ABOUT THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF ETHICS AND THE PROFESSIONS
The Australian Institute of Ethics and the Professions is co-sponsored by St John's College and The University of Queensland. Its primary concern is with professional practice, including medicine, law, engineering, architecture, government and education. Business ethics is also of particular concern. The Institute seeks to provide a non-partisan forum for the exchange of ideas on the ethics of the professions and aims to serve the various professions as well as offer, where appropriate, critical discussion of existing practices and the values and ethics that govern them. The Institute aims to collect existing codes of ethics in the various professions, as well as statements of values and practices that have been published by various organisations and companies. A specialist collection of works dealing with professional ethics and philosophical ethics is also in the process of being built up. These collections will allow the Institute to become a focus for research activities and a resource for the professions. The Institute is housed in the Morgan Center at St John's College. It is governed by a Board of Directors and is located within the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law at The University of Queensland.Whilst the Institute does not itself offer undergraduate subjects, its Director and Deputy Director teach subjects within the University, including courses on professional and applied ethics in the Departments of Management, Studies in Religion, Philosophy, and the Faculty of Medicine. The Administrative Officer teaches justice studies within the Brisbane College of Theology.
Various Visiting Fellows from interstate and overseas have been in residence and have offered seminars and lectures to the general public as well as to people with specialised professional interests. Visiting Fellows of the Institute have included Dr Joel Wilbush (Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Canada); Professor William May (Cary McGuire Professor of Ethics at Southern Methodist University, Texas, USA); Professor Kenneth Goodpaster (Koch Endowed Chair of Business Ethics, University of St Thomas, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA); Dr Davis McCaughey AC (Professorial Associate, Department of History of the University of Melbourne, formerly Governor of Victoria, Australia); Dr Robert Cook-Deegan (Director of the Divison of Biobehavioural Sciences and Mental Disorders at the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, USA); and Professor John Langan, SJ (Rose Kennedy Professor of Ethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC).