest at the villa where he wrote The Prince while in exile from Florence. Explore the London “haunts” of John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, the most famous Utilitarian's who envisioned a “greatest good” based on happiness and pleasure, and Thomas Hobbes, who championed social contract theory as a necessary response to our self-interested nature. Weigh counter arguments by Immanuel Kant that morality can only be found in universal, intentional respect for all persons.

Do all this, learn practical ethics and systematic moral analysis and still have generous amounts of free time to explore the art, culture and history of Athens, Rome, Florence, and London.

Apply today to join a select group of students who will explore not only the wisdom of selected philosophers and political theorists but also the locations where they lived, taught, wrote and died.

Course SLS 4274 Description Summer '09

The study abroad version covers the same readings and seminar topics as the campus based version. However, the sequence of the topics is modified to fit class locations and free time is included so that students may plan touring options. These details are available in the Topical Outline/Itinerary for the study abroad version.

This course addresses the possibility of ethical leadership. Challenges to ethical leadership are explored and responses from leadership and moral theories and from moral psychology are reviewed. Personal moral development is emphasized. Read the Syllabus Summer '09 (.pdf) Topical Outline Summer '09 (.pdf)

For more information please refer to the Study Abroad Program offered through International Affairs.