UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Integrating ethics into sports organizations and practices will be the topic of the Sports Ethics Conference to be held on Penn State's University Park campus in April.
Hosted by The Penn State Center for the Study of Sports in Society, and co-sponsored by the Rock Ethics Institute, the College of Health and Human Development and the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State, sessions will be held from 10 a.m. through 4 p.m. on April 6, and 9 a.m. through 4:30 p.m. on April 7.
At the conference, sport practitioners and administrators will raise issues and ethical concerns they face in their day-to-day engagement in sport.
To help navigate the concerns, some of the world's leading sport ethicists, at Penn State and from other universities, will provide a critical analysis of the issues in an ethically sound manner.
Topics that will be explored include:
- Athlete role modeling
- Pedagogical potential of sport participation
- Environmental impact of sport events organization
- Commercialization of sport
Also during the conference, a student-essay contest winner will be announced. The center will grant the award to an essay of outstanding quality addressing any ethical issue arising in sport.
Sessions will be held in the Bennett Pierce Living Center, 110 Henderson Building, and in the courtroom of the Lewis Katz Building. The event is free and open to the public. Registration is recommended. Attendees do not need to attend the entire conference to register. The event is approved for SARI@PSU participation credit.
The full schedule can be found on the website.
Additional sponsors of the event include Penn State's Department of Kinesiology and the Paterno Family Liberal Arts Professorship in Literature from the College of the Liberal Arts.
The Center for the Study of Sports in Society supports research, teaching, public programs and service across Penn State related to the study of sport and its cultural, economic and social impact. The center hopes to bring academics and sports officials together on topics such as changes in football rules and protocols to improve safety, the use and misuse of data and the gap between data analysts and those without math backgrounds, and the disparity of opportunity for competitive youth sports in underprivileged and communities of color.