This week, Feb. 16-20, 2026, Michigan State University celebrates Ethics Week, a week-long series of events designed to engage students, faculty, staff, and the community in meaningful discussions about ethics and to encourage campus-wide engagement with contemporary moral challenges.
Organized by the Ethics Institute, Ethics Week is dedicated to exploring the key roles ethics plays in our professional and personal lives and the many dimensions of ethical inquiry, with a focus on issues that resonate within our current societal context.
Throughout the week, participants will have opportunities to engage with a wide range of themes through various formats, including panel discussions, workshops, and interactive sessions, all aimed at stimulating dialogue, critical thinking, and collaboration across disciplines.
Some of the events held during the week are led by College of Arts & Letters faculty and students. Those events include:
Downtown Tree Canopy Revitalization Visioning Session
This session will be facilitated by students from the Integrative Arts and Humanities class, “Hacking the Built Environment,” taught by Barbara Pearsall, Assistant Professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design, and Hailey Becker, Ph.D. in Forestry and MFA in Art candidate. This class examines MSU’s campus history — its natural environment, language, and spatial planning — as a lens for understanding institutional values, with particular attention to MSU’s colonial histories and land-grant/land-grab legacy.
This semester, students in the class are engaging ethical themes related to environmental sustainability, the health and well-being of diverse populations, social justice, and inclusion. In collaboration with the City of East Lansing and the Department of Forestry, students are learning about urban forestry issues facing East Lansing and are creating artworks that support the development of the East Lansing Downtown Tree Canopy Revitalization Project, a plan to guide future tree planting, care, and management.
During Ethics Week, students will facilitate a Downtown Tree Canopy Revitalization visioning session for the MSU community on Monday, Feb. 16, from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. in Snyder Hall, Room C20. Register here.
The Aspen Tree: Community Through Connection
Led by the Institute of Ubuntu Thought and Practice (IUTP) team, this event invites participants to shift their focus from self to community. The aspen tree is significant because, while it appears as many individual trees, it is actually a single organism with a shared root system. This metaphor situates individuals as part of a larger whole and offers opportunities for identifying pathways through which to connect and sustain life together in a much deeper way. Participants will be invited to collectively explore shared experiences and commonalities.
This event takes place Monday, Feb. 16, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. in the International Center, Room 303. Register here.
The Ethics of Open Scholarship
Led by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Arts & Letters, this session will explore the ethical questions raised by the open access and open science movements, including the ways that advocates’ goals of creating greater equity in scholarly and scientific communication have been undermined by recent developments in corporate publishers’ business models. A range of developing alternatives to corporate-owned publishing models will be presented as attendees reflect on their own concerns about working in the open.
This event takes place over Zoom on Tuesday, Feb. 17, from 9 to 10 a.m. Register here.
Infusing Ethical Approaches to AI Across Curriculum Panel Discussion
This panel discussion will feature four faculty members from the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures (WRAC) who will discuss artificial intelligence and teaching, including MSU’s AI guidelines and ethical approaches to AI in the classroom. Panelists will address how AI is being discussed, interrogated, analyzed, addressed, and integrated into teaching; how MSU’s AI guidelines — both previous and newly revised — have been implemented; share the various ways in which ethical approaches to AI have been infused in classes and across the First-Year Writing program, undergraduate programs, and graduate programs.
Panelists will also share specific examples of activities, assignments, and prompts that attendees may adapt for their own teaching. Time will be reserved for whole-group discussion and for audience members to share experiences in teaching ethical approaches to AI, both that have worked and maybe not worked so well. The goal is for participants to leave with at least one or two ideas they can implement in their teaching and curriculum.
Panelists include Danielle DeVoss, Chairperson of WRAC; Casey McArdle, Assistant Professor and Director of the Experience Architecture program; Steven Fraiberg, Associate Professor and Director of the Professional and Public Writing program; and Mike Ristich, Academic Specialist and Director of the Citizen Scholars program.
This event takes place on Wednesday, Feb. 18, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. in Bessey Hall, Room 315. Register here.
Philosophers Doing Ethics Panel Discussion
In this panel discussion, four faculty members from the Department of Philosophy will discuss their research, highlighting the range and value of philosophical approaches to ethical concerns. Panelists include Assistant Professor Aaron Schultz, who will discuss technology and attention; Professor Robyn Bluhm, who will discuss neuroethics; Associate Professor Matt Ferkany, who will discuss ethics education; and Assistant Professor Megan Dean, who will discuss the ethical complexities of eating.
This event takes place on Wednesday, Feb. 18, from 7 to 8 p.m. in Bessey Hall, Room 114. Register here.
Inclusive Critical AI Discourse
Led by Jesse Draper, a core faculty member of the Digital Humanities program and an Academic Specialist in the College of Arts & Letters who serves as Executive Director of H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, this event will create space and structure for critical discourse about artificial intelligence among faculty and students at the unit level.
This event takes place over Zoom on Thursday, Feb. 19, from 9 to 11 a.m. Register here.
More Information
Organized by the Ethics Institute, this is the second annual Ethics Week for the Michigan State University community. The inaugural Ethics Week at MSU took place Feb. 17-21, 2025.
For more information and a full list of events, visit the Ethics Week web page.
By Kim Popiolek
