DePaul University, an institution committed to imparting strong business ethics to students and Chicago’s at-large corporate community, has appointed one of the nation’s top business ethics scholars, Patricia H. Werhane, to the university’s Wicklander Chair in Business Ethics.

Werhane will assume the Wicklander Chair in August, at which time she will join the faculties of DePaul’s College of Commerce management department and College of Liberal Arts & Sciences philosophy department. She also will become director of DePaul’s Institute for Business & Professional Ethics (IBPE), oversee business ethics education at DePaul and organize conference and training programs for the Chicago business community to enhance understanding of current corporate ethics issues. DePaul will formally welcome Werhane to the university during a reception dinner in Chicago May 21.

“Pat’s appointment is significant because it allows DePaul to create a sustainable focus on business ethics across college boundaries and in the corporate community,” said Richard Meister, DePaul’s executive vice president for Academic Affairs. “It continues DePaul’s tradition of integrating values not only at the course level, but also throughout the academic culture.”

“The appointment also reflects DePaul’s ability to attract a nationally known business ethics scholar and academic leader,” he added. “It’s our hope that Pat’s impact will make ethics as important as profit maximization in the minds of our graduates and in the corporate community where they will work.”

Ethics outreach programs will be a priority for Werhane and the IBPE’s board of prominent Chicago executives. “Our goal will be to explore ethics strategies used by the Chicago business community so we all can develop ways to integrate ethics into management thinking and be more effective in avoiding the crises in ethical leadership that businesses have faced in this past year,” Werhane said.

“There are many companies that are successful models for integrating leadership and values into everyday decision-making,” Werhane said. “Based on what these companies are doing, we can create models for corporate ethics programs and for dealing with the day-to-day ethical issues managers face.” Bringing together faculty to discuss the best ways to teach ethics also is important, she said. “We can all learn from each other.”

Werhane comes to DePaul from the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business, where she was the Ruffin Professor of Business Administration and co-director of the business school’s ethics center. Her research and teaching has focused on applied business ethics, employment and employee rights, leadership and values, global business, health care organization ethics and the legacy of economist Adam Smith. She has written or edited 15 books and numerous journal articles on these subjects and is often interviewed by journalists about current ethics issues. She is a past president and founder of the Society for Business Ethics and founder of the society’s publication Business Ethics Quarterly, which is the preeminent journal in the field.

Before joining Darden’s faculty in 1993, she was the Henry J. Wirtenberger Professor of Business Ethics and the director of the Center for Values Across the University at Loyola University, Chicago. She served on the faculty of Dartmouth College and was a Rockefeller Fellow at the college’s Ethics Institute. She also has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University in Britain and the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. She earned her bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Wellesley College and her master’s and doctoral degrees in philosophy from Northwestern University.

DePaul’s Wicklander Chair was created in 1991 with an endowment gift from Chicagoan Callista Wicklander, who, with her late husband Raymond, has long supported DePaul’s mission of teaching and its commitment to integrating the study of ethics into its professional programs. In the past, the chair has rotated annually among faculty at DePaul’s nine colleges and schools, who researched ethics issues – especially relating to teaching – during their tenures as chair. Several directors and an executive board drawn from Chicago’s corporate community have led the IBPE since DePaul launched it in 1985 as a forum to explore and promote ethical practices in organizations. Werhane’s hiring represents the first permanent Wicklander Chair appointment and an expansion of the chair’s responsibilities to encompass leadership of the institute and DePaul’s ethics education initiatives.

Editor’s Note: Reporters interested in profiling Werhane or discussing current ethics issues with her, or in attending the Institute for Business & Professional Ethics dinner reception for Werhane beginning at 5:30 p.m. May 21 at the Standard Club, should make prior arrangements with Robin Florzak, DePaul Media Relations: 312/362-8592 or rflorzak@depaul.edu. Reservations are required.