Charlotte Program Offers Students Tools To Be Ethical Leaders
In construction, a capstone completes a building or monument. It is an essential part of the structure — and also an important symbol. Likewise, a capstone class crowns students’ studies symbolically and in practical terms.
This is certainly the case with UNC Charlotte’s 10.5-month fast-track Master of Science in Management program, designed for people with non-business undergraduate degrees. The program’s capstone course wraps up students’ experiences in a distinctive way: they learn from immersive studies of real-world ethical dilemmas, guided by a world-class expert in global business ethics.
“Our capstone class integrates managerial studies, legal studies, ethics and leadership into a single package,” says Denis Arnold, who teaches the class. “The leadership component is very significant in terms of what they do in this class. The class members are identifying what constitutes good ethical leadership and what doesn’t. In that regard, they develop a set of skills that they wouldn’t otherwise have had.”
Arnold, the Jule R. and Marguerite Surtman Distinguished Professor in Business Ethics in the Belk College of Business, draws from his extensive research and experiences to shape the course.
“We’re trying to give students the tools to be ethical leaders and community members,” he said. “Much of what we do with respect to the research has an impact on the class. And the class is very driven by social science research from the last 20 years that tells us what it looks like to manage an ethics and compliance program in a large organization effectively. We want them to understand the design of an ethical organization and to know how to discern red flags.”