Madeline is a nurse who works in the emergency room of a hospital. Upon her hiring, she discovered that Paul, one of her classmates from nursing school, also worked at the hospital and would be her co-worker. After working a few shifts together, the two connected on social media. One day, Madeline saw that Paul had “liked” a meme on social media that expressed anti-immigrant sentiment, decrying immigrants as a drain on resources, including healthcare. As soon as she saw the meme, Madeline felt uneasy. The hospital where Madeline and Paul worked served many in their city’s immigrant communities, and Madeline was herself the children of immigrant parents. The meme hit close to home for her. Additionally, Madeline considered herself friendly with Paul, and he was in a more senior position to her on the nursing staff.
Finding Boundaries
Jay and Logan have been co-workers and friends for several years. Recently, Logan started texting Jay a lot, sometimes every day. At first, Jay was happy to be talking to Logan out of work, as they had always been friendly with one another. But Logan was having some family difficulties with his spouse, and his home life had become stressful. Jay wanted to be supportive, but lately the texting had become overwhelming. Furthermore, Jay noticed that Logan wasn’t contributing as much to their shared projects, using his home life as an excuse, which left Jay working overtime in order to meet their deadlines. Jay cared about Logan and wanted to be a good friend. At the same time, the texting was becoming burdensome, and their work wasn’t getting done efficiently. Jay felt it was unfair that he was having to pick up Logan’s slack and put in extra hours. Jay wondered how best to set boundaries with Logan and get their work back on track.
The Admissions Dilemma
Alex was recently accepted to a prestigious college and joined a private online group made up of other accepted students. In the group, students were exchanging inappropriate jokes. Some jokes were hateful towards certain groups of people. Alex was taken aback by what the other students were sharing, but also unsure of what college would be like and anxious to make new friends. After reading some of the other students’ posts, Alex contributed a joke that mocked a minoritized group. A few weeks later, the college's admissions team learned about the online group and decided to take back admissions offers from students who contributed hateful content, including Alex. Alex was no longer welcome to attend the university.
Serving a Cause vs. Serving a Client (*Sensitive)
Since childhood, Susan has known that she would become a defense lawyer. She wants to fight powerful people who abuse others, and she works actively to help government and democracy in general work effectively. Once, when Susan was representing two individuals on death row and lost the capital trial in state court, Susan and her fellow defense lawyers had to decide whether to file an appeal. A group of civil libertarians with whom she had been working urged her to wait five years because filing an appeal was likely to set back the statewide fight against the death penalty for a number of years. However, both of Susan’s clients were scheduled to be executed within that time, so Susan chose to appeal the decision, thus saving her clients’ lives.
The Diagnosis Dilemma (*Sensitive)
Thomas is a genome scientist and geneticist at a pharmaceutical company. He works on identifying gene targets for drug development. When Thomas was finishing up the last couple of months of his residency during medical school, he was asked by his favorite doctor, someone he viewed as a mentor, to assist with his private practice patients. One night soon after Thomas started this work, one of Thomas’s professors was brought into the hospital in the middle of the night in a deep coma after having attempted suicide. Fortunately, Thomas and his mentor were successful in saving the professor’s life. However, when Thomas’s mentor looked over the notes on the case, he said that Thomas had “missed the diagnosis,” and that the patient had been brought to the hospital due to “an acute asthmatic attack.” Thomas quickly realized that he was being asked to help cover up a suicide attempt. Although he followed his mentor’s directions and changed the diagnosis in the patient’s file, he did not feel at all comfortable about the situation.
A Believer in Bolivia (*Sensitive)
Patrick is a young medical resident who is “passionate” about his work. After his sister died of leukemia during his senior year in college, Patrick became a Christian in order “to find meaning in life,” and he now feels deep ties to Christianity. Patrick has long been concerned with issues of social injustice, and he sees becoming a doctor as his way of helping the poor. After completing his formal medical training, he wants to establish his own orphanage in Bolivia, where he has worked with children before. Patrick’s very strict moral and ethical standards for himself and his work are visible. He makes decisions according to his understandings of right and wrong, and understandings based on his Christian beliefs. Because of these beliefs, Patrick refers patients to his colleagues if there is an issue that is in conflict with his values. He does not care if he gets a “bad rap” or a “bad mark” as a resident.
Camera Shy (*Sensitive)
Julie is a junior in high school who is very committed to theater. Julie, like many of her friends, is self-conscious about her appearance. She has noticed that one friend in particular is struggling with an eating disorder, which concerns Julie. When Julie served as a counselor at an all-girls summer camp, she was struck by how comfortable all of the campers looked in the photos. It sort of “hit” her that she had not seen pictures of herself or her friends looking un-self-conscious in a long time, and she says she is sick of feeling insecure and watching her friends struggle with the same issues. Her experience at the camp helped her to realize that she wants to use theater to help young women be successful and to feel empowered.
Drama Drama (*Sensitive)
Beth is the director of a repertory theater and teaches at a school of drama. While Beth feels that collaborations in theater are most often wonderfully exciting and generative, she has experienced some that are chronically bad and some that have reached a critical point at which she has asked an actor to leave the play. She remembers casting an actress who turned out to be a non-functioning alcoholic, and she realized soon after rehearsals started that the actress had to be fired. However, she said that she felt “a terrible sense of responsibility to this woman,” and she wondered if she might be precipitating a crisis in the actress’s life by letting her go. Beth nonetheless maintains that there “was no question that this was the right course of action.”
Mentorship at a Distance (*Sensitive)
Noah is an environmental virologist and an Albert Schweitzer Fellow. For the duration of his Schweitzer fellowship, Noah has worked on a music program at a school that serves students with “extreme” behaviors. When his father died of a heart attack, during Noah’s adolescence, Noah was unable to deal with the loss in a healthy way. He became dependent on drugs, and frequently became “side-tracked” during his college years. In part because his father was a helpful and important role model for him, he tries to provide healthy and positive mentorship for the students at the school. Noah is deeply spiritual, and describes two guiding principles: (1) to love God “as you understand it,” and (2) to love one another. His beliefs are his greatest source of motivation. Noah also explains how Albert Schweitzer, the humanitarian in whose honor the Schweitzer Fellowship was established, has served as an important mentor and role model for him. Noah believes that we can follow Schweitzer’s example in order to “change the world for good.”
The Right To Say No (*Sensitive)
Sophia is eighteen years old and about to graduate from a high school for the performing arts. Sophia has always loved performing, but theater became a deep passion for her during her high school career. However, a couple years ago, she encountered a difficult situation related to her chosen line of work. Because her parents do not subsidize her acting, Sophia wanted a paying acting job. After mailing out her headshots and resumes, she eventually landed a role in an independent film that she did not know much about. As part of her role in the film, Sophia was asked to do something sexual that made her very uncomfortable, and that she felt was wrong; however, she did not know what the consequences of saying “no” would be. For two years after this experience, Sophia stopped looking for any acting work outside of school.
Discriminating Decisions
Renee is a 38-year-old American working towards a post-graduate degree abroad. Renee spent the past 12 years of her career working in international education. Before leaving her post to pursue her own education, Renee served as Director of Study Abroad at a mid-sized public research university in the US. Renee describes a time, early on her career, when she was instructed by her superior to block a student with disabilities from study abroad. At the time, Renee reached out to others, including the human resource department at her university, but was met with silence. Ultimately, the student did not go abroad. Renee was deeply troubled by the experience and has dedicated her energies to advocating for student rights ever since.
Selling the Gift
Sofia, a 34 year old Mexican woman living in Nicaragua, runs a social program on emotional education. As the head of her program, she has faced many challenging decisions. In difficult times, she is compelled to reflect on her personal values of “integrity, honesty, responsibility, resilience, growth mindset, and spirituality”. Sofia describes a time when she was approached with a business deal to sell expensive equipment--which had been given away as donations--to local hospitals. The deal was lucrative, but in sharp contrast to her stated values. Sofia ultimately turned down the offer and held steady in her convictions.
Firm About “Flim Flam”
Gail has served as a criminal defense attorney for twenty-three years, and she was appointed a federal district court judge in the mid 1990s. She is a highly principled person, and she feels that her values shape her decisions in her professional life. Early on in her career, when she was having trouble finding cases, she was approached with a request to represent a woman charged with “flim flam,” which was basically an elaborate scheme to steal money. After Gail initially agreed to represent the woman and received full payment on the spot, she changed her mind and returned the money. Although many would argue that Gail had a responsibility as a lawyer to represent anyone who needed it, she said that the woman clearly had resources with which to locate and hire other legal representation, and she said that there was nothing the woman had done with which she cared to be involved. Despite having made a decision that felt in line with her values, she still questions whether she made the correct professional decision.
The Meaning of Grades
Stephen is a professor of engineering. He recognizes the importance of teaching in his work as a professor, and he tries to use techniques that require students to take chances and try new things that will help them to grow in both intellectual and personal ways. However, Stephen faces a major dilemma in his work with respect to grading. Like other professors at his college, Stephen has a strong commitment to the meaning of grades, and he refuses to inflate them. As a result, students from his department have traditionally had difficulty gaining acceptance into their desired post-graduate engineering programs: their grade-point averages are not as high as those of competing students from colleges where grade inflation is commonplace. Though Stephen recognizes that his students are at a distinct disadvantage as a result of his school’s relative lack of grade inflation, he wants to approach grading fairly.
Valuable Investments: Ethical Values in Business
Lauren is in her late forties, and is the president and CEO of an Internet startup company. Lauren argues that strong values and business success are intimately related, though she acknowledges that this understanding may not be the norm in the business world. During a previous job with a different company, Lauren made the choice to move a company meeting from Colorado to California “at a time when Colorado had passed legislation that was very anti-gay and lesbian,” even though they had already put deposits down on hotels in Colorado. She upset at least one other employee with her support of the gay and lesbian population, and this employee quit the company as a result. The company certainly lost money because of Lauren’s decision, and she may well have lost customers as well.
Playing Hardball
Mark is thirty years old and is in his fifth year of graduate study in genetics. One of the projects he is working on is geared toward the development of a tool that will allow molecular biologists to sift through the abundant data generated by the human genome project. In his work on this project, Mark came across an organization that was producing flawed data, and he sent a statement of his objections concerning the faulty data source to the “second in command” at the organization. To support his argument further, he included his own, unpublished data. A few weeks later, his contact at the institution posted Mark’s data set on a website without asking permission and without giving proper credit. His advisors counsel him not to write a letter of complaint, as the individual who stole his data was in a higher position of authority, and could ruin Mark’s career. The incident disappointed Mark: he did not receive appropriate credit for his work, and the incident made Mark question his scientific beliefs and values.
In Pursuit of Excellence
Alfred Bloom was the President of Swarthmore College, a small liberal-arts college, from 1991-2009. In order to improve the long-term quality of the college’s athletic program, he and the college leadership decided to reduce the number of intercollegiate sports teams at Swarthmore from twenty-four to twenty-one. This move included ending the football program, which was an extremely controversial decision, and it received a great deal of notice in the press. Bloom explained that the decision was motivated “by a desire to… give students across sports a sense of quality of play, a sense of accomplishment, and a chance of actually being successful in competition… it was really about providing excellence. In athletics—because of the degree of specialization that’s taking place—if you want to have excellence, you have to have actually fewer teams.” In other words, because having good sports teams means admitting students based on that talent, President Bloom decided that Swarthmore should focus on a wider set of student interests and pursue excellence among a smaller set of teams.
Empathy: How Much Is Too Much?
Linda is a twenty-seven-year-old professional nurse at a respite unit at Boston’s Health Care for the Homeless. As a child and young adult, Linda faced many challenges within her family: her parents were divorced and her mother and sister were both mentally and emotionally unstable. By helping her mother and her sister, she learned to “reach out and help others.” Linda firmly believes that “pain brings empathy.” At the same time, Linda acknowledges that over-empathizing with people can be risky, because you can lose balance, or take on too much of a patient’s “sorrow and sadness.” Linda believes that it is important to have “balance” and “empathy” and “to know your limits” at the same time.
Divided Loyalties
Sara is the executive director of a national nonprofit that represents the concerns of America’s independent workforce, including freelancers, consultants, part-timers, and the self-employed. Sara’s grandfather was vice president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, and although she never met her grandfather, she has been very much influenced by his work as a union organizer. Soon after being recognized as one of a group of outstanding social entrepreneurs, Sara was invited to the World Economic Forum (WEF), a meeting of leaders of governments and corporations from around the world. Because the WEF gathers so many powerful individuals together, there are often protests of one form or another, and Sara was forced to cross a picket line in order to attend the WEF. In this case, she felt torn between a loyalty to her roots in the labor movement and a responsibility to her role as a successful social entrepreneur.
What’s a Mentor?
Grace is in her late twenties and is in her sixth year of graduate studies in molecular biology. For the past five years, she has been working in the lab of a well-known professor, which she knows she needs to do in order to “make it” in her field. However, Grace is not completely sure that she wants to follow the academic career route. This is in part because she feels that the life of a postdoc is difficult, and in part because she has difficulty with her current lab advisor’s very “hands-on” managerial style. Grace feels that because of her advisor’s style, there is hardly any collegiality in the lab. In addition, because she is in her sixth year of graduate school, Grace is switching from working for her advisor to working for herself, which means that she is a potential competitor with her advisor. Now, Grace believes, the relationship with her advisor is tense because of this competitive situation.