CENTER FOR ETHICS*
University of Idaho
Center for ETHICS
500 Memorial Gym
Moscow, ID 83844-3080 
Phone: (208) 885-2103
Fax: (208) 885-2108  
Email: ethicsinfo@uidaho.edu

About Us

What is the Center for ETHICS*?

Ethical Theory and Honor In Competition and Sport

The Center for ETHICS* at the University of Idaho offers study, intervention, outreach, consultation, and leadership in developing and advancing the theory, knowledge and understanding of character education including moral and ethical reasoning, moral development, ethical leadership, and ethical application.

What is the Center's Mission?

Believing and teaching the tradition of competitive integrity to inspire leaders of character.

What is the Center's Goal?

To return the classical concepts of justice, integrity, and responsibility in competition through education, research, and applied ethical intervention programs.

What are the Center's Objectives?

  • Model ethical conduct.

  • Conduct global research about competitive ethics, moral reasoning and character development.

  • Develop and provide teaching methodologies and curriculum supporting the practical application of moral reasoning in competitive communities.

  • Sponsor conferences whereby participants will utilize practical application of moral reasoning to confront problematic ethical reasoning and action.

  • Provide professional training programs to help decision makers navigate current ethical issues or trends.

  • Nurture a commitment to ethics, moral reasoning, and character   development within competitive communities.

  • Serve academic, professional, and public agencies in developing competitive moral excellence.

Who is at the Center?

The Center is home to many people from many different expertise levels.  We have many professors, graduate students, and undergraduate students.  Learn more about the Center staff.

What Does the Center Do?

The Center, through its director and faculty, provides classes, workshops, applied interventions, evaluations, assessments, and consultation about character education and all its perspectives to any organization, profession, industry, and discipline. Learn more about specific character education curriculum, methodology, and programs for K-12.

The Centers staff has written teacher texts, Sport Ethics: Applications for Fair Play, athlete texts, Who Says This Is Cheating, developed computer generated interactive CD-ROM teaching tools, Performance Enhancing Drug Use, teacher curriculum materials, teacher methodologies, and computer assisted teaching materials.   The staff has also developed student texts in Principled Thinking for K-12 using sport as a milieu, as well as, commissioned curricular works for specific athletic programs.

The Center houses the largest statistical information (approximately 80,000 inventories as of March 2009) base of the Hahm-Beller Values Choice Inventory in the Sport Milieu in America on moral reasoning of athletes, from junior high students through the elite level, and Division I-III NCAA.  The Center has worked with over 250 research groups.  The research base also includes information on professional character development as well as the development of numerous other competitive populations.

How Does the Center Work?

The Center is composed of interested people who are committed to the proposition that a specific, copyrighted educational program can make a difference in how people make moral decisions and how these decisions affect other people.

The Director--responsible for and oversees all of the Center's scholarly and academic activities as well as all applied strategies by formulating ideas, concepts, and direction.  The Director stimulates innovative approaches and creative ideas about intervention, teaching methodology, research activities, and generally promotes the interests of the Center.

Research/Measurement Specialist--responsible for designing, carrying out, and implementing various research projects using cognitive instruments.

Graduate Work in Sport Ethics in the Division of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, & Dance

A Master's Degree in Physical Education, and a Ph.D. in Education are all available at the University of Idaho, with emphasis and majors in Sport Ethics and Sport Philosophy. All graduates from the Sport Ethics/Sport Philosophy program have found professional opportunities in their chosen fields.

Graduate Research Assistantships

The Center for ETHICS* employs graduate students to assist with the numerous research projects the Center conducts.  These assistants conduct research, read philosophical material, contribute content to and edit the Athletes of Character text book series, act as consultants, act as editors, input and analyze data, critique the managerial process, review and develop policies, among other important tasks.  The graduate assistantship is a paid position and offers many excellent resources for ones' academic and professional progress. 

Currently, there is one graduate assistant working at the Center, Julie Latrell. Please contact either Julie or the director, Dr. Stoll, for any questions about these positions.

Undergraduate Internships

The Center for ETHICS* also works with undergraduates who want to do their internship requirement for the degree they are pursuing.  There are always a variety of projects going on at the Center and doing an internship with the Center is a great way to learn about research and get exposed to different types of research opportunities. 

Our center is a year round enterprise and we presently have contracts through Winning With Character especially working with University of Georgia football, Montana State football, University of Maryland football, and the Atlanta Braves baseball developmental teams as well as more than 40 high schools and junior colleges.

We develop curriculum, pedagogy, and evaluative instruments to help coaches teach the basics of servant leadership to their young men and women.  What we do at the center is write curriculums based on virtue and servant leadership. 

If we teach then we are obligated to evaluate the learning, thus begins a different work venue - we develop instruments both qualitative and quantitative to measure learning....especially cognitive moral reasoning.

Summers here at the Center are busy and active.  We are either writing, editing, revising, or developing new curriculums because at present we have approximately 40 different texts in some state of the above.  We also are inputting data and struggling to manage the largest data base in America on moral reasoning of Athlete Populations.  Summer staff is 2-4 research assistants and Dr. Stoll.

Our internships are unpaid because we are an educational enterprise and because at the present moment all of our money goes into research and graduate student education.  However, we do have interns show up here, work hard, and then clamber to come back to study.

Contact Dr. Stoll for more information and/or any questions.

Undergraduate Research Opportunities

One of the unique things that the Center for ETHICS* has to offer is the opportunity for undergraduates to do research.  In the Fall of 1998, a group of undergraduates at the University of Idaho who had all taken a class taught by Dr. Stoll, started an undergraduate research team.  The PLAY Group tackled philosophical issues and developed a position paper on the importance of play (physical activity) across the lifespan.  The article was published in the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance, November/December 2000 issue.

What is Presently Occurring at the Center?

The Center began with a mission to improve American sport but now addresses needs in business, law, education, and the military, i.e., the American Bar Association, the United States Naval Academy, the United States Air Force Academy, the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the NCAA, NFHSAA, NYSCA, Washington State University, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Georgia Football Team, and the Atlanta Braves developmental baseball teams.  See a complete list of the schools that the Center is currently involved with.

See a list of terms commonly used at the Center for ETHICS*.