After a nationwide search for a new director, the Kenan Institute for Ethics will find a familiar face at the helm July 1 when current Associate Director Noah Pickus assumes the commanding role.
The search committee has selected Pickus as Nannerl O. Keohane director of the institute, Provost Peter Lange announced Monday.
Pickus has served as the interim director since the departure of founding director Elizabeth Kiss last summer.
Since its inception in 1995, the Kenan Institute has worked to make ethical inquiries and simultaneously convert these ideas into practice both at the University and in the community, Pickus said.
"I think the institute has achieved in its first 10 years a kind of entrepreneurial proof of concepts-that you can have an ethics institute that does both theory and practice," he said.
In the coming years, however, the institute will take on a much larger role on campus in defining the experience of Duke students, he added.
He explained that the institute will focus on organizational ethics, moral development and civic and global ethics and their applications to the community.
"I think our overall goal is to ensure that people recognize that when a student graduates from Duke, he or she has had experience dealing with ethical issues-in the classroom and outside-so that it becomes kind of a signature of the Duke experience," Pickus said.
He added that ethics should not become an academic major at Duke but rather remain a certificate program as a supplement to any course of study.
"We don't have a plan for a major-we have the certificate program because the focus is that the Kenan Institute doesn't own ethics at Duke," he said. "Our job is to help infuse it across the University, because if we own it, nobody else has responsibility for it."
Pickus said he also hopes to expand the research component of Kenan to further include students from all facets of the Duke community.
Students will be involved in research ranging from moral development at different stages of a student's life to what works in ethical business practice, Pickus said.
"I think that this is a real opportunity for the institute and for Duke to take the next step of what we have been building and to really deepen our engagement with both the lives of students and the best research and practice we can build," he said.
Lauren Hunt, assistant director of communications and advancement at Kenan, said members of the institute are very pleased with the selection of Pickus as the new director.
"This is the best possible outcome, so we are delighted with the news," she said.
Hunt added that Pickus, who has worked to expand the institute's programs and to develop a new strategic plan for the organization, has already proven himself to be an effective leader.
"There was no doubt in our minds, having been under his leadership for the past year, that he was the right person for the job," she said.
The search for a new director, which was led by psychology professor Phil Costanzo, was very competitive, and the committee considered many well qualified candidates for the position, Hunt said.
"The staff was able to meet with the finalists, and they were an impressive group of people," she said. "It's a testament to [Pickus] that he was chosen among such an impressive group."
Hunt said Pickus will continue to be a great leader at Kenan as the institution moves forward.
"He's a wonderful combination of an academic who also understands how to run an organization and how to work with people," she said. "He has a real vision for the future of Kenan and Duke."
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