Seven Cameron University students will head to the national championship competition of the APPE Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl® in March following the regional competition. The CU team of Elishamah Antoine, Jonelle Dunham, Angelica Martinez, Michelle Nya, Sharon Richardson, Ty Spence and Taylor Spores look toward to the national championship competition, where they will face winning teams from the other 11 regional competitions. This will be the second trip to the national competition for Spores and Dunham.

The CU team finished the regional competition in a tie for first place with UT-San Antonio but placed second based on the tie-breaker (margin of victory.) The Aggies finished ahead of teams from universities across Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma including Loyola University, the University of Oklahoma, Texas State University, Baylor University and the University of Houston. Cameron was the smallest school in the competition, with the Aggies facing teams from significantly larger schools.

"This team has an incredible work ethic," says Dr. John "Ken" Masters, associate professor of business and mentor/coach of the CU team. "I'm proud of the work each one of these students put in to prepare for the regional competition, and I know they are already preparing for nationals. Cameron students can compete with students from any university in the country."

Antoine, Dunham, Nya, Richardson, Spence and Spores are seniors who are each pursuing a Bachelor of Business Administration degree. Antoine is from Simonette, Haiti; Dunham is from Lawton; Nya is from Bowie, Md.; Richardson is from Grandfield; Spence is from Snyder; and Spores is from Apache. Martinez is a junior from Lawton pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree in Strategic Communications.

The team's participation was made possible by assistance from the Virginia Brewczynski Endowed Chair in Business Leadership, which was created by the Lawton Retail Merchants Association in July 1994.

Presented by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, the APPE Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl® is a tiered competition. The top scoring 36 teams in 12 regional ethics bowls qualify. In advance of competition, each team receives a set of cases created to explore a variety of topics within practical and professional ethics. Cases are drawn from areas such as: the classroom (e.g., cheating or plagiarism), personal relationships (e.g., dating or friendship), professional ethics (e.g., engineering, law, medicine), or social and political ethics (e.g., free speech, gun control).

Teams prepare an analysis of each case. During each competition match, a case is selected from the set and a moderator poses questions based on that case. These questions seek to delve deeper into the multiple ethical dimensions of the case. A panel of judges probes the teams for further justifications and evaluates answers. Rating criteria are based on intelligibility, focus on ethically relevant considerations, avoidance of ethical irrelevance and deliberative thoughtfulness.

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PR# 25-142