What We Do

The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics has been the leader in applied ethics since 1986. Our comprehensive approach to enlightening people and organizations through materials offered on our website, customized engagements with organizations, and our commitment to Santa Clara University students to be trained in applied ethics has continued to increase our impact. Our Framework for Ethical Decision-Making is recognized by the people and organizations that reach out to the Center for resources as a clear and helpful process to make better decisions.

The Strategic Roadmap to a Distinctive Markkula Center for Applied Ethics is intended to provide a direction that will result in further cementing our role as the leader in training, facilitating, and teaching others to make better ethical decisions. It allows us to prioritize our own decisions and path forward and allows us to continue to measure its effectiveness over time. It ensures that our position as a Center of Distinction holds true both on campus and in the world.

Don Heider

Executive Director

Vision

The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics will empower people and organizations to make better decisions for a more caring world.

Core Values

• Honesty and Integrity in our work
• Caring, Compassion, and Service for others
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in our staff, students, board and councils, and the materials we produce
• Transparency in processes to ensure understanding and accountability
• An environment that cultivates Trust both internally and externally

People

The Ethics Center's staff includes ethics scholars and practitioners in many fields.

Among our staff are Ph.D. ethicists, lawyers, businesspeople, educators, religious leaders, scientists, and journalists.

We are guided by an Advisory Board of leaders in the Silicon Valley. The board is comprised of representatives of major valley companies, law firms, and nonprofit organizations. A Faculty Steering Committee helped to develop Center policy, and a Faculty Ethics Council helps identify ways in which the Ethics Center can support all Santa Clara University faculty across campus.

The Center's home at a Jesuit institution that requires ethics courses for all undergraduates gives us access to a faculty with expertise in ethics in many disciplines. More than 80 of those faculty members serve as Center Scholars who assist us in a variety of projects.

2022-23 Annual Report