Teaching
Courses Taught
UPNS 411W: Nursing Ethics Across the Lifespan
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Course Overview: This course introduces undergraduate nursing students to ethical dimension of nursing practice. It presents the processes of moral reasoning and ethical theories, values, virtues, principles and other influences on the student’s capacity to recognize, identify and respond to potential and actual ethical issues. The course examines contemporary professional and clinical ethics issues that influence nursing practice, and to a lesser degree, it introduces students to ethical issues at the organizational level in health care. The relationships between ethical and legal principles are also examined. Various models of ethical decision-making are explored as students apply these frameworks to resolve ethical dilemmas. Students will also examine the role of professional codes of ethics and the legal standards that influence the ethical practice of nurses.
AS 150.450 (01): Topics in Biomedical Ethics: Depression
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Course Overview: There is a mental health crisis in the United States. One very significant aspect of this crisis is that – according to a recent survey conducted by the CDC -- the prevalence of depression is skyrocketing, particularly among young adults. Unfortunately, we are still woefully inadequate both in identifying cases of depression and, especially, in treating them. It is therefore morally imperative that we gain a better understanding of what depression is and how to treat it. In this course, we will use the tools of philosophical analysis to make headway on these questions. We will explore the nature of depression, address ethical issues in its treatment, and investigate depression’s “significance” – that is, what depression can help teach us about perennial philosophical questions like what makes for a life worth living.
Phil 235F: Environmental Ethics
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Course Overview: In this course we discuss some of the key issues in environmental ethics. The course is loosely organized around the topic of global climate change, which we will use to explore ethical questions concerning the rights of animals and non-sentient life, our obligations (if any) to future generations, fairness, global justice, collective responsibility, the (im)permissibility of geoengineering and the use of other risky technologies, and the putative necessity of major societal change in order to stave off ecological catastrophe. The course is organized into three sections, with each section devoted to an area of ethical research that has been challenged or reconceptualized in light of environmental concerns. First, an ecologically conscious approach challenges our traditional understanding of who (and what) deserves moral consideration. Second, it tests our understanding of fairness, blame, and responsibility. Third, it potentially calls for a thoroughgoing reconceptualization of society and of the ways in which we live our lives. All three of these challenges are made stark by consideration of climate change.
Phil 233: Biomedical Ethics
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Course Overview: This course is a survey of some major topics in biomedical ethics. Each week we will read several papers which are meant to illustrate not only the key issues concerning the various topics discussed, but also important principles in ethical theorizing more generally, principles like autonomy, justice, welfare and consent. The aim will be to familiarize ourselves with both the biomedical ethics literature and ethical theory more broadly.
Courses as T.A.
At Washington University:
Biomedical Ethics (Charlie Kurth), Spring 2016
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Present Moral Problems (Julia Driver), Fall 2015
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Biomedical Ethics (Charlie Kurth), Spring 2015
Intro to Environmental Ethics (Claude Evans), Fall 2014
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Great Philosophers (Anne Margaret Baxley), Spring 2014
Great Philosophers (Fay Edwards), Fall 2013
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At University of Colorado:
Philosophy and Society (Eric Chwang), Spring 2011
Intro to Ethics (Robert Hanna), Fall 2010
