Andrew Cullison, '01, the third and final candidate in consideration to fill current Director of the Prindle Instutute Bob Steele's position next year, visited campus Tuesday to speak about his vision for the future of Prindle.
The bulk of Cullison's presentation centered around making the Prindle Institute marketable to all departments at DePauw.
Some of the tactics that he discussed using include a program for social entrepreneurship, reaching out to all disciplines to try to incorporate work with the Prindle Institute into each classroom curriculum and creating an active online website that students could post to and use to debate on ethical issues.
Cullison's main point was the idea of 'multidisciplinary,' in that one cannot consider an ethical issue using a background knowledge of just one subject area.
He explained that there are always multiple factors to consider, usually stretching across multiple subjects. He hopes that, by incorporating ethics into many classes, people will become more interested in getting involved in the Prindle Institute.
"I can't imagine how you can seriously address serious practical ethical questions without a solid liberal arts education," Cullison said. "Hopefully, once you start thinking about that ethical issue, you will start getting the bug... You will start thinking about it more, and you will start paying more attention."
Each of the three candidates was asked to prepare two parts to their presentations: the first was an ethical lesson and the second was the candidate's vision for how he would serve the Prindle Institute as Director.
For the first part, Cullison chose to use an example of a train that was headed down a track. The train was going to hit a child standing on the tracks, but you had the power to flip a switch. The train would change directions and instead crush a new Playstation 4 that you had just bought. For moral reasons, he explained, almost everyone would choose to flip that switch.
"Ten million children die each year from preventable diseases," Cullison said. "For approximately the cost of a Playstation 4, you could save the life of a child...There is no morally relevant difference between [the two situations.]"
Professor of religious studies, Beth Benedix, who attended the presentations for all three candidates, thought that this portion of his presentation was genius.
"I found him very inspiring. I thought he was a visionary," Benedix said. "I think what he showed was he could hit the ground running. He already brings with him the energy that I think would really be like ideal in that space."
First-year Vanessa Freije, who also attended all three of the candidates' presentations, was impressed by Cullison's vision for weaving together the Prindle Institute with students' regular curriculums.
"I like how he talked about ethics being multi-faceted," Freije said. "He was by far my favorite."
One of the ideas that impressed Freije and Benedix was his idea of having a prize for each distribution area at the end of each semester for a project relating to ethical issues. Students would be able to enter in a contest to win a prize, financially or otherwise, for a project that their teachers would assign relating to ethics. Cullison's hope is that, through this contest, Prindle would garner more student interest and diversify the institute.
"He truly meant the word that he used, 'multidisciplinary,'" Benedix said. "I thought he was really able to see connections among different programs, different parts of the curriculum."
Cullison stressed that his main focus as director of the Prindle Institute would be to actively engage students in the institute because it is something that he feels is a great asset to the university.
"At the center of all my ideas, I want you to just be confident that the student is really at the center of all of these," Cullison said. "Every single one of these ideas is designed to actively engage students."
While Benedix isn't entirely sure as to when the decision for the new director of Prindle will be made, she left Cullison's talk excited for the future of Prindle.
"I left completely energized and totally jazzed," she said. "I think this is a really important position that we fill and a really important decision that we make, and for me it's really exciting to have a candidate like Andrew as someone we're very seriously considering."
