Director Named for UST’s Center for Ethical Leadership

Dr. Joseph Cerami has been named as the new director of the Center for Ethical Leadership at the University of St. Thomas – Cameron School of Business.

The Center for Ethical Leadership was recently established at UST to allow students to discuss and think critically about “hot topics” in ethics, such as corporate social responsibility or cyber ethics. Furthermore, the Center hopes to increase the engagement of leaders across the world with moral thinking, and elevate moral and ethical discourse across the board.

“Ethical leadership is not important, it is critical. It is critical because we have to make decisions everyday that are going to affect relationships with friends, family, coworkers and others,” said Cerami. Like Cerami, the Center for Ethical Leadership believes firmly that there is no area of human interaction that does not have some kind of moral content to it, and therefore no issue across the world that doesn’t involve ethics.

At UST, Cerami will focus on three specific fields of ethics: medical, technology and business. The greatest challenge to this education will be encouraging students to move from abstract discussions to practical applications. The Center will attempt to demonstrate to students the vast impact an ethical decision can have from multiple perspectives.

The benefits of such an education have far-reaching impact: research suggests that ethical leaders achieve higher performance results, tending to be better respected and more successful in life.

In 2015, Cerami published a study which analyzed research on leadership, demonstrating the needs for ethical individuals committed to service careers across all sectors- public, private and nonprofit. At the Center, Cerami hopes to put his findings into motion, creating the much-needed new generation of ethical leaders. “As the founding director of the Bush School’s Public Service Leadership Program, we developed a mantra of educating principled leaders,” he said. “The opportunity to join the faculty and staff at St. Thomas is a wonderful opportunity to extend ethical leadership ideas and programs that complement the University’s mission, values and vision.”

regions: Houston

About the Author