NCSSM has held an annual spring conference for North Carolina students and their teachers since 1998. The first conference drew 160 students from ten high schools. In 1999 the conference was attended by 260 students from 28 schools. The 2000 conference had 420 attendees from 29 schools. The 2001 conference included middle school students for the first time and had over 950 registrants from 59 schools.
Moved to the fall in 2001 to accommodate another major conference on the campus in the spring, the conference focused on a single issue, Genetically Modified Foods: Issues and Answers. It attracted over 400 participants from 22 middle and high schools.
In 2003 the conference returned to being limited to high school students and drew approximately 475 registrants from 25 schools.
In 2004 registration included 600 registrants from 36 high schools.
In 2005, due at least in part to high gasoline prices and consequently reduced opportunities for school trips, we had approximately 250 registrants from 12 schools. Numbers increased to just over 300 from 18 schools in 2006.
Many sponsors have brought their students back year after year. At NCSSM we believe the interest in this conference reflects a growing commitment to ethics and servant leadership education by high schools statewide, as well as the value of the activities provided to the attending schools.
We have developed a curriculum of which a part is the Ethics and Leadership Conference, which allows our students to provide a useful service to the State while also participating in discussions of ethical and leadership issues that they will face as adults. An effective curriculum that addresses development of both skills and values of future leaders is an important undertaking. We can help students develop leadership skills and high ethical standards for use as they solve problems on a local and global scale in their future professional lives.
NCSSM invites other schools to join us in this effort, to share what we are doing in ethics and leadership education. Please contact Steve Warshaw (Warshaw@ncssm.edu) or Linda Schmalbeck (Schmalbeck@ncssm.edu).
| Spring 1998 | Dr. Rushworth Kidder, Founder and President of the Global Ethics Institute Ethical Leadership for the 21st Century |
| Spring 1999 | Dr. Elizabeth Kiss, Director of the Kenan Ethics Program, Duke University To Know All Is To Forgive All? Science and Moral Responsibility |
| Spring 2000 | Dr. Peter Gibbon, Harvard University School of Education The End of Admiration: A World Without Heroes |
| Spring 2001 | Dr. Rushworth Kidder, Founder and President of the Global Ethics Institute Napster Ethics: Values and Technology in the 21st Century |
| Fall 2001 | Dr. Geoff Sayre-McCord, Chairman of Philosophy, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Ethics As a Contact Sport |
| Spring 2003 | Dr. Donald McCabe, Professor of Organization Management at Rutgers University Promoting Academic Integrity in the Internet Age |
| Fall 2004 | Dr. Scott Silliman, Executive Director, Duke Law School's Center for Law, Ethics and National Security The United States and the War on Terrorism: Where To From Here |
| Fall 2005 | Dr. James P. Evans, Director of Clinical Cancer Genetics and The Bryson Program in Human Genetics, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill What's a Mother To Do? The New Genetics, Medicine, and Society |
| Fall 2006 | Doriane Lambelet Coleman, Professor of Law at the Duke University School of Law The Moral and Legal Implications of Organ Transplants between Siblings. |
| Fall 2007 | Dr. JoAnn Burkholder, Associate Professor Aquatic Botany and Marine Sciences at NC State University | Fall 2008 | Professor James E.Coleman Jr., Professor of the Practice of Law, Duke University School of Law |
