Senior Fellow
408-554-5319
mmclean@scu.edu
Margaret R. McLean, Ph.D. is senior fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. A senior lecturer in religious studies and affiliate faculty in bioengineering, she teaches courses on ethics including health care ethics and ethics and biotechnology. In 2006, she received the Brutocao Award for Curriculum Innovation.
Holding a doctorate in clinical pathology from the Medical College of Wisconsin and a Masters of Divinity from Luther Seminary, she has a second doctoral degree in ethics from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. She is a member of the Bioethics Committee at O'Connor Hospital (San Jose), Seton Medical Center (Daly City), St. Louise Regional Hospital (Gilroy), Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (San Jose); the Infant & Children Bioethics Committee at Valley Medical Center; and the Santa Clara County Medical Association Bioethics Committee.
She is a former editor for Religious Studies Review and reviews manuscripts for a variety of professional journals. Professional and research interests include the ethical dimensions of biotechnology, especially medical applications of genetic technologies, neonatology, justice in health care, medical decision making for vulnerable patient populations, and end-of-life care. From 1999 until 2002, she was an advisor to the California Senate Select Committee on Genetics and currently is a consultant to the California Department of Public Health.
Widely quoted in the media, she has written extensively on ethical issues for professional publications as well as the local and national press. Her article on disaster preparedness published in 2013 in Health Progress received a 2014 Gold Award from the American Society of Healthcare Publication Editors and a bronze 2014 Association Media & Publishing EXCEL award. Current projects include: end of life decision-making with a focus on unrepresented, incapacitated patients, ethical preparedness for medical disaster, innovative approaches to undergraduate education in medical ethics, and the ethics of space exploration and astrobiology.
In 2017, she was awarded a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from the Congress of the United States and the Santa Clara County Medical Association Citizen’s Award in recognition of her significant contribution to the health field.