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 "If I major in philosophy or ethics, what will I be able to do? Other than teach?"

We didn't pose those questions to distinguished ethics teacher Brian Miller. Such questions would never occur to us. After all, what better life than teaching ethics and philosophy? 

In America, we rely on multiple institutions and as many pathways to train new educators in the fundamentals of the teaching craft. Reformers have routinely called for more systematic approaches, prominent among them transforming teacher education to model the clinical training, research practices and mentoring of doctors.

Parents everywhere have concerns about what will happen to their children and families after they are gone. On an abstract level, older generations worry about whether they are leaving their children better opportunities to live the good life, meaning a life safe and free from harm as well as one offering freedom to make ethical choices and to actively engage with others in the places where they live. 

Media recognition of social enterprise overwhelmingly focuses on social entrepreneurs whose initiatives are the passions of the technology moguls and philanthropists of Silicon Valley. Here in Michigan, however, social entrepreneurs are relying, not only on innovative ways to deal with large ethical problems, from food justice to restorative justice, they are relying on a new legal form to do something and to make a difference.

Erin Mattimoe is a young nonprofit professional with a special talent for building leaders in youth organizations. She is currently a program specialist in the Ann Arbor and Jackson Regions of Girl Scouts--Heart of Michigan. When we began our conversation, we thought we already knew about Girl Scouts.

Public awareness of pediatric bioethics dilemmas is often limited to media reports dramatizing conflicts over the rights of families and doctors in determining the circumstances for performing highly experimental surgeries or limiting life-saving treatments to seriously ill newborns, today remembered as educational case studies or lawsuit names--from Baby Fae to Baby K. 

Our inaugural podcast of the Atlas of Ethics begins, appropriately enough, with a fascinating discussion of an ethical idea that concerns our obligations toward those close to us, that is our families and relations, and to those close by, such as our neighbors.

Sometimes, when we ask people to talk about the ethics of their work and the pathways they have taken to be where they are, they offer up their best linear moves and memories. Many of our listeners are interested in learning the point-a-to-b directions people follow as well as the google maps they rely on along the way. 

Our first Generational Leaders Dine and Discuss program about the state of education in Michigan featured a remarkable and engaging group of panelists.