This Winter Term, DePauw students can take a leading role in shaping the future of one of the university’s proudest traditions—the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl. Ethics Bowl: Strategy and Community Engagement (taught by Kristen Fuhs Wells and Alex Richardson) invites students to explore how ethical dialogue, collaboration, and competition come together to form a model for civil discourse in higher education.

Students will take on hands-on projects such as developing new case materials, producing training videos, designing collaborative events, curating the Ethics Bowl content library, and creating outreach strategies for the national competition. The course culminates in a two-day trip to St. Louis, where participants will help demonstrate the Ethics Bowl model for a regional network of colleges and community partners interested in starting new teams.

Since 2017, the Prindle Institute for Ethics has been home to the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE)—the world’s largest organization dedicated to bringing ethics into everyday life. APPE oversees national programs such as the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl and the Research Integrity Scholars and Educators (RISE) Consortium, and regularly convenes ethics centers and institutes from around the world. The Prindle Institute supports this work as part of a shared mission to engage students and the public in thoughtful, collaborative ethics education.

Through this partnership, students in the Winter Term course will gain hands-on experience in national ethics programming while helping to shape the next generation of Ethics Bowl. It’s a chance to see how ethics connects classrooms, campuses, and communities—and to help guide where the conversation goes next.

Enroll for Winter Term 2025 to be part of the future of Ethics Bowl.