COLLEGE ETHICS BOWL 2011

The Southeast Regional 8th Annual Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl competition will be held November 12 at the EpiCenter at St. Petersburg College. Registration starts at 7 a.m., and actual rounds begin at 9 a.m. The event runs through 5 p.m.

The competition will include 24 teams from colleges and universities across the Southeast. Top finishers will earn the right to compete at the Eighteenth Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl on March 1st, 2012 in Cincinnati, OH.

The final teams include:

• Barry University
• Eckerd College
• Embry Riddle Aeronautical University
• Florida State University
• Georgia Military College
• Georgia State University
• University of Alabama
• Samford University
• St. Petersburg College
• The Citadel
• University of Alabama at Birmingham
• University of Central Florida
• University of Florida
• University of Miami
• University of North Florida
• University of South Carolina Aiken
• University of South Florida
• University of Tampa
• Wake Forest

The Southeast Regional Ethics Bowl is co-sponsored by St. Petersburg College, Eckerd College, and University of South Florida, St. Petersburg.

The Ethics Bowl is a team competition that combines the excitement and fun of a competitive tournament with an innovative approach to education in practical and professional ethics for undergraduate students. Each team receives a set of cases which raise issues in practical and professional ethics in advance of the competition and prepare an analysis of each case.

At the competition, a moderator poses questions, based on a case taken from that set, to teams of three to five students. Questions may concern ethical problems on wide ranging topics, such as the classroom (e.g. cheating or plagiarism), personal relationships (e.g. dating or friendship), professional ethics (e.g. engineering, law, medicine), or social and political ethics (e.g. free speech, gun control, etc.) A panel of judges may probe the teams for further justifications and evaluates answers. Rating criteria are intelligibility, focus on ethically relevant considerations, avoidance of ethical irrelevance, and deliberative thoughtfulness.

The St. Petersburg College ethics team includes students Nick Pizanias, Sarah Pemberton, Victoria Sedlacek, Dylan Lundsford, Michael Fisher, Audra Baldetti, Michelle Grice, Kevin Healey, Virginia Van Grod, Marie Cram, and Jessica Campbell.

The Ethics Bowl requires 36 judges and 12 moderators. More than 40 students from St. Petersburg College, including six volunteer coordinators, will volunteer throughout the day. The event is free and open to the public.

See the 2010 final scores.