Ethical Analysis from our Students
This year, the Markkula Center continued its engagement with students through numerous fellowship and internship opportunities. As these students worked towards completion of their individual projects, Markkula Center ethicists served as mentors, guiding each cohort and helping them apply ethical decision making to their areas of focus.
Student projects ranged across many disciplines and topics and the end products were equally varied, including research surveys, graphic novels, videos, essays, and ethics debates. Some of those projects centered around artificial intelligence.
AI themes that students encountered last year included: AI’s impact on race-based disparities; researching SCU students use of AI in the classroom; examining how AI is changing the future of work for people in creative fields; implementation of facial recognition technology in airports, and ethics around AI use by employees in the workplace.
Read on for an overview of projects completed by students over the course of the 2024-25 academic year.
2024-25 Post Graduate Fellowship in Health Equity and Innovation
In collaboration with Peninsula Healthcare Connection (PHC), the Center introduced a new graduate fellowship–the Fellowship in Health Equity and Innovation. This groundbreaking fellowship in the field of health care ethics combines real-world clinical experience at Sutter Health and Palo Alto Foundation Medical Group, and in-depth ethical analysis.
Bilal Arshadullah ’24, served as the program’s inaugural fellow. Arshadullah graduated with a biology degree and minor in biotechnology and gained invaluable clinical and patient care experience through this fellowship.
2024-25 Honzel Fellowship in Health Care Ethics
The Honzel Fellowship in Health Care Ethics is awarded to an outstanding (rising) senior with a passion for ethics as it relates to health care. The Fellow serves as a peer mentor to students in the Health Care Ethics Internship and develops an ethics project with particular relevance to students and alumni.
Sydney Shelby ’25 - Public Health Science and Biology Majors & African American Studies and Medical and Health Humanities Minors; presented "Laboring for Change: A Conversation on the Black Maternal Health Crisis in America."
2024-25 Health Care Ethics Interns
Designed for students interested in health care, health policy, biotechnology, bioengineering, health law, and health care administration, the Health Care Ethics Internship program places SCU undergraduates in community-based experiences with various units in local hospitals and other health care facilities, or with ethics departments in pharmaceutical, biotech, and technology companies. The Interns embark on a year-long research project on a topic of their choosing, write an essay for the Center’s Ethics in Health Care Blog, and present their topics at the annual year-end symposium event.
Meghan Abate ’25: “Opening the Black Box: How Artificial Intelligence Increases Race-Based Disparities in Medicine”
Harpreet Bhasin ’25: “The Future of Skin, Vascular, and Nerve Transplants for Financial Compensation”
Cassandra Blake ’25: “Menopause is Deprioritized, Leaving the Root Cause of Women’s Health Concerns Overlooked”
Mateo Fesslmeier ’26: “Fair Play or an Unfair Edge? Navigating the Ethics of Sports Enhancement”
Krista Gorham ’25: “How America’s Long-winded History of Individualism Promotes Health Inequity Under the Guise of Health Insurance”
Sarah Herrington ’25: “The Evolving Ethics of Pediatric Care: Balancing Consent, Autonomy and Protection”
Tatum Holloway ’25: “Menstrual Equity: Ethical Responsibilities in Access and Workplace Accommodations”
Elsa Kinney ’25: “Inequities in Organ Transplant Allocation: Exploring Disparities in United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) Scoring Systems”
Karina Martinez ’26: “Access is Power: Barriers and Facilitators to Contraceptive Care for Hispanic Adolescents”
Maria Sakurets ’26: “Racism in Kidney Care: Exposing Disparities and Seeking Solutions”
Yeseñia Andrea Sandoval ’26: “Integrating Spiritual Health into Holistic Patient Care: Ethical Perspectives on Hispanic Mortality Paradox”
Tianyu Tan ’26: “Your Money or Your Life: The Ethics of the Expensive Rabies Treatment”
Aria Trivedi ’25: “Misconduct in Your Backyard? An Ethical Review of Clinical Trials”
Jesse Vargas ’25: “The Destruction of Safe Spaces: How the New ICE Policy Undermines Health Care Access for Undocumented Immigrants”
Hermon Welde ’26: “Race is Not Biology: The Dangerous Legacy of Race-Based Medicine”
2024-25 Hackworth Fellowship
Campus Ethics Fellows create programs for their peers on ethical issues, while other Fellows work on an ethical issue within one of the Center's Focus Areas. Hackworth Fellows spend the academic year in research and developing a deeper understanding of ethical problems and their solutions.
J.P. Best ‘25, Alicia Nelson ’26, and Natalya Salaices ‘25: “Ethics of Homelessness”
Grace Davis ’25: “Ethics of Belonging: Honoring the Stories of LGBTQ+ Christians”
Tara Khambadkone ’26 and Sophie Smithstanza ’26: “What is going on with AI at Santa Clara?”
Noah Kisiel ’26: “How We Ought to Treat Ourselves: Ethics through Discovery ‘The Self’”
Claire Krebs ’26: “The Common Good and Care Lenses in Action: SCU Medical Amnesty Policy Reform”
Anna Mulderink ’27: “Ethical Lenses in Action”
Madison Michelle Patrick ’25: "The Ethics of Over Medicalized Childbirth”
Gabrielle Pitre ’26: “The Importance of Faith in Christian Black Communities and Faith in God in the Midst of Discrimination as a Source of Strength”
Zara Shroff ’25: “Before you Prompt: Conversations on Ethics, AI, & the Future of Creative Work”
Caroline Smith ’25: “Everyday Ethics: Frameworks in Action”
Jamie Son ’25: “Controlling Lives, Denying Care: The Crisis of Health and Transparency in Detention Centers”
Edward Sorensen ’25: “Ethics in Finance”
Yasmin Urzua-Gutierrez ’25: “Dignity Ignored: Telling the Stories U.S. Policy Ignores“
Hydeia Wysinger ’25: “The Justice and Care Lens in Action”
Environmental Ethics Fellowship
The Environmental Ethics Fellowship spent the year exploring the impact of The Pajaro Levee Failure, and the ethical issues faced by the Pajaro community.
Arden DiCicco ‘25, Jessica Garofalo ’25,
Hannah Hamawi ’27, and Mahi Shah ’28:
Government Ethics Fellowship
Fellows work on projects at the intersection of policy and ethics.
Christian Barnard ’26: “Is Ranked Choice Voting Worth It?”
Bailey Black ’25: “A King by Another Name? The Ethics of Presidential Immunity“
Ainsley Zapata ’26: “The Ethical Implications of the Rise of Voting Restrictions in the United States Between 2021-2024”
Business Ethics Internship
Interns are placed in ethics and compliance divisions of Silicon Valley companies.
Chisomaga Nlemigbo ’25: “Intel Ethics and Legal Compliance”
Working with Intel’s in-house attorneys and various subject matter experts, Chisomaga managed Intel's internal employee question submission database where employees can submit ethical and legal concerns and get appropriately tailored guidance on how to navigate such situations. Questions surfaced around a variety of topics including: conflict of interest; gifts, meals, entertainment and travel (GMET); protection of intellectual property; and AI usage within the workplace.
Other duties involved creating monthly and quarterly reports tracking metrics around employee training in the area of code of conduct and information, security, and privacy awareness, and conducted research and data compilation to help department leaders at Intel make informed business decisions and create a more positive and powerful culture of ethical decision-making within the workplace.
Ethics Bowl
A debate group on ethical issues, the Ethics Bowl team competes regionally and nationally.
The 2024-25 Ethics Bowl squads competed on December 7, 2024 in the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl California Regional competition hosted by Stanford University.
The two teams competed by addressing cases about human interaction with wildlife in national parks, ID verification for porn sites, facial recognition technology at airports, NDAs, cell phone bans in K-12 schools, and the ethics of eDNA.
2024-25 Ethics Bowl Teams:
J.P. Best ’25, Bailey Black ’25, Anna Nicolae ’25, Zack Yamashita ’26
Zachary Chung, Owen Lewis ’25, Abigail Sauter ’26 , Kate Schiller ’25