Subject: "Ethics" in advising - Can you teach someone "ethics"? What do you advise your staff when their personal ethics/values bump up against the "advising community ethics/values"? (May 2005)

Comment from the Commission Chair/Editor: As you will read below, there has been only one response to this subject so far. Should we rephrase it to query, "In what ways does an advising administrator encourage and teach others to make ethical decisions within the constructs of the advising position?" Does anyone have an ethical decision-making model to share? (Thanks, Pam, for sharing this.)

• The Spring 1993 edition of the NACADA Journal had an article titled "Ethics in Academic Advising." I have based an advisor training session on this article. I ask the participants to identify some advising situations where they were unsure of what to do. Paraphrasing from the article, I identify 4 ways of acting ethically: to be respectful, beneficial, fair and loyal. I ask the audience for definitions of these as they relate to advising. I propose that ethics can help them with their difficult situations. I then break them into groups and ask them to resolve their situations and give them some additional sample advising situations. I then ask them as a group to identify the ethical issues involved and what an ethical response would be. They then share with the other groups.

Contributor: Pam Pudelka, Delmar College, ppudelk@delmar.edu