Center for Ethics at Baylor University to Debut June 1

Ever since its founding in 1845, Baylor University has challenged its students and faculty to view the world through an ethical lens –– to explore what is right and wrong, and to develop critical thinking skills about moral principles and topics such as honesty, justice and responsibility.

Now, a new center at Baylor will bring together people and resources to coordinate and expand the initiatives on campus that explicitly engage ethical issues.

The Ethics Center at Baylor University will debut in the College of Arts & Sciences on June 1, 2026. It will be directed by Paul Martens, Ph.D., associate dean for undergraduate studies, strategic initiatives and special programs in the College of Arts & Sciences and associate professor of religion.

“The Ethics Center is being created for the purpose of supporting the ambitions of Baylor’s strategic plan, Baylor in Deeds, especially the goal of becoming a Christian university the world needs –– a Christian research university committed to developing faith-based leaders of character tackling some of the world’s greatest challenges,” Martens said.

Martens said the new Center is designed to be a structure that resources and supports campus activities that are central to Baylor’s basic institutional convictions, and that integrate ethics into the University’s identity.

“We have had the support of the College of Arts & Sciences and the Provost’s Office for years, but this new Center will enable research, curriculum and community engagement to rise to another level that will use our funding and infrastructure to accomplish things that would otherwise still be dreams,” he said.

“Baylor University, because of its Christian mission, needs to be part of the national conversation on any number of ethical issues,” said Lee C. Nordt, Ph.D., dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. “At least two of these issues that our new Center will address will be bioethics and the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), which have been subjects for discussion and research at Baylor for some time now. We have a lot of people at the University already working in areas involving ethics, and they will be affiliated with this new Center.”

Fostering ethics research

Fostering instruction and research in ethics is an important element found throughout the College of Arts & Sciences strategic plan, A&Spire in Deeds, which seeks to implement the goals of Baylor in Deeds.

The Ethics Center is also an outgrowth of the Baylor Ethics Initiative, a group of more than three dozen Baylor faculty members from academic units across the University who are “dedicated to critical and creative research about how Christian beliefs and practices relate — presently and potentially — to the broader cultural, social, economic, and political systems that we inhabit as local, national, and global citizens.” 

At the heart of the Ethics Initiative are faculty research groups gathered around interdisciplinary fields of inquiry. These include research groups, led by world-class ethicists from Baylor’s Department of Philosophy and Department of Religion, that focus on AI and technology ethics, bioethics, ethics in leadership and global ethics.

“The faculty who are already part of the Ethics Initiative will be affiliated with the new Center, and we will work to devise formal ways to incorporate graduate and undergraduate students into the work as well,” Martens said. “Our goal is not to compete with the graduate and undergraduate programs dealing with ethics that already exist, but to complement them and provide them with additional resources. We are especially interested in supporting strategic efforts that enrich the curriculum.”

Multidisciplinary participation

Baylor already has a number of groups which explore ethical issues, including the Center for Christian Leadership and Ethics in the Hankamer School of Business and at least two student organizations –– the Baylor Ethics Society and the Medical Ethics Discussion Society. Each year, Baylor students from the Ethics Society seek to compete in both the National Ethics Bowl and the National Bioethics Bowl. Building on this momentum, Martens is confident that the new Ethics Center will provide faculty and students across campus even more opportunities to collaborate.

“The study of ethics is interdisciplinary by definition, since it brings philosophical and theoretical reflection together with practical realities. For example, you can’t study bioethics without some familiarity of either philosophy and theology on one side, and medical knowledge on the other,” Martens said. “The challenge is that scholars involved in each of these areas of discourse rarely have sustained conversations with each other, and we expect our Ethics Center will provide a big tent under which these sorts of conversations can happen.”

One of the goals of the new Center will be to sponsor outside speakers discussing ethics on campus, as well as to host ethics conferences that will invite participants from around the world. 

“Baylor has already had ethics workshops on campus and co-hosted conferences here and in other cities,” Martens said. “Those will remain, and we will continue working toward bringing national and global thought leaders in ethics to campus, whether through conferences or as visiting scholars. We will work to have funds available that will allow our faculty involved with ethics to travel and share their expertise on the national and global stage –– that is essential to fulfill Baylor’s Pro Mundo commitment in ethics.”

As the new Center draws in more faculty and students from across academic divisions at Baylor, Martens said it will help to reinforce the University’s goals and Christian mission.

“Baylor’s strategic plans have called for a sustained conversation concerning ethics around campus. We see the Ethics Center as a long-term investment by the College of Arts & Sciences to strengthen that discourse and bring to fruition an historic commitment to fostering discussions about virtue and ethics among our students and faculty,” he said. 

ABOUT THE COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES AT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY

The College of Arts & Sciences is Baylor University’s largest academic division, consisting of 25 academic departments in the sciences, humanities, fine arts and social sciences, as well as 11 academic centers and institutes. The more than 5,000 courses taught in the College span topics from art and theatre to religion, philosophy, sociology and the natural sciences. The College’s undergraduate Unified Core Curriculum, which routinely receives top grades in national assessments, emphasizes a liberal education characterized by critical thinking, communication, civic engagement and Christian commitment. Arts & Sciences faculty conduct research around the world, and research on the undergraduate and graduate level is prevalent throughout all disciplines. Visit the College of Arts & Sciences website.