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What would you do for the greater good if you were given $500? Students who enroll in Dr. Chris Tweedt’s upcoming Ethical Issues in Business class will have the chance to test their ideas.
Tweedt has been awarded a grant from the Georgetown Ethics Project to fund projects that improve the community. Here’s how it will work: Tweedt’s class will be broken into 16 teams comprised of five students. Each team will be entrusted with a $500 budget, and a single, powerful instruction: “Find some good to do. Do it.”
“I’m very curious to see what students will choose to do with the $500,” said Tweedt. “There are so many possibilities. Will they start a business? If so, which one, how and why? Will they give the money away? If so, to whom and why? Will they invest money? If so, why? Will students follow established ways of managing the funds, or will they innovate?”
In a traditional business ethics course, students dissect the choices made by others, usually within the confines of a case study. But Tweedt’s project will flip the script, allowing students to create change by making their own case study.
“After students use the money to do the most good they can, they will present an analysis of what they did in front of their class. They’ll answer questions like: What good came out of the project? Did you add value to the world? Why or why not? What were the obstacles to your choices? How did you respond? Do you think your decision was the best?”
People in business make value judgements all the time, Tweedt said, and their actions affect others for better or worse. A course in business ethics is critical because it gives students the tools and framework to make better value judgments, and learn from their mistakes and failures.
“It’s my hope that students leave the course with stories to tell and lessons learned,” Tweedt said “They’ll be able to share these stories and lessons in interviews, on internships, and at the workplace, where these lessons are backed by their own real-world experiences.”
The project will take place in Tweedt’s Ethical Issues in Business class in the Spring of 2024.